The last 6 days seemed like they took 10 minutes. I landed on Monday, and now it's Saturday morning and I'm sitting in the Warsaw airport to fly home. We were pretty much in wall-to-wall meetings with customers and local partners. It was a good week business-wise and we got a lot accomplished. I was in Warsaw on Monday, Tuesday and Friday. On Wednesday Sylwek (our field engineer in Poland) and I flew to Wroclaw (pronounced vro-swav).
Wroclaw is in the southern part of Poland. It belonged to Poland up until the 5th or 6th century, when it became part of Germany. It remained under German control until the end of World War II. The lasting impact of WWII are evident almost everywhere you look and among the culture of the people. The city actually held out 6 days longer than Berlin, but was almost completely destroyed when the Russian army finally took the city. At the end of the war, following tremendous atrocities committed by both the German Nazi's as well as the Russian "liberators", the city was turned over to Poland. More recently, 12 years ago, the city was besieged by what is referred to as the Thousand Year Flood, where the entire city was completely flooded in a disaster that would compare to Hurricane Katrina in terms of loss of life and damage to the city. Despite a tragic history, the people of this city are very proud of their culture and resiliency. Another source of pride is Rynek, which is one of the largest Main Squares in all of Europe. We had a couple hours of free time on Thursday, so one of our local partners took us down to the square to walk around and check it out. Here are some pictures:
This is a picture of Adam, who works for one of our local partners in Poland. Despite the expression he's giving in this picture, he's actually one of the most positive, optimistic people that you will ever meet. I've known him for 3 years now and exchange e-mail and phone calls with him on a weekly basis. When he found out that I was engaged, he gave me a big hug and the next day gave me chocolate to give to Nancy on behalf of his wife and him. This is just another example of the tremendous friendships that I'm lucky enough to develop with my current job.
This is a picture of Sylwek at dinner. That smile on his face is perpetual (although it does get bigger after a few beers). He's worked for Harris for about 10 years now. Prior to that, he spent 12 years in the Polish military. He has some amazing stories, but the one I'll never forget is the way he describes the day his company commander informed them that the communist times were over and they were adopting a free society. Poland was the first country in the eastern bloc to make this giant leap away from Soviet influence. Obviously this was a huge risk, however, Sylwek says that almost everyone in their unit starting crying when they were told that they were allowed to publicly practice Catholicism (Poland being 96% Catholic). He's a great guy and probably the most talkative human being you'll ever meet.
Random picture of my hotel room. It's not the ritz, but I've stayed in worse. Two other random stories/facts:
1. According to Sylwek, anywhere in the world, if you see as statue of a man on a horse, the following principle applies (I'll refer to it as the "Statue of a Man on a Horse principle"):
- if all 4 of the horses legs are on the ground, then the statue is of a hero who died late in life of natural causes.
- if 3 of the horses legs are on the ground, the hero was wounded in battle and died of that wound some undetermined time after the battle ended.
- if the horse is only on it's hind legs, the hero was killed in battle.
2. According to the taxi driver who dropped me off at the airport, the Polish population in Chicago is high enough that it would be the 3rd largest city in Poland.
I have no way of knowing if either of these are true, but both seemed interesting.
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