The long return, Mon, 29 Jun 2020 | written by Jemma
Jemma and Simon at a City, Temple in Europe, Germany, Poland

After spending a couple of hours wandering around the Muskauer Park, we jumped back in the van and headed to our next destination: Görlitz. This is a really interesting place, again on the border with Poland. It is adjacent to the Polish town of Zgorzelec, which were one town until separated in 1945. Görlitz has a really beautiful old town centre, and has actually been used for many films because of this, such as Inglorious Basterds and Grand Budapest Hotel. There seemed to be a few nice churches about, but these were all closed, presumably because of coronavirus. We were really struck by how (slightly out of the main town centre) most of the buildings were these tall colourful 18/19th c. town houses that were in really great condition, but then every 3rd or 4th building would be almost totally derelict.

We walked across the bridge to get to Zgorzelec and hung out in a restaurant for a bit – for cheaper drinks and to be able to use data from Simon’s Polish sim card again. This also gave us a nice view of the back of Görlitz cathedral. The difference between the two cities is pretty big: you can really tell which country is poorer and went through a phase of building multis everywhere.