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.This snowfall had been forecast accurately a few days ago, and yet it caught out motorists on the hop. Few snowploughs were to be seen in the morning rush hour; by the evening, everything was back to normal, Warsaw was coping. Tonight the temperature will fall again to a double-digits below zero, with more snow falling until the early hours.
This time last year:
God's Dwelling Place - a short story
This time two years ago:
Beat this for a snowy winter!
This time three years ago:
Poland's most popular outergarments
This time four years ago:
The Frost Gods return
It's mid-February, no wonder winter has taken road clearance services aback. And again Poles proved they have to cling to their car(t)s - only extraordinary circumstances prompt them to give up on driving.
ReplyDeleteYesterday I left the car at home and used the public transport - I spared myself petrol-consuming crawling in traffic jams and the whole stress it involves. In the evening I dug the car out of the snowdrift and today in the morning I could swim against the tide again - others who used the car yesterday left it somewhere in town or near home stuck in snow, so traffic was light today...
It's getting dark around 5 p.m., days of winter are numbered :)