Days 1-5 and 9-10 -- Opole/Turawa/Marszalki


 Turawa is a village about 14 kilometers from Opole. Marszalki, where Bo’s brother Wojtek has his house, is technically a part of Turawa. It’s a lovely recreational area with four lakes, the closest being a 15-20 minute walk from the house. The village has everything you may want – two bakeries with fresh bread and rolls baked daily, a very well-stocked deli with meat and meat products supplied by local farmers, fresh eggs and produce sold at the store, but also by local farmers. It even has a palace… Until the end of the World War II the village was owned by the von Garnier family, who in 1841 received the title of count (with the name Count von Garnier-Turawa).  Turawa was part of a large estate that included not only farmland, but also a mill, a brick factory, a sawmill and a railroad for transporting wood out of it. The estate also included a lot of forested land with a separate area to breed fallow deer for the hunts that took place on the estate. The last owner of Turawa was Hubertus Count von Garnier-Turawa who was forced to leave it in 1945 and died in 1952 in Bavaria. His descendants are still alive and so are some local craftsmen who used to work for the family.

In the 1930s, a project was proposed to construct  an artificial reservoir to protect the area against flooding. Hubertus von Garnier offered his own lands west of Turawa and in 1933 the project was submitted to the German government, receiving the personal approval of Adolf Hitler. Construction on the 22 km2 reservoir finished in 1938. It is now the largest of the four lakes near Turawa.

Turawa Palace was the main residence of the von Garnier family. It is a baroque structure built in the early 1730s by the landowner Martin Scholtz von Loewencron, and designed by a local Opole (then Oppeln)-based architect Adam Tentschert. From 1759 until the end of WW2 in 1945, the palace was owned by the von Garnier family. It survived the war almost intact, but the change of borders (Germany before 1945, Poland after 1945) and subsequent communist rule caused major damage and devastation. It was used as an orphanage from 1945 until the 1980s and is currently empty and in very bad technical condition. Supposedly, there are people interested in buying and restoring it, but it cannot be sold due to unresolved ownership issues that are too complex to describe here. 

The Marszalki part of Turawa is a mix of old pre-war farmhouses (+ working farms) and new, hip homes of well-to-do people. 

This was a fantastic time of family fun and lots of bonding for the youngest generation in the family. The six of them live in different countries and speak different languages (some only English, some only Polish, some English and Polish, some Polish and Spanish and some English and a bit of Spanish), but they always managed to communicate and had great fun playing together. The adults had fun too. Attractions included delicious Silesian food in the countryside, swimming in the lake (some), yummy Indian food by Tapas, a soccer/football game with a big win for the local Odra Opole team (the kids were on local TV thanks to Kasia who does publicity for the team) and lots of drinking and laughing…































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