My New 27-Year-Old Scooter

I got the scooter bug the day I joined GOVECS back in 2011. Within a week of working there, I somehow managed to get a company-issued scooter for research and development testing. Back then, GOVECS GO! line of scooters was just entering the market and the scooter itself was evolving almost every month. The best…

Breaking One Hundred

Running in the late-fall, mid-winter, and then early-spring months in Poland is quite shitty, to say the least. And I’m not talking about the weather. Sure, it’s cold, rainy, snowy, even icy at times. But giving up running due to -5 degrees Celsius outside is not reason enough to quit running. Keeping your lungs healthy…

Scrum is in the Air

On Monday I spent a few hours talkin’ Scrum with Agile On The Boat folk. AOTB is a pretty cool initiative that gathers around scrum masters, product owners, project managers, software developers, and anyone within Wroclaw’s software development scene to discuss the Agile Method. The topic of this weeks session was “Technically Aware Scrum Master”…

Age of Illusion

Illusion is a Polish heavy metal band formed in 1992. Given that I was 10 at the time, and that I left Poland to live in the States just two years later, I never listened to Polish metal, nor have I ever heard of a band called Illusion. Until I met my wife. At the…

Sunday Night Post

This week’s been relatively calm so when my phone reminded me of my self imposed blog-post-deadline late this Sunday afternoon…absolutely no post topic came to mind. I have set this post deadline to force myself into some kind of creative writing for at least a few minutes every week. Don’t get me wrong, as a…

Snowed In

Yesterday was Wroclaw’s first real snow day of the season and the city freaked out. Perhaps it didn’t freak out as much as it simply shut itself down. And that shouldn’t happen in Poland in the winter time. It’s only natural that we associated winter with snow. I know, I know, but in Poland that…

Vozilla – Wrocław’s Electric Car-sharing Service

Vozilla is not Wrocław’s first car-sharing service. It isn’t second either, as Wrocław has dabbled with vehicle sharing in the past. But it’s most definitely a first all-electric car-sharing service in the city and from what I can see around town, it’s the most popular one to boot. Vozilla uses Nissan Leafs as its vehicle of choice…

Hey, You!

Hey there. It’s been a while. How are things? You doin’ alright? How are the kids? Yeah OK, you’re right. I don’t really care about your kids. But after a prolongated period of absence on this blog I never really know how to hop back on the blogging bandwagon. So I needed something witty, if…

A Taste of Europe 2017

At the beginning of this month, we stopped by the annual European Food Festival taking place in Wrocław’s city center. I believe this was our third time attending, and it seems that this street -like fair is gaining in popularity. We did by now notice some familiar faces among the folks representing their country. For…

PMI Wrocław Awesomeness

On May 18 and 19 I took part in a two-day PMI Wroclaw event, and then followed that up with a PMI Connect evening during the week. Below is my personal write up of these events. 4th Annual PMI Wrocław Conference My first contact with PMI Wroclaw was exactly a year ago when a few of…

Licking Your Heart – The Musical

Licking Your Heart is not your typical happy-go-lucky musical. It doesn’t make you wanna dance in your seat or sing along with the crowd. With the plot taking place in a 1945 war torn Breslau, which during the play officially changes the name from Breslau (German) to Wrocław (Polish), this musical does transform you to…

GOVECS Supplier Forum

Late last month I attended my very first supplier forum. The feat itself was ever more rewarding since it was for a project that I am currently leading. Because GOVECS is a fairly small company with very start-up roots, our projects and scooters often don’t get the attention and consideration of other high volume customers…

January Resolutions

It’s been two weeks since New Years Eve and I’m still trying to figure out how to write the very first blog post of 2017. On one hand it should be grand, something spectacular to set you, the reader, up for what’s to come later this year. On the other, with no grand subjects in…

Scooters on Display

For some reason totally not explained in any way, shape, or form, there is a display of scooter posters in the middle of a shopping mall here in Wrocław. Naturally I had to investigate…and read all about every single scooter shown. I saw the display from afar, mostly because I saw my beloved Schwalbe in the…

A Vespa Wedding

It was supposed to be a different. The plan was to ride the 33 year old Vespa from the Cathedral, where the wedding ceremony took place, to the wedding hall some 6km away. Unfortunately the weather didn’t hold, and after a week of sunny 30°C days, it rained most of Saturday, and it kept raining…

Break The Silence – TEDx Wrocław 2016

Today Ania and I attended a TEDx Wrocław event called Break The Silence. It was my third TEDx Wroclaw event, and it was the best TEDx Wroclaw to date! I’ve been a little critical of the past events, but this year the TEDx Wroclaw crew raised the bar way high with all aspects of the…

Sunday Brew & Tacos

On Sunday we stopped by the “City Brewery”. The defunct looking complex of redbrick buildings actually used to be a brewery on-again, off again, from 1894 to 1996. Today, it has become a site of cultural gatherings of all sorts. Art galleries, art workshops, culinary workshops, indie clubs, it’s all there. On most weekends however,…

City Walking

May is known in Poland as the beginning of the grilling season, mostly because May is the first month warm and sunny enough to do anything outside. Temperatures in the 20°C+ (68°F) become fairly common and the sunshine wakes everything, and everyone, back to life. Saturday was so sunny and warm that we decided to…

Beaver Walking

We came across a pretty remarkable sight today when walking Fado along the river bank. At first I thought that someone went chainsaw happy for a bond fire nearby, but upon closer inspection both Ania and I knew what it really was; beavers! I’ve never seen beaver damage up close before, but their handy…err, tooth…

A Taste of Europe

Wrocław hosted a “Taste of Europe” food festival last week. The proper translation would sound more to the tune of “Europe at the fork tip” or something along those lines. But my translation fits better as that’s exactly what it was: a bunch of vendors from different European countries showing off their local cuisine. We…