9.5 KiB
Wrocław/Millennium Strike
Wrocław/Millennium Strike WROC.WAV
Arriving
Alex, apt-get, mercury.lamp, pachy and myself were in Wrocław1, Poland between April 30th and May <END DATE> for Millennium Strike Live WROC.WAV where apt and merc were performing (B2B, under alias Re;iwa Diabolik). Shout out to pachy for finding time and money to join us last minute; I am very very glad he was able to be there, it wouldn't have been the same without him.
The trip there was a bit of an ordeal; due to a scheduling SNAFU our airport was far enough away that we had to take public transport, and our flight was just about early enough that taking the first train wouldn't get us there in time, so we had to leave at 11PM and spend maybe like 7 hours total waiting for our somewhere-around-8:30AM flight. Merc had also flown in from the States that very day and hadn't slept.
We had a bunch of gear to transport and were trying to limit luggage charges, so we had to struggle to fit everything and had one bag that was slightly over size limits. This ended up biting us in the ass on the way back as RyanAir nabbed us for the oversized bag and made us pay their extortionate bag charges.
Setcrafting
Basically all the time in Wrocław before the event was spent on… actually preparing the set, which hadn't really been started yet, so we were mostly inside the hotel — this had much to do with apt and I being busy preparing for Premier Impact and everyone just generally being busy. Alex, pachy and I were technically free, but I was also trying to make stuff happen for Premier Impact still, and we all kinda hung around for moral support.
The Event
The venue for the event was a club called Transformator. Pretty cool place, good sound system, nice seating area around the bar, cool backstage room, small secondary stage where a house DJ was playing for an audience of nobody the whole event for questionable reasons.
The itself event was a lot of fun. Nothing much particular to say, other than that it's always such a pleasure to hang out with the Millennium Strike guys. Apt and merc's set was received very well despite being pretty "out there". Shout out to Ashton and the whole Millennium Strike crew for creating one of the only spaces where one can play this kind of thing live. Here's a re-recording of the set that merc did — I know there's a live recording floating around somewhere too but it's currently not public.
Unfortunately as the event was winding down (in the early morning, I think around 5AM — people party late in Poland it seems) security at the club got bizarrely aggressive trying to shoo everyone out, even though we weren't really loitering by any means. I will neither confirm nor deny the occurence of an Alex Chimp-Stomping Incident that might have slightly ticked them off.
Wrocław
Pleasant Surprise
With us primarily being there for the event and it being a really busy period, I don't think any of us had really read up on the city very much. Safe to say we were all very pleasantly surprised! Wrocław is an absolutely lovely city; real student town energy with lots of young people, very warm hospitality and a very homely, casual atmosphere in restaurants as well.
Food and Drink
Absolutely amazing food! This was a very unanimous opinion among all of us. I had no idea that Polish cuisine is so delicious; it's definitely something I look out for now, and I'm planning to learn to cook some dishes. Incredible beer as well, the best I've ever had. If you ever visit the city I highly recommend visiting Świdnicka Cellar, the oldest restaurant in Poland (est. 1273!) as well as Konspira, a restaurant themed around the anti-communist resistance with a lot of character (and amazing food; see image above).
Food prices were maybe about half what you'd find in an equivalent western European city, less than half in supermarkets.
Architecture, Cityscape
Wrocław has really cool architecture, a pretty eclectic mix of styles and old and new stuff. Lots of old defensive works that I believe were built after the Mongol invasion. Quoting Wikipedia:
In the 13th century, Wrocław was the political centre of the divided Polish kingdom. In April 1241, during the first Mongol invasion of Poland, the city was abandoned by its inhabitants and burnt down for strategic reasons. During the battles with the Mongols Wrocław Castle was successfully defended by Henry II the Pious.
In 1245, in Wrocław, Franciscan friar Benedict of Poland, considered one of the first Polish explorers, joined Italian diplomat Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, on his journey to the seat of the Mongol Khan near Karakorum, the capital of the Mongol Empire, in what is considered the first such journey by Europeans.
Lots of beautiful brickwork which is a style of architecture I have not encountered before in this manner.
There was something very familiar about the layout of the city and the style of architecture in places, being similar to my hometown; I chalk this up to the places being connected through the Hanseatic League.
The streets are broad, well-maintained and very clean. There's good public transport options — busses, trams — and the city is also very walkable. A couple times we used Bolt, taking advantage of the low prices.
The nighttime atmosphere was very pleasant as well, perhaps owning to the high student population. Wrocławians have a very interesting fashion sense; a lot of young people there dress like early 2010s scene kids, so you see a lot of bona fide goths and stuff. Very endearing honestly.
We were there at the same time as the largest guitar festival in the world. Guitar music, rock especially and boomer rock especially within that is very popular. Lots of street musicians playing AC/DC and stuff.
People, History and Closing Notes
Overall Wrocławians made a strong impression on me as warm, hospitable, humorous and headstrong people. Wrocław had a very active anti-communist resistance that they are very proud of, and they've kept that history very alive, both visibly in the city scape but also in their endearing fashion sense.
Perhaps also because our visit coincided with a largest-in-the-world scale event and two national holidays, we overpaid quite a bit on the flight and accomodations. Flights within the EU can be had for really cheap; I think on a good day a Paris-Wrocław return flight can be had for around €70. Also, in our case in hindsight it turned out that getting two-person hotel rooms was a lot more expensive than it would've been to get single rooms instead; I don't know if this is normal in Poland, but it was certainly unexpected to me and is something to look out for.
We ran into a lot of weird cursed technology SNAFUs this trip, summarized:
- One of our hotel rooms had the electricity short out after we connected some gear, and we had to switch rooms;
- The replacement room's window wouldn't open;
- My laptop developed a black line running through the middle of the screen;
- I broke my phone by launching it off the bed across the room.
I definitely intend to return to Wrocław sooner rather than later. With how busy we were there's a lot I didn't get to see, and I'm honestly just really fond of the place. Honestly, more than anything I really want to eat the local food again :).
Pronounced "Vroslav".