torstai 19. elokuuta 2010

14.8. City exploring – Green and beautiful

More city searching to do! My colleagues gave me few good tips and hints about what to see, and then it is only matter of choosing the places to go. Botanical Garden and Wroclaw Fountain were my targets on Saturday.


Botanical Garden is located right next to Cathedral Island area, so it was very easy to reach. Something informative first: (see, my current role as trainer has already grown in; First theory and then practical exercises :))

"The garden has been opened already 1811. It occupies grounds of old fortification, and some buildings demolished during WW2. Garden is located right at foot of the Church of Holy Cross. In addition to the different garden and park-like areas, it included plant houses with water plants and cacti, to mention only a few. Main driving force of building the Garden was Heinrich Robert Göbbert working with city municipal gardens 1852-1884. Currently the garden belongs to Wroclaw University." That’s the most important things what “A Guidebook to Wroclaw” has to say about the Botanical Garden.

And in I went! At the very beginning there was one of city gnomes. These little statues are one interesting detail in Wroclaw, and I will later dedicate a whole chapter for them... That's also something learned useful in training; give teasers of things still to come :)

As you can imagine, a garden is FULL of things that just demand to be photographed. I decided to combine some of the photos into a collage; that’s in nutshell what the garden is; beautiful things with theme colour green.
click to enlarge...


Not only green… As mentioned, there was also house for cacti and other Mexican Succulents.


I am a fan of cacti! They are only plants that have agreed to grow on my windowsill more than couple of weeks.


I had looked the opening hours wrongly, and had only an hour to spend in the garden before closing. It was enough to walk it through, but definitely left few places unexplored. So, I’ll be returning later to see the deep and rich autumn colours.
Then, next destination would be Wroclaw Fountain. I had heard many people praise that sight, and website informed that the multimedia show at fountain would involve Apocalyptica.. So, that’s what really needs to be seen and heard!

The show was supposed to start only at nine, so I walked to Rynek (Market Square), sat on a terrace of a café, drank tea and enjoyed sunny and warm evening, beautiful buildings and life in general :) Then I checked updated fountain showtimes and learned that modern music show starts at eight instead of nine. Ok, time to go. I went to tram stop, equipped with two different guides telling me three possible lines to take. Sounds good, yes, but only fault was that according the tram stop listing on the sign at the stop said (or so it seemed to me) that none of those lines would be going to correct destination.

Intensive line map, tram stop listing and guide book reading and comparison didn’t help, but a friendly man showed intention to help me. Without common language we survived to communicate enough for him to instruct me to correct tram. And aboard I went again!

I followed the names of the stops during the way and after 25 minutes it seemed that I am in absolutely wrong tram. Scenery started to became very woody, and look suspicious in terms that I was going to a popular sightseeing place. What to do? My colleague (thank u Greg :)) had instructed me an online route map, but unfortunately “server was down” (go IT nerds go) and no help available from there. I was tired, hungry and therefore decided to give up, jump away from the tram on next stop and get back where I came from.

Of course return was not possible with a single tram, but for once I managed to conclude correctly the direction to which to walk after few stops in order to get to correct line! After dinner at a Greek restaurant Akropolis where service was despising but meat mix and crispy vegetables very delicious, it was time to call that Saturday a day and head home.

If you have to go astray, there probably could be worse looking tram stops where to do that.

Ei kommentteja:

Lähetä kommentti