A Dream Journey through the Central Europe of my Childhood Imagination

It was a different world, a dream world. As a child I had visited it often; sparked by trips to Poland through West Germany and Czechoslovakia, journeys which had a profound influence on my aesthetic sensibilities as I was growing up. The atmosphere, the klimat, was so unlike the London suburbs in which I was born and where I grew up.

Below: have I been here before? Kind of, sort of think so... But when? Memory can be so fickle.

Below: have you been here, in your dreams of long ago?

Below: I dreamt of trams that delivered coal. All night fleets of tramcars haul trains of coal wagons which drop their load through trap-doors between the tracks, down chutes into coal bunkers located below the cellars of the tenements that line the city streets. Shortly after daybreak, task completed, the trams return to their normal duties – conveying passengers to their places of work.

And I loved the cars. They were so different to our Austins, Hillmans and Jaguars! My grandmother's family lived in a flat overlooking the petrol station, so I'd often see some amazing cars. Here, for example, is a Krenzstaier 2,8 Liter (in Luxus trim), a favourite among local plutocrats and captains of industry.

Let's cross the tracks to another part of town... this is the line that skirts the western side of the city.

And I'd often take the opportunity to check out the Metro system, which back then still used rolling stock that dated back to the early 1920s!

Here's another one, the trains used on Line No. 2... These had an additional headlamp to provide extra lighting in the long tunnel sections in the distant suburbs

Line 3 stations were my favourite ones on the network – note the chandeliers. 

Below: "The streets were deserted/The police were alerted" – looks like one of those black saloon cars favoured by the state security apparatus heading our way. My father prudently hides his camera.

The car passes without incident. Let's continue our stroll. Almost back at my grandmother's...

Below: the bar on the corner of the street where they live. Looking at this image today, I've become quite thirsty, and fetch myself a bottle of Lützaner pils from the cellar.

Your very good health! The Beer Magnate'f  fineft offering. Beer, as I could only imagine. Cheers!

You will have guessed by now that these images are AI generated. I used Google Gemini Advanced 1.5 Pro with Imagen 3. Compared with my early attempts with AI-generated art, it's so much better in responding to my prompts. The pictures really click with my imagined world, dreams triggered by visits to Poland in the 1960s.

AI art is controversial. Is the content, the intellectual property of millions of creators, being scraped, royalty-free for the benefit of the tech giants? Or has a new creative tool been handed to humanity, just waiting for our imagination to be let loose on it? I'd be keen for your feedback.

Each of the above images is unique. I could type in exactly the same prompt a million times, and never get the same image again.

This time last year:
Poland's sleeper trains: 2024 timetable

This time two years ago:
City-centre notes
[One week living in Warsaw's Nowe Miasto]

This time four years ago:
First snow for ages!

This time five years ago:

Politics and personal responsibility

This time six years ago:
Consciousness, memory and spirit of place

This time seven years ago:
Polish Perivale

This time eight years ago:
Power in the vertical

This time 12 years ago:
And still they come [anomalous flashbacks that is]

This time 13 years ago:
Classic glass

This time 14 years ago:
What's the Polish for 'pattern'?

This time 16 years ago:
"Rorate caeli de super nubes pluant justum..."