Warsaw city centre, dusk to darkness

To town for the leaving-do of a colleague (always a sad occasion when a excellent, competent and all-round nice person moves on) a beautiful cloudless sky brings on that 'crushed-velvet dusk in the city of my dreams' vibe again. Warsaw's city centre has developed fantastically over the past three decades, its skyline once dominated by Stalin's Palace of Culture slowly becoming crowded out by new skyscrapers. Little by little, Warsaw's central business district is shifting westward, its epicentre no longer focused around the axis of ulica Marszałkowska. Rondo ONZ ('United Nations Roundabout') and aleja Jana Pawła II now constitute the eastern edge of the CBD, and it's around here that I strolled yesterday evening.

Below: Rondo ONZ, an entrance to the Line 2 Metro station in the foreground. Note cycle path snaking round it. Two pizza delivery guys are setting off with their orders. To the left, the Ilmet building, completed in 1997, destined to be pulled down and replaced by a taller building in 2011, and still standing. The giant rotating Mercedes-Benz logo on the roof was taken down in 2021 (a shame!); demolition was postponed because of one thing after another, but as you can see, there are no longer any tenants in the building (no lights on) and new plans to dismantle it and build something new in its place were announced in 2023. Plans for building a 188m-tall skyscraper, Warsaw One, have been announced by developer Skanska, with construction due to start in 2026, which suggests that the Ilmet building will finally be torn down sometime this year.

Left: Rondo ONZ One stands on the south-east corner of the roundabout. It is 159m high (plus mast), so when built, Warsaw One across the road on the south-western corner will look down upon it. My favourite Warsaw skyscraper, its appearance in 2006 contributed hugely to cementing Warsaw's image as a modern city of business. As well as the metro station, Rondo ONZ is also well served by trams running up and down al. Jana Pawła II and (after modernisation) west along ul. Prosta. And Warsaw Central railway station is a mere seven-minute walk away.

Below: looking west along ul. Twarda ('Hard Street'); in the foreground, the Cosmopolitan tower, behind it, Spektrum tower. At the base of the former, a fine cafe called SAM where we had the leaving do. Spektrum tower boasts that it has "the highest-situated concert hall in the world" on its 28th floor, though this is contentious.

Below: Plac Grzybowski, looking west. Cosmopolitan tower in the centre, to the right, the Q22 tower, to the left Rondo ONZ One, and to its left, Warsaw Financial Center. 

Below: pl. Grzybowski looking southwest. In the foreground, the Church of All Saints (where, in 1923, my father was baptised); behind it from the left – the Intercontinental Hotel, the antenna topping Varso tower, Warsaw Financial Center and Rondo ONZ One. And shining brightly in the sky, Venus, the evening star (after whom my kitten is named).

After some decent food (and three glasses of surprisingly excellent Pinot Noir!), it's time to say farewell and set off to Młynów and thence to Chynów, accompanied by the strains of Yours Sinsoully in West Wilts Radio (for my weekly dose of finest soul and R&B). And there's a hungry kitten to feed!

Night falls. Below: a view of Warsaw largely unchanged since the 1970s, though with more (and bigger) cars. A reminder of the time when the Palace of Culture, seen here flanked by postwar apartment blocks, was the only tall building in Warsaw.

Below: and back to where I started – Rondo ONZ for the metro back to Młynów. Looking west towards the Warsaw's newest skyscrapers that stand around Rondo Daszyńskiego. The skyline will be filled out by the five towers currently under construction for the Towarowa 22 complex.

Warsaw is developing beautifully; a dynamic business hub, integrated into the European and global economies, with an excellent culinary and cultural infrastructure. May its growth be sustainable.

This time four years ago:
We live, we dream – what's all that about?

This time nine years ago:
Searching for growth

This time 12 years ago:
The more it snows - a decent snowfall in Warsaw

This time 13 years ago:
A Dream Too Far - short story

This time 14 years ago:
Compositions in white, blue and gold

This time 15 years ago:
Dobra and the road

This time 16 years ago:
Polish air force plane full of VIPs crashes on landing in bad weather

Easter and photo catch-up time - Pt 1: Urban

Normal blogging resumes from today; there will be more localist photography and fewer spiritual and philosophical musings. For the time being anyway...

On 21 March, I had the chance to visit the Varso tower for the first time - the EU's tallest building, opened late last year. Below: Warsaw skyline looking west from Warszawa Śródmieście. Skyscrapers from the left: LIM tower, Central tower, Varso Place (centre), the Lumen building by Złote Tarasy, and Złota 44 ('Żagiel', or the Sail).

From the 43rd floor, the views, shortly after nightfall, were spectacular. Impressive city, Warsaw - what you are gazing down upon was nothing but rubble 78 years ago. Below: looking north, along ulica Towarowa/ul. Okopowa.

Below: looking north-east towards aleja Jana Pawła II.

Left: looking down on the Palace of Culture, with Złote Tarasy in the foreground. A long-held dream of mine. My dream was to be able to do this from 360 degrees - Stalin's gift to the people of Warsaw ringed by supertall skyscrapers, each one higher than it, rendering it invisible when looking at the Warsaw skyline from a distance. 

This might never happen - the shift to remote work, resulting from Covid and IT, means that corporates need less floor-space for their offices, and so the rush to build supertalls has slowed right down.

Below: once a familiar sight in railway stations and airports around the world, the flip-over destination indicator board has almost completely been replaced by LCDs. Warsaw's Śródmieście station still has some; they will not be around very long. Known across former communist Europe as the Pragotron (after the city of Prague, where the company that manufactured them, Elektročas, was based). Working off punch-cards, the mechanical complexity of these devices (and lack of spares) means their days are coming to an end. The flik-flik-flik-flik sound of the destinations flipping over as a train departs will soon be history. Make sure you take a conscious note of it before it goes.

Earlier in the month, I got out of Warsaw on two business trips. 

Below: leaving Szczecin station at daybreak, having come up on the night train.

Below: the rising sun colours the distant waters of the River Oder. To the left, the tower of the Pomeranian Medical University.

Left: the same tower, this time in the late afternoon. Szczecin will never allow the visitor to forget its Germanic history - the architecture is so characteristic.

Below: the Urząd Morski (maritime office) building, the neo-gothic former Neues Rathaus (new town hall), opened in 1879. Burnt just after the second world war by Soviet soldiers, it was rebuilt in the 1960s, and renovated in 2008-15. The strong sunlight brings out the colour of the brickwork.

Below: Szczecin's main post office, built around the same time as the Rathaus, and in the same materials, but still serving its original purpose. Renovated in 1995.

On 9 March I had a meeting with the Wałbrzych Special Economic Zone at the Lower Silesian Science and Innovation Park. I travelled to Wrocław by night train, arriving shortly after 5am. A leisurely breakfast in the (mercifully!) open Scottish restaurant, where meat-free food was on the menu, and at 6am I set off on foot for to my destination - 8.2km from the railway station. It rained all the way. By the time I arrived, nearly two hours later, I was soaked through. Still, I did my paces for the day. Below: Much of the route was like this.

Passing the war memorial honouring soldiers of the Polish Army, 1939-45 (erected in 1979), I decided to walk to the top. Until I looked down upon the individual graves, I thought it was going to be a Soviet memorial - that communist aesthetic pervading, the sculpture looking to my contemporary eyes in the wet morning like nothing more than a pile of body-bags stacked high. Somehow it failed to arouse any meaningful emotion in me.

Below: looking down from the summit at the Park+Ride by the Oporów tram loop. The hill was a popular destination for joggers and Nordic walkers. Just 20 cars parked (it's around 7am).

The Wałbrzych SEZ event was very interesting, focused on HR, and attracting HR directors from across Lower Silesia. I returned to Warsaw by car, as one of two passengers (three or more people in a fossil-fuel-powered car = same carbon footprint as doing the same journey individually by train). My longest car journey of the year so far.

Back to Warsaw, the train to town takes a different route; all trains from the Radom line are diverted to Warszawa Gdańska via the mis-named W-wa Zachodnia Peron 9. Below: my train is about to cross over the brand-new bridge that carries traffic over onto the Warsaw bypass route (via W-wa Wola). The old route - the tracks leading into the centre of the photo - was far more convenient for me, but awaits modernisation.

Tomorrow's photo catch-up will be rural in character.

This time last year:
Animal spirits, animal consciousness

This time three years ago:
A myriad paths to God

This time four years ago:
No God for those who don't believe, a God for those that do

This time five years ago:
Work proceeding around Jeziorki

This time six years ago:
Karczunkowska reopens to traffic

This time ten years ago:
Goodness gracious!

This time 11 years ago:

Muddy feet, Warsaw 'pavements'

This time 11 years ago:
Cycling and recycling

This time 12 years ago:
Winter clings on to the forest

This time 13 years ago:
Toyota launches the iQ

This time 15 years ago:
Old school Łódź

Town and country in the snow

At last, after a couple of weeks with ambiguous weather, finally winter returns with snow and frost - and the prospect of more to come. The next week will not see temperatures rise above freezing. In central Warsaw, the urban heat-island effect means the difference between frost and meltwater. Salt applied liberally to the roadways makes its way onto the pavements. However, as the week's rush subsides on Friday evening, the snow gently falling, the visual effect is aesthetically pleasing.

Below: looking north along ulica Krucza, towards the junction with ul. Żurawia. The Socialist-Realist building on the right is typically of the state administrative buildings - ministries - built soon after the Soviet takeover of power in Poland.

Below: looking north along Aleje Ujazdowskie towards Plac Trzech Krzyży. Note the tree nestled between the historic buildings. 

Below: looking west along ul. Hoża, a Stalin-era ministry to the right, Tsarist-era tenements to the left.

Below: looking alongside the Most Poniatowski bridge towards the Vistula; its escarpment is behind me. My favourite bridge.

Down among the trees, the bridge is visible in the distance. Powiśle, between the scarp and the river, has significant parkland. I catch the Kamienna Koleje Mazowieckie limited-stop train back to Chynów, which takes a mere 42 minutes from W-wa Śródmieście.

Back in Jakubowizna after a decently frosty night, a bright morning - the snowfall hasn't been too heavy over night, and its powdery rather than wet and heavy - so walking to the shops isn't a chore (indeed I walk the long way out and the long way back to maximise exposure to sunlight).
 

After lunch, a second stroll, this time the other way, into the forest.

Below: heading back home, note the approaching cloudbank on the horizon. It looks like a range of distant hills (I wish it were! Would be lovely to explore them on foot...). More snow is on its way.

Today's walking: 14,500 paces (see below!) 

This time five years ago:
"Forget about doing 10,000 paces a day!"

This time six years ago:
Ukraine - fight or flight?

This time nine years ago:
Sadness at the death of Tadeusz Mosz 

This ten years ago:
Oldschool photochallenge

This time 12 years ago:
Warsaw's wonderful nooks and crannies

This time 15 years ago:
Viaduct to the airport at ul. Poleczki almost ready

Warsaw: midsummer's day, midsummer's night

Midsummer's Day - the middle of summer, or the astronomical start of summer? A busy day in town today, to the office, a conference call, a trade workshop, an economic conference and a business mixer. On my way from the workshop to the conference, I walked along ulica Prosta, popping through the completed Norblin complex (which I last visited before work here started in earnest). Below: looking towards Norblin from the plaza outside the mBank building.

Below: walking along Pasaż Ludwika Norblina. Quiet for the time of day. But it's so nice - a blend of old brick and modern architecture.

Below: looking back at the mBank building along Pasaż Ludwika Norblina. A stone's throw from where my father lived as a small child.

I wrote recently about pre-war German ghost signs in Silesia, here's a sign from Poland's more recent Stalinist past - a health and safety slogan from the early '50s by the look of the typeface that was uncovered during the reconstruction and preserved. 'On each job, take care not only of your own safety, but also equally of your work comrades.'

Below: from the 32nd floor of the Warsaw Unit, looking east along ul. Prosta (lit. 'Straight Street'); the mBank building to the left, the narrow black building is Skysawa tower; beyond that the (shorter) Central Point that sprang out of the ground outside my office during the pandemic; to its right, Rondo ONZ tower, further right is the Intercontinental Hotel. The Palace of Culture is hidden from this view.

Below: looking at the same skyline from street level. Plenty of cyclists and e-scooterists using the cycle path. Build it, they will come.

Below: plac Grzybowski, standing there a vintage Jelcz 043 coach.

I reach the Bristol hotel to see to my delight a whole lot of classic cars (including three Jaguar XK140s, three E-Types, two '65 Ford Mustangs) outside - participants in the Imperial Rally, from Oslo to Lisbon.

Below: looking north along Krakowskie Przedmieście towards the Bristol hotel. Tourist season hasn't yet begun in earnest.

Below: waiting for the train home, W-wa Zachodnia station. This view will soon be history, as work will soon start on the modernisation of the suburban platforms.

Below: the new long-distance platforms as seen from an old suburban platform. Note the difference in lighting. Sunset (the year's latest - 21:01 in Warsaw today) leaving light in the sky nearly an hour and half later.

This time two years ago:
Rural rights of way

This time three years ago:
Not a whole lot going on...

This time seven years ago:
Dreamtime supernatural

This time nine years ago:
Baszta - local legend round these parts

This time 11 years ago:
Downhill all the way to December

This time 12 years ago:
What do I want for Poland

This time 13 years ago:
Summer holiday starts drizzly

This time 14 years ago:
Israeli Air Force Boeing 707 visits Okęcie

Random January photos from Warsaw

Just some random snaps to show how glitzy and rich Warsaw has become. Below: Plac Grzybowski, looking west towards Aleja Jana Pawła II. A scene unrecognisable from pre-EU accession times. The investment has poured in, as have the jobs. Quality jobs.

Below: ul. Próżna, just around the corner from my office. Once a street of ruins, a street that had survived the destruction of the Ghetto almost intact but was in a dreadful state by the late 1990s.

Below: I wrote about last month's opening of the S2 expressway tunnel under Ursynów, which now effectively allows transit traffic to pass through Warsaw without encountering any traffic lights. This new ad, just west of Węzeł Lotnisko, the S2/S79 [and future S7] junction, is for an eaterie on the other side of the tunnel (actually 8km away and 1km off the S2). A bit more info (such as opening hours) would be useful.

Below: completed and opened last year, the new Ferrari showroom on ul. Wirażowa is immediately suggestive of a wealthy population. Work started in 2018, testament to how rapidly Warsaw was rising in international rankings of wealth. Before moving here, Ferrari's Warsaw showroom was housed (somewhat symbolically) in the former building of the central committee of the Polish communist party, the PZPR.

Fossil-fuel-powered trappings of wealth are not for me - I'd rather spend the cash on domestic comforts and doing up the działka (and maybe another classic motorbike?)

This time two years ago:
The Inequality Paradox: pt.2

This time three years ago
Jakubowizna in mid-winter

This four years ago:
Warm winter's day in Jakubowizna

This time five years ago:
Seeking an aesthetic in the Grim

This time six years ago:
UK overtakes France as the World's 5th Biggest Economy 

This time eight years ago:
Ice in the Vistula

This time 12 years ago:
A consolation to my British readers

This time 13 years ago:
Winter in its finery

The time 14 years ago:
Snow fences keep the trains running

Town & Country

In town yesterday for my first face-to-face business meeting of the year, lunch at the courtyard patio of the Bristol Hotel. This time, I afforded myself the luxury of a stroll around Śródmieście. My third visit to central Warsaw since last autumn - the first two being for my jabs. A mere three visits to town, compared to regular visits and stays on the działka, maybe 20 times so far this year. I suddenly realise that my perspective has become more rural than urban. I'm far more used to walking along footpaths between fields and orchards than along the main streets of a capital city.

The greatest shock was the people. A girl with pink hair, pink leather jacket and rainbow badge. A girl with long hair in a plait hanging down her back hunched over the handlebars of her racing bicycle. A guy dressed like a late-1970s punk, complete with nose piercing, Crass tee-shirt and spiky hair. Young folk on electric scooters rule the pavements. Man-buns. Black wet-look yoga pants. A bleached-blond guy driving a classic open-top sports car. Loud motorbikes costing as much as as a large second-hand SUV. These are people that one simply does not see in Chynów! 

Back to Chynów then, I'm on my way to Top Market for provisions and then onto the hardware store to buy a wheelbarrow. An instant visible contrast between town and countryside (the Polish wieś) is obesity. The queue at the smoked-meat counter was some 20 people long; most of them were overweight or indeed obese; a sign of a well-to-do farmer who can provide for the family. Food is about quantity rather than exotic provenance. Clothing is more homogenous; no one stands out from the crowd in terms of what they're wearing. Mass still draws crowds to the church. Dads in suits, mums tottering around on high heels - it's big social gathering, a chance to don one's finery. 

The city is a refuge for individualists; the countryside is for conformists. Individualists stand out less in a city in which individualists are nothing unusual, each in their own individual way.

This difference between town and country is visible in Poland's political make-up, the countryside being more conservative (zachowawczy) than its cities. The young people in the countryside - late-teens to early 20s, are making some attempt to look different by taking on the fashion of young urbanites, but in doing so, they all seem to be going about it in a similar way. Peering into a smart phone is the common factor that unites the young in town and country.

Am I an individualist or conformist? I've spent nearly all my life living ten miles from the centre of a capital city. Externally, I'm as conformist as possible, trying to be inconspicuous. As a consciousness moving about the face of the planet, I seek to be no more than a platform from which to observe - rather than wishing to be observed; as invisible as possible.

Krakowskie Przedmieście, and the Hotel Bristol

Ulica Nowogrodzka, centre right my old offices (2011-13)

This time last year:
Covid and economy recovery

This time two years ago:
Electric cars for hire by the minute

This time five years ago:
Mszczonów - another railway junction

This time nine years ago:
The Devil is in Doubt - short story, part I

This time ten years ago:
Stormclouds are raging all around my door

This time 11 years ago:
Floods endanger Warsaw

This time 12 years ago:
Coal line rarity

Pfizered for the second time

All good, I hope - today I got my second jab of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, 36 days after my first one. I'm lucky to get it, given that it's the best performing of the Covid-19 vaccines currently in use.

Source: The Economist

As with my first appointment, everything went smoothly. I turned up 45 minutes early, waited no more than five minutes before being ushered into a room to fill in a form to state that I didn't have any of a long adverse reactions to my first jab. With that done, I found myself in a queue of one outside the door of the room where the vaccinations were taking place. 

Shirt off, needle in - over in a second, got my Comirnaty (the brand name of the Pfizer vaccine) card stamped and dated - proof that I've had both doses. The doctor who vaccinated me told me that I would gain full immunity within between 21 and 28 days. And that's that! I thanked everyone involved, waited a few minutes to ensure no sudden funny turns - and off I went. A lovely sunny evening, I got off the train from town a station earlier and walked home from W-wa Dawidy via the lakes.

I still need to take care during the next four weeks. Mask and alcoholic disinfectant I shall still take with me on leaving the house, and I shall avoid crowded trains and buses and continue to work from home, although by the end of the month some work-related travel will see me in Wrocław and Poznań.

Looking at my exercise log for the two days after my first jab, I see that I did no exercises involving my arms (no press-ups, pull-ups, planks or weights), only sit-ups, squats and back extensions. Walking was curtailed for two days - I didn't venture out. Then I got back into it with a vengeance. This serves as a benchmark for my recovery this time round.

The vaccination programme is picking up speed - more and more people I know have had at least one jab, many more have appointments for the coming weeks. Numbers of new cases are generally falling, though a post-Majówka spike is likely (as people got together over the May holiday long weekend and because the weather was crap, spent time indoors rather than outside over a grill as planned).

Mindful of last year, when Poland saw a huge and deadly first real wave striking in autumn, I can only hope that by early October enough people will have been vaccinated and/or had Covid to ensure genuine herd immunity. It will be interesting to see how many of the vaccinated will go on to develop Covid, and how many people who've recovered from it will go on to get it a second time.

Because the clinic where I had my jabs is very close to my office, I popped by to take a look, and to retrieve two bottles of wine which were Christmas presents! I've not been in since 1 October, since when we moved from the modern 9th floor (built in the 1990s behind the structure visibile in the foreground of the wartime photo, below, to the less prestigious but more historic 4th floor. My window is above the one with the grey plume of smoke emerging from it.

PASTa - A building that will always be associated with the Warsaw Uprising.

Update: side effects of second jab more mild than first - ache in arm has almost past after a day and half. Nothing else to report.

This time two years ago:
Another railway bridge over Puławska is replaced

This time seven years ago:
Thoughts about life occasioned by the birth of kittens

This time nine years ago:
Waiting for the footbridge on Puławska

This time ten years ago:
Lost in the wonder of it all

This time 11 years ago:
Bicycle review

This time 12 years ago:
A Celebration of the Garden

Hot in the city

Wednesday 16 September. Temperature at 16:30: 29C. Hot in the city. A day spent discussing the state of Poland's real estate and construction sector, and seeing it (in Warsaw at least) how it is, six months after the start of lockdown.

Below: I step out of W-wa Śródmieście station and onto ulica Emilii Plater, on my way to Q22. In the foreground, Daniel Liebeskind's Żagiel, Złota 44, to its right, the Intercontinental Hotel.

Below: on its way up, 38 stories and 155m tall when finished, Skysawa (how does one pronounce that? Skajsawa or Skysower?) is starting to emerge from ul. Świętokrzyska at the Rondo ONZ end. To the right, in the background, Spektrum tower.

Below: it's five to nine, I'm just about to enter Q22. I'm moderating our Real Estate & Construction Breakfast - for the first time in 14 years of doing them - as a webinar. Before the pandemic, at this time of day, the pavement is packed.

Below: view looking south from the 32nd floor of Q22. In the centre of frame, Varso tower, now overtaking Rondo ONZ 1, and when completed, Warsaw's - and the EU's - highest building.

Below: view looking west from the 32nd floor of Q22. In the centre of frame, Warsaw Spire. To the left of it, the cluster of office buildings around Rondo Daszyńskiego, with the Skyliner tower (190m) the tallest of them.

Below: back in the office for the first time in two weeks, and a quick peek to see how Central Point is doing. Not even at the halfway stage - but as lockdown got started, it was still a hole in the ground.

Below: Finished! Widok tower, and in front of it, the redesigned PKO Rotunda building.

Every building will be completed; unlike the crash of 2007-08, when construction came to a standstill, it hardly missed a beat this time round. But developers are not starting new projects. Everyone is waiting; maybe two years - to see the future of office work. What will be the balance between WFH (working from home) and coming into city-centre offices to meet colleagues? Once the pandemic eases (no sign yet!) the corporate world will eventually settle on an optimal, blended, hybrid model. But exactly how many desks will be needed remains to be seen - and this will determine the future growth of cities. The choice has always been between Upward and Outward. My guess is the latter. Unfortunately - sprawl will result.

This time last year:

Resting with the heroes

This time three years ago:
Polish employers' demographic challenge

This time seven years ago:
The rich, the poor, the entrepreneur

This time eight years ago:
Food: where's the best place to shop in Poland? 

This time nine years ago:
Bittersweet

This time ten years ago:
Commuting made easy

This time 11 years ago:
Work starts on the S79/S2 'Elka'

This time 12 years ago:
Warsaw's accident-filled streets