Palm House

The Palm House was one of the few places in Poznań I decided to visit that I hadn’t, on investigation, already visited before. It took me a long time of map rotating and muttering and cursing to find the tram to take me there. I gave up on Google when, earlier, it took me the wrong way in search of the Croissant Museum. As always being lost gave me a few treats, not least being the discovery that Tram 8 is the tourist tram: next time I’ll hop-on-hop-off for my explorations

Enough preliminaries.

The Palm House is in Wilson Park. The Poles have a soft spot for Woodrow Wilson. Point 13 of his Fourteen Points developed to shape the peace process after WW1 spoke of the need to establish an independent Polish state, “which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish population, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.” A fat lot of good this declaration was when Hitler appeared on the scene.

The park itself was a pleasure to walk through: fountains, statues, flowers and a rather clumsy waterfall. A young woman was doing energetic exercises on one of the paths, and another one bent over carefully and left a sandwich for a man sleeping on a bench.

The Palm House was huge, impossible to miss.

inside, trunks of vines and palms. Leaves. Waterlilies. Fish. Pitcher plants. Cactuses.

And orchids. Thereby hangs a sorry tale. Somehow my orchid photos didn’t download from the card and I deleted them.

Coda

I got lost in the Palm House and had to seek help at the cafe to get out. Not quite the end of a not-so-competent day. I suddenly realised my train booking was for 5.30 am: I’d forgotten the Polish habit of using the 24-hour clock.