Szczecin from the water

Taking a river cruise around sunset gives new perspectives on a maritime or riverine city, often yielding magnificent prospects not to be experienced on foot. Szczecin is no exception.

Below: pulling away by boat from the centre of Szczecin, beyond the far end of the Bulwar Chrobrego.

Below: flashback to the Royal Docks on the Thames in the early 1980s before they were redeveloped. The entrances to Basen Wschodni and Basen Zachodni, the East and West Basens of Szczecin docks.

Below: floating dry-dock in Szczeciń's Stocznia Remontowa (repair shipyard), currently servicing the Sea La Belle, a Liberian-registered chemical tanker used for carrying epoxy resins (!). It has been here for just over a week.

Below: Is this Cookham Dene? Are we on the upper reaches of the Thames? No, this is about five minutes' north by boat from central Szczecin. And soon it will be autumn in Buckinghamshire. 

Left: looking back towards the Szczecin shipyards. The city offers the joys of boating to its citizens, who have safe inland waters close to hand. The season is over, but it's still warm enough until the sun goes down. 

Below: the wreck of the Ulrich Finsterwalder, a small concrete-hulled (yes!) transport ship built by the Germans in 1942. A circumnavigation of ts 90m-long hull marked the end point of the cruise; having rounded the Eisenbeton-Seefrachter, our boat began to head back for Szczecin. At this point, we are still over 55km from the sea – so much for Churchill's "From Stettin on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain is descending across our Continent." But then I doubt he could have mastered the pronunciation of 'Świnoujście on the Baltic'.

Below: last rays of the sun, setting over Szczecin's north-western suburbs, the telephoto zoom shot...

...and the wide angle shot. Sunset is 25 minutes later here than in Chynów, due to Szczecin's location on Poland's extreme west.

Below: return to Szczecin's port, passing the shipyards on the left bank of the Oder. Marvellous mood. Puts me in mind of Joseph Conrad's description of the Thames Estuary at the beginning of Heart of Darkness or Erskine Childer's descrption of the approaches to the Kiel Canal in Riddle of the Sands.

This time 11 years ago:
Polish politics enter a critical period

This time 13 years ago:
New shopping centre for Jeziorki?

This time 15 years ago:
Mobile and intelligent

This time 16 years ago:
Unadopted – abandoned properties

Szczecin Philharmonic

I first laid eyes upon Szczecin Philharmonic from the 11th floor of the Radisson Blu hotel in November 2016 (photo below). The building, which brings to mind an frost-covered mediaeval Hanseatic skyline, was designed by Studio Barozzi Veiga from Barcelona. It won the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture in 2015 and the Architectural Design of the Year prize in the Eurobuild Awards 2014 contest.

And now, a chance to see the building from the inside, and indeed to take in a concert, not just any concert, but the one inaugurating the 2026/2027 season. This consisted of three pieces; Beethoven's Egmont overture, Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor (which he composed at the age of 20!) and Sibelius's Symphony No. 2 in D major.

Below: the large spiral staircase that can handle peak audience flows between levels before and after performances and during the breaks.

Left: Architecture that seems to pre-shadow Warsaw's controversial contemporary arts museum in terms of their interiors (though it must be said, the exteriors differ as much as a Portakabin differs from a Gothic cathedral).

Below: the auditorium, which seats nearly 1,000 people, was expressly designed to deliver the most outstanding acoustic qualities. This was demonstrated by the guide dropping a one-grosz coin (weighing 1.6g) from the balcony onto the lower floor – the sound reverberated clearly around the concert hall. On either side of the ceiling are stowed thick black curtains (kotary) that drop down to cover the angled acoustic wall panels to prevent deafness when electrically-amplified music is being performed at eleven.

I was lucky enough to watch the concert from behind the orchestra, so for the first time I had the chance to watch an orchestral conductor at work from face-on, rather than just his back. It was a revelation; the gestures, the facial expressions – very powerful.

Below: general view of the foyer area, which possesses a worthy bar, serving a respectable variety of beverages including craft ales.

There were two exhibitions in galleries on the upper floors; one an entirely forgettable bunch of abstract paintings, the other an atmospheric black-and-white photo-reportage of charcoal burners in the Bieszczady hills taken by the Kumor family, Tomasz, Magdalena and their son Michał.

The Szczecin Philharmonic is an absolute must-experience venue for anyone visiting the city.

This time last year:
Compositions in reds, greens, whites and blues

This time ten years ago:
Low water mark

This time 15 years ago:
Łódź to Jeziorki by car in four hours
[See how Poland's road network has improved!]

This time 16 years ago:
What's new on the manor?

This time 17 years ago:
The funeral of Tadeusz Lesisz

This time 18 years ago:
Socialist realism in the boardroom

Poland's bread-culture renaissance

Once upon a time nearly every Polish town and village had its own bakery, making bread the way bread has traditionally been made in Poland. These days, most of these bakeries have shut down; bread now comes from in-store bakeries of the big supermarket chains, or from chains of dedicated bakeries with optimised logistics. These essentially bake frozen dough on the premises, so you get a warm and crusty loaf... but something is missing.

Last week I had to go for a heart check-up (all good thanks!) in Ursynów. I passed an artisan bakery, Bread Morning! on Aleja KEN 15. Noting that it was next door to a chain bakery (Putka), which was empty, while a queue of five people was waiting in Bread Morning!, I joined that queue. I bought one loaf of pszeniczno-żytny (wheat-rye) bread for 14 złotys. This is a price that many across rural Poland might find psychologically bonkers, when a reasonable loaf of chleb górski or chleb drwalski from a Lidl in-store bakery costs around 4 złotys.

But what a loaf! It was one of those taste-sensation things that prompts the response "I've got to have that again!" I've had this with my first decent Polish craft IPA, and before that, my first New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, when I woke up the following morning, tormented by a desire to taste that taste once more.

So when faced with the choice of travelling all the way to Ursynów to collect my results in person or making a few phone calls, I jumped on the train. Results in hand, I popped by Bread Morning! and bought another one of those pszeniczno-żytny loaves. Before me in the queue was a guy placing his order – and paying – for three loaves to be collected on Saturday morning, when demand is the highest.

********

Back in Jakubowizna I ate and I ate and I ate and I ate. Six slices, one after another, on their own, without anything. (Just to be clear: this is brunch – I'd already eaten a decent breakfast: fried rice with duck and mushroom.) And then a seventh slice. And now an eighth.

It's been a long time (nearly 16 years!) since I last raved about Polish bread. But the renaissance is on its way.

Bread Morning! Piekarnia rzemieślnicza (Warszawa) on Al. KEN in Ursynów is an example of something that's been unfolding across Poland over the past decade alongside the craft ale revolution. This is the triumphant return of old-school sourdough baking. Poles have a deep-rooted attachment to rye sourdough breads (chleb żytni na zakwasie). Oh yes! Even in the 1960s we had our Polish bakeries supplying the few Polski Skleps in West London that were around at the time with decent loaves of traditional Polish bread. So much better than Sunblest white sliced.

The late 1990s and early 2000s saw the widespread industrialisation of baking as part of the revolution in Polish food retailing. Supermarkets and bakery chains flooded the market with par-baked, frozen dough products, puffed up with chemical improvers, enzymes and commercial yeasts to accelerate rising. Traditional bakeries (piekarnie) faced intense pressure on their margins; many shut down; those which survived turned to shortcut pre-mixes to stay in the game, sacrificing flavour, crust integrity and keeping qualities.

Around the mid-2010s, a counter-revolution gathered pace. Sparked by passionate home bakers and professionals returning from abroad (bringing back inspirations from Parisian boulangeries, San Francisco sourdough hotspots and Nordic craft bakeries), a new wave of artisan bakeries began appearing in major Polish cities.

The core philosophy rejects commercial improvers in favour of cool fermentation up to 48 hours. Google Gemini explains that “this allows wild yeasts and lactobacilli to break down complex gluten structures and phytic acid, resulting in superior digestibility, a moist, open crumb (miękisz), and a crunchy crust that stays fresh for days without preservatives. Craft bakers revived older, unadulterated grain varieties such as spelt (orkisz), emmer (płaskurka), and einkorn (samopsza), alongside regional stoneground ryes”.

Bread Morning's shop is next door to its bakery, which has large windows open to the street. Passers-by and shoppers can watch doughs being hand-kneaded and loaded into the ovens. Google, which knows these things, states that “Warsaw has become one of Central Europe's most vibrant centres for artisan baking. What began as destination bakeries in central and creative quarters (such as Mokotów, Śródmieście, and Saska Kępa) quickly spread to residential neighbourhoods like Ursynów, Żoliborz, and Wilanów. Places like Bread Morning! demonstrate that neighbourhood demand for high-grade, honest sourdough is robust; locals willingly queue early on Saturday mornings for a still-warm loaf, classic rye, or flaky laminated viennoiserie made with real butter rather than vegetable fat”.

I sincerely hope that artisan bakeries will not turn out to be a short-lived hipster novelty, but will prove to be the vanguard of a resurging Polish bread culture. 

Mediaeval monks called ale 'liquid bread'; I'd call this bread 'solid ale'. 

This time two years ago:
Further exploration of the eskers around Sułkowice

This time three years ago:

Hottest September in Poland?

This time four years ago:

Box-top art in the Sublime Aesthetic

This time five years ago:
Trains of thought, insights and 'voices'

This time seven years ago:
Parliamentary train at West Ealing station

This time eight years ago:
Progress in Jakubowizna

This time ten years ago:
Miedzianka by Filip Springer

This time 11 years ago:
Out of the third, into the fourth

This time 12 years ago:
Inverted reflections

This time 13 years ago:
Observations from London's WC1
and Observations from the City of London

This time 14 years ago:
Civilising Jeziorki's wetlands

This time 13 years ago:
Warsaw's Aleje Jerozolimskie

This time 17 years ago:
Melancholy autumn mood in Łazienki

This time 18 years ago:
Autumn gold, Zamienie

Morning sun

Into the dark (slightly-less than) half of the year, sunlight is at a premium. An early stroll is called for whenever the sun icon is shown in the weather forecast for the hour or two after sunrise. In any case, I wake before dawn; feed the cats, make coffee and off I go. No apologies for posting another picture taken at this spot for the second time this month; it really gets me. I am filled with gratitude for living here and being so close to nature.

The air is clear and fresh, the world feels bright and alive. Though it hasn't rained here for several days, my suede desert boots and thick socks are sodden with the early-morning dew.

Below: in a clearing between orchards and forest, three young female roe deer suddenly become aware of my presence.

Within an instant, they are off. Fortunately, I was prepared with my Nikkor 70-300mm zoom lens and the camera's shutter at the right setting to catch the motion.

On my short evening walk yesterday, I was accompanied by Czester (looking round), Arcturus and Pacyfik following in the rear. Unlike dogs, no leashes are needed. They'll follow me if they want to; if they don't – they won't. Today I was followed into the next-door forest by Céleste, her five kittens, Uncle Scrapper and Ol' Mr. Heaps. 

Left: the second morning walk, down ulica Słoneczna towards Chynów. Look down the road. As I walked west, I wish this road ran for twenty miles, a hundred. To walk and walk and walk. And stop for lunch and an ale before catching a train home.

Below: Chytown Central. The golden years. Cherish them while they're here. These will be said to have been the best of times. Peace, rising prosperity and good governance. It's almost midday; morning will very soon be over.

Below: Is this Taos, New Mexico? Are we on the the edge of the desert? No, this is ulica Główna, Chynów. Bungalow, ranch-style under a south-western sky. Beautiful.

Below: on the way from the orchard, an apple train of four wagons, each bearing three szkryniopalety, (palletised crates), each with a capacity of 300kg of apples. With the current prices as they are, at the lower end of the spectrum, say, 2zł per kilo wholesale, this lot represents at least 7,000 zł (around £1,400) of table apples. Retail – two-and-half times that.

Below: the vibe is Americana. The DK50 Chynów-Drwalew bypass to the left, the service/access road to the right. Passing under the main road is the Warsaw-Radom railway line.

Turning in and headed for home. A train is due. And indeed, here it its, on time, next stop Chynów, final stejszyn, Radom Główny. This is a Stadler FLIRT (Fast Light Innovative Regional Train), built in Siedlce. As a passenger, I prefer the NEWAG Impuls (also Polish-built); the button to open the door reacts instantly, sparing that moment when you worry if it's working or not on the FLIRT. 

Jakubowizna at its most sublime. The trees, the space, the sky, the light. A blissful prospect. A little bit further down the lane, and I'll be home to lunch.

As I write, Hipek is fast asleep in the cat tower, snoring the sweetest little snore... 

Bonus photo snapped on Sunday: a PZL M-18B Dromader water-bomber belonging the Poland's state forestry organisation, Lasy Państwowe.

This time three years ago:
By the light of the silvery moon

This time 14 years ago:
Łódź, city of culture

This time 15 years ago:
Nine days before the parliamentary elections

This time 16 years ago:
Melancholy mood in Łazienki park, early autumn

This time 19 years ago:
Flamenco sketches

Some thoughts about blogs and blogging

Yesterday, I met up with my fellow-bloggers from While not null (over from Australia, whose splendid initiative it was to meet) and Politics, Economy, Society to chat about the future of blogs and blogging in the current age.

Blogging has gone through several changes since we got started many years ago. In the early years, just about everyone had a blog, but within two years (on average, according to Google), 90% of those blogs had fizzled out. The next phase was the monetisation of blogs, search-engine optimisation. This led to square kilometres of slop being (manually at this stage) produced with the commercial aim of driving online traffic to advertisers.

At the same time, other forms of social media began to expand, elbowing attention away from a form requiring more attention to read and indeed to produce. Blogging began to ebb. 

Twitter was originally categorised as a 'microblog'; Facebook moved in that direction when it added status updates. Indeed, I see my own blogging output fell sharply as I signed up for those two. It fell (from 250-300 posts a year to around 170-200 posts a year), but has stayed consistently at that level since around 2014. Since then, I've remained on Facebook but have quit Twitter after Musk deformed it.

My posts today tend to be longer and more considered than in the early days, but over the nearly 20 years since I started, there's a consistent thread running through the blog.

My blog aims to show over time the passage of time. That's the purpose of the 'This time x years ago' feature at the bottom of each post. Searchable memory of ordinary things – how they looked before they changed; the ever-shifting  texture of reality. What the railway used to look like, when the snow arrived, what local shops existed, what people drove, how the landscape changed, how a road looked like before all those new houses came. What seems mundane now won't in 2046.

I can now see just how far Poland has progressed since I started blogging, less than three years after joining the EU. Today, I can identify the tipping point at which Poland ceased being a post-communist hardship posting and became a normal country. It was the day I travelled from Warsaw to Kraków in a day and everything worked out fine – November 2014 ('Poland – it works!')

My blog is an authentic voice, increasingly rare on an internet in which so much prose has been professionalised, optimised, monetised or, now, AI-smoothed. My photography is there to prevent the blog becoming merely a diary of opinions. Over the years, thousands of photographs build up a visual record of Warsaw and southern Mazowsze which would be difficult to reconstruct retrospectively.

My old question about 'am I a generalist or specialist' is being settled; over the years a pattern is emerging; the topics I like to write about, those I tend to steer clear of (politics being one). 

In an age of AI-generated content, where writing style is becoming samey ("Not this. Not this. Not this. But this. And this is quietly important"), authenticity is all important. Today, synthetic, auto-generated text has led to the collapse of commercially driven blogs. This has cleared the ground for blogging to re-emerge purely on aesthetic, essayistic and archival terms. And this is where this blog fits.

Having been freed from the expectation of being mass-market commerce, I hope that the blog has established its place as a distinct literary and visual format and will survive into the future in the way that radio and cinema survived TV and TV has survived the internet.

Today I noticed that next year, Easter falls on 28 March. This means my Lenten cycle of blog posts will be finished before 1 April, being the 20th anniversary of this blog. The event will be marked with a very special post and a revamp with some new features.

This time last year:
Last evening in shirt sleeves?

This time two years ago:
Anomalous landscapes amid local forest

This time six years ago:

W(h)ither the DK50?

This time seven years ago:
A change in the weather

This time eight years ago:
Zamek Topacz classic car museum

This time 11 years ago:
Curry comes to Jeziorki
[It didn't stay long. Decor matters!]

This time 13 years ago:
Why we should all try to use less gas

This time 13 years ago:
Polish supermarket chain advertises on London buses

This time 18 years ago:
Well-shot pheasants

Slowly, into the cold and the dark

Equilux is upon us. Today, the day was 12 hours and 1 minute long; tomorrow it will be 11 hours and 57 minutes. From tomorrow, nights will be longer than days for the next 173 days. On 17 March next year, the day will be 11 minutes and 57 minutes long, and a day later, on 18 March, the day will be 12 hours and 1 minute in length. So the lighter 'half' of the year is 192 days. Light and warmth prevail, just slightly, over the cold and dark.

Below: the sun sublime is to be replaced by hygge; the kitchen lights are on a tea-time. The kitchen is warm and cosy. That patch of white below the middle of the pic is Hipek, taking it easy. Cats increase the cosiness quotient.

Astronomical autumn kicked off two days ago, on Wednesday 23 September, and meteorological autumn started on 1 September. Thermal or climatic autumn is also making itself felt. The last few nights have seen temperature minimums dip into single figures, the overcast skies have been distinctly autumnal. But next week, a run of clear-sky days are forecast, with temperatures rising above 20°C.

By going to bed earlier and earlier, I can still wring out the most of the daylight, by waking well before dawn. I am feeling the need for more sleep! A solid nine hours last night, up from summer minimums of seven. Still warm enough in the house not to need heating, a second layer is now called for. The duvet, however, is back, though it's still to warm for duvet + pyjamas. 

The last of the cider has been made, one demijohn of perry has been made with local pears (never ask me whose!), and the final demijohn will be filled with grape juice, fruit of the vine and work of human hands, that shall become moderately drinkable wine.

This time last year:
Equilux – the triumph of light over darkness.

This time two years ago:
Equilux: the struggle between Light and Dark

This time five years ago:
S7 construction update

This time six years ago:
Covid – we still really don't know where we are

This time 12 years ago:

Thoughts occasioned by today being equilux

This time 15 years ago:
The magic of Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand's Marlborough region

This time 16 years ago:
Grandson of Poles elected to lead UK's Labour Party

This time 18 years ago:
Give me sunshine!

By train to Dęblin via Radom

Yesterday's post focused on the Air Force Museum in Dęblin; today's will be a reflection on my railway journey there and back via Radom. 

Now, until five years ago, Radom had but one railway station, named simply Radom. Since then, the city has been sprouting stations, jak grzyby po deszczu. Coming into Radom from Warsaw, the Koleje Mazowieckie local service now stops at Radom Stara Wola, Radom Północny, Radom Gołębiów and Radom Wschodni before finally arriving at Radom's main station, which had to be renamed Radom Główny in 2021. 

The newest of the new stations, Radom Wschodni, opened in June 2025. And this (below) is my first visit. More about this station later.

Dęblin railway station owes its existence and historical importance to the intersection of two major railways built under the Russian imperial administration in the late 19th century. Dęblin was known in Tsarist times as Ivangorod (Ивангород). And here, the Russians built a massive fortress guarding the confluence of the Vistula and Wieprz rivers.

The station became a junction of the Vistula Railway (Kolej Nadwiślańska, opened in 1877); this line ran along the right bank of the Vistula, linking the Prussian border at Mława with Warsaw, Ivangorod, Lublin, and Kovel, in present-day Ukraine.  It connected the frontline fortresses of Modlin, Warsaw Citadel and Ivangorod (Dęblin) to the Tsarist heartlands. The first line to reach Dęblin did so a year earlier, in 1876, being a spur off the main Warsaw-Moscow railway. This ran south-west from Brest-Litovsk to Łuków and then onto Dęblin. Joining this line at Dęblin was the Ivangorod–Dąbrowa Railway (Kolej Iwanogrodzko-Dąbrowska, opened in 1885); it was built to get Silesian coal to Russia. Starting at Dęblin, it bridged the Vistula and traversed the Świętokrzyskie hills before reaching the Austro-Hungarian frontier at Dąbrowa. 

Today the old Kolej Nadwiślańska is Linia Kolejowa (LK) 7, linking Warsaw to the Ukrainian border at Dorohusk, while the old Kolej Iwanogrodzo-Dąbrowska, connecting Silesia via Dęblin and onto Łuków and the Belarusian border at Terespol is LK 26. So that's that sorted. Now, let's have a little look at the stretch of LK 26 between Radom and Dęblin...

Below: Garbatka Letnisko station, as the name implies, a summer-holiday resort town. Jedlnia Letnisko, closer to Radom is another such town. Both kick-started their resort-status careers in the 1920s, the result of the railway line bringing tourists from nearby Radom and Dęblin to enjoy the Puszcza Kozienicka forest that lay to the north of the tracks.

Below: Zajezierze koło Dęblina station. This pic, snapped from the window of my eastbound train, has the appearance of a vintage hand-coloured black & white photograph. The station has recently been remonted, but, sadly, the clock has already broken (it's really 09:56).

Below: crossing the Vistula. The current steel girder structure is the third railway bridge here, the first being blown up during the First World War and the second during the Second World War. Such is Poland's history.

Below: railway junction south of Dęblin, a freight train, having bypassed the passenger station, makes its way onto the LK 26 before crossing the Vistula.

Below: mounted on a plinth outside Dęblin station, a narrow-gauge Ryś locomotive with tender (class T49). Built between 1946 and 1950, these were a development of the German Henschel Riesa Kriegsdampflok, a standardised narrow-gauge locomotive built in large numbers between 1936 and 1944 for military field railways and construction sites.

Below: around Dęblin's main station building (destroyed during the First World War) stand a number of houses built for the Tsar's railway workers. This one survived.

Below: the south-east water tower, built during the German occupation, and hit by Soviet shells in 1944 (holes visible near the top). In use today as a communications tower for mobile telephony.

Below: Back at Radom Wschodni. Note the escalators, the signs for the airport, and the bus stop on the viaduct from which one can take bus to said airport. In the distance to the left (click to enlarge image), the LK 26 veers off from the LK 8, the main Warsaw-Radom-Kielce-Kraków line. The new station meant that I could change trains here from the one coming from Dęblin to the one heading north to Chynów, rather than going in one stop to Radom Główny to back track via Radom Wschodni again.

It is good that Radom, a city the size of Portsmouth or Newcastle-on-Tyne, has experienced a boom in new stations in the past five years; Radom Południowy and Radom Potkanów (both to the south of the city) complete the set. And finally, a reminder that Radom Główny station, opened as Radom in 1885, was designed by the magnificently named Adolf Schimmelpfennig.

This time three years ago:
It's a competitive world

This time four years ago:
To Rzeszów and back by rail, Pt  I

This time five years ago:
Science, Religion, Magic and Consciousness

This time eight years ago:
The house on the działka, coming on

This time nine years ago:
Autumn comes early

This time ten years ago:
Kriegslok passes through Jeziorki

This time 14 years ago:
A little way west of Jeziorki

This time 15 years ago:
The Old Sailor's Tale - part II 

This time 16 years ago:
Prague-Jeziorki-Moscow

This time 17 years ago:
The passing of Lt. Cmdr. Tadeusz Lesisz 

This time 19 years ago:
Summer ends, autumn begins

The air force museum in Dęblin

Today, being World Car-Free Day, Koleje Mazowieckie once again refused to take money for train tickets, and one could travel all over the network for free. This year, I decided to visit Dęblin, in particular the Air Force Museum. Train from Chynów to Radom where I changed for a train to Dęblin. Just over two and half hours. And on arrival, I discovered that today, being a Tuesday, entrance was free too. Great! Below: 'Attackers' Avenue' and a vista of old Soviet MiGs, Sukhois and Ilyushins and the occasional helicopter.

But the getting there could be easier... Below: Over the Vistula by electrical traction, out of Mazowsze and into Lubelskie, till we come to a town associated with Polish military aviation – Dęblin.

Dęblin (pop. 13,000) reminds me of Warka (pop. 11,500) as it used to be before Warka Miasto opened. Dęblin's one station is a long way from the town centre – three and half kilometres to be precise! 

And the town's bus service is pathetic. There are four weekday bus routes, an hourly service from the station to the main market square that departs four minutes before the train from Radom arrives in Dęblin. Left: bus route no. 2; just two buses a day to the railway station, in the early afternoon. That's it.

So it's wait nearly an hour or walk for 45 minutes (I can't complain; it stayed dry and I covered 20,000 paces today). Public transport – not that good. And by car from Warsaw – be warned of roadworks on the DK48 along the way, the museum's website says.

Despite the difficulty of getting here, if you are into military aviation history in the slightest, this museum is a must-visit, along with the one in Kraków. Below: A Polish Air Force MiG-21 in NATO Tiger Meet colours. The air base often hosts pilots from other NATO members. Culture clash! USAF nose-art vs. Polish officers' formality can be seen at the museum.

Dęblin has been home to the Polish Air Force's training school since 1925; today there was much activity with four fast-jet take-offs, many helicopters circling around the base and piston-powered basic trainers practicing touch-and-goes, just the other side of the museum's perimeter fence. 

Left: rear end of an Ilyushin Il-28, NATO codename 'Beagle', and in the sky above it a Diamond DA-20 Katana trainer.

Dęblin – where NATO's top guns would whoop it up... but where? The town is decidedly dull. I am a great fan of Poland's progress, and in Dęblin I can see new asphalt and pavements, but, other than four kebab shops and a couple of Viet-Pol restaurants – like, where's the action for the airmen? Below: Ulica Warszawska, Dęblin's main drag. A long straight road that passes the central square, where it becomes ul. Niepodległości. More a rectangular park than a proper rynek.

All in all, Dęblin is not as good in terms of the actual aircraft on show as I remember Kraków's Air Museum to be; my interest not being in the vast display of old Soviet kit at both museums, rather pre-war Polish and NATO aircraft from the Cold War. Thankfully, the good stuff is in hangars rather than exposed to the elements. Below: a British Miles Magister basic trainer that Polish fighter pilots got started on, and behind it a Polish designed-and-built LWD Junak basic trainer from the 1950s.

I did appreciate the indoor exhibition with its focus on the interwar years and the Polish Air Force fighting alongside the RAF in WW2.  Below: an interior representing RAF Northolt in the glory days, the peak of the Battle of Britain, when 303 (Polish) Fighter Squadron was the top-scoring unit defending the British Isles.

There was a smaller part of the indoor exhibition featuring Polish aviation within the Warsaw Pact. One chilling exhibit was this large wall-map showing the direction of the thrusts of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe, as planned in the 1980s. By D+3, Polish forces were expected to have been 270km into West Germany

Below: a LIM-2, being a Polish licence-built version of the ubiquitous Soviet MiG-15bis first-generation jet fighter.

Below: flight deck of a Polish Air Force Antonov An-26 (like this one, snapped over Jeziorki near the end of its career).

This time last year
Mińsk Mazowiecki (by Koleje Mazowieckie, for free)

This time two years ago:
Car-free day 2024 - Łowicz

This time five years ago
Into darkness

This time eight years ago:
Summer's end

This time nine years ago:
In which I lose a lot of data from my old laptop

This time ten years ago:
Konin – town of aluminium, electricity and coal

This time 13 years ago:
Car-free day falls on a Sunday

This time 14 years ago:
Vistula at record low level

This time 17 years ago:
Car-free day? Warsaw's roads busier than ever

This time 18 years ago:
The shape of equinox

This time 19 years ago:
Potato harvest time in Jeziorki