Sexy ladies in Wrocław!

Portret brodatej Heleny Antonii z Liège, 
dwórki królowej Konstancji Austriaczki.

Yeah, I hope people who link through to this post from Google and are looking for sexy ladies have a little bit of a surprise ;)

This lovely lady is the focus of my Polish homework this week. I need to write her life history. That was a bit of a tricky task to do considering I could find only scarce references to her existence. Nothing on Google and very little on Wikipedia. My saviour turned out to be her Facebook page:

Brodata Dziewica

Not only could I officially 'Like' this curious lady but I also found a PDF link which gave me a bit of her life history. Originally born in Belgium, she suffered from a condition called 'Hirsutyzm'. She lived a surprisingly pleasant life because she was a courtier for Queen Constance from the Hapsburg Empire and apparently, at the time many people, particularly from the Mediterranean areas, liked a bearded lady.

To each its own, I say!

Interestingly, this portrait of Helena Antonii, the bearded lady, is on show in the National Museum in Wrocław and was painted in 1620, when she visited Wrocław and the towns inhabitants were so curious they commissioned a picture.

So apart from writing about bearded women, what else have I been doing? Well firstly I managed to get my Internet connection back and I've found out via an email to my company account that there is now in fact another ex-pat in my local village, a new arrival from Canada. It'll be interesting to get there point of view on Polish life.

On the entertainment side, I found this film hiding away on my hard drive,

The lives of Others

It's a German film about the Stasi, an interesting gritty drama with good reflections on Eastern European life in the 80's. Probably, someone from this blog recommended it to me a long time ago and I've forgotten about it.

If so, Thanks! Great film.