Polish Pottery shopping

Carolyn (Bill's ex) and I left out of Kaiserslautern Friday around 11am heading for Dresden. After a small snaffo at one of the interchanges (we went the wrong way), we didn't have a problem the rest of the day. Well, there were a few traffic jams and a few accidents that combined to make our six hour trip eight hours, but other than that, everything went fine. The weather was beautiful - clear and cool. Carolyn and I actually had a good nonstop conversation on the ride up, hardly any awkwardness. Nothing more than could be attributed to two people getting to know each other. I was pleasantly surprised.

We made it into Dresden about 8pm, relaxed in the hotel room a little and then headed out to get some real food. Dresden has a cute old city restaurant area about a block square right next to the old Church of Our Lady that they are rebuilding. A Hilton hotel with a sushi restaurant, four or five nice dinner places, a cafe, a wine celler, and a night club. All packed into a small street block. This is just the old city downtown. I'm sure Dresden has other cool areas like this, however we just visited this one because it was right next to the hotel. We wanted to eat at the spanish Tapas place, but it was completely full, as the waitress quite rudely told us. So we went next door to the business-y looking steak house and had a very nice dinner. Then we went back to the hotel and crashed!

Only to wake up at 4am the next morning! So we could be on the road by 4:30 and in to Poland by 6am when the factory stores opened. The first store already had a bus there when we stopped, so twenty or thirty American women were already in there picking their way through the wares. It wasn't quite what I expected. First off, it was small. And while there was a great variety of things, I didn't see too much quantity of each. Carolyn immediately started shopping, but I really wasn't sure where to start. I guess I wasn't expecting to have to make a decision on what to buy so soon. I thought I'd get a chance to look around, and then make decisions. NOPE. If you do that, the line for the cash register just gets longer because the busses keep coming. And the stock gets depleted. So I started looking around and making my decisions. I found some mugs that I'd seen in Bill's house that I liked and picked out two patterns I liked. Then four egg cups, a wicker basket, and a couple other odds and ends.

Carolyn asked a bus driver if he could keep an eye on her car while we were in the store - it's not uncommon for German cars to get stolen in Poland. Especially nice BMW 3series sedans. Apparently a Polish person can sell her (stolen) car on the black market for 1000 Euro. Which is quite literally a years salary! So they flirted, he watched her car, and gave us tips on where to shop. Carolyn found a few new stores on advice from him. We saw him on and off throughout the day, so it was nice to have somebody to talk to while we waited for each other to finish shopping.

We visited about eight more shops through out the day. I picked up a couple octagonal bowls, a scalloped bowl, a heart shaped platter, and a few other things. OH - the cutest is a cracked egg looking salt and pepper shaker. Each half of the egg is a shaker. Cool, huh?

We finally made it back to the hotel room around 8pm that night. Took a shower, a nap, and then went back out for dinner. The Tapas place wasn't so busy that night so we ate there.

Okay, that's enough for now. I'll wrap up the trip details tomorrow. That's the bulk of it anyway. Posted by Jinglelady at October 21, 2003 11:43 PM | Previous Blog | TrackBack