On my walk yesterday, I looked towards the city centre from Dawidy and was stunned to see a blazing tower on the horizon. So I scrambled up onto the railway embankment to get a better look - my God! My first reaction was that this is something akin to the Grenfell Towers tragedy in London in June 2017, when 72 people died. I whipped out my 70-300mm lens and zoomed in - no smoke above it, no smoke - no fire. So what was it?
A live railway line is not the place for pondering such questions. I did so at home, posting the photo on Skyscraper City, the very best resource for anything to do with Poland's built environment.
[It's a global site, but Poland has one of the most active Skyscraper City communities in the world, with more posts and page views than Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Norway, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK all put together!]
Within minutes, I had my answer - that 'flaming tower' is the Warsaw Spire. Yes indeed. Such was the angle of the sun that the south-west facing glass reflected it so awesomely. It was quite a sunset, too... (turn through 180 degrees...) On the horizon, the Raszyn radio mast (a misnomer, as it's in Łazy, 9km from Raszyn. When completed in 1962, it was the second-tallest structure in the world and the tallest in Europe. And 93m miles beyond, the sun. Shining onto Warsaw's Spire.
Left: my father and my son in front of the Spire, 31 July 2019. The Spire has two curved glass 'walls', and between them a vertical row of windows - and it was these that reflected that sunset yesterday.
Crumbling King Coal, Katowice
This time eight years ago:
Street cries of Old Poland
This time nine years ago:
The gorgeousness of Warsaw at dusk
This time ten years ago:
I'm so glad I'm living in Warsaw
This time 11 years ago:
Candid photography
This time 12 years ago:
Archival photos of Jeziorki's Rampa in action
This time 13 years ago:
Red sky in the morning...
3 comments:
It's not asphalt being extended on Gogolińska street, it's just some work being done to make it more flat - nothing else will change at this moment unfortunately.
That is sad. Slippery, pot-holed, neither fit for car nor for foot. Time to lobby a bit harder!
On one hand a shame, as it would be nice not to have to drive all the way around Zgorzala to get to Sarabandy and not get soaked and muddy cycling along Gogolinska. On the other hand it avoids the rat run it would inevitably become.
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