# Opole (Oppeln)- Some shots of my hometown



## drowningman666 (Nov 5, 2007)

opole is a middle size city (most says that small city rather  ) with population about 128 000 people, which is situated in south-west of poland, 100km from wroclaw and ca.60 km from czech republic boarder, opole is also capitol of opolskie provience ( the smallest one in poland), i hope you'll enjoy it

this is market square - heart of opole downtown:





tower of opole city hall:

near the mlynowka channel:





the freedom square:


the only remain of former opole castle- piastowska tower:

the other parts of downtown:


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## Jedrzej (Dec 25, 2005)

Beautiful city! I was in Opole 5 years ago and it looked much different. Now it's very clean city with very nice new architecture as well as old. Congratulations!


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## drowningman666 (Nov 5, 2007)

thanks, is nice to hear it from somebody from cracow


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## SilesianSkyscraper (Aug 14, 2007)

Nice city. It looks quite small, but I like it.


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## Kerkhoff (Nov 9, 2007)

Nic mnie tak nie śmieszy jak prowadzone po anglikańsku dyskusje między Polakami:lol::lol::lol:


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## LuckyLuke (Mar 29, 2005)

Nice pictures... I've been to Opole 2 times by now. I think it's a nice town and has a lot of potential. Take a look at my photo thread about Opole. http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=523772


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## drowningman666 (Nov 5, 2007)

LuckyLuke said:


> Nice pictures... I've been to Opole 2 times by now. I think it's a nice town and has a lot of potential. Take a look at my photo thread about Opole. http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=523772


i've seen them before and i think they're just great, i like especially those from dinopark


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## drowningman666 (Nov 5, 2007)

next i want to show you my neighbourhood, eastern suburbs of opole


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## drowningman666 (Nov 5, 2007)




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## Chicagoflo (Oct 8, 2007)

I can't see any is it just me?


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## drowningman666 (Nov 5, 2007)

some of the new photos that I've taken this weekend


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## schmidt (Dec 5, 2002)

Cool pics, I had never seen any sights from this city hehe.

One question though, how present is still Germans and the German language in Opole's daily life? I read the city is one of the few spots in Poland that still has some remaints of the pre-WW2 German population from the area.


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## Arbais (Dec 22, 2007)

schmidt said:


> Cool pics, I had never seen any sights from this city hehe.
> 
> One question though, how present is still Germans and the German language in Opole's daily life? I read the city is one of the few spots in Poland that still has some remaints of the pre-WW2 German population from the area.


In Opole voivodship lives (by census 2002) 150 000 Germans.


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## drowningman666 (Nov 5, 2007)

schmidt said:


> Cool pics, I had never seen any sights from this city hehe.
> 
> One question though, how present is still Germans and the German language in Opole's daily life? I read the city is one of the few spots in Poland that still has some remaints of the pre-WW2 German population from the area.


all the tourist spots are signed in polish and german, also the menu cards in restaurants etc. are bilingual, most of the people don't speak german, it's not well known language although you can learn it in every school, most choose english and that's the current trend


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## Taller Better (Aug 27, 2005)

drowningman, I'm sure you were planning on asking to have this moved over to the correct section, URBAN SHOWCASE, so I will do it for you. Any new thread you start with your own pictures must be there. The Cityscape section is strictly for photos from the internet.


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## drowningman666 (Nov 5, 2007)

thanks, and sorry for the problems


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## drowningman666 (Nov 5, 2007)

so i had a little walk through the downtown and i decided to take this few pictures, all of them were taken 22.07.2008
hope you'll enjoy it!!

this is the franciscan church in opole, it's under the renovation and just a part of it is ready but i think looks cool even if it's not finished



it has a sunwatch

surroundings


here you can see the city hall tower in the back

market square neighbourhood 

there are cathedral towers in the background

nice sculpture 

local administration office 

this tower in the back is the only remain of the castle that was here before it burned in 30's

some views from the administration office






this is the place which is called "opole venice"


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## Indyk (Feb 18, 2006)

drowningman666 said:


> this tower in the back is the only remain of the castle that was here before it burned in 30's


Actually it didn't, it was torn down.


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## Dr.Seltsam (May 28, 2008)

drowningman666 said:


> ...although you can learn it in every school, most choose english and that's the current trend


It would be very stupid to choose german!
I would also choose english because it is the "world language" and german not.
Nice pictures/city by the way!


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## drowningman666 (Nov 5, 2007)

Dr.Seltsam said:


> It would be very stupid to choose german!
> I would also choose english because it is the "world language" and german not.
> Nice pictures/city by the way!


yeah but in the most of polish high schools you have to learn 2 foreign languages
english is almost everywhere obligatory and you can choose the 2nd language
it's usually german, french, sometimes spanisch, and almost everyone in opole choose german, so a lot of people have at least basic knowledge of our western neighbour language


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## Nightsky (Sep 16, 2002)

Looks like a wealthy city! There are so many wellkept old beautful buildings in Polish cities, in Sweden we torned many of them down in the 60s to build ugly concrete blocks.


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## Dr.Seltsam (May 28, 2008)

Oh ok...I thought you have to choose between English and German.
It's the same here in Germany but the 2nd language (after English) you can choose is French or Latin.


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## drowningman666 (Nov 5, 2007)

Nightsky said:


> Looks like a wealthy city! There are so many wellkept old beautful buildings in Polish cities, in Sweden we torned many of them down in the 60s to build ugly concrete blocks.


it's maybe a little rich for polish standards, i've tried to show you the nicest areas of the city, but like in every polish city there is a big contrast, we've got a lot o nice and well maintained places but there are also ghettos and grey commieblocks areas in my city, if anyone want to see it i can show that not everything is such a nice stuff...


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## Xemita (Jul 3, 2007)

Very nice city :applause:

Do you have more pics of the brick, two towered church?


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## drowningman666 (Nov 5, 2007)

Xemita said:


> Very nice city :applause:
> 
> Do you have more pics of the brick, two towered church?


this church is a XIII century opole cathedral, i hope you will enjoy this few pics
this is the view from koraszewskiego street

close to the church

there are reconstruction works around the cathedral, there will be "medival" wall like it used to be in the past


some views from opposite riverbank


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## drowningman666 (Nov 5, 2007)

*Some pics of opole university*
This building used to be a hospital in the past, but polish public medicine was very poor that time and this place was in bad shape
than our local university decided to take over this place and make absolute make 
makeover, now it is the university headquarter and you can enjoy those views


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## drowningman666 (Nov 5, 2007)

*Other pictures*
here we've got a view from the university hill

and this is our local museum-museum of opolski silesia



this is St.Mary Church, i was baptized here

really cool place, this building is equiped and decorated like it used to be in the 20's of XX century so you can check out how your grandparents lived 

next building, i don't know what it is but i like it

this is St.Wojciech street

some other buildings


this is the new part of our museum, it's almost finished, very nice building with some glass details



Osmanczyka street

St.Sebastian church

Ksiazat opolskich street








at the river






and this is our tiny convention centre


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## Dr.Seltsam (May 28, 2008)

Cool update!
Thanks!


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## drowningman666 (Nov 5, 2007)

so this time i decided to visit one of the coolest place in opole- i mean our tiny zoological garden, it's situated in bolko island which is surrounded by odra river and ulgi channel, the whole island is the biggest city park with some paths and the big part of the island belongs to the zoo, the garden is quite modern since it was absolutely damaged during the big flood 1997's and it had to be rebuilt 
however there are still some not so good looking parts, there's no terrariums and elephants but all the things are going right way and i think it's just a matter of time when those objects will come back to the opole

first if you want to get into the bolko island you have to go through this bridge over the odra river

some views from the bridge






this is how the most of park looks like

zoo entrance

and that's the zoo

gorillas


not the best quality, jaguar was behind the glass




anteater


there live also not so exotic animals


waterfall





feed the fishes


that was not the whole zoo but i haven't taken more photos 
hope you enjoy it


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## Raveolution (Jan 10, 2008)

wow, looks like a really nice place to live 

-and concrete blocks aren't necessarily ugly.


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## drowningman666 (Nov 5, 2007)

yeah the city is quite nice to live in but sometimes it's extremely boring


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## drowningman666 (Nov 5, 2007)

I haven't posted any pictures for a long time so I decided today to have a walk around eastern suburbs of Opole, where I live and to take some pics, weather was fine too and it was very important factor which convinced me to take this walk. The pictures were taken in two districts: Kolonia Goslawicka (where I live) and Grudzice (it's nestled next to Kolonia Goslawicka). These are typical suburbian neighborhoods that surround Opole. Hope you'll enjoy it !!


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## drowningman666 (Nov 5, 2007)

And here are some nightshots of downtown that I've taken this evening

Solaris shopping mall



New part of museum


City hall tower



Krakowska street and market square





Szpitalna street


Bridge over Odra river


"Opole Venice"


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## rychlik (Feb 14, 2008)

I have family in Opole and I was born in Brzeg. Do you know that city? 
Opole looks nice. Glad to see the Poles taking care of their cities and towns once again. The new modern architecure looks great as well.


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## drowningman666 (Nov 5, 2007)

rychlik said:


> I have family in Opole and I was born in Brzeg. Do you know that city?
> Opole looks nice. Glad to see the Poles taking care of their cities and towns once again. The new modern architecure looks great as well.


Yeah I know Brzeg, it's a city in the northern part of Opolskie Province. I've been there few times since it's well known due to it's historical castle. The castle and market square are rather nice but the rest of the city doesn't look well maintained hno:
That's true that Poles are taking care of the cities but there is still more to do than is done. However I must admit that the progress is bigger every year


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## christos-greece (Feb 19, 2008)

Very nice shots, really from Opole, drowningman...


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## rychlik (Feb 14, 2008)

drowningman666 said:


> Yeah I know Brzeg, it's a city in the northern part of Opolskie Province. I've been there few times since it's well known due to it's historical castle. The castle and market square are rather nice but the rest of the city doesn't look well maintained hno:
> That's true that Poles are taking care of the cities but there is still more to do than is done. However I must admit that the progress is bigger every year


My impressions of Brzeg were great when I was there in 2007. They've recently renovated a lot and there's new development. 
But I am in Toronto and Euro architecture impresses me quite easily


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## drowningman666 (Nov 5, 2007)

rychlik said:


> My impressions of Brzeg were great when I was there in 2007. They've recently renovated a lot and there's new development.
> But I am in Toronto and Euro architecture impresses me quite easily


and my friends were very impressed by Toronto architecture, it's modern skyscrapers and wide freeways


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## durio uno (Oct 26, 2009)

nice beautiful Polish little gem...thanks...greetings from Malaysia...


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## rychlik (Feb 14, 2008)

drowningman666 said:


> and my friends were very impressed by Toronto architecture, it's modern skyscrapers and wide freeways


Aside from the skyscrapers, Toronto is not that interesting. I have a roommate from Bulgaria here who is into architecture and he hates Toronto. They styles are very conservative. I'd say Poland's/Warsaw's new architecture is more with what is going on in Europe- it seems less conservative. I love Warsaw. Painful history - exciting future.


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