Below: returning to my office on ul. Nowogrodzka, which runs parallel to Al. Jerozolimskie, with the sun low in the sky and blasting down the road.
It may be zero degrees, but spring in coming. It will be several weeks yet, but the longer period of evening daylight is most certainly welcome, as is the sunshine.
Below: in a similar architectural vein - block of flats on ul. Krucza, one tram-stop from Centrum.
Right now, you can find a 40-50 square metre flat here for around £100,000 (500,000 zlotys). Or one-third of the price of a grotty terraced house in Greenford, Middlesex, 12 miles (20km) from the centre of London.
But look at how short the wheelbase is; the seatpost is bent to allow the rear wheel to be positioned further forward. Like in a cycle polo mount. The rear-facing rear dropouts suggest a frame built for fixed drive. These bikes are getting more and more extreme; this is the most extreme I've seen in Warsaw to date! And the snow has only just receded! I've been told by reader Chris that this is a Polish designed-and-built bike, the Torro, for track and traffic. See the website of TenFour bikes here.
Above: almost out of the box - a 2008 Kross Unforgiven Limited Edition parked outside my office. This bike came out of the factory as a fixie. Another Polish designed-and-built bike (the Kross bicycle company is a great success story).
Right: I say 'almost out of the box' because of its non-standard stubby bars. Narrow bars make for nippier handling through traffic, but there comes a point (when they are narrower than the rider's shoulders) when they become ludicrous. Why not dispense with bars altogether and merely stick your thumbs into the hole in the stem?
Above: photo taken at 1/5th sec, f3.5, 320 ISO, Nikon D80 with 18-200mm VR lens zoomed out to 18mm. Below: a crop on the detail, more than five times magnification. Neither photo tweaked in Photoshop or Lightroom. Click to enlarge and look at the crispness of the word odjazdy ('departures'). Incidentally, from the departures board below you can see that the photo above was taken during the height of the evening rush hour.
Unfortunately, the 18-55mm kit zoom that came with my D40 does not have VR. I am toying with the idea of buying a 16-85mm VR zoom to go with both Nikons; this will offer the much-needed VR for night photography, plus it gives a wider angle (equivalent to 24mm on a standard 35mm film camera). This lens should do for me; the D80 should do me for many years as a body for use with the longer lenses. As for the D40... there are rumours that the D40 current replacement, the D3100, is due itself to be replaced by the D3200, with 24 megapixel sensor.
Below: as I approach the station, looming out of the evening mist, the Palace of Culture.
Left: any decent horror film from Rosemary's Baby to The Shining must have its spine-tingling setting - The Dakota building or the Timberline Lodge, and with its current trendy lavender colour scheme, the Palace of Culture looks Gothically grim on a misty night, rimmed by the skeletal fingers of leafless trees.
Right: view of the Palace from the south, approaching W-wa Śródmieście station. The contrasting sodium lighting of the colonnades makes them look like the gaping, salivating maw of a gigantic, ravenous creature, snapping at the passers-by.
This time last year:
A neat symmetry; while passing through Kabaty Metro station (en route to the bankomat), I chanced upon two identical Russian-stock trains. The one on the left is waiting to depart, the one on the right as just pulled in to the last station. There's about a minute when both are standing here together. Just enough time to line up a shot on my Nokia 6700 Classic (5 megapixel camera).
The photo below appeared on this blog in December 2009, before the fixie became the Warsaw hipster's mode of transport of choice.
Brakes evidently more of a hindrance than help when thick snow covers urban roads. It seems (for I've not tried riding in snow on my fixie) that direct control of the driving wheel via the pedals works better than brakes, and that skinny tyres adhere better to slippery surfaces than do fat ones with gnarly tread.
Left: As though wearing a baggy white mohair sweater, Poland's piano-playing elder statesman toughs out the cold. The statue faces the building that housed the British Embassy on the corner of Al. Ujazdowskie and Al. Róż. The lawn behind the statue is lined with roses in the summer.
Right: the pond at the southern end of Park Ujazdowski, frozen solid, offers children returning from school a ready-made skating rink. No danger of anyone falling in after such a prolonged period of heavy frost. The ducks that usually reside here cluster near the park's southern-most exit, hoping to cadge bread from passers-by.
Approaching midday, right in the heart of the city - Centrum, Rondo Dmowskiego. A cycle courier (on a fixie, what else?) is dicing with a Gocław-bound 507 bus. Despite the steady snowfall, it's actually the warmest it's been for weeks, with temperatures nudging zero at lunchtime.
Below: Ogród Saski, and the ducks are out in force on the corner of ul. Marszałkowska and Królewska, their traditional winter hang-out.
Below: outside the Palace of Culture, an impoverished intellectual (a social class lacking in Britain) is calling it a day; his selection of well-thumbed paperbacks up for sale is covered in snow and thus business is not brisk.
Left: The Marriott hotel rises above snow-covered spruces across from the Palace of Culture.
So here I am, neither on one pavement nor the other, waiting for the lights to change, waiting for the green, waiting to make a move; watching and waiting, watching for signs. Everyone's waiting, no one's wanting to talk, busy - busy waiting...The UK has a smaller proportion of adults with A-levels or their equivalent than Poland or Bulgaria, an analysis by the European Union's official statistics agency shows.Oh golly-gosh. Those funny people with those funny unpronounceable names are actually cleverer than us? "And why is that?" ask the well-meaning Guardian readers. It is, so the newspaper asserts, "due to the rising cost of learning".
Several former eastern bloc countries now have adult populations that are more highly educated than the UK's, the Eurostat data reveals. They include Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland and Bulgaria.
Chcesz być czymś w życiu, to się ucz
Abyś nie zginął w tłumie,
Nauka to potęgi klucz
W tym moc, co więcej umie.
Ignacy Baliński (1862 - 1951)
('If you want to be someone in life, then studyThis time last year:
To avoid dying among the masses,
Education is power's key
In him the power, who knows more.')
Above: The pond on ul. Trombity. If there's on thing to give you confidence when stepping out onto ice, it's tyre tracks. If a quad can drive on this stuff, there's nothing to worry out.
Above: following the quad's tracks forming a corridor through the reed-beds I enter a world normally closed off to human eyes, taking in vistas that for much of the year the human eye cannot witness.
Above: the effects of the floods of 2010 are still visible. This stand of trees is still under water.
Left: an Alitalia Airbus A319 on final approach to Warsaw Okęcie airport. If any Italians are gazing out of the plane at this moment, they will probably not be too surprised, as it's frosty in Rome too, with bright blue skies.
Right: a tree with its bark stripped - I guess by a woodpecker. Plenty of bark on the ice below, another tree a few metres away has been similarly attacked. Closer inspection of the tree shows that there are plenty of holes where beetles have bored into the trunk. A sign that despite the big freeze, life goes on, the struggle to survive.
Above: looking upstream, less than ten miles south of the centre of Warsaw, and not a sign of the city. Has the river frozen solid?
Above: people venturing out onto the ice. They are doing so responsibly. The man is armed with, sorry - carrying - a stick, testing the ice before moving forward, gingerly. And there must be a second person at hand. They did not not go far before turning back to safety.
Above: the Jeziorka river at its confluence with the Vistula. I must say, I was not brave enough to test the ice in person... better safe than sorry. Another week at -10C, and maybe...
Above: W-wa Jeziorki station and its demolished shelter. A frosty morn; note absence of cars parked up along ul. Gogolińska. Either the cars wouldn't start, or their drivers preferred to face the jams in the warmth of their vehicles rather than brave the cold trains.
Above: W-wa Okęcie station, and behind it the long-to-be unfinished S79 at the junction for the airport. People who alight here tend to work at the airport rather than passengers, for despite the name, this station's one and half kilometres from the international terminal. The new station serving the airport will be ready... May? December? Who knows.
Left: W-wa Zachodnia station. A sky of girders and pylons, a God-awful place lacking signage, proper information or decent amenities. A great place however for newcomers to Poland to get the feel of post-communism; how that system wrecked any sense of pride in public service.
Above: looking south from Most Poniatowskiego (most = bridge). Note the ice-free west bank. The water here has not frozen because of water from sewer outfalls and from hot water emerging from the Siekierki power station downstream.
Left: Let's zoom in on the chimneys of Siekierki - the power station is working flat out to provide the fair city light. If you click on the picture to enlarge, you will see little white dots in front of the Most Łazienkowski. These are gulls.
Looking north from the bridge towards the Most Średnicowy (temporarily named the Coca-Cola-Carlsberg bridge in advance of the football championships), the expanse of clear water dominates the width of the Vistula, largely as a result of a sewer outfall. Although at lunchtime today it was -9C, the waste water (treated, it must be said) was steaming into the river and flocks of gulls and ducks were enjoying the warmth.
Above: the National Stadium, resplendent in strong winter sunlight. The Vistula has not frozen over by the east bank either, but the ice is closer to the shore.
Her path is being blocked by a member of the Roma community seeking alms from passers-by. What will Babcia do?
Below: Resolutely Babcia continues her climb. She's seen off Hitler and Stalin and will not allow an able-bodied 30-something obstruct her. Whoomph! In goes the knee, Whack! And the shopping bag.
Below: Down comes the weight of a full bag of shopping once again, full of angular cat-food tins and heavy vinegar bottles, this time onto the back of the obstructive beggar.
"Ow, my back!" Left: Babcia squeezes through to claim a moral victory.
Above: Platform 1, where my afternoon train is waiting to take me back to Warsaw. Platforms 2 and 3 are still a mess. But despite the cold, work is under way. Much of the old Art Nouveau has disappeared from the platforms.
Above: from the website of the meteorological station at the physics faculty, Warsaw University of Technology (click to enlarge). As you can see, the temperature has not risen above -7C all week, and has not risen above -12C since last Wednesday. And bear in mind that this weather station in located in downtown Warsaw, where the urban heat island effect increase the temperatures by a degree or two compared to the surrounding areas. And look at that wind chill (perceivable temperature). Which takes the current perceivable temperature outside my window as I write down to -26C. 
Above: the main entrance to the National Library, separated from Al. Niepodległości by neatly illuminated grounds. Below: looking like a Soviet nuclear physics institute north of the Arctic Circle, the entrance to Iluzjon/Filmoteka Narodowa.
A large lecture room, it reminds me of Warwick University' L3 lecture room, where the university's Film Society projected movies. Currently on - a short triptych of Coen Brothers' films - A Serious Man, The Man Who Wasn't There and Burn After Reading. It's one thing watching a film on DVD, quite another to see it as it should be viewed - on a large silver screen. Prices are cheap (11 złotys weekends, 13 złotys during the week - less than three quid) and a well-selected repertoire of classic films old and new. Highly recommended.
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