Poznan 1991

When we first arrived in Poznan, we stopped at a shopping square on the west side of the city. As we got out of our RV, that had German license plates, we still must have looked like Americans. A man stopped to talk to us, and we found he lives in Palm Springs (20 miles from our home), and is spending the summer in his former home town.

We found a nice spot for lunch in the RV, then drove until we found the Hotel Merkur, the same hotel where we had used the phone to call our friends, in 1985, during our first visit. Again the people in the hotel let me use the desk phone. Our visit, in both 1985 and 1991, with that family, is told elsewhere in the Tidbits.

After a night in Poznan’s very nice campground, we drove to downtown Poznan and found a parking place on the main street, right in front of five identical 12 story office buildings, built side by side. We walked around town, visiting stores here and there, including a round 10 or 12 story building that seemed to contain many little stores, rather than one large store. We then headed toward the old main town square, Stary Rynek. Around the square are very nice three or four story buildings, and the museum in a building built for use by Napoleon, when he was passing through Poznan long ago.

The City Hall in the middle of the Square is a very nice building with a steeple and a special clock. We later found that had we stayed for another few minutes, we would have heard the clock in Poznan's City Hall go through its special operation. As seen often in Europe, a two-horse carriage was transporting passengers around the square, and on adjacent streets.

We again visited the two very beautiful churches that are located on opposite corners of Poznan’s Town square. Both were very dark inside, but the marble pillars and other decorations are among the best we have “almost” seen — the churches are both so dark inside. Luckily, the video camera could see more than we could, and took pictures of things we almost couldn’t see in the dark.

As we walked past a building at the southeast corner of the Town Square, we heard a most accomplished piano concert, or perhaps it was piano rehearsal by an outstanding artist. We don’t know which, but as I said, Paderewski (the great Polish pianist, and Polish Prime Minister in WWI) lives!!!