TEDx Wrocław – My Thoughts

Last Saturday I attended a TEDx conference. The “x” in TEDx stands for “an independently held TED event”. Basically a conference deemed cool enough by TED to bear its name. Wrocław’s TEDx theme was “Unleash Your Inner Hero” and the entire day of talks was divided into four sections: hero state of mind, superpowers, having a vision, and call to action, in this order exactly.

My first thought just after showing up at the event was “damn I’m old”. To me it seemed as though the sold out theater in which the talks took place was filled to brim with university youth. Those days have long waved bye-bye to me. Don’t get me wrong, I can totally hang with the kids, except that I can’t, cause when I wanted to talk to someone about using the practices discussed in a particular talk the kids around me had no idea what a day spent at a full time job felt like. Maybe that was just me. The truth is that going alone to an eight hour talk with multiple breaks and a long lunch feels like crap. Somehow I couldn’t catch the vibe, find people to talk to… so I just left and watched the rest on a live-feed web cast back home. Turns out I should have done that to begin with.

Out of 16 scheduled appearances two were a musical number, one was a magic show, and one was a no-show altogether. The conference started off with a bang; there was a young man talking about how his video game playing turned into a riddle website with millions of hits. His presentation was just on the edge of creepy while keeping you interested and wanting for more. His website screenshots gave me goosebumps but everything made sense when he explained why things were the way they were. It was cool.

Presentation fallowing that was given by a woman who really wanted you to draw out everything you did at work. To draw out your plans, your daily schedule, your tasks, draw draw draw! It was a great talk, I learned a lot and really wanted to try the stuff she spoke off back in the office…except for the fact that she had microphone trouble throughout her entire speech and that was pretty much all I remembered at the end. That productivity at work begins with properly mounting your ear-mounted microphone. Sorry.

I did buy a CD from a musician Joao de Sousa after he played and sang four songs, each in a different language: Portugese, Spanish, English, and Polish. There was a woman of Jewish descent talking of preserving history, there was a double amputee teenager who spoke how he was motivated by a complete stranger to become the youngest person to travel to both the North and the South Pole. That’s right, a Pole at the Pole! Geocaching, woman stereotype in the mass media, how to dream and make money off of magic tricks… it was all there.

I felt that there was no connection at all between the divided topic (hero state of mind, superpowers, etc.) and the talks given in that slot. At one point I got a little irritated of the guy giving a talk on “Being an Expert” when couldn’t properly say the word “expertise” in English and kept mispronouncing it so badly even the youth around me was whispering the correct pronunciation. It was an interesting talk, I just couldn’t get past the broken English it was given in. That is of course my own opinion.

Overall the conference was a good experience, I enjoyed hearing the things I heard and give mad props to all those who have the cajones to go up and talk about their stuff in front of hundreds of strangers. But I do feel there was something missing and I just can’t quite put my finger on what it was. Maybe it’s the fact that on TED.com I can play and listen to whatever talk I want and if I don’t like it I can simply close the window. Here, when I was sort of bored (along with everyone else) of a talk, you still had to sit through the rest of it.

Am I glad I went? Yes I am. Will I go again? If they have a web feed… probably not. But I did learn a thing or two, for that I believe the conference has served its purpose.

Oldtimer Bazar Redux

I did a writeup on Wrocław’s Oldtimer Bazar back in October, but I’m pretty sure it will be a recurring topic as I keep finding cool new stuff every time I attend. The original write up is here: Oldtimer Swap Meet.

The most recent show took place a week ago and even though it’s still winter and there was quite a lot of snow on the ground the turnout seemed pretty solid. Not too many bikers, but a lot more gear and a lot more old school parts. From old Schwalbe frames to gas masks, that show keeps impressing me with sheer variety of crap for sale. But one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, so perhaps there’s someone that’s been looking to restore an old Simson scooter, from ground up no less.

I really admire people who can take a piece of crap frame and through hard work and patience come up with a scooter such as the one seen above. There are times when I think to myself that I could do that, too, and then I usually have to sit down, relax, and wait till that thought goes away. Maybe one day…but not any day soon, that’s for sure.

I did however catch the Supermoto bug recently, with my purchase of the FMX and all, and found a couple of cool Supermoto bikes at this swap meet. I actually sat on a Yamaha XTX-660 and didn’t find it to be too tall, that was actually why I never considered it for myself to begin with. But I found an even beter toy shown for sale on a trailer nearby. A BMW GSX 650. Wow, what a cool looking machine that was. Very pricey, but I think that’s just a BMW standard, and only meant for a single rider, ever, but overall that BMW was pretty nice.

One of the most odd thing to see was some WWII memorabilia, swastika on crates and stuff.

I was surprised to see that the motorcycle stunt guys were doing their thing even though there was snow all around. It seemed that all drifting was much easier, obviously since it was wet everywhere, but wheelie stunts and stoppie’s seemed borderline suicidal.

The only part I can’t quite figure out is what that old school motorcycle did under the same tent with the stunt riders. I can’t image it was used for any stunt riding, or was it?

The car selection was very small at this meet. I spoke to the owner of this Willys made for the Russian market (check out the instructions plates in Russian) and he told me that everyone backed out due to too much salt on the road. Poland salts their roads heavily in the winter season.

And last but certainly not least is my pop, who no matter who’s junk will always find something for himself.

Giant Wrocław

I was walking through Wrocław the other evening when I came across this giant lawn chair. I’ve seen it before, it just never occurred to me how big it was until I saw an illegally parked car directly underneath it.

The chair is 9 meters tall and is made of smooth concrete. It was designed by Tadeusz Kantor and completed on August 11, 2011, even though the project itself was set in place in 1970! Now that’s some serious bureaucracy for you. The chair looks pretty cool at night, but I will try and take some photos of it during the day as well.

I also came across a rhino sculpture, this town is full of weird surprises.

The Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity

The Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity (GOCC) is Poland’s biggest charitable foundation, helping collect money for children’s hospital equipment. They’ve been saving lives for over twenty years now! Every year just after Christmas the foundation starts collecting donations, a charity drive that ends with concerts and events all across Poland, dubbed ‘The Great Finally’. Every year around this time the media is abuzz doing their part to promote the foundation, and while listening to the radio yesterday I’ve learned that in some hospitals across Poland if it wasn’t for this charity drive there would be no life saving equipment, period! Polish health care is a pretty broken system that’s been overhauled time and again with no real life results. The GOCC skips all the bull shit and tells the citizens of Poland the sad truth straight; we need to buy this equipment for this cause, this is how much it costs, and here’s where it will go if we get the money to buy it. And for over 20 years now people have reacted with passion.

Every donation is rewarded with a red heart label and today Wrocław was flooded with hearts! It’s such a great feeling to see how many people participated in this cause. Volunteers with donation ‘cans’ crisscrossed the city today and even police robots did their part in collecting donations.

GOCC is so well known for their great work that pretty much every major government agency, hobby club, dealership, etc., does their part in collecting money for kids. It was a little odd seeing soldiers patrolling the city today, in full uniforms, guns, grenades and all. There were full blown commando squads walking around, too. Scary looking dudes, with red hearts plastered on their automatic weapons. The police department, firemen, search and rescue squads, army, everyone was collecting even the smallest of donations. Smaller clubs did their part, too. A local motorcycle club showed up even though it snowed in a couple of inches of powder over night, and an off-road club gave rides to kids on a small obstacle lot. There were plenty of musicians scheduled to play throughout the day, I happened to be there when a young all-girl band was up, and they did pretty good for a garage band.

Seeing it all was great, but here’s what really made my day. The lady seen below casually walked up to this hobbyist with an old gun arsenal and asked if she could hold the automatic rifle. When the guy tried to show her how to use it she full told him “Son, I lived through the war and shot this before, have you?” People around couldn’t stop laughing as this lady kept talking about her shooting skills and basically schooling the guy on his on weapon. She mentioned some awards she got back in the day for her bravery and it was really interesting, albeit a bit funny, to hear her talk.

Winter Blogging

I’ve been wondering why every winter I seem to blog a lot less and the answer is quite simple; there’s a lot less time for things to write about. On this blog I write about stuff going on in my life, events I’ve been to, places I’ve visited, so naturally if I don’t really do anything…I’m out of material

Such is the case now. Today was longer from the shortest day of the year by a whopping 8 minutes, but on a weekday it still means I get to work when it’s dark, and leave when it’s dark as well. And that’s always been the case, only that it doesn’t help my blog any when I’ve got no sunlight left to go somewhere or no daylight to take some photos. This leaves weekends, so I’m gonna do my best to bring you winter time blogging, on weekends. That, or I will recycle and post some stuff I’ve been meaning to write but still haven’t.

Winter in Wrocław has been relatively mild thus far with temperatures staying mostly on the positive side. Only a couple of days ago did it dip hard below zero and today we actually got some snow. My parents have taken upon themselves to feed all the local birds this season an have placed about half a dozen feeders in their yard. It seems the birds were skeptical at first, but are feeding in full force now. The bird seen most ofthen is a Great Tit, and the twelve year old in me just can’t say that without a smile on my face. I mean, if you have to birds, you got a pair of Great Tits. Hilarious.

I on the other hand just appreciate the fact that I can power slide my Mazda into the driveway anytime there’s barely an inch of snow on the ground. It’s so much fun, until the shoveling begins.

And to what end? I just peeked outside and all my shoveling went for nothing. Gotta love winter.

Wrocław’s Rhino Transport

If you happened to fly in or out of Wrocław’s international airport, you might have noticed a rather large wooden crate casually placed outside the main terminal door. The crate has a big Rhino Transport sign written on it in Polish to avoid any confusion as to what the big box is for.

Upon inspection of the crate we noticed a small peeping hole on the side and sure enough there was a rhino sitting inside the box, albeit a small one.

So why is there a rhino sitting outside Wrocław’s airport? Well, as it turns out the whole thing is a clever marketing scheme made to promote Wrocław’s ZOO. There was in fact a rhino transport that took place in the recent weeks to our city’s ZOO but it did of course take place far away from the public view and last I read the rhino is now undergoing quarantine before an official public introduction.

Giving credit to the ZOO’s marketing department, the crate and the mockup rhino inside it are so real a local newspaper reported people calling the police and animal control wondering why the rhino inside does not have any water while it’s blistering hot outside. You know it’s gotta look real when people are calling the cops to bring relief to the poor beast inside. Of course a little common sense wouldn’t hurt, I mean do you really think there would be a real rhino locked in a crate outside an airport terminal with thousands of people a day casually walking by? C’mon!

Café Pestka – Best New Coffee in Town

When it comes to coffee there are plenty of places in Wrocław to get your standard run of the mill cup of joe to go. Café Pestka is not one of them.

The name is catchy and quite original though when translated into English it does mean “Café Bean” which sounds fairly similar to The Coffee Bean super chain of coffee shops found in southern California. However, after talking to the shop’s owner the ‘bean’ in question is meant to represent the beginning of everything; the seed, the bean, that starts it all. Food, ideas, thoughts, great coffee… The logo of the café, a tree growing out of the said bean, is meant to represent just that.

The reason that after just one visit I can tell it’s the best coffee in town is simple: I know the barista behind the counter and know of his obsession with coffee. Everyone at the shop has been fully trained and certified by the best caffeine addicts in Poland, but my former coworker Michał brings the sort of passion one can only dream to have for any one subject. And his passion is coffee. My cup of coffee was brewed in what I can only describe as a science class burner that filters the coffee using gravity and temperature differences between two opposite glass containers. If I’m describing it wrong that’s cause I still don’t know how it works, even though it was described to me in detail. All I know is that for the first time ever I drank pure black coffee and it was the most delicious coffee I ever had. And while I had it some 3 hours ago I still feel like “I am the Great Cornholio!”

Putting aside the 50 ways you can get your coffee brewed here the shop offers a very comfortable atmosphere, delicious cookies, and Polish made soda’s that will perk you up just as much as coffee would. I didn’t know Poland made Cola based on Yerba Mate could be that good. Their chocolate almond cookies with a hint of chille were awesome, though I can only assume the chille was that faint tingling on my tongue as it was otherwise unnoticeable.

If you’re looking for a coffee shop to call your own, look no further.

Their info:  Cafe Pestka Facebook

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Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław

During her high school years Karolina did something much different then anything I’ve ever done in high school: she volunteered to participated in a program that organized a local Jewish cemetery clean up. The volunteer program between Wrocław’s ASSA high school and Berlin’s Thomas-Mann-Oberschule put together a group of students willing to share their views, cultures, and experiences while conserving a part of history for future generations. Last month marked their 20th year in operation!

To celebrate the 20th anniversary a small presentation was put together on a Friday evening following a week long cemetery clean up. A few speeches were given in both Polish and German to honor all those that have kept the program going and to honor those that have paid the ultimate price through prosecution of war. Many photos were displayed showing students from both countries participating in the annual clean up with a TV running news reels taped through the years. Karolina also came across a few friend she hasn’t seen since graduating high school.

Karolina and Asia cleaning in the background.

To get a better understanding of the importance of this program, we rode our bikes that weekend to visit the cemetery which is now also a museum. The cemetery was established in then a small city outside of Wrocław in 1856 when the first burial took place and it has served Wrocław’s Jewish community until 1943 when the cemetery itself became a fierce battleground  during WWII.

I don’t know if that’s any way to describe a cemetery, but it’s quite beautiful inside. The architecture of tombstones varies a lot but most all are extremely interesting to look at. The overgrowing vegetation gives it an eerie atmosphere yet somehow I can’t imagine it any other way. Graves and tombstones covered in fern and ivy add to the mysterious feeling when walking along the isles. While reading the names and dates you can’t stop but think who was that person living here in Wrocław a hundred years ago. And there are quite a few important people buried at this cemetery. There’s a bulletin board with names and a place of burial for the few that have left their mark on Wrocław’s history.

I congratulate everyone that has participated in this program throughout its 20 years in operation!

Karolina and Asia cleaning in the background.

Wrocław by Chris Niedenthal

Chris Niedenthal is a world renowned Polish-British photographer born in 1950 who’s best known for a series of photographs documenting the life behind the Iron Curtain. Some of his photographs were on display in Wrocław’s center square a couple of weeks ago, all of them taken in 1982 which coincidentally is the year I was born.

Looking over these photos pretty much everyone had a smile on their face reminiscing of the years that has passed. But the cruel truth is that these were harsh times to live in, albeit a much simpler time, too. Today we get caught up in our iPad lives forgetting that just 30 years ago my mom couldn’t get dipers, milk, or a few slices of ham because store shelves were simply empty. The gallery was a good reminder to perhaps enjoy what we’ve got, and what Poland as a country has achieved since then.

Wrocław’s Oldtimer Swap Meet

Click PLAY to view my short film from this event.

Yesterday we stopped by Wrocław’s edition of the Oldtimer Swap Meet. I didn’t know what to expect as I’ve never been to this kind of event in Poland, but I quickly find out that this oldtimer swap meet was anything but.

The name suggest an old timer extravaganza at this particular flea market, but as I looked at hundreds of new motorcycles all around I had a hard time connecting the name to my surroundings. Of course there were small vendors with used parts present, but they were grossly overshadowed by vendors with fairly new stuff from Harley Davidson leather to body parts and actual modern motorcycles for sale. New and used tires seemed to be in demand as well with a crap load of rubber on display at the meet.

But nothing beat the sheer amount of motorcycles for sale. Hundreds of bikes all with prices and phone numbers clearly marked. I had no idea the motorcycle market was this big in Poland. I’ve seen plenty of motorcycles listed on Polish eBay, but to see so many of them all in one place was quite a sight. Again, it’s not that there were so many motorcycles gathered in one place, it’s the fact that they were all for sale!

What sort of saved the old timer theme of this swap meet was a small section of classic cars for show. From old Polish classics to good old American muscle, there were quite a few good looking cars there yesterday. Some, too, were for sale but prices seemed steep even by American standards and it seemed that perhaps these owners didn’t really want to sell their cars at all.

In the ‘pile-o-crap’, as I like to call it, present at the swap meet we found a few jewels here and there. Mainly old vehicle books from that 60′s and 70′s that were really cool to look through. The Wartburg logo seen above reminded me of my dad’s old car from the 80′s, a 2 cylinder Wartburg station wagon.

For the entertainment portion of the swap meet two separate events took place: timed slalom riding and a stunt motorcycle show. The former was an alright show, I mean it was cool to see how tight of a corner a huge 1200cc motorcycle can take, and in some cases how a motorcycle can slide out from underneath you. But it was the stunt riding that stole the show. To really take in what went on I’d like to invite you to watch my short film from the show as there’s no real explaining how they do what they do. There was even a couple of guys stunt riding scooters which made me wonder just a bit how difficult my very own GOVECS scooter would be to wheelie… just kidding boss.

For the lack of a better name I suppose calling this event an Oldtimer Swap Meet fits fine as long as you already know what to expect. I only found one single part for my Schwalbe project, a horn, but then I read 6V on it and quickly realized that my electric Schwalbe won’t have a 6V connection at all. One more detail to consider down the line.

Follow the link to a Picasa album: More photos here!

And here are a few chosen WordPress photos.