DAY 16 -- Broumov to Szczawno Zdroj

 We toured the monastery in the morning and then started towards the Polish border and the historic spa town of Sokolowsko. 

The first mention of Sokołowsko (then a German town called Goerbersdorff) appeared in 1357. The village was most likely founded by Benedictine monks of Broumov.

In 1509 Sokołowsko was bought by count von Hochberg. Until the middle of the 19th century, Sokołowsko wasn’t different from other villages owned by Hochbergs. It changed in 1849, when countess von Colomb arrived at the village. Enchanted by the landscape of Sokołowsko, she encouraged her brother-in-law, Dr. Hermann Brehmer to open a health resort. In 1855, the world’s first specialized tuberculosis sanatorium, using an innovative method of climatic and dietary treatments, was opened in Sokołowsko. The Davos Sanatorium was modeled after Sokołowsko. Prof. Alfred Sokołowski became a close co-worker of Dr. Brehmer, and the village was named after him. The health resort in Sokołowsko in 1887 hosted 730 patients.

After World War II, a tuberculosis sanatorium still existed in Sokołowsko, but the resort gradually declined.  

Polish film director Krzysztof Kieślowski spent his childhood years in Sokołowsko, it was also where his documentary movie “X-ray” was created. In 2007, the In Situ Contemporary Art Foundation acquired the buildings of the former Dr. Brehmer’s Sanatorium, and is working to rebuild it after a 2005 fire nearly destroyed it.

We arrived in Sokolowsko in pouring rain accompanied by thunder. We stopped almost in front of the In Situ offices and talked to one of its presidents Bozenna Biskupska. She said she couldn’t let us inside the enormously impressive building because of safety reasons. The building was only opened for guided tours on Saturdays and Sundays… She suggested we go to Kino café to wait out the storm and see where Kieslowski used to watch movies. We decided to walk around the sanatorium building and take some pictures first. As one of the doors was open and it was pouring, we walked in. A group of workers was having lunch. They took pity on us and not only let us come in, but also let us go to several rooms inside the building. Again, the amount of work that needs to be done there is overwhelming, but the building is amazing. This article has some good pictures: https://polskapogodzinach.pl/sokolowsko-atrakcje/#google_vignette

We did try to go to Kino café, and a couple of other places, but everything was closed in Sokolowsko!






From there (still in the rain), we drove to Szczawno Zdroj (Bad Salzbrunn) near Walbrzych. It is another old spa town, one of the oldest spa towns in Lower Silesia as the therapeutic qualities of the mineral waters in the vicinity of Szczawno have been known since the 16th century. The first sanatorium in Szczawno opened in 1815. In a short time numerous facilities were built and equipped in the emerging resort. According to fashion and standards of the day, following the exclusive resorts of Switzerland, Prussia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, many of the accompanying facilities also appeared in Szczawno, including cafes, restaurants, a mineral water pump room, a theatre, a concert hall and parks with walking alleyways. The final shape of the resort was set in the late 19th century and the early 20th century. Many of the older buildings have survived to this day in excellent shape, even the Spa Theatre that was built in 1896 still puts on festivals, concerts and performances in its stunningly decorated interiors. The former Grand Hotel built in 1909-10 by Prince Hochberg Bolko and Princess Daisy von Pless was at the time the largest and most luxurious hotel in Silesia. It is now a Dom Zdrojowy sanatorium.  The Swiss-inspired pijalnia (mineral water pump room) is stunning.

Since the 19th century the spa was very popular among the Polish cultural elite. Among its guests were poets Zygmunt Krasiński, Teofil Lenartowicz, Lucjan Siemieński and Narcyza Żmichowska, composer and virtuoso violinist Karol Lipiński, philosopher August Cieszkowski and the inventor of Esperanto L. L. Zamenhof. In 1855 and 1857, one of the greatest Polish violinists Henryk Wieniawski visited the spa and played concerts here. From 1966, the city hosts the annual International Wieniawski Festival. Among famous guests of other nationalities were King Constantine I of Greece and British politician Winston Churchill who stayed in the Grand Hotel. 

 

We had a funny experience in Szczawno. While in pijalnia, Bo spotted a little poster announcing a piano recital the same night at 7 pm in the former Grand Hotel, now Dom Zdrojowy. We decided to go. When we arrived around 6:30, the room was already completely full with mostly elderly spa patients. We managed to find seats and were somewhat surprised to find out that the pianist/performer was 94 years old and also a patient (for the 58th time) of the spa. He walked/danced into the room in a black suit holding a white umbrella, and it went downhill from there. He obviously enjoyed himself enormously performing in front of a packed house, but his piano playing skills must have deteriorated with age, and on top of that he also started singing! After an hour, we discreetly left and went to have a drink.






















 

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