Wrocław Zoo with kids and a FIVB volleyball game

In September 2014, the FIVB Men’s World Championship was held in Poland. One of the games was in Wroclaw, Poland. Ann wanted to cheer and decided to buy tickets for herself and her parents. After a while we thought it would be great to go there with family and explore Wroclaw city.

Wrocław is 180 km away from Poznań. The road is of average quality and goes through many small towns, so the trip took about 3 hours. We started early in the morning to arrive around noon.

Along the way we found beautiful decorations in one of the towns, made for the end of harvest. We stopped for a while to watch them. In Poland there are a lot of village parties organized to celebrate the end of the harvest. Those decorations were created to encourage people to join. We found figures of people and animals made from bales of hay. It’s quite unique.

Our visit to Wrocław started with lunch at a restaurant, then we went to the Wroclaw ZOO. It is very similar to the zoo we know from Poznań, but it is a little smaller, so it is easier to walk through the whole area. In the main area, the Afrykarium was under construction, and we hoped to see it once it was finished.

We accidentally noticed that visitors were feeding the animals. There were signs that said 'Do not feed', but they did. It was not cool and we were worried about the animals' health. It seemed to be common here, because the bears had learned to wave at visitors to get food.

Unfortunately this zoo was poorly equipped for kids. All we noticed for them were strollers that could be borrowed near the entrance. You can put children inside and pull them around if they are exhausted, but that is not enough, especially on a crowded day. Another thing that was a disappointment was the tall hedges and walls around the animal enclosures that did not allow the kids to see the animals. We needed to lift them up to show what’s inside.

Our accommodation was near Centennial Hall, where the FIVB game was played in the evening.

Fun fact: Centennial Hall was built in 1913 to a design by Max Berg. At that time, its reinforced concrete dome had the largest span in the world, and since 2006 the hall has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

On that day there were two games, one of them, the most interesting for us, was between Poland and Cameroon. Hour by hour, more people were coming.

Our plan was that Ann with her parents would go to the game and the rest of the family would spend the time another way.

First we visited an ice cream shop, then we went to watch the Multimedia Fountain located near Centennial Hall. Kids could soak their feet in the water. Just before the match started, we went to the fan zone to watch a part of game there. There were some contests and fun for the audience. I wanted to show kids what kind of fun it is to watch a volleyball game in public. Then we planned to go to the hostel to sleep.

Kids wanted to get some fan gadgets. They saw people dressed in white and red everywhere. I decided to buy one item per child. Girls had funny hats and Kris had a scarf with “Polska” (“Poland”) on it. We also painted our faces in red and white. We also bought a trumpet that was very quickly adopted by Justine who played it all the time. With all of that stuff, we entered the fan zone. The kids began to dance and have fun, and everyone was watching us. A few minutes later, a man from Polsat TV came up to us and asked if we had tickets to go inside the hall. We answered that we didn't have any. Then he asked if we wanted his tickets: he couldn't go inside because he had to go somewhere else, and he wanted to give them to us because he saw how much fun our kids were having. At first I thought he wanted to sell those tickets, but when he came again with tickets and didn't want any cash for them, we were very happy. It was like winning the lottery. The total value of the tickets we got was about 800 PLN. That way we got tickets for a game that we didn't expect. There was half an hour until the game started. What a surprise!

Now we needed to go buy T-shirts to look like real fans. We ran to the stand and bought fan T-shirts for everyone. Now only one task was left - to find their mother inside the hall…

Until the break we couldn't find a way to do that. There were about 7,000 people inside and all of them were wearing the same colors. During the break, we spotted the grandparents on their way to the restroom. We caught up with them and sat together.

With the whole family, we watched the game until the end. The kids had a chance to be in the center of the action and became a part of this noisy and big sport show. The kids enjoyed it very much - cheering and singing loudly. It was amazing that all of this was unplanned.

Fun fact: Poland won that game against Cameroon 3:1. Two weeks later, on 21 September 2014 in Katowice, Poland beat Brazil 3:1 in the final and became world champion for the second time in history.