Noc Muzeów: night of pride of being Polish

Noc Muzeów rolls around once more, a wonderful institution. The trick is to see those places you normally can't, rather than save a few zlotys and waste a few hours to queue for those places you can easily pop into during the year. Eddie's choice this year was the Presidential Palace on Krakowskie Przedmieście.

Above: we join the queue at half past six, half an hour before the palace opens its doors to visitors. Eddie looks on as behind us, the queue rapidly gains length.

Left: compared to last year's rather dull six-hour queue to get into Warsaw's Filtry, standing on Krakowskie Przedmieście was far more enjoyable. An endless throng of people of all ages, many foreigners too, heading up the thoroughfare, there's much to look at, like a Spanish paseo. The queue's good-natured; no political comments, a general sense of contentment in the warm evening air. A cavalcade of veteran cyclists passes, in 19th Century dress; every few minutes something of interest happens.

Below: at nine o'clock, we're almost there; 20 minutes later, we're through the metal detectors and in the palace.

Below: the Round Table, at which in April 1989, Poland's communist rulers accepted the framework for handing over power to a democratically elected government. The papers with black diagonal stripes indicate those participants of the round table talks who are no longer alive.

Right: Eddie in the ante-chamber before the hall of columns, in which the main presidential receptions are held. The ultrawide lens has been corrected for parallels, but in doing so, the sofa on which Eddie is sitting appears massively stretched! The lens has proved very useful in capturing the interiors of the palace.

Below: the tour continues into a vaulted room that looks like it should be underground, but is actually on the first floor. In it are replicas of flags and standards representing key moments in Poland's history.

Below: three of the flags. From the left - King Jan III Sobieski's standard at the Battle of Vienna (1683). The eagle looks like a hatchling! Middle - Insurgents' flag, Battle of Olszynka Grochowska, 1831 November Uprising; motto: In God's name For Our Freedom and Yours. Right - standard of Józef Piłsudski's 1st Brigade, Płock, 16 August 1915; motto: A Free Person in a Free Poland.

Below: we leave the palace from the front entrance. It is beautifully illuminated; for me this has been a night of pride of being Polish.

This time three years ago:
Why Poland can no longer afford to keep the grosz

Inside Filtry

Well, it's one o'clock in the morning, and after six and half (yes!) hours of queueing, Eddie and I were finally let in through the gate and into Filtry - Warsaw's water treatment plant. A legendary place; well worth the wait to get in. Filtry. My father lived on ul. Filtrowa (lit. 'Water-filters Street') before the war; his family lives there to this day. This 30-hectare site, beautifully built and laid out, dominates the south-west fringes of central Warsaw.

The late-19th C. urban infrastructure project was initiated by Warsaw's Tsarist mayor, Socrates Starynkiewicz (a man who spoke no Polish) and carried out by an Englishman William Lindley and his son (also William Lindley). Hence Pl. Starynkiewicza and ul. Lindleya that link the waterworks to Al. Jerozolimskie.

Below and above left: interior and exterior view of the water tower and chimney in the middle of the symmetrical frontage of the waterworks, along ul. Koszykowa.

High-quality brickwork is one of the main characteristics of the waterworks. Our guide (who did an excellent job - taking groups of 40-50 people around the facility all night long) told us that Lindley was criticised at the time for choosing such expensive bricks - 125 years and two world wars later, he was proved right. Also, by spending big money on covering the filter beds with brick arches, he kept them from freezing in winter and being overrun by algae in summer. Pinching kopeks was not an option - today's public procurement managers would do well to learn from Starynkiewicz and Lindley.

Above: the shot that rewarded a six and half hour wait. Inside the slow-filtration beds. Quite something. Not normally lit, the filter beds are dark except when guided tours visit. It's worth remembering that this is a working production facility, rather than a museum; opportunities to visit are few and far between.

And on we go, to the early '30s fast-filtration building (above), the interior of which (below) looks like it could have been part of the set for the Coen Brother's Hudsucker Proxy.

If any of my Warsaw-based readers noticed a funny taste in their coffee this morning, it may have had something to do with Eddie tampering with the control panel (below).

(To put your mind at rest, this part of the filters is now only for show; a new facility was opened last year) The filters have had large amounts of money spent on renovating the historic parts - the site is applying for UNESCO World Heritage status - while at the same time the new facility below continues to do the work. The new building is architecturally consistent with the rest of the site; inside, however, it's boring though reassuringly antiseptic (below).

The tour ended at 02:15. There were still new groups entering the waterworks after us, so the guides must have had a hell of a day. There must also have been scenes of angry disappointment as the queue a hundred or so people back from us who were shut out as the filters closed were told they'd waited several hours in vain.

It is possible to visit the filters outside of Noc Muzeów; unfortunately for foreign visitors, details of how to get in are only in Polish on the Warsaw water authority's website. It is definitely worth visiting - even if it means a long wait. But better to line up a free-of-charge invite to visit the filters (every Saturday in July and August from 9:00am); smaller groups, longer tours.

For Eddie and me, Noc Muzeów ended with a night bus home; we arrived just before 4am as it was beginning to get light. Panie Hrabio! Już dnieje! As we waited for the N83 to arrive (a useful bus, linking the central station to Trombity), we gazed at the Palace of Culture (left). While Moni and her friends had managed to clock up five attractions in one night starting later and finishing earlier, we did only one - but it was worth it. For Polish readers, here's TVN Warszawa's round-up of Noc Muzeów 2011.

Noc Muzeów - Museum Night - at Filtry

After our failure to get into the Filtry (waterworks) at last year's Noc Muzeów, Eddie and I were determined to get in this time. We joined the queue to get in at half past six - 30 minutes before the guided tours began. The queue was unbelievably long; the tower in the distance is roughly where the queue ended. I counted some 800 people in front of us. After queuing for around two hours, I reckoned that we were one-two thirds of the way from the back of the queue to the front.

Queuing was made bearable by the open-house at the Polish Japanese Institute of IT across the road (clean toilets, cheap buffet, sushi, Japanese pop music), and a general good spirit among those queuing.

Around midnight (!) it was touch-and-go whether we'd get in; rumours were flying around the queue - they'd let in people until one am (the published time) - another 120 people, then 200; tempers were starting to get frayed, with people having waited over six hours (and forfeited the chance of visiting any other attractions that night). The clocked ticked towards one am; the queue moved forward at the rate of a metre every ten minutes... would we make it?

I learned a lot about the mass psychology of queuing; if you don't flake out in the first half hour, you're likely to stay through to the end. The guy in the photo (foreground, right) was getting more and more pessimistic, about humanity, Poland, the waterworks authorities; after more than six hours he bugged out, convinced we'd not be let in; 20 minutes later, he would have been proved wrong. The rest of the people queuing around us were fine. As we entered the critical last half hour, a sense of solidarity emerged - there would be no pushing in!

This time last year:
Warsaw's Museum Night 2010

This time two years ago:
On transcendence