Using an eSIM in Wrocław

What Wrocław is like on a phone

Wrocław is a university city: younger, looser and less pressed than the capital. The visitors are travellers after a handsome city without the crush, conference delegates, and families whose children are hunting the little brass dwarfs scattered across the pavements. The centre sits on islands in the Odra with more bridges than you can count, so the walk you actually take is longer than the straight line on screen suggests. Around town the line is comfortable, apart from inside the old brick buildings and the churches on the island, where the walls are seriously thick.

À l'atterrissage

Copernicus Airport (WRO) sits west of town and has no train of its own, so it is bus 106 by day or 206 at night into Wrocław Główny. Plenty of people instead come by rail from Berlin across the border, or from Kraków and Poznań, and land at the orange-brick station within walking distance of the old town. Turn the eSIM on before you leave the aircraft so you can buy the bus ticket in the app rather than hunting for a machine at the stop. The ride in is connected the whole way.

Où la couverture change

The Rynek and the streets around it are open enough to work everywhere. Ostrów Tumski, the cathedral island, is stone and thick brick, and inside those buildings you notice the drop at once. The bridges and the riverside paths are actually the best places in the city, because nothing stands in the way. Head south-west out of town and the ground climbs into the Karkonosze range quickly, where the summit trails run for kilometres without continuous service.

What a day here costs in data

A normal day comes to roughly 600MB to 1.3GB, less than the capital because you walk nearly everywhere. The unusual drain is the dwarf-hunting map you leave open all day while ticking them off one by one, plus the photographs, since there is a shot on every corner. Add evening video from the lit-up square with a nightly upload and about 2GB a day is the right allowance.

Districts travellers ask about

• Rynek and the old town — The big square with the town hall in the middle, where every walk starts; reception is good and it is the hardest place in the city to get lost meeting someone.
• Ostrów Tumski — The cathedral island, where the gas lamps are still lit by hand each evening; inside the church buildings the signal falls away, so shoot outside and send from there.
• Nadodrze — An old quarter turning into studios and small shops; tall brick blocks with inner courtyards mean back rooms are weaker than street-facing ones.
• Sępolno and the Centennial Hall — The eastern side with its park and big fountain; wide open, so it works well, but far enough from the old town that the tram is the sensible way there.

Day trips out of the city

• Książ Castle — On a bluff above a valley an hour and a half to the south-west; the road into the valley has dead spots, and the tunnels beneath the castle have nothing at all.
• The Church of Peace at Świdnica — A huge timber building about an hour away, reached on country roads with steady service; inside, being wood rather than stone, it holds up better than a masonry church would.
• The Karkonosze range and Śnieżka — The summit route crosses exposed ridge with kilometres of nothing in between, so download offline maps before you leave your accommodation. Know too that an emergency call does not behave the way a data session does; take your instructions from the park authority and the official mountain rescue service.