TriCity miscellany

Little more than a fishing village before it became Poland's access to the Baltic in the inter-war years, Gdynia was filling up with modernist architecture by the time Germany invaded. Below: public-sector building currently hosting the local tourist-information office on the ground floor and social security offices above.

Below: angular modernist apartment building on the corner of ulica Armii Krajowej and plac Grunwaldzki, nearer the beaches.

Below: modernist apartment building, on the corner of ul. 10 lutego and ul. 3 maja.

On from Gdynia to Gdańsk by train. Below: passing through Gdańsk Oliwa station. The original waiting room today serves as a bistro – hot food and drink available on the platform. Opened in 1870 and refurbished in 2014, leaving many original features such as the tiling and the wooden platform roof, the station is served by InterCity trains from Warsaw. As such, it is well located for the beach (just over 2.5km, served by trams to Jelitkowo).

In Gdańsk for the sights. Below: the Baltic Sea Cultural Centre, formerly the old town hall. Designed by Antonis van Obberghen as the Spanish Armada was sailing to England (1588). The Flemish architect was also responsible for Gdański's Old Armoury (now the Fine Arts Academy, as seen in this post), and the extension of Toruń's Gothic town hall.

Below: ulica Piwna (lit. 'Beery Street'), looking north. The holiday season is already in full swing.

Below: the Court of the Millers' Guild. Visible behind it to the left is the Great Mill of Gdańsk, dating back to the 14th century.

Below: a slice of northern Europe. I reiterate the words of Jonathan Meades – Europe's real divide is not east-west; it is north-south. Gdańsk has more in common with Amsterdam, Hamburg and Helsinki than with Varna, Constanta or Split. 

Left: the Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, one of the largest brick-built churches in the world. Interestingly, the church hosted both Lutheran and Catholic services for decades before becoming entirely Lutheran in 1572 – and reverting to Catholicism in 1945.

Below: seen outside a Gdańsk shop a Nefryt TV set, manufactured in the mid-1960s by Warszawskie Zakłady Telewizyjne. Its insides are filled with toys representing children's TV shows of that era. We see, for example, Bolek i Lolek, Koziołek Matołek, Reksio and Tytus.

This time last year:
Footpath between Widok and Chynów station is opened

This time two years ago:
Summertime, and the living is lazy

This time three years ago:
Thoughts occasioned by the picking of fruit

This time five years ago:
First half of 2019 - health in numbers

This time six years ago:
Key Performance Indicators - health - first half 2018

This time seven years ago:
Three and half years of health and fitness data

This time eight years ago:
First half of 2016 health & fitness in numbers

This time nine years ago:
Venus, Jupiter – auspices

This time ten years ago:
Down the line from York

This time 11 years ago:
Cider – at last available in Poland

This time 12 years ago:
Despondency on Puławska

This time 13 years ago:
Stalking the stork

This time 15 years ago:
Late-June lightning

Tadeusz Lesisz – the exhibition

It's quite something to see the name of one's father-in-law in large letters on the front of a national museum! To Gdynia on a family trip for the opening of an exhibition dedicated to the life and times of Tadeusz Lesisz, naval officer and architect. The exhibition will be on for six months, right up to the end of this year, taking in the 15th anniversary of his death. [My obituary of Tadeusz Lesisz is here.]

Left: Aleksander Gosk, deputy director of the Polish Naval Museum in Gdynia, making the opening speech at the event. Mr Gosk made the point that Tadeusz Lesisz was a real-life Private Ryan, in that all three of his brothers were killed during the war. Below: my wife Barbara, Tadeusz's younger daughter, takes guests around the exhibition; to her right are pre-war photographs of Tadeusz's brothers, Edward, Edmund and Feliks. Two were murdered by the Soviets at Katyń, one was murdered by the Nazis. Edmund's Virtuti Militari (Poland's highest military decoration), is on display, which he was posthumously awarded for leading the only Polish attack into the territory of the Third Reich during the September 1939 campaign.
 

Below: Barbara in front of a post-war photo of her father, by then Lieutenant-Commander, and a map with the main campaigns in which he took part, and his medals. He was the artillery officer on board the ORP Dragon during the Normandy campaign, shelling German gun emplacements on the shore, before it was sunk by a German manned torpedo. During the heroic defence of Cowes on the Isle of Wight on 4-5 May 1942, the fierce anti-aircraft fire from the ORP Błyskawica that he directed kept the town and its docks from suffering as badly as might have been feared. He was also artillery officer on the Blyskawica during the Allied landings in North Africa, Operation Torch, where the the ship was hit by a German bomb, resulted in many killed and wounded. 

The exhibition covers the early years of Tadeusz Lesisz (born 10 February 1918), the youngest of 13 (and nine surviving) children of Franciszek and Wiktoria Lesisz. He entered the Polish cadet corp and by the outbreak of WW2 was a cadet officer in the Polish Navy, assigned to the ORP Burza, which along with other Polish naval units was attached to the Royal Navy, alongside which the Polish sailors fought, from the beginning of the war to its end. By 1941, he was the artillery officer on the ORP Błyskawica.

Left: another emotional moment; the ensign from the ORP Błyskawica which draped Tadeusz Lesisz's coffin at his funeral service. His grandson Edmund looks on. He would have been proud of the work his daughter has put into keeping his memory alive – in Poland, as well as on the Isle of Wight, and with the Atlantic and Arctic convoys.

Below: the ORP Błyskawica. The museum laid on a special friends-and-families tour for those who had attended the opening of the exhibition, the highlight of which was visiting the ship's upper superstructure, including the bridge and the gunnery control centre.

Below: the gunnery control centre, with Admiralty Fire Control Clock to the left. It was from here that Tadeusz Lesisz would command the ship's guns.

Below: on the bridge, Moni poses by the ship's wheel.

As we stepped off the Błyskawica, the most intense deluge opened up; it was only 400 metres to our hotel but we got soaked to the skin. Given that I travel light and had no change of clothes, I had to blast myself with the hotel-room hair dryer to be in a state to attend the dinner that took place in the restaurant above the museum.

The exhibition is beautifully and clearly laid out (outstanding design and execution), and though I've dwelt on Tadeusz Lesisz's wartime service, it also shows his post-war work as an architect in England, reproducing some of his designs for schools, hospitals and churches across the North-West. The exhibition also stresses his engagement with the Polish community in the UK, ex-combatants' associations, and his support for the Solidarity movement in Poland, especially after martial law. An exhibition of this kind shows the lives of the people behind institutions such as the Polish navy, and the wealth of materials from his life that have been brought back to Poland, serving to show this heritage, is the credit of his daughter Barbara, who has put in so much time and effort to make this important exhibition a reality.

If, dear reader, you happen to be in Gdynia this summer or autumn, I commend a visit to the Polish Naval Museum and the ORP Błyskawica.

This time five years ago:
Jakubowizna in high summer

This time six years ago:
Warsaw's Raffles Hotel opens

This time nine years ago:
The ballad of Heniek and Ziutek

This time 10 years ago:
Yorkshire's yellow bicycles

This time 15 years ago:
Horse-drawn in the Tatras

This time 16 years ago:
Rain, wind and fire

This time 17 years ago:
The Road beckons

A new path to Krężel

Early this morning I had the following dream: I was walking through a dark forest, between Chynów and Piekut at night. Through the trees I see a bright light near ground level. I approach it. It's clearly not a beam from a focused source, but a glowing orb -– brilliantly white light. It is about a metre and half in diameter and hovering just above the ground, bobbing slightly... I get closer, though I am mindful of the electromagnetic radiation associated with these objects. I'm about 30 metres away when suddenly it just whooshes off vertically upwards through the trees and into the night sky. I'm left there wondering what it could have been, when I hear two men approaching from the right. Soldiers, American soldiers. In uniform. They speak to me in friendly voices, introducing themselves as being from the Cognitive Resources Unit... The dream fades...

It's not yet 5am, but broad daylight outside. I open the roller blinds, make a coffee, catch up with the news on the BBC World Service. A large tuna sandwich and I'm off – at least to see in daylight the very spot I had just dreamt about. I head for Dąbrowa Duża and Gaj Żelechowski, passing between the two villages, aiming for the unasphalted track between Chynów and Piekut. After about an hour of walking, I get to the place in my dream. And right there, I find a new path, one I'd never taken before, indeed, one I hadn't even noticed before. I decide to take it in the hope that it will continue south reaching Krężel, from where I can catch a train home.

Below: sylvian bliss. It's good to be in the forest shade; around 8am and its already uncomfortably hot in the direct sun, even wearing just one layer. Caution: ticks. 

Below: "When you come to a fork in the road – take it!" (Y. Berra). One path will get me to Krężel station in time for the next train. The other one will lead me away from the station and result in a wasted hour waiting for the next train...

Below: a moment of satisfaction – my navigation skills through the forest have not let me down. I will make it in time with about six or seven minutes in hand.

Below: I board the train back to Chynów, my ticket purchased on my Koleje Mazowiekie app for 2.73zl (54p). Having started at Warka, three stops back down the line, the train's still empty. It will be chock-full of commuters by the time it gets to Jeziorki.

I alight from the train one stop along in Chynów, where a fair crowd of commuters is waiting. Twelve minutes later I'm home, in good time for the working day, having racked up 13,000 paces in under two hours. At home, I take off my trousers and check my legs for ticks, as I do after forest walks. And indeed, there's one, marching up my left thigh; caught it before it could drill into my skin and inject bacteria-laden saliva into my bloodstream.

This time last year:
Mutineers march on Moscow

This time five years ago:
Lifelong brand ambassador
[as if to prove the point, I wore these boots on my walk today.]

This time seven years ago:
How much for locally grown strawberries?

This time eight years ago:
Zamość - the beautiful, must-visit town of Poland's east

This time nine years ago:
Voting closes in citizens' participatory budget 

This time ten years ago:
Beginning of the end of PO [Civic Platform]

This time 11 years ago:
Where's the beef? Fillet steak in Warsaw

This time 12 years ago:
W-wa Zachodnia spruced up for the football, W-wa Stadion reopened

This time 14 years ago:
Literature and biology

This time 16 years ago:
Old Nysa van spotted in Grabów

This time 17 years ago:
The oats in the neighbouring field rise high

Mindfulness, exercise, diet and health

A few weeks ago, my brother sent me a link to a book by Ellen Langer, Mindful Body. I hadn't heard of Prof Langer, but I was familiar with some of her research, in particular the Philadelphia chambermaids experiment. In this, 84 hotel employees were divided into two groups; one was told that a day's work – cleaning 16 rooms, making 16 beds, lifting, pushing, carrying – was the equivalent of an intense daily workout in a gym. The other group, the control, carried on normally without this information. The researchers measured the maids' body fat, waist-to-hip ratio, blood pressure, weight and body mass index. "All of these indicators matched the maids' perceived amount of exercise, rather than their actual amount of exercise." Once the women mindset had accepted that they were actually exercising intensely, "there was a decrease in their weight, waist-to-hip ratio, and a 10% drop in blood pressure."

I've now watched several interviews and podcasts with Prof Langer from over the years, and it confirms what I've long believed; that mind and body are one, and the mind has the power to heal or accelerate healing. As I've written here before, if you believe in the power of belief, you can heal yourself to a far greater degree than modern medical science would give credit for. Healthcare professionals and the pharmaceutical industry would have you believe in them more than any flaky woo-woo pre-scientific witchdoctorism.

Earlier this month, the UK lost a great broadcaster, Dr Michael Mosley, presenter of Just One Thing. He died, apparently of heat-stroke, while out walking on a Greek island. His BBC Radio 4 programmes focused on one thing that can improve your health outcome if introduced into your daily habits – be it glugging olive oil, reading a poem aloud, Nordic walking, holding the plank, or high-intensity interval training, to name but a few. 

The plank episode gave me cause for reflection. If holding the plank for two minutes a day reduces your blood pressure, then holding it for six and half minutes a day should be even better, right? Or is it just the belief that holding the plank reduces blood pressure reduce blood pressure – or are both factors at play here?

Tracking exercises (something I've been doing daily since 1 January 2014) also works. I am motivated to 'beat last year' – the only person I'm competing against is the younger (65-year-old) version of me. Looking across the seven sets of exercises, the walking –  and indeed the fruit-&-veg and alcohol consumption, I've improved in every metric compared to the first half of 2023.

An old family joke was my mother's book Think Yourself Slimmer – which she interpreted as an alternative to cutting out cakes and biscuits from her diet. Yet there might have been something there; her belief in the power of the mind over body might have contributed to her reaching the age of 88, despite a total lack of exercise or inability to resist sweet and starchy foodstuffs.

Meanwhile, my father exhibited the two key features of mindfulness throughout his life – instinctively. Number one – he observed. He was, to use Prof Langer's term, noticing. He would notice things around him, all the time. Number two – he was curious, he was ever keen to learn (one of the last words he ever wrote, found on a Post-It note by his bed, was 'quantum supremacy'.) 

Back to Prof Langer. Listening to her is like having my personal theories, built up over decades, confirmed by high authority. "YES!" I feel like shouting out. "YOU ARE SO RIGHT!" She defines 'mindfulness' not as meditation, but as being aware of being aware. Mindfulness is not about detaching yourself from reality, but about being in the moment, observant, perceptive, attentive. 

As I said, I've watched several interviews with Prof Langer. She's a well-practiced public speaker, and gets her points across in a way that are easy to absorb. Of all of these, I'd say this is the best; here she is being interviewed by Steve 'Freakonomics' Levitt. Highly recommended!

And yet I intuit that there's even more than Prof Langer says. Being consciously grateful for your good health is part of the cycle. And this leads to the spiritual dimension. Because if you are grateful, you must be expressing gratitude towards someone or something. Mindfulness includes never taking your blessings for granted, never allowing yourself to become complacend. And quantum luck? The idea that you can will an outcome by collapsing some wave function or other? That you can avoid misfortune by precluding the possibility? It's not just about expecting the unexpected, but precluding the unconsidered mishap by considering it. A timeline collapses. The very verge of magical thinking – physical effect without physical cause. Not something mainstream medical science is keen on.

This time last year:
Blasted!

This time six years ago:
My new used laptop
[Six years on, it's still fine albeit without a battery; I can no longer source a new one. But it works fine when connected to the mains.]

This time nine years ago:
Face to face with Mr Hare

This time 11 years ago:
Central Warsaw vistas

This time 12 years ago:
Future of urban motoring?
[Sadly not. It proved to be V8-powered two-tonne SUVs for dragging lazy lard-arses into town]

This time 14 years ago:
On foot to Limanowa

This time 16 years ago:
Crumbling neo-classicism in Grabów

This time 17 years ago:
Bike ride into deepest Mazovia

Big Walk to Zalesie Górne

It's been a busy week at work, and a week devoid of inspiration. No great dreams, no ideas triggering new avenues of thought. Never mind; such is life.

Today I set off on a 12-mile (20km) walk with one aim – to buy some beer. Non-alcoholic beer that is; Perła 0,0%, which I came across in the Żabka convenience store in Zalesie Górne last week. Excellent stuff – hoppily bitter. Just the thing to extinguish thirst on a hot day. Having liked the taste of it, I looked it up online; the 33cl aluminium cans are only available in Żabka and in an online supermarket  called Delio (of which I've never heard). So my mission to Zalesie Górne was all about buying every last can of the stuff on the shelves. Which I did – all three of them.

My route – Jakubowizna-Chynów-Nowe Grobice-Sułkowice-Kiełbaska-Julianów-Krępa-Nowinki-Zalesie Górne. And back by train. Time taken: Three hours and 15 minutes to the shop, then back to Zalesie Górne station and a short walk home from Chynów station.

Below: the tiny settlement of Kiełbaska (administratively, a part of Julianów). Note to non-Polish readers; kiełbasa = sausage; kiełbaska = little sausage. Out of curiosity, I looked up the origin of the name – the word kiełbaska was also an archaic slang term for 'four morgas', a morga being a unit of area, a little over half a hectare.

Below: barracks? Battery chicken sheds? No, these are homes – the Chojnów Park development in Krępa. As I pass, I am minded of Malvina Reynolds' 1961 song, Little Boxes. By another one of those synchronicities that so often pop up in my 'This time x years ago', I see I had exactly that same thought on this day 17 years ago – back then, exurban sprawl had just started to spill over Warsaw's southern border into the fields around Zgorzała. This, dear reader, is a further 20km south (or 13km in a straight line) from Zgorzała, and represents the furthest-flung outpost of large-scale housing development. From here it's 40km by car from central Warsaw (alternatively a 12-minute walk to Ustanówek station and a half-hour train ride to town). Indeed, from the office district of Warszawa Służewiec, it's a mere 21 minutes by train from Ustanówek.

Approaching Zalesie Górne from the south, following the footpath alongside the railway line. I am overtaken by some form of mobility scooter.

Below: entering Zalesie Górne, I come across another one of those full-on Polnische Romantizmus street names – here we have 'Street of the Enchanted Rose'.

With the solstice passed, it's now astronomical summer – the hottest months of the year. The third quarter will soon begin. A total of 24,725 paces walked today, a ver, very good rezultat. One tin of beer supped back.

This time four years ago:
My return to central Warsaw after lockdown

This time five years ago:

From Peace of Mind to State of Elation

This time six years ago
Last summer before S7 works begin

This time seven years ago
Nostalgia, ideology, aesthetics, emotions

This time eight years ago:
Civilisation and barbarism – how the former deals with the latter

This time ten years ago:
Ahead of the opening of Jeziorki's Biedronka

This time 11 years ago:
New views of Jeziorki

This time 12 years ago:
Motorway finally links (the outskirts of) Łódź and (the outskirts of) Warsaw

This time 15 years ago:
Kraków Air Museum

This time 16 years ago:
Quintessential Jeziorki

This time 17 years ago: 
Little boxes, Mysiadło 

It's my money – and I'm not intending to spend it

The Economist published an excellent article headlined 'Baby boomers are loaded. Why are they so stingy?' [paywall] This excellent analysis was preceded by a leader entitled 'What penny-pinching baby-boomers mean for the world economy'. I now realise that my behaviour vis-a-vis money is nothing abnormal – it maybe a bit extreme, but it certainly follows a trend. 

The Economist writes in the leader of its 1 June issue: "The West's baby-boomers are the richest generation ever to have lived – but they do not spend like it. Instead, the elderly are squirrelling away money, motivated by ever-longer retirements, the risk that they will need to pay for old-age care, the inevitable uncertainty about how long they will survive and the desire to pass on assets to their children." The article continues: "Born between 1946 and 1964, baby-boomers are the luckiest generation in history. Most of the cohort, which numbers 270m across the rich world, have not fought wars. They grew up with strong economic growth. In aggregate they have amassed great wealth, owing to a combination of falling interest rates, declining housebuilding and strong earnings." 

Strolling around Poland's shopping malls, or watching the cinema ads (I have no TV), I can honestly say that I am not remotely tempted to spend money by what's on offer. Owning everything I need (and lots more stuff I no longer need – see this excellent blogpost about decluttering), I shrug my shoulders at the blandishments of businesses as they attempt to sell me things. On the other hand, I'm still working and earning. My outgoings are minimal (food, transport, entertainment) and with my UK state pension rolling in, my net worth increases every month.

On a call with my colleagues last week, I noted how much more expensive it is to be a woman than a man. The last time I went to a hairdresser was in 1995; soap, shampoo and toothpaste are the only body-care products I buy, and my clothes will last me a lifetime. My colleagues chided me for not injecting enough money into the economy! How right they are.

I have no need to show off. I don't own a car and ride my motorcycles sparingly (hot sunny days only). Senior discounts mean rail travel is 30% cheaper than it used to be. Food – I avoid the processed stuff, cook meals from scratch, and shop carefully to cut food-waste to zero. I am also not jetting around and will not be using up accumulated wealth to waste time or money seeing foreign countries that fail to resonate with my spirit. A long local stroll, such as the one I had this morning, is comparable in net joy to any similar walk I could have taken anywhere else on earth. All this is in keeping with my personal de-growth manifesto. 

Doing my bit not to screw up the planet any further by buying unnecessary baubles, my tightfistedness in face of the retail sector is also due to concerns about climate change.

However, as The Economist points out, if 270m rich old people reduce their spending to no more than what they need (having learned to curb their wants and resist advertisers' persuasive pitches), the global economy will splutter to a halt. 

What could I spend my money on? Well, I have a building project or two that I'd love to carry out, but that means finding a solid, local, builder with whom I could get on well with and who wouldn't walk away with the job 98.5% completed. 

And finally – what's left? A solid cash reserve for advanced old age (which will not be cheap, given how many seriously old people will be dependant on so few people of working age). Looking at the Polish statistical office's demographic projections, should I get to 100, I'd be one of 17,000 Poles of that age or more in Poland in 2057. The number of centenarians in Poland today? A mere 1,200. Meanwhile the number of young Poles currently entering Poland's labour market is around half of what it was 20 years ago, and it's only going to get worse. 

One worry I have is that wealth disparities will increase dramatically as an avalanche of bequests passes down from my generation to an ever-decreasing number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, born into wealth and entitlement. Freedom from discomfort, hunger, homelessness and disease is a noble aim, but luxury is bad for the soul and bad for our planet. Leaving an educational endowment makes great sense too, at life's end.

This time two years ago:
As I walked out one midsummer's morning

This time nine years ago:
Central Warsaw rail update

This time 12 years ago:

Poland's night train network

This time 13 years ago:
On a musical note

This time 14 years ago:
Standing stones

This time 17 years ago:
The year nears its zenith

Qualia compilation 9: Summer, mid-1960s Isle of Wight

Here's another family-holiday qualia flashback that resurfaces frequently into my stream of consciousness; two summer holidays (1963 and 1964) on the Isle of Wight. One such moment occurred this morning. I was lying awake in bed – then suddenly, entirely unbidden, but maybe triggered by a congruent play of light on the retina and air temperature, I am back in the Victorian house that my parents and their friends had rented for two weeks over those two summers.

I have had this memory often enough in the recent past to check it out online. I remembered 'Bembridge, Isle of Wight', but in fact it was St Helens, a village just to the north of Bembridge. (Google Maps shows the house as being on Mill Road, close to the junction with Lower Green Road. Across the beautiful green, as classic a village green as one can get in the British Isles, was Upper Green Road, and on it the shops.

Here, I would badger my mother into buying me toys; and it was this memory which struck me this morning. There was a set of toy soldiers marked 'EMPIRE MADE' that she wouldn't buy me, because of the red paint of their tunics contained lead, and my baby brother might put them into his mouth. I came to see that embossed lettering, 'EMPIRE MADE' as a warning sign for children, a byword for dangerous and shoddy goods. 

Below: Isle of Wight, summer of 1964; my brother is one and half years old, with my father. Photographer unknown.

Another memory rolled in; a bright sunny morning when I woke early and my father spontaneously decided than he and I should go for a stroll down to the sea in Bembridge. We walked down Mill Road until we reached the marina; I recall the clanking of cables and ropes on the masts of the yachts moored there and the cries of seagulls. I was disappointed by the lack of a beach, However, this was more than made up for by the treat that followed; an open-topped double-decker bus came round the corner, my father hailed it at a request stop that was conveniently situated near us, and we boarded, going upstairs. As it was early, the bus was nearly empty, so we took seats right at the front, by the glass windscreen. The conductor came up to sell us our tickets, but the journey was very short; it was only two stops before we had to get off at the green in St Helens. Below: a bus just like this one! [Photo courtesy of Southern Vectis]

This is all totally credible. Memories are like that. But here's another flashback. It's Thursday evening on the działka, nice and warm. 

I step out of the shower. My right foot lands on the bathmat, my left heel lands on the cold stone floor. I'm glancing over at the towel rack. At that moment – PAFF! I'm in a hotel in Kansas City or Oklahoma City, mid 1950s; I'm a man in his thirties, the hotel is large and brick-built, from the end of the 19th century or early 20th century. The combination of haptic input (cold on the heel, warm air) and and sight (chromed towel rack on a tiled bathroom wall) brought a sensory congruence that I immediately recognised. For a fraction of a second I was there. It felt just as real as my memory of the Isle of Wight from 60 years ago.

[UPDATE morning 10 August 2024: In a hypnagogic state while waking, I suddenly become aware of an odour that I immediately associate with the house in St Helens on the Isle of Wight. There was an airing cupboard on the landing on the first floor in which my mother would place our beachwear and towels to dry overnight. A mixture of sea-salt, washing powder and human body. For a second, I was fully conscious of that smell and its precise location in space and time. Unmistakable. Many's the seaside holidays, but it was that specific one. I wake fully, and attempt to find that smell. Is it the skin on my upper arms or fingers? No. On the bedding? No. I cannot recover that precise sensation. Like a melted snowflake, it has evaporated.]

This time five years ago:
Quantum jumps, quantum luck and the atomic will

This time six years ago:
Under the sodium

This time seven years ago:
"Further progress? Hell yes!"

This time 16 years ago:
The 1970s and the 2000s

Summer sleepers – night-train timetable update

The railway timetable changed yesterday, and with it came changes to Poland's night-train network. Trains with sleeper carriages are, in my opinion, an excellent way of getting to distant destinations; your ticket is both a means of travel and a bed for the night.

IC 18170 Uznam Warszawa Wschodnia - Świnoujście (dep. 21:53 arr. 07:17). A later start from Warsaw; it means arriving in Szczecin Główny at a reasonable 05:28, about half an hour before opening time at the station's KFC). Arriving at Świnoujście at a humane 07:17, you can get across the Świna on a Bielik ferry, from the other side of the river, it's a 20 minute walk to the beaches. It also calls at Międzyzdroje at 07:07, another resort popular with Germans as well as Poles.

IC 81170 Uznam Świnoujście - Warszawa Wschodnia (dep. 21:07 arr. 06:31) is the return service, taking slightly longer to return to the capital. Taking the Uznam there and back gives you the best part of 12 hours on the beach. With a hotel or apartment from Saturday to Sunday, you can get a full weekend of Baltic sun-and-sea having worked Friday and be back in your Warsaw office first thing Monday morning

TLK 16170 Karkonosze Warszawa Wschodnia - Jelenia Góra (dep. 22:02 arr. 07:12). The biggest single change to the summer sleeper-train schedule is that this train now only goes as far as Jelenia Góra, so you cannot travel on to Szklarska Poręba as you can in winter. A popular skiing destination, it seems that in the summer months it's no longer worth PKP's while to take the train beyond Jelenia Góra, which is sad. The train goes through Wrocław (at very early 04:47) and Wałbrzych Miasto (at 06:06) – and is a great way of getting to the fabulous Książ castle before the crowds turn up.

TLK 61170 Karkonosze Jelenia Góra - Warszawa Wschodnia - (dep. 21:02 arr. 06:06) is the train back; again, you can be at your desk in Warsaw first thing Monday morning. 

TLK 38171 Ustronie Kraków Główny - Kołobrzeg (dep. 21:00 arr. 10:44). Seaside-special for folks from Poland's south, which calls Kielce, Radom, Warsaw and the Tri-City and on to the resorts of Ustronie Morskie and Kołobrzeg. The train takes a full hour-and-half longer to do the journey than it did in winter. You can use this train as a nocturnal connection between Warsaw East (01:29) and Gdańsk Główny (05:38), though with four hours between the two cities, you'll not get much quality sleep time.

TLK 83171 Ustronie Kołobrzeg - Kraków Główny (dep. 19:45 arr. 09:12). Passing through Warsaw at 04:11. Again, taking over an hour longer than in the winter timetable.

TLK 35171 Karpaty Zakopane - Gdynia Główna (dep. 20:06 arr. 08:29). Finally, the train runs all the way, without the need for a replacement bus service for the Zakopane to Kraków leg. The Karpaty also serves as another nocturnal connection between Kraków, Warsaw and the Tri-City (dep: Kraków Główny 23:34, calling at Warsaw Central at 04:28).

TLK 53170 Karpaty Gdynia Główna - Zakopane (dep: 19:18 arr 07:42) An unfeasibly early hour for a sleeper to depart, but this makes for a convenient night service for Varsovians heading for the Tatras; it passes through Warszawa Gdańska at 23:03 and Kraków at 04:48. At last the Polish mountains are connected to the Polish sea by night train again.

And now the two sleeper train services that miss Warsaw altogether...

IC 83172 Przemyślanin Świnoujście - Przemyśl Główny (dep. 17:55, arr. 09:08). Fifteen hours and 13 minutes (half an hour quicker than in the winter timetable). The bad-boy of all Polish train journeys, more than 986 kilometres (612 miles) all the way, connecting the south-east and north-west extremes of the country. An early-evening start from Świnoujście, but there's a dining car attached – the Przemyślanin is the only sleeper train with a gastronomic wagon. Given the nature of night trains, moving from your compartment to the restaurant means having to arrange this with the sleeping-car attendant. The carriages are delivered to Świnoujście station an hour or more before departure time, so you can leave your stuff in the sleeping car (it's safe), and dine en route to Szczecin (18:52) or even as far as Poznań (22:14) before returning to your bunk(s). The train also calls at Wrocław, Katowice, Kraków and Rzeszów on the way, thus serving six of Poland's 16 provincial capitals. An InterCity train with modern sleeper carriages, superior in comfort to the stock used on TLK night connections.

IC 38172 Przemyślanin Przemyśl Główny-Świnoujście (dep. 18:15, arr. 10:07). The same route, backwards, and a useful connection (as I once found out) to travel between Kraków to Poznań (dep. 22:14, arr. 04:50), though of course pre-booking is necessary.

Finally, a third service connecting the Kraków with the Tri-City by night, this one skipping Warsaw.

TLK 53172 Rozewie Gdynia Główna - Kraków Główny (dep. 22:36, arr. 08:29) drops down from the coast through Gdańsk, Bydgoszcz, Poznań (02:45) headed to Wrocław (04:58), Opole and Katowice.

TLK 35172 Rozewie Kraków Główny - Gdynia Główna (dep. 19:59, arr . 05:58).  It zig-zags its way back north, again connecting the cities of Katowice, Opole, Wrocław, Poznań, Bydgoszcz and Gdańsk. 

Prices? Essentially, take the price of the normal second-class seat from A to B, multiply by two and half, and add that sum to the price of the seat. So around 300-350 zł tops, minus discounts for age etc. Last month, I payed 220.60 zł for Świnoujście to Warszawa Zachodnia for a two-berth sypialny, for example, with my 30% senior's discount. On the way out, I was fortunate to have the compartment to myself; on the way back another passenger boarded at Szczecin. Three-berth is cheaper; a compartment for oneself is also available, but requires the purchase of a first-class ticket so it works out about twice the price of a two-berth compartment. Couchette accommodation (no bedding, six bunks to the compartment) is the cheapest way. Seat-only night travel by train is excruciatingly awful; avoid it unless you are desperate.

Resources: Here's PKP's online timetable checker. For the phone, I recommend the Koleo app, as well as the clunkier Portal Pasażera app, which has the bonus of showing you in more-or-less real time where your awaited train actually is. Both available on Google Play and no doubt on whatever it is that Apple has. In Polish only, a somewhat dated page from the InterCity.pl website about sleeper and couchette services. This mentions deluxe compartments (single and double) that have an en-suite toilet and shower. Wow, but I've never seen such a thing on domestic services (unless the Przemyślanin has one). 

There's also the international night train. This is the 19:34 departure from Warszawa Wschodnia, the Chopin (Warsaw-Vienna-Munich); attached to it are carriages for three other European capitals – Prague, Bratislava and Budapest. This very long train travels down to Kraków and over the border to Bohumin in Czechia, where the carriages for Prague are detached. The rest of the train continues to Ostrava, where the train is split up further; carriages of the Chopin service continue on their way to Vienna and Munich, whilst the EN407 goes to Budapest via Bratislava. However, it's still impossible to buy tickets for these services via the PKP app. 

This time last year:
Conscience, consciousness and sensitivity

This time two years ago:
Little annoyances and optimising one's life

This time three years ago:
The 13th thirteenth

This time four years ago:

Ghastly June day in London

This time five years ago:
Perfect weather week in Warsaw

This time six years ago:
Further progress is unimaginable

This time seven years ago:
Baletowa reopens as rail works move on

This time eight years ago:
Polish doctors in UK offer new healthcare model

This time 13 years ago:
The closure of the Góra Kalwaria - Pilawa railway link

This time 15 years ago:
My blazing bus pic gets on front page of Gazeta Stołeczna

This time 16 years ago:
Storm clouds rising

Ławki and Hill 126

Further explorations on foot from Jakubowizna, uncovering territories new. Across the DK50 northward I go, through Sułkowice, across the Czarna river and the railway line towards Budy Sułkowskie and then into the forest. I've not been here before. Soon after leaving the road, the trails become unclear, overgrown; in one place a bee-keeper has installed an apiary right across a forest track, fencing it off and watching over it  with CCTV cameras. I detour around the humming beehives, through the undergrowth, picking up the track on the other side. It runs through low-lying land and, filled with water, resembling more and more a stagnant river as I navigate its fringes. After a while, I make it onto drier land. 

Below: boggy ground – it looks solid enough, but the ground is sodden.

Below: The terrain starts to rise. The forest takes on a different character, there are more pines, the soil sandier. Strong sunlight streaming through the trees sets off that wonderful smell of coniferous resin, reminding me of summer holidays in Stella-Plage. 

A footpath takes me further up the hill, until I reach the summit, at a height of 126m above sea level (and about 14m higher than the boggy ground I'd just traversed). Below: view from the top of Hill 126, the highest point in the forest. Here, it becomes my sad duty to have to pick up and stow in my rucksack scattered litter including plastic water-bottles, a beer can, empty vape liquid containers and bits of broken bicycle light. I later dispose of these responsibly in a waste bin. How can anyone leave their shit up here is beyond me.

Below: the OpenStreetMap view of the forest (click to enlarge, open image in new tab and see at full scale). I walked through the entire forest from south-east to north-west without encountering a soul.

Below: ulica Główna (Main Street) in Ławki (as I've point out before, Ławki literally means 'little benches'). Note the amenities: a bus stop integrated into the Warsaw WTP agglomeration public transport network; a pedestrian-friendly speed limit; five-a-side football pitch, play park and outdoor fitness apparatus. Plenty of new houses; new asphalt links either end of this stretch of village road with Gabryelin and Biały Ług. The bus serving Ławki, by the way, is the L19, one of the L-for-Local routes that provide services across the nine poviats (districts) bordering Warsaw. As Ławki lies in the southernmost part of the Piaseczyński poviat, the L19 (which starts its journey from Pieczyska) goes further south than any other bus route in the WTP system. But Chynów is in Grójecki poviat; being the next poviat out beyond Piaseczyński and not bordering Warsaw directly, we don't get any WTP L- routes out our way.

Below: Ławki – where the streets have twee names. I've mentioned this phenomenon before in a blogpost about Polish street names – full-on Polnische Romantizmus. I can imagine a meeting of ladies in floral dresses at the local town hall coming up with these: from the top – Wild Corner Street, Spellbinding (or Bewitching) Street, and Morning Dew Street. These new street names are in keeping with the spirit of our age. Streets named after famous people or historical dates are so passé.

Having missed a southbound train by a few minutes at Czachówek Południowy, I continue northward to the next station, Czachówek Górny, at the centre of the Czachówek diamond, where the Warsaw-Radom line crosses the Skierniewice-Łuków line. While waiting for the Koleje Mazowieckie train to take me the three stations back to Chynów, I snap this empty coal train heading east (below), hauled by ET22-669. This freight-only line is busy; a few minutes later, an aggregates train heads west towards Skierniewice.

This really is a most beautiful time of year; my favourite quarter – from the vernal equinox to summer solstice. It's worth making the most of days like these. Total of over 19,000 paces walked today.

This time six years ago:
Warsaw-Radom

This time nine years ago:
Civilising Warsaw at the local level

This time ten years ago:
Rustic retreat rained off

This time 12 years ago:
Thunderstorm over Jeziorki

This time 13 years ago:
Getting lost on top of Łopień

This five 15 years ago:
Regulatory absurdities in Poland

This time t6 years ago:
Czachówek and Alignment

This time 17 years ago:
Joy, pain, sunshine, rain

Vote for Europe

Poland votes tomorrow in the European parliamentary elections. It's been 20 years since Poland joined the EU, a period of remarkable social and economic progress in Poland. And Poland's governance has improved greatly, at local as well as at national levels, with much best-practice absorbed from other EU states. Tragically, the UK has cut itself off from the EU, to the detriment of its own economy, and for Poland, Brexit has led to the loss of a mentor and a natural ally in Brussels as a counterweight to the Paris-Berlin axis.

We vote tomorrow – but what's at stake? 

One major problem that the EU has when selling itself to the public is its complexity. Complexity is both a feature and a bug. On the one hand, the EU is not a hierarchy led by a single strongman. Billionaires know whom to phone in London or Washington to get things their way. But having distributed centres of power (the Council of the European Union, the European Commission and the European Parliament) makes it harder for corrupt actors to bend the system their way. And harder for the average voter to understand.

This very complexity doesn't sit easily with the uncurious. Simplicity and strongmen is what many crave. Simple answers to intractable problems, simple answers that they can understand; all too often simple answers that are wrong.

Even I, who have travelled to Brussels four times to meet with MEPs and lobbyists to get a better understanding of how the EU functions, even I who follow the Politico EU newsletter daily, even I have only the sketchiest understanding of the complex machinery at the heart of the European Union and how it really works. So – question to my Polish readers: do you know (without looking up) your Euro-parliamentary constituency and its boundaries? How many MEPs represent your constituency? Which party are they from? I certainly didn't know, despite having voted in every one of Poland's post-2004 European elections. 

But does it even matter?

Right now, there are three major issues facing Europe; Russian aggression, climate change and the Green Deal, and migration. A further issue is Europe's flagging competitiveness in the global economy.

Russia's military doctrine of using information warfare against the West means that discontent is being weaponised, and social media is proving an ideal conduit. Social media has removed the filter from social discourse. Bad actors can speak directly to the discombobulated, at scale. The result, in terms of democracy, has been that lies can spread through society with devastating effect (see Brexit). 

Checks and balances, devolved power, consensus and compromise, may not be sexy, but at the end of the day this form of governance works better than the strongman governance model. By any metric, former USSR republics now in EU membership are wealthier, healthier and happier than those currently under an authoritarian or totalitarian leader. 

We need to learn to look at the big picture, and not focus on the grit in our shoe. Human progress from barbarism and might-is-right towards Western democracy has not been easy or painless. Western democracy could do better. It will evolve, and it will ultimately prove itself superior to totalitarianism.

Below: Warsaw, 4 June 2024, on the 35th anniversary of the elections that brought communism to an end in Poland, a rally called by prime minister Donald Tusk. He reminded us that democracy is not a one-way process and can be turned back. Note the singular absence of young people. With no memories of the bad old days of communist dictatorship, they have become complacent. I hope tomorrow's turnout will be higher than the 45.7% in the 2019 European election...

Europe could be governed better. But historically, and looking at its neighbours – and looking at its history – it could also be a whole lot worse. Let's be thankful for what we've got, and vote tomorrow to make sure it gets no worse, by preventing populist wreckers from getting into the European parliament.

This time two years ago:
Savants, UFOs and psychic abilities

This time three years ago:
A proud moment

This time four years ago
Rail progress - Krężel to Chynów

This time nine years ago:

Aberdeen, dour city

This time 11 years ago:
Fans fly in for the football

This time 13 years ago:
Cara al Sol - part II

This time 14 years ago:
Still struggling with the floodwaters

This time 15 years ago:
European elections - and I buy used D40

The time 16 years ago:
To the Vistula, by bike

This time 17 years ago:
Poppy profusion