Above: having alighted at Łódź Widzew station and made my way to ul. Rokocińska, this is my first impression: garishly coloured blocks of flats set among greenery.
Above: as there are no street numbers prominently displayed on the blocks of flats, navigation along this 17km wylotówka (a road heading out of town) is not easy. I assumed, on the basis of studying Google Maps, that my journey from the station to Tulipan Park, a newly-opened industrial estate at ul. Rokicińska 168 would be a short walk. It turned out to be 40 minutes.
Sprayed on a flower shop on ul. Rokicińska - an anglophone alternative to HWDP. (For my Polish readers not in the know, it means 'all coppers are bastards'. Meanwhile the road goes on forever. And it was hot - about a thousand degrees. And me in a suit.
Widzew is thinning out (it's the largest district of Łódź by area, the least densely-populated) and I'm still walking.I finally arrive to the official opening of Tulipan Park; among the more interesting discussions I had was one with two local real estate agents who were talking about the concept mooted to join Warsaw and Łódź into one mega-agglomeration of five million people. A key part of this idea would be a new airport, midway between the two cities; this was the lead story in today's Warsaw section of Gazeta Wyborcza.
Given that (as I wrote last week) trains from Warsaw to Łódź currently take over two hours to cover the measly 83 miles (130km) between the two cities, I think that such grands projets should be promptly forgotten. Below: map of the proposed locations of a Warsaw-Łódź airport
[Source: Gazeta Wyborcza article cited above. Link to artwork here.]
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3 comments:
Brilliant. Why not build an airport in Torun and call it - Warsaw-Łódż-Gdansk-Szczecin-Poznań airport?
I rather like the city, although I've only stayed there for a day at a time. It has a lively arts scene and some very nice bars/clubs and cafes although it's very much a "work in progress"
Warsaw feels smaller every day, but Lodz felt immediately like the kind of city you could know and get to love quite easily. But then I always was a hopeless romantic.
As far as I can see, Okęcie, Mszczonów and Baranów are all listed because they are roughly equally accessible for me (given the bottlenecks going into Warsaw). They didn't ask me, so how did they know? Babsk is obviously a throw away option for Łódż politics. Wouldn't the new agglomeration have to house several billion people for it to qualify as an urban area or is it to be the Łódż (plus the bit previously known as Warsaw) extended village agglomeration?
Never trust estate agents!
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