THE LOWER SILESIA METHOD

Wroclaw (also known as: Breslau) is the largest city in Western Poland, it’s the City of the 12 Islands and 112 Bridges, and it was my destiny this summer.

The complete name of the event I joined was something more or less like this: “UNDERGROUND SU 2003: Secrets of Lower Silesia: Underground World”. Casi nada...

But I have to confess that before applying for Poland I applied for another SU... and I was rejected. So this SU in Wroclaw (a.k.a: The Flower of Europe) was like my second choice... and I think I was very lucky!

In Wroclaw (aka: Broshuaf) I found quite a lot of new friends, I found quite a lot of art and fresh air and beautiful stuff, I found quite a lot of love and I even swam in natural lakes... What else can someone expect in only 2 weeks of holidays?

Anyway, thanks to Lufthansa Airlines I also visited several German airports: The thing is that I should have gone Barcelona-Munich-Wroclaw but the first plane was 2 hours late and I missed the second one. A pretty Lufthansa girl told me to stay the night there in Munich, but she didn’t make it sound like a proposition, so I asked another pretty Lufthansa girl and that one found me a flight to Frankfurt and from there another one to Wroclaw.

I spent all day in airports, but the sunny side of the thing is that my flight Munich-Frankfurt was “First Class” (waw, man, First Class...), for first time in my life I could live the experience of being at the other side of the curtain!

It was very disappointing: some more centimeters for the legs, two little chocolates, and a free refreshing towel... but no Lufthansa girls in topless, no champagne, no live music, no feet massages...

Fuck the first class.

I finally arrived to Wroclaw and met some of the friendly organizers.

And Puchatek (also known as: Ewa) took care of Omer and me. And we almost destroy her family clock.

Day 1: Arrival Day

“Wroclaw is a city of encounters, a city that unites.

Here, in a sense, the spiritual cultures of East and West meet.”

- John Paul II, Polish pope

Ewa (aka: Winnie the Pooh) fed us with her sweetest honey-coffees and took us to the magic place known as “the Dormitory” (a.k.a: the Gym; a.k.a: the Kung Fu Place; a.k.a: Akademia Feng Shui; and even a.k.a: Studium Edukaji Ekologicznej).

For me, that place was just in the thin line between sports and sects. It was like a crossroad of cultures with elements from gymnastics, from Christianity, from oriental mystics, from alternative medicines, and from Chinese restaurants...

At night we were allowed to be noisy, but during the day we should be quiet because there were some spiritual therapies going on!

And one of our rooms was decorated with pics of Japanese gurus, Catholic nuns and the Pope John Paul II; the other one with a big mural of a shiny green forest...

I went to the Pope side.

Omer and me found a proper guide who took us for a sightseeing tour instead of waiting for the others in the Gym; and we saw almost all Wroclaw already, we visited the main parks to go with girls, we tasted the first Polish beers (Ziwiec rules!), we saw the party places and even the Kurna Chata and the tourism office (and I helped to raise a little bit the Polish economy with my mistakes buying telephone cards that I couldn’t use).

Our Polish guide was an expert one, his name was Miki, and he told us he was Hungarian, but I still don’t believe it. And we still hadn’t seen him in action and he was already looking like a nightlife expert and explaining us some seducing tricks. Omer and me were taking some notes and trying to learn. Lesson one: “Hungarians and Poles go to have beers and wine together...” Etcetera.

We came back to the Kung Fu Place, we met some new participants, and we came back to the center to the Official SU Opening in Kurna Chata Restaurant.

There we ate Magic Balls (they looked like boiled potatoes, but there were surprises inside!) and we drunk the typical Polish jar of cold beer. One fucking liter each. Hey, that was not only the alcohol in it, it was also too heavy to drink it with only one hand! Anyway, “na zdrowie!”. I sat in a table with several natives, very friendly and smiley people, and with Julia, a Spaniard that was teasing us all the time explaining she was from Poland (come on! she spoke Spanish better than me!).

And we went to the Communist Pub (aka: PRL). And what a pub! It was better than a museum!

Waw: the best compilation of Ruskie propaganda, solemn pics, paintings and sculptures of Stalin and Mao, cool 80’s music... and waitresses with red ties and red extra-short mini-skirts! I was amazed, taking pics like a fucking tourist, even in the toilet (it’s so kinky to empty your bladder while Che and Lenin admire your little brother with their eyes full of solemnity!).

And then, to avoid having a politically biased party, we went to a Capitalist Pub (aka: Shouflada or something like this). There we weren’t so lonely, there was also a Polish mother and 2 sexy lesbians dancing barefoot, but I didn’t like it so much, so I drank another beer and went out to do dark sightseeing with Svetlana (aka: the Girl who Poured her National Drink on her Clothes), and we talked about philosophy and about killing people.

Later we came back and met a sleepy Guillem (aka: the one from Vilassar de Mar!). He had finally arrived. Not his suitcase. “Fucking Lufthansa.”

Day 2: Competition Day

“Don’t try to understand Wroclaw, to make a lot of pictures and see a lot

of places. You have to feel it, to feel the history of the past, to feel the fever

and dream of the present and to feel faith and hope of the future.”

- Krulik, AEGEE-Wroclaw

We woke up early, had breakfast, make some fun of Giusepe’s name (aka: Pepino; aka: Pepinillo), took a tram to the center and started playing the Quest Game.

I was in the winning team... how could we lose with Jazmina (aka: the One Who Reads Bukowski and Likes to Quote: “Stella, bitch, where is your underwear!”) and Rik (aka: the One Who Lost The Answers’ Paper And Tried to Blame Me!)! And how could we lose with Anna leading and helping us!

Playing that game, we found out that the guy with the lions was Hercules (“I Herkules dupa kiedy wrogów kupa”), that Helium was a cinema, that the statue of the comedian Aleksander Fredro is not the best place of a date, that drinking in the streets (aka: botellón) is forbidden in Poland (like in Spain) but that people don’t give a shit (like in Spain). Etcetera.

In the Rinek Square (aka: Market Square; aka: Waaaw Square) we were a little bit like losing the rhythm, but then we found 2 clever and friendly blonde natives who answered almost all the questionnaire. They even found the fucking fake window. I was so impressed that I asked them a bonus question: “Eh... something else... would you give us your telephone numbers?”. At first they refused, but they changed their mind and run after us! One of the Sardinian boys took the numbers down in his mobile phone... and we didn’t see him again.

We also found out that in Wroclaw they have lots of strange legends and histories. One of the hits was the myth of the Statue of the Naked Sword-Man. When a virgin girl stands in front of him and look at his “sword”, he is supposed to have an erection, despite being made of metal. The funniest thing of this legend is that we were supposed to find it out asking the natives, and we chosed to ask a pretty shy girl, who had some problems talking straight about this subject:

“yes, I know the legend... is... eh... well... the thing is... actually... yes, well... I know... but... this... his thingy... well... something happen... something... uh...”

Nice red cheeks, by the way, and 20 minutes later we finally got the point, but this time we didn’t manage to get her number.

We also climbed the Gothic tower of the Isabel Church (aka: Sw Elzbiety) and we had picnic on the top. Beautiful view... Wroclaw is a wonderful city, it’s about time I say it, one of the nicest places I’ve seen.

After the game, we had the introduction course by Ewa, and some ice-breaking games (really confusing the one with the toilet paper), and I think that night we already ate the first pirogys.

And later we had the European Night (aka: National Drinking Party).

In some SUs, they keep the big hits for the last days, but we did totally the opposite and started with the greatest just then, maybe to avoid evaporation of the precious liquids.

There was a lot of good stuff around, but the Hungarian Stand deserved special mentions. Agi and Miki had prepared a big table with music, flags, booklets, wines, candies, food... (with all those good things we could even forgive the palinka taste!)

The problem was the Spanish pride. We couldn’t be less that Hungary so we stole Nacho’s ham and –with that ham, some sunflowers seeds, a Jueves Magazine and some other garbage– we organized a Castizo parody of Feria de Abril that was in the thin line between distilled folklore and ridiculous shame!

I have to mention also the French foie, the Catalan aromes de Montserrat (that thing that Svetlana drank like water before the introductions), the Serbian Tinto de Verano (aka: wine mixed with water! come on!) and the Polish style of mixing several undrinkable national drinks in one glass and drinking it in one sip! Amazing... Later some though guys were even going to the toilet barefoot.

And everything became more and more confusing as hours went by.

“A la figa! A la figa!”, said the Italians. “Mollerusa! Mollerusa!”, said Guillem.

And we danced and sang and drank a lot and Omer did some press-ups, and we had a Greco-Roman fight, and we also had a Karaoke Party that very same night.

Who needs national hymns when there are the Beatles songs??? And Queen and Bob Dylan are also not bad.

In my opinion, the greatest hits were “Bohemian Rhapsody” (as usual), “Yellow Submarine” (really, Guillem, I assure you), “Knocking on Heavens Door” (more classical music), and specially the AEGEE version of “Let it be” (“Aegeee, Aegeeee, talking words of wisdom... Aegeee...”)

Wonderful.

And “total masterpieces!”

Day 3: Panoramic Day

“Wroclaw –the capital of Lower Silesia– is a city

rich in remarkable works of art and architecture.”

- Jerzy Kos, English Miniguide

The third day we did sightseeing... but not just a little bit, but extra-size hardcore sightseeing. I don’t think I can tell the names of everything we saw, but I can tell you I definitely felt in love with Poland and specially with Wroclaw, its colors, its bridges, its churches, its parks, the buildings painted like aquarelles, the rivers, the sculptures, the trams... and Rinek Square, Solny square, the Ratuzs (aka: the Town Hall), Ostrów Piaskowy, Ostrów Tumski, the Cathedral of John the Baptist, Grunwaldzki Bridge, Piasek Island...

There’s only one word to describe all that: “Waaaw...” (and actually I’m not sure if this word exists).

We walked around and around and we climbed another tower and we also visited the amazing Panorama thing: an enormous oil painting by a Pole called Wojciech Kossak. Actually it was something more than just a painting: it was something between a simple painting and a thematic park... They manage to make you feel like being in the middle of the Battle of Raclawice, with painted fighting people all around and with real plants, garbage and stones in front of the canvas. The perspective was perfect, and that Wojciech Bartosz and his Polish friends looked like giving a good lesson to the evil Russians...

And, going on with the belligerent atmosphere, we also visited a War Museum full of weapons and pictures of glorious killers... I mean war heroes... I didn’t like it so much, but I enjoyed the helmet collections (because I love funny hats and because it reminded me Asterix and Obelix).

Later on, we received a Polish lesson, and I managed to remember “dzienkuje”, “dzien dobry” and “chests” (or “tits” for the girls). I did my best. And the teacher was very nice and friendly.

And I think that day we ate more pirogys (with potatoes or with onions or cheese inside... I’m a little bit confused with the pirogys variations, but they were quite eatable) and went again to the Communist Pub.

There, instead of dancing, I sat with some girls to have beers, I learned some French and I discovered a lovely French madmoiselle who was a meat addict like me... so we escaped to get our dosis. We bought 2 Polish gyro-pitas with Jesus sauce and we ate them at the Stone Flogging Pillar, that thing in front of the Ratusz which may look like a cross from far but is a 18th Century thing used for corporal punishments. And it was far more romantic than it may sound! Even with the slippery food escaping from our hands.

Ratusz and Rinek Square, at night, are also quite pretty. It’s difficult to decide if they look better at daylight or under the stars (exactly the same dilemma I had with her smile but didn’t say anything yet).

And we came back to PRL, we said “dobry wieczor” to our friends, Pepino joined us, and we 3 went back to the Kung Fu Place telling impolite jokes in the tram. I didn’t know it yet, but that was going to be my last incursion into a pub during all the SU... And I’m fucking proud of it!

Day 4: Underground Day

“Así encontramos de súbito,

hondas patrias imprevistas,

paraisos profundos de hermosura”

- J.Ramón Jiménez, Spanish poet

We went down... down to a magic subworld of tunnels, caves, cellars, dark corridors and holes in general... It was one of my favorite days, full of mixed emotions.

I think it all started in some place called something like Klodzkos’ Fortress where they had some big cellars with tortures stuff that we used to take the typical tourists pics. But that was just a warming up.

Because, talking about tortures... we were still waking up when the organizers put us inside a crazy labyrinth of shrinking tunnels. Each corridor smaller than the one before. Scary but fun. Some big brains enjoyed hiding in the glooms and saying “buu!”, others were just sweating and asking all the time “what the fuck are we doing here?” or “who the fuck is touching me?”. The most difficult part was to crawl trough a fucking small hole (you know witch one I mean, and don’t tell me it was a corridor made for humans, because there’s people in my family with nostrils bigger than that hole!).

Very interesting place... we crawled one after the other, nose to ass, in a total darkness... “Oh, I see the light at the end of the tunnel!”, said someone (probably the first one of the row, because the others were just eclipsed by his butt). And somebody said to have claustrophobia, but received the best shock therapy to cure it. I have never laughed so much in a tunnel (actually, I don’t get inside this kind of tunnels very often... and the truth is that they were nervous laughs, but they were laughs anyway).

And don’t quote me on this, but I think someone farted down there, or maybe it was something worse...

There were also some other funny tourists who started to sing to avoid looking scared like us. When they finnished, one of our experts in international diplomacy told them: “Thank you very much, thank you for stopping...”

But the greatest hit was the Bear’s Cave in Kletno... Just a perfect lovely cave!

If I got it right, that hole had been the house of some big guy named Ursus Spelaeus, who forgot to clean the remainings of his last barbacue and let some bones half buried. He had also decorated his place with lots of stalactites and stalagmites and columns and dripstones and travertine lakes and hollows and stone waterfall cascades and phallic shapes all around, everything colored with manganate and ferrum oxides, and lots and lots of fresh water all around. There was even a fossil skeleton of a bat on a wall, covered with calcite glaze, but from my point of view it could also have been a frozen spider. The guide was a gentle old girl with a nice sense of humor who couldn’t resist to make Freudian jokes about some kind of test for good-looking girls that consisted in erected stone dicks. I liked her style.

The place was wonderful, I have to congratulate Ursus Spelaeus, but the air conditioning wasn’t working alright. Temperature being 6.2 ºC, humidity about 100% (let me tell you that they should be very careful or, in such conditions, carbon dioxide will undergo precipitation and form calcite crystals that will fuck all the decoration)... And everybody had warm clothes but Guillem and me! But I can’t complain, as I had something better: French hugs.

Around the cave there was a nice forest and we went up there by funny mini-cars for tourists, but the memories of the bear’s place and the hugs eclipse everything else. I could have stayed there, living in a camping tent and hugging forever.

I think that evening we ate the golabki (I’m not sure about the spelling, but I’m trying to talk about that meat rolled with cabbage: delicious and caloric stuff!) and we played cards: the Merda Game, the Liar and Strip Merda. To recover our clothes we had to get on the top of the table, sing, dance and do things like that. Maciej even showed us the magic of the Polish “poetry”. I didn’t get all the message, but I was in such good mood that everything sounded romantic and sexy.

So I went with Claude-Cécile to the Yin & Yan Room, we did a goodnight kiss and later we went to sleep.

Day 5: Confusing Day

“Three minutes may be long enough to have a good pee,

but not to make a decent speech!”

- Longin Pastusiak, Polish deputy

The Adventure of the Spider Boat (aha: Nadbór Ship) was the most confusing sightseeing I had done so far. I was quite blinded by the strong sun, but I was told that behind the spider-nets there was a colorful boat made by Polish students. And somewhere around there was also a lovely teacher of History of Technology known as Professor Januszewski (aka: Spiderman) who told us a lot of stuff about the boat and a lot of stuff in general. Meanwhile, Tere (aka: The Queen) took 100 pics. And outside was OK, but then we went to see a strange film inside the boat’s sauna and there we felt more protected from the spiders (there was even one we liked to call Big Mama which was almost the size of a small chicken) but it was so fucking hot that it was difficult to follow the arguments of neither the film nor the Captain speeches. Specially because of the noise of the improvised fans and the snoring of half of the group...

Then we went to the Japanese Garden. The bonsais were really small and the place was cute, but it was a little bit disappointing not to find any videogame in a Japanese place. I like gardens and flowers so much that I started planting my camping tent and would have liked to make open air love there, but the guard was furious and told us something uncompressible (I think it was in Polish).

And we had also the most confusing dinner of all my life... confusing for the hour (it was 14:00) and confusing for the food itself (the mythical and unforgettable Blueberry Pirogy)... Eh... Uh... I have no words to describe that... But Tere thought they were great.

To increase the confusion we visited the Door of the Zoo, and then CC and me we had a romantic second dinner that consisted of just raw sausages (no Freudian jokes now, please, we did our best to make it look romantic), and then we met again the others and then we had a cruise!

The Cruise in the Odra River was another one of my favorite moments. Confusingly perfect.

Romantic, sunny, quiet, relaxed... till the Italian Revolution started and then the cruise became romantic, sunny, noisy, funny and with life music. I told them the poem about the pazienza and the gallina, and they told us a lot of stuff in Italian, and sang beautiful noisy songs.

And the river was cool and we could see the Odra bridges from the underside, and the sun was going down slowly and the towers of Wroclaw were perfect for pictures and I was happy and birds were singing and life was smiling and Claude-Cécile was smiling. I would have liked to stop the time (and to make love in the boat, of course).

But I didn’t manage to stop the time, and the cruise finnished and we went to a snobby bar next to the river. Nice place... but disabled waiter. He looked even more confused than us, and was totally unable to cook 8 sausages. Let me quote his confused words:

“Eh... uh... sausages... er... uhrg... in half an hour... half an hour... gu... eh... maybe”.

Guillem was quite confused, too, as he had already paid for the famous sausages. Dominika (aka: SuperDominika) tried to put some order, but it was useless (when I say “it” I mean the waiter).

So Dominika (aka: Jim Morrison Reincarnation) guided us in a quest for tourists’ food (aka: Pizza Hut) and there we ordered “Meat Lovers Pizza”, of course, and they misteriously brought us “Vegetarian Pizza”!

And we celebrated Bojana’s Birthday (aka: Bohanita’s Birthday) and they gave us balloons.

And let’s face the truth: I also would have liked to make love there...

Day 6: Nature Day

“He was gradually falling in love.

He thought about visiting a psychiatrist.”

- Charles Bukowski, Love for 17,50$

It’s time to say waaw again, because we went hiking through Polish mountains, we saw all the colors of green and I breathed more fresh air than during 9 months in Barcelona. But Sleza was not exactly flat, and it was a little little bit tiring, I have to admit it, and some out of breath participants were claiming: “Well, fuck the nature! Fuck the mountains! Fuck the trees! Where is the underground?”. I said: “Don’t complain, it’s very beautiful...” and the answer was: “Well, yes, AT LEAST it’s beautiful!”.

Two special sights to remember from that excursion: the mountain of the green rocks, and Paolo’s socks.

We also had the honor of finding out that Italian girls really exist (I had heard about them before, but never seen, so I thought they were a legend and that Italian boys reproduced themselves by mitosis techniques). The fact that the 2 Marias were pretty and very friendly was also quite good.

On the top of a mountain we rested a little bit, I took off my t-shirt and laid down on the shade, and received some sweet caresses that made me want to make love in the top of the mountain. So I said some funny bullshit and I liked my own joke so much that I’m going to reproduce it: “oh, ma puce, you make me feel so great... I feel like a king... I feel like the King of Poland... let’s say The Pope!”.

And we went to swim to the lake next to Sulistrowiczki Reservoir. That was confusing also. Cold and hot. I mean the weather and water were a little bit cold, but we were too hot inside and the water around us was a little bit like boiling...

I’m not going to talk about the stinky place were we went to change our clothes, let’s just say it was one of the few places were we didn’t feel like making love.

That evening we ate Polish fabada (aka: fasolka po bretowku), quite good actually.

And we also had a cake (congratulations to Puchatek’s family, it was absolutely delicious; and happy birthday again to Bojana!) and the Spaniards prepared some sangria to celebrate that Guillem’s suitcase finally arrived (magic recipe: wine + juices + sweet beverages for children + palinka + ice cubes + lots of sugar) and we did a cool Latin party with Compay Segundo’s music (DJ Stefano rules!).

Then we took a shower or two and then went to sleep (more or less).

Day 7: Sophisticated Day

“The hippopotamus does not have a sting in his tail,

but a wise man would rather be sat on a bee”

- Polish proverb

OK, we are arriving to the moment when –after so many stories and so much fun and so much love– I’m starting to lose the point and I’m not sure about what happened which day and my notebook becomes more and more confused.

So maybe it’s the best moment to describe one of my favorite characters of this SU... Try to guess who I’m talking about:

He’s got the head of Kojak,... the sunglasses of the guy from Miami Vice,... the moustache of Nietzsche,... the pipe of Sherlock Holmes and the collection of puppies of my sister... and he can drive a Peregrin Bus and prepare coffee at the same time with the help of a long stick!

He would have had such a tough look if it weren’t for all those teddy bears and pink elephants and little doggies and rabbits around... And he looked cold like ice even when he was totally lost (aprox. once everyday) or when we had an improvised chicken picnic inside his bus. And he never talked very much, so when he tried to establish contact with us, we were amazed and someone had to call the organizers: “Ewa, the driver IS TALKING!!!”.

And, talking about strange stuff... what about the apple-mint juice? As our gastronomical experts said: “Perfect! It’s like drinking juice and cleaning the teeth at the same time!”.

And, well, I guess we are in the day when the Lord of the Teddybears took us to the Lubiaz Monastery, a strange monastery that actually looked more like a party palace that like a serious monks place. There was Baroque and Rococo stuff, cool sculptures, expensive decoration, and sumptuous roof paintings by someone called Michael Willmann. I got the impression that those Habsburg Dynasty guys were a little bit pretentious but I liked their style anyway. (Of course I would have liked to make love in each and everyone of those luxury rooms... several times!).

And later we could chose between Botanical Garden and Zoo and I think 2 of us went to the garden and most of the others just went to eat something.

The Botanical Garden was very nice, with 7.000 diferent plants (I didn’t count them, my guide said so) and we walked around and we sat infront of the head of Carolus Linnaeus and we had an apetizer and we listened to a sophisticated concert of violoncel, arp and flute. No summer hits, just Bach, Debussy, Massenet, Ibert, Mendelssohn and Gluck. Beautiful music and beautiful surroundings. As we were too late to get a chair we were sitting and laying on the grass... and I must confess I woke up from an improvised 2-minute siesta. I woke up because I dreamt I was falling, but, contrary to the stereotypes, reality was far better than the dream: the melody was still in the air, the smell of flowers too, the classical concert was still going on, the exotic trees were still all around, the sun was going down slow, I was in Wroclaw and ma puce was next to me.

I think that was also the day that we ate an amazing Polish burger with lot of onion that made me get up and congratulate the chef (hey, man, if you read this try to guess what I ate next day for breakfast).

And a lot of people went clubbing, because the Conquerors Competition by Nations was getting more and more hot (well, Hungary had already 2 or 3 millions of points more than the rest of Europe, but the fight for the second position was still open). But some lazy drunk gamblers stayed in the Kung Fu Place and drunk Polish hot wine (interesting taste, something between tea and sangria, but stronger) and we played cards. The Mafia Game was especially funny and we learned several lessons:

1) never trust Italians when you’re playing mafia games.

2) the people who know too much die young (eh, Guille?)

3) always kill Lukasz, maybe he’s not from the mafia, but just for fun...

When people started to sing Polish songs we realized it was time for shower and went to sleep (more or less).

Day 8: Nazi Day

“The human soul is like a bee,

extracts sweetness even from bitter herbs”

- Henrik Sienkiewicz, Polish poet

We went down to the underworld again, and this time it wasn’t so sweet... But we had fun, probably as much fun as someone can have inside a nazi hole.

But lets make clear here that when I say “nazi hole” I’m not talking about Margaret Thatcher’s pussy. No way. I’m talking about some gloomy military constructions around Gluszyca, Walim and Rzeczka.

It seems that the nazis liked to make holes in the mountains like big Arian rodents. Well, actually they just sat there with their guns and persuaded some prisoners to make holes for them. Nobody knows for sure what were those holes made for and probably the purpose was quite wicked, but now tourists use them to get inside wearing funny helmets and take pictures (fuck, I thought I looked like a tough miner, but in the pics I see myself like a Fraggel Rock!).

Those nazi constructions make your head full of bad vibrations, you can almost feel the suffering and the panic still in the air after so many years... but I tried to be positive, thinking that the office were I work was not such an horrible place compared to that.

It was deep, cold, dark and wet. Grey and brown. Cement and stone. In some galleries there were still some tools, and everything was covered with sadness and premonitions of Death, so maybe I shouldn’t say this, but the truth is that I wanted to make love in those ugly caves, too..

In one tunnel there was a guy pretending to be like from an horror movie (something like a low budget version of Scream)... it looked like if he was going to say “buu!” to us, but he didn’t say anything, just stayed there, maybe symbolizing the Incarnation of Terror. My office came to my mind again... (but my boss is worse: her look is exactly the same but she also talks).

One of the guides was very professional, talking like a robot and ignoring us, but giving time to Puchatek to translate what he was saying.

The other one was not so kind. He said (in Polish, of course): “No translation. First I explain everything non-stop and later you translate if you feel like, but don’t interrupt me”. We didn’t get a shit and we started getting bored of his speech, so we were talking and hitting the walls with our helmets or hitting each others helmets (“gimme five! gimme head!”) or kissing in such romantic atmosphere (“who needs warm clothes?”). So the guide got nervous and told Puchatek: “They shouldn’t do this. They should shut up and listen and be serious and respectful. Please translate this important message”. And SuperPuchatek told him something like: “Yes, yes, go on talking, guy, don’t stop for us, maybe later I will translate it if I feel like”. So we didn’t get the message until the evening, but it was OK and we were very proud of our SU responsible.

As an extra revenge, she complained to some boss.

As another extra revenge, we stole one of the helmets.

(The thing is that I needed a souvenir for my sister and didn’t know what to buy. A red helmet from the Polish nazi caves seemed cool at the beginning, but the fact that inside there was written “MADE IN SPAIN” made me thought that maybe I should keep it for myself, for carnaval and parties).

Probably that evening we ate pirogys again (I guess that was the mushrooms version, quite good) and I suppose we also did some party, but I’m confused.

And of course: shower (the other one this time) and sleep.

But the nazi stuff came back to my head and I couldn’t stop trying to guess the purpose of those underground constructions... I made up 2 theories (the first one is just an intuition, but I’m quite sure of the second one):

a) maybe Hitler was trying to build a love nest for him and his secret gay lovers, but he had a terrible taste about interiors decoration...

b) those nazis were nuts.

Day 9: Fanatics Day

“Words must be weighed, not counted”

- Polish Proverb

Not everybody had such suicidical tendencies, but a small group formed by the bravest between the braves went to the Spider Boat again to see what Professor Januszewski had to tell about the nazi stuff and other constructions. I liked his style and I liked his enthusiasm and the way he enjoyed his job, I hope someday to be able to do that. He didn’t give a shit about how many people were listening... and probably he had tamed all the spiders himself.

After the speech we saw an intellectual movie (some kind of Polish nouvelle vague, very confusing but at least it was short like Buñuel’s “Chien Andalous”).

But the enthusiasm of the Spiderboat Captain was nothing compared with the enthusiasm of the Man of the Book, the only person I’ve met who was in love with a complete Jewish Cemetery!

The Jewish Cemetery itself was interesting, but the Man of the Book was simply amazing. The only thing he loved more that his cemetery was his old semidestroyed Book... (well, actually he also loved quite a lot the sound of his own voice!) And we had several translators but they weren’t able to follow his rhythm!

The place was nice, grey and green. Solemn, wild and melancholic at the same time; and Max Born (very clever scientist) was buried there. There was also Ferdinand Lasalle (socialist philosopher), Clara Sach (painter), the parents of Edith Stein (nun), and the guy who once had a beer in Krakow, in a bar were had been working a girl who used to go out with the neighbor of the nephew of a close friend of the mother of the sci-fi writer Stanislaw Lem... more or less.

But that wasn’t all: the Man of the Book told us about each and everyone of the people who were buried around (aprox. two hundred millions) and he also talked about each and everyone of the Holocaust victims, plus their family, plus the neighbors. The ones who were listening even heard him talk about Monica Lewinski (blowjob celebrity), and I’m not joking now. That guy couldn’t tell the difference between interesting historical events and fucking boring gossips! But I also liked his enthusiasm... let’s say almost fanatism...

I asked something about the Jewish calendar (it starts so fucking early!), Bartek translated the question and the Man of The Book answered in an only 15 minutes speech. Bartek translated the answer: “Well, he doesn’t know”.

The fact is that when we left, he was still talking and I guess he may be still there and won’t stop till the End of Times.

Then I used my VIP connections to come back by car instead than by bus. And we stopped in a gas station and gave a surprise to the chofer cleaning her car.

Then, in the Pope Room of the Kung Fu Place I took a very sexy siesta. Really kinky, with sleepy people around...

And we went to have dinner to the Sphinx, a very interesting place were women are not allowed to work (not even hided in the kitchen). I haven’t seen such a pervert restaurant in my life.

But despite his honest and obvious sexism, the place was quite popular because the handsome waiters were really decorative, a little bit inept but no-one is perfect! And I’m not talking only about the typical confusions between a glass of coke and a glass of orange juice, they also broke some stuff and baptized Maria Teresa with a mix of several drinks. They gave her an ice-cream; and they were really good-looking, so we forgave them.

Then, suddenly, Omer remembered his date, got up, paid like a thunderbolt, asked for chewing gum, and started running.

Day 10: Hottest Day

“Your electric hot waves

running through all my nerves

burn my fingers and lips.

Send on fire each kiss.

Every touch of your hand

paralyzes my breath

tangled wires

tie my hands and knees.”

- Grzegorz Ciechowski, The Current

Fuck, I have some memory holes now, but according to the booklet we visited that day the Castle Ksiaz, the Mine Julia, the Fox’s Adit and Castle Grodno, and I think the Ksiaz Place was that nice house in the hills with the Rococo rooms and the luxury stuff. One of our experts in Gothic castles said: “when you’ve seen one castle, you’ve seen them all”, but this one had some weird stuff... I’m talking especially about the weird Monsters Gallery, a very very dark and romantic place where I wanted to... OK, I think there’s no need of saying it again. And the monsters were so cuuuute! I almost died when the curtain fell on my head, but I survived so everything was allright, and we had the pocket lunch plus a hot dog and explained dirty jokes till Tere forget her prejudices and started laughing.

The gardens were quite cute and big also, like good palaces’ gardens must be.

I found out that the place had been build for Mr. Bolko I (Polish prince) but later several other celebrities had ocupied it, including Adolph Hitler (Austrian dictator) maybe trying to find a better love nest for his gay lovers or maybe attracted by the Monsters Gallery...

Then I laid in the grass like the lazy girls, while some people played volleyball and Omer rescued the ball from a strange fountain several times.

And as I don’t know what else happened that day, I will use this space to talk about some interesting fact about Polish culture:

The biggest box of condoms I saw there was 3 units!!

In Spain we usually see them in 6 or 12 units boxes, and I’ve been told that in some civilized countries like Holland they have them in packs of 24 or even 48!

As Paolo would say “maybe this is something about the religion?”... (well, actually he said that sentence in a rather funnier context, but I can’t write it here because this is the censored version).

And my favorite girl managed to see the 3-condoms boxes in a positive way: “maybe they are just one-night packs!”.

(Please, feel free to send e-mails telling me how big are the condom boxes in your countries, and what theories you have to explain those differences, I’m very curious).

And, talking about curiosity, I don’t get how the organizers convinced us to taste the Mad Dog Thing that night, if everybody knew it was a dangerous cocktail made of vodka, red sweet thing and tabasco!

Lukasz’ face of concentration preparing the drinks was only beated by the pain faces of the participants after tasting that (red cheeks, red noses, hot breaths, throats on fire!).

And, talking about fire, a very friendly Nacho prepared a beautiful yellow little banner (that I still keep as a souvenir) with something like: “Please, knock before entering”. And I went to sleep but later I changed my mind and went to an afterhours party (with the music of one of the best Bob Dylan’s CDs, candles’ light, some people playing coupling rituals, others just drinking and talking...) and after a prudent time I went to sleep again.

Day 11: Free Day

“Just a perfect day

You made me forget myself

I thought I was someone else

Someone good.”

- Lou Reed, Transformer

Well, like Tere would say: "we needed a holiday from our holidays", so CC and me we escaped from the group (fuck the football match) and got lost, and had a morning siesta, and walked around (and it even rained a little bit to make it more romantic) and we drank hot chocolate (in a hot and snobbish café) and checked the mails (and the 2nd page of El Listo), and looked for souvenirs with few success, and bought CDs (Republika, Myslovitz, Leonard Cohen) and had a proper lunch in the Kurna Chata Place (where we found Luca (aka: Luca Torelli; aka: Torpedo) and the 2 Marias) and later we had dinner in the Sphinx (where we found 2 lost Sardinians!; and where one of the funny waiters tried to take away our half-full dish in the middle of a kiss!), and we went to sleep in a real bed (in a youth hostel that actually seemed to have less intimacy than the Kung Fu Place...)

And that's all, nothing else too see here, please move on!

Day 12: Creepy Day

“I think documentals are higher forms of art than fiction films

because life is more clever than myself and it creates

more interesting situations than the ones I could invent”

- Krzsztof Kieslowski, Polish filmmaker

We woke up before the alarmclock, did some sport and run to the Gym, we had some breakfast there and then we went to Zabkowice Slaskie, the place with the Banana Tower, the castle ruins and the confusing stories about Frankenstein... (Come on! Why not Dracula?!)

Acording to the rumors, Frankenstein seemed to live there even before Mary Shelley wrote her book and he did some creepy stuff... but those legends were just a warming up for the horrors we were going to see with our own eyes that day!

First we went to a place where they had fountains with mineral magic water and lots of souvenirs (specially stones)...

And later, in Kudowa Czermna, we met someone even more interesting than the Bus Driver and the Man of The Book together! She was a friendly and talkative nun and had a nice little house (aka: Skulls’ Chapel) inside which we were not allowed to make pics (fuck!!! why?!!! why?????!!!!)...

From the outside it looked quite like a normal chapel, but inside...

Instead of using flowers paper or just white paint, the little chapel had been decorated with human bones!

The victims of the 30 Years War and subsequent epidemics were covering all the walls and the roof! And all of them looked totally death, brown-yellow, and very thin, without eyes but with big smiles (who knows about why were they smiling... maybe the nun and the tourists looked funny to them).

I didn’t count them all, but I trusted the nun when she told us that there were 24.000 skulls organized this way: 3.000 in the walls and roof and 21.000 under our feet... What a lovely and crowded place!

And she was also quite enthusiastic, and she explained us her collection of Record Guinness bones: “Here’s the longest one”, she said holding a very very long one (I will do an effort and won’t write here any Freudian joke, but it was sooooo kinky to see the nun holding it so sweetly and talking about its length so proudly!). And we learned to tell the difference between Occidental skulls and Tartar skulls, and we saw the skull of a guy who had been shot in the face and also the skull of his wife who had been beaten in the head (that’s what I call an unlucky family...) and also bones from a broken legs... but the bone-lover nun was keeping for the end her favorite kinky hit: a skull affected by a venereal disease! (“Moral of the history: always use balloons in all your relationships!!”). Before leaving, she showed us all the other bones under the chapel: a fucking grey mess half-buried in the dust, and she quoted the famous line “from ashes to ashes...” (which means in Spanish something like “del polvo venimos y el polvo buscamos”).

One of our experts in chapels said something like “waw, this place is dog’s paradise!” and someone else repeated the classic “oh, my dog!”, but the question that stucked in my mind was “WHY NOT STAMPS????”

And, talking about creepy stuff, we are arriving to the end of the story and I still haven’t told you about one of the most popular places in Wroclaw: the toilet of the Dormitory!

That little “room” was like an agora in the Ancient Greece: a meeting point of cultures where people coming from here and there spent some time everyday to chat and discuss about social life and political issues... “Who’s next? who’s next?”

Notice that, maybe for first time since Humanity gave up shitting outdoors, there was more queue in the male’s side of the corridor! To understand why, just take a look at the numbers: 2 m², 1 toilet, 1 shower, 1 little place to clean the face and teeth, and a lot of male participants... most of them Italians!

(Interesting Fact of Italian Culture: they are able to use hairdryers in heads with less hair than mine and in the middle of a very hot summer).

And there’s also something particular in Polish toilets: most of them have a window in the door! The glass is not clear enough to have voyeur fun, but it’s useful if you want to check if the one who is inside is standing up (so you can wait) or is sitting (so, if you are not in a hurry, you better go for a walk and come back in half an hour! (or, if you can recognize the person and you know his style, maybe you come back in 3 hours...)).

Hence, if you wanted intimacy, you should use the help of Stanislaw Sempel (the Polish hypnotizer).

And I think that day we started watching Snatch, quite a good movie, I think, but not good enough... People preferred dancing, doing coupling rituals, having sex or even sleeping or queuing infront of the toilet!

Day 13: Sausage Day

“Viure d’amour et d’eau fraiche”

- French Proverb

Once upon a time there was a beautiful place called Sobotka’s Lake, a perfect nature spot next to a stone mine (open air mine, this one) surrounded by green forests and stone walls that looked almost built on purpose for the climbing fans. The only problem is that some people had confused the stone walls with school blackboards and the lake with a garbage collector.

But if you forget the pile of plastic shit and the graffitis the place was quite close to paradise (just check the pics). The wind had moved all the empty bottles into a corner of the lake, and the rest of the water was 100% clear, there were millions of little cute fishes and even some seafood I tried to get with my cap but didn’t succeed. But I took a nice and refreshing bath.

The organizers had prepared a surprise for the participants and had gone there earlier to arrange some climbing stuff; but the participants surprised the organizers being a bunch of lazy bastards who preferred siestas in the shade of the trees than trying to get on the top of a rocky thing without mechanical stairways!

OK, some people managed to do it, and specially Bartek and Maciej looked very professional, but I have always been a chicken for this things, for me walking barefoot on those rocks with some broken bottles around was more than enough risky sport.

After the siesta we played some strange games about guessing people, and I went for a walk with Paolo, to check the stone mine (quite deep and impressing, by the way) and climb some metal stairs at the top of it. Finally I got scared again and I came back. And then I went for another walk with Claude-Cécile.

Later we played Slovakian cards, even stranger than the Spanish ones (but the paintings were not so nice as Heraclio Fournier’s, I have to say it). Some Slovakian cards had numbers, others had people, some were like “jokers”, some were “rests”... very confusing cards.

And we finally started the Barbacue! There were some great and greasy red sausages (Polish chistorras?) and also some black “vegetarian” ones (Polish malagueñas?) and also non-exploded popcorn (aka: just corn).

I would have preferred to wash my hands, but I enjoyed the thing anyway.

But, as often happen during SUs, we were not sure if that barbacue was lunch or dinner, so, just in case, lovely Italians prepared some pasta when we came back to the Gym. And we danced some kind of Elvis’ Remix and celebrated Puchatek’s Birthday, and we went to the toilet and meanwhile there were some assaults, robberies and lots of confusion (I mean even more than usual).

Day 14: Last Day

“A la figa!”

- Italian Cheers

There’s a Termodynamics Law that says that last days of holidays are always covered by a thin feeling of melancholy.

People started leaving from very early (actually Agi overslept a little bit, but I think she managed to get her flight) and, after some depressive goodbyes I decided to escape to the center and have some lonely sightseeing. I hadn’t been in my own since the beginning of the SU and maybe needed some meditation. And I really love the Rinek Place.

I took it easy, enjoying the view, the colors, the sounds of the city and the music of the street accordionists... First I walked randomly (the way civilized people should always walk when they are on hollidays), and later I took a look at the open air exposition of photos and painting reproductions. The exposition was about “Wroclaw Women Clothes” and it may sound like fashion bullshit, but they had some good stuff, and you could see the evolution of the city through the years (and this evolution can be summarized more or less with: destroy-Wroclaw-rebuild-Wroclaw-destroy-Wroclaw-rebuild-Wroclaw...).

And I also found a pin-flag for CC (finally!), a little bottle of vodka for my grand-daddy, and a black beer for me. Then I found the others and went to have a proper meal in the Kurna Chata, where I bought a Zywiec big glass (cheaper and nicer than the shit from souvenir shops), and later we did some shopping for another sangria (the 3rd one, I think) and came back home to do a siesta.

Yes, it may sound strange but the fact is that after 2 weeks everybody was calling “home” to the “Kung Fu Place”.

There was a second Puchatek’s Birthday Party and we drank the Italian sangria and ate a quite good and garlicky Polish salad, and I finally putted all my stuff inside the suitcase (very depressing also, but quite easy because I was the last one and I just had to collect the clothes that no-one had taken away before). Then, to raise our moral I spent some time talking with Maciej about politics, economy and unemployment...

I will also try to summarize the conversation: “Poland is fucked up”, “Well, Spain is fucked up also... actually I think the whole World is fucked up”, “Well, maybe you’re right, but Poland is more fucked up”. He told me some numbers and I had to agree. Fucking economy.

I went with CC to say goodbye to the Pope Room and later we went to sleep a couple of hours.

Day 15: Departure Day

“For esgrullar lo scroto

tu debes pagar 1 zloto”

- Stefano, AEGEE-Cagliari

Despite being quite sleepy didn’t have any problem with the flights coming back to Barcelona, but the thought of spending the next day inside an office didn’t help at all. I was already missing too many things.

Wroclaw is great, Polish people are great, the SU had been perfect.

In the airport I was bored and I checked the scores (that someone had copied directly from the blackboard to my notebook) with a proud smile. Thanks to Hungary we had even beaten Gaudí’s Birthday Party in Barcelona last year:

France 1 (100%)

Poland 1 (unknown percentage)

Czech R. 0 (0%)

Spain 3 (75%)

Türkiye 3 (300%)

Serbia 1 (33%)

Italy 7 (64%)

Germany 1 (100%)

Hungary 16 (800%)

Slovakia 1 (100%)

TOTAL 34 (131%)

Waw... Each person scored an average of 1,31 points, we should have videotaped that!

And later I read some booklets in the plane and I found the list of all the Nobel Prize winners that came from that thought-inspiring city: Paul Ehrlich, Gerhard Hauptmann, Theodor Mommsen, Fritz Haber, Friedrich Bergius, Kurt Adler, Otto Stern, Max Born, Philipp Lenard, Reinhard Selten...

Actually I’ve never heard of half of them, but for sure there was something good around Wroclaw that stimulated the brains and the spirits: maybe it was the air, maybe the river, maybe the people, maybe the pyrogis, maybe the beer or maybe the pocket lunch, I can’t tell, but it was good and I miss it.

Fuck, I think that’s all, more or less, or at least that’s all I can remember...

or at least is more than enough for the censored version!

Thanks to all the people who helped me with the notes to write this bullshit (inspired in actual facts), specially to Claude-Cécile of course; and thanks again to the organizers for organizing the SU; and thanks to organizers and participants for being there and creating such great atmosphere!

Do wiedzenia, whatever...

BY THE WAY: AEGEE-WROCLAW IS HERE, BARTEK’S PICS ARE HERE, RIK’S PICS ARE HERE, KAMILA’S PICS ARE HERE, GERARD’S PICS ARE HERE, LUCA’S PICS ARE HERE, TERE’S RADIO IS HERE... AND THE GABRUDOS’ PAGE IS STILL HERE, ALWAYS AT YOUR DISPOSAL (AND FEEL FREE TO WRITE YOUR OPINIONS, YOUR RAMBLINGS OR YOUR ADVERTISINGS IN THE GABRUDOS’ FORUM, HERE)...

(if you have some other related links I may add just tell me)