The most beautiful places in the world and the University of Wrocław
She has traveled to more than 50 countries! Today we will tell you more about the passion of Karolina Sokołowska, who on a daily basis – whenever she is not traveling, of course – can be met in the Botanical Garden of the University of Wrocław.
The desire to travel has always been in her. – I couldn’t always afford it – says Karolina. – But the most important thing is to understand that a person can cope anywhere, in almost any conditions, and traveling itself is not particularly difficult.
Her first destination was India and Nepal. It turned out to be quite a difficult direction of travel. – India was a culture shock for me at first, it was difficult for me to find myself in that reality, and for the first days I had the impression that I was on another planet – she recalls. – I remember that on December 24, a day so significant for our culture, I was sitting on the ghats – stone steps leading to the banks of the Ganges River and watching the funeral ceremonies. I watched as funeral pyres with human corpses were soaked in the river, where people had previously washed, bathed, drank water, and washed their clothes, and then set them on fire.
Then there was Malaysia. – The main goal was to hike through the jungle in the Taman Negara National Park, one of the oldest rainforests – says Karolina. – I won’t forget this place because my friend and I planned the trip for November, during the rainy season. It turned out that the jungle was full of leeches. At the beginning, we thought that leeches live only in water, so they would be in puddles and we would just try to avoid them…
It turned out that they were land leeches, so instead of focusing on the amazing rainforest, the travelers rushed through the forest as fast as they could, just to avoid being attacked by leeches. – And there were a whole lot of them!
Soaking clothes in a nicotine solution was supposed to provide some protection against leeches. That was the plan. However, transporting tobacco bags across the border seemed too risky due to very restrictive customs law.
Every vacation means planning a trip. And when you organize everything yourself, the costs are much lower than in travel agencies. – So far, apart from Antarctica, I have managed to visit all continents – says Karolina. – Although I appreciate the beauty of Europe, I try to visit places outside it – she admits.
But traveling is also related to what she does for a living. – I work in the most beautiful place at our University – the Botanical Garden – she smiles.
She sees to greenhouse plants, i.e. tropical and succulent plants that naturally grow in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australia. – It is amazing to wander to distant lands and see the plants we have in our greenhouses – says Karolina. – And although the greenhouses in the Garden are not large, we have a truly huge collection of both tropical and succulent plants here.
Every journey has something amazing to offer, something that can only be found on a given land. – Because there is so much beauty, I sometimes divide it into categories, and for example, in terms of cultural differences, India was the most interesting – says Karolina. – I was also incredibly impressed by the trip to Brazil to the less popular states of Pará and Amapá, where we had been swimming in the Amazon River and wandering at night through a jungle full of not only plants, but also spiders and snakes.
– Trying to communicate in Spanish with the Portuguese-speaking inhabitants of Brazil was interesting – Karolina laughs. – Fortunately, people everywhere are so friendly that there is always a way to communicate somehow when traveling.
Kenya and Tanzania are also impressive, especially for animal lovers. – Almost at your fingertips, you can see animals you’ve previously only seen on TV or in a zoo –she describes.
And, of course, Australia. – Especially Tasmania – it’s amazing that animals so characteristic as kangaroos, adorable wombats, koalas, or Tasmanian devils – are found only there. – In Australia I also had the opportunity to see little penguins, which somehow, I had never associated with Australia before.
The Arctic expedition was unique. – It started with professor Mateusz Strzelecki asking for a few plants for the newly built Cold Regions Research Center. That task was given to me and when I talked to the professor about Spitsbergen, I thought I have to go there. A few months later, I had already purchased a ticket and managed to spend 5 days in this amazing land. In July, the sun doesn’t set, so it was bright all the time, and the reindeer were coming near the hostel. The flora of higher plants is not very rich there, but we managed to find the flowering time of the Svalbard poppy – a beautiful plant! – recalls Karolina.
She doesn’t travel alone, always in the company. Sometimes with one person, sometimes in a group. It is more economical – because it is cheaper to rent a car or a room. It is also easier and safer. – Although I have not encountered any dangerous situations, preparing the trip is easier when several people do it. Because, contrary to appearances, to organize a cheap and interesting trip, you need to devote some time to it – she says.
Working at the University of Wrocław really inspires me to travel. – In my workplace, I can say that the entire world of plants (on a micro scale, of course) is at my fingertips – Karolina laughs. – I honestly admit that although I know tropical plants, seeing them in natural conditions often leaves me astonished. It’s amazing when I can see the plant I grow in a pot as a powerful plant in the rainforest.
One of the trips, to a small village in the heart of the jungle – Saul, took place thanks to the Erasmus + project in which non-academic staff can participate.
The prerequisite is a good knowledge of the foreign language, finding a suitable unit and the approval of the supervisor. – In our case, the trip to French Guiana, which was the idea of the Garden’s director Zygmunt Kącki, was very fruitful – Karolina says. – We went in a group of four (Zygmunt Kącki, director of the Garden, Tomasz Dymny from the Arboretum Wojsławice, Paweł Fedorów, responsible for plant protection, and me). We were preparing to rebuild the palm house, which was closed in 2006, so a visit to the Guiana Amazonian Park allowed us to learn about the actual conditions in which the plants live. Besides, we also managed to establish cooperation with the botanical garden there, which I hope will result in a plant exchange in the future.
The trip itself was unusual because Saul is a small village with less than a hundred people and can only be reached by air. – So twice a day a plane lands there on the runway, or rather on the dirt floor. There are about 20 seats on the plane, and the only thing you can admire during the flight, apart from the sky, is a very dense tropical forest where Karolina encountered a huge spider the size of a small cat. – It paralyzed me for a moment – she reports. – It’s good that my friends warned me that it was there, otherwise my scream would probably have been heard in the capital! – she laughs.
So: India, Nepal, Malaysia, USA, Peru, Bolivia, Iran, Iceland, Cambodia, Vietnam, Australia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Kenya, Tanzania, Brazil, French Guiana, Cuba, Suriname, Mexico, Arctic-Spitsbergen, Azores, Georgia, and one could go on and on…
Read also about the passions of our employees:
Complied by Katarzyna Górowicz-Maćkiewicz
Translated by Maja Szczęśniak (student of English Studies at the University of Wrocław) as part of the translation practice.
