Ople, Street Market

(2 photos)
As we drove east from Wroclaw (in 1985), we saw a cemetery with a lot of flowers, then there was a cow pulling a wagon. Didn’t look like an ox, just a regular milk cow. So many of the streams and rivers in Poland have scum floating on the top. Most of the towns are crowded with people. When we look down the street it appears there’s a parade or something, but we guess these people are going to shop, to work, and to their homes.

In the town of Ople we stopped to see the street market. Most of the fruit and vegetables in the Ople market did not look too good (in 1985), but we did get some nice plums, and bought some tomatoes and onions.
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We saw some large mushrooms, and there were a lot of sunflowers for sale — that large, flat round item, right where the lady is walking past. Sometimes people bought a pie-shaped piece of the sunflower, and walked along the street picking out seeds and eating as they walked. There were many flowers for sale, and the fruit and vegetables in the street market did look better than in the stores.

As I look at this picture now, that appears to be sweet-corn for sale, piled on the ground, right in front of the gentlemen. If so, that is about the only time we saw that anywhere in Europe — but we didn’t notice it until I looked at this photo. We saw a man buy a cooked ear of corn to eat in the market place in Krakow.

I remember that in WW II when we brought German Prisoners of War to the US for imprisonment, they objected when given sweet corn to eat, to them corn was pig feed. I know when Emmy's cousins visited us, eating an ear of sweet corn was a new experience for them.

In 1985, in the cities with public transportation, the equipment looked rather old and falling apart. In Wroclaw the street cars were from many, many years ago. We remember seeing one old streetcar with only one set, or carriage, of wheels, right in the middle of the car — we also saw one like that in Poznan. Sometimes at a RR crossing there’s a sign saying not to take pictures. Many of the apartment buildings, even the new ones, look rather bleak and unkempt.