It's been a long time coming

Friday 28 November 2025. The opening of the passage under Warszawa Zachodnia (Warsaw West) station. I came on Sunday to cast mine eyes upon this marvel, for which I had waited so long.

Goodness! When did work start? Six years ago or longer? It's become a blur. So many memories; of the old underground passage, reeking of the 1980s, cigarette smoke and burnt casein, and its closure; of years of inconvenience, thumbing through back-dated magazines sold for a quarter of their cover price, trying to read the printed timetables in dim light, garbled station announcements saying that my train will be arriving at a different platform to the one advertised... A commuter hellscape that... finally... is over.

In its place, a modern, bright, civilised, convenient station; escalators, lifts, digital signs showing departures in real time; and the promise of modern retail and gastronomy replacing the dives and dinginess of what I considered at the time Poland's worst railway station.

Below: lots of space in this mall....

Left: ...Disco pants and haircuts. This place has got everything!

Though we'll still wait for the cafés and stores to open, soon there'll be a choice of a Starbucks, Costa and a CoffeeToGo; there'll be a Żabka (naturally), an Aldi (wow! I've never been in one, in Poland or in the UK! Wonder if they are licenced to sell alcohol, or is the shop deemed to be too close to the platforms?) A Subway, a Paul, a 1minute SmaczneGo and a Gorąco Polecam (the last one for me), and a second Scottish Restaurant (one at either end of the tunnel), a Relay, a Rossmann and a HeBe. Travellers will not be left wanting for choice, though I wonder what the opening hours of these shops and cafés will be, given that there's a gap of just 68 minutes between the last train of one day and the first train of the next.

Below: if not, there are several sets of these well-stocked and reliable (contactless card) vending machines dotted around the premises.

Below: looking west, with the old tunnel from Aleje Jerozolimskie behind me. The dip in the tunnel ahead leads down to what will be the underground tram stop when the tramline is finally completed (2026? 2027? I neither wish to believe the press releases nor to speculate). Once done – this will be marvellous. To be able to descend from your train and board a tram heading north to Wola or south to Mokotów will be a huge improvement in the travelling lives of Varsovians. For now, the passage down to the tram tunnel to the left is fenced off (and probably will continue to be for some time to come).

Below: to reach other platforms you no longer have to go up via the footbridge. Stairs, escalators and lifts now take you down to the tunnel. This is Platform (peron) 3, serving two tracks, one eastbound, one westbound. Try not to get confused by the track (tor) numbers, one aspect of the old station that's not been reformed. Track 23 eastbound, track 21 westbound. I think. 

Below: the western waiting room/booking hall on the ulica Tunelowa side. Smaller than the one on the Aleje Jerozolimskie side (but less busy). 

Below: here you'll find the 'Neighbour Area Plan' which nicely shows  central Warsaw's railway stations. Not 'train stations', not 'neighbor'. The Radom line terminates at W-wa Gdańska station to the north and skirts the city centre through which it used to go. Much to my annoyance.

Below: access from the booking hall to the platforms is via stairs, escalators and lifts. No more having to walk up 50 steps, then down 50 steps, then down another 50 steps, and finally up another 30 steps to get from Platform 3 to Platform 9. Real-time digital timetables everywhere.

For my purposes, the opening of the tunnel marks a huge leap forward in being able to change trains at W-wa Zachodnia. From a 20 minute walk up and down stairs and ramps, through mud, across the busy road at the back of the station and along a corrugated canyon to reach Platform 9, cut to 15 minutes with a shorter route, down to eight minutes when the western section of the tunnel was opened in October 2024, the interchange now takes six minutes. But ultimately, the Radom line should really go back to serving W-wa Ochota, W-wa Śródmieście and W-wa Powiśle like it always had done. Changing at W-wa Zachodnia is no longer the monumental pain in the arse that it once was. 

Poland is getting on with it; works take a long time, but in the end they get there (hello HS2) and things get noticeably better. Repeat consistently over a couple of decades, and the contrast between then and now is stunning.

Ultimately, vast improvements like the ones I've seen here and elsewhere across Poland's railway network over the past 28 years, demonstrates that it is possible to make rail travel more attractive to passengers. Just don't privatise it. British trains are worse than Poland's and vastly more expensive.

Below: bonus photo – Last Train to Warsaw, just leaving Chynów.

This time last year:

Biorhythms are nonsense. And yet...

This time four years ago:
Twilight rambler

This time six years ago:
Late-November pictorial round-up

This time seven years ago:
Artificial Intelligence vs Artificial Consciousness

[In retrospect, an interesting and prescient piece!]

This time eight years ago:
Viaduct takes shape in the snow

This time 11 years ago:
No in-work benefits for four years?

This time 12 years ago:

Third snow-free November in a row

This time 13 years ago:

Another November without snow

This time 13 years ago:
Snow-free November

This time 15 years ago:
Krakowskie Przedmieście in the snow

The spread of craft beers - not just central Warsaw

A big thanks to Tim and Andrzej at RSK for suggesting a visit to Mam Ochotę, a klubokawiarnia in Ochota (which sounds like a suburb of Tokyo but in fact is Warsaw's Kensington). Not the very epicentre of the city, but a few bus stops to the south-west. Ochota literally means 'willingness' or 'desire'; mam ochotę literally means 'I want' or 'I fancy'. (A trendy Warsaw bar these days has to have a name with a double meaning - like PiwPaw or Same Krafty)

So, fancying a craft beer, we popped by for an ale or two. The revolution has spread beyond the city centre; although there was no artisan brew on tap, there was a fair selection of bottled ales from small regional breweries around Poland, many various brewing styles.

We plumped for two beers (above), Serce Dębu (literally 'oak heart') from Perun, brewed by the Zodiak brewery in Piaseczno, an American brown ale, 5.5% abv, a complex and multi-layered beer, a good mouthful with lingering aftertaste. Not as hoppy as an IPA, but richly rewarding. The second, Kujawskie, by the Krajan brewery from the Kujawsko-Pomorskie province, was intriguing, not for any intrinsic reason other than its taste gave me an instant flashback to the Polish beers exported to the UK in the 1980s. Żywiec used to taste like this before Big Brewing got its corporate hands on the process. Malty rather than hoppy, strong too at 6.0% abv.

We debated whether the Polish word for malt, słód, formed the etymological origin of the adjective słodkie ('sweet') [Wiktionary suggests that this is indeed the case.] In the days before sugar (cane or beet) became readily available in Poland, malt - germinating cereal grains - for brewing would have been (besides honey and fruit) the sweetest taste commonly encountered.

I must say I prefer my beers bitter and hoppy than malty and sweet, but the latter style is more prevalent in Polish brewing. Andrzej, who hails from Lower Silesia, made the connection between beer-drinking and coal-mining; a miner who'd spent a whole shift underground extracting coal would emerge dehydrated; drinking a litre and half of beer would always be preferable to the same amount of water or to a smaller amount of wine or spirits.

It is good that beer is experiencing a renaissance in Poland. Back in the late 1980s, in the dying days of the communist system, you'd go into a bar and ask naively for a beer - the inevitable answer from the sarky waitress was "we didn't have any beer, we don't have any beer, we won't have any beer". As soon as democracy was re-established the Polish Beer-Lovers' Party won 16 seats in the first parliamentary elections held in 1991. Small local breweries took off, beer drinking took hold in Poland. But the big, multinational brewing conglomerates had an eye on emerging markets like Poland with a large population, rapidly rising GDP and a lot of coal miners. So within 20 years, the Big Three (SABMiller, Heineken and Carlsberg) had a virtual monopoly of the Polish beer market, turning out beers like Tyskie, Lech, Żywiec, Warka Strong and Okocim that all tasted and looked the same, lacked character or conviction.

The revolution started a few years back - the big brewers were (and are) losing market share as regional breweries and craft brewers bounded back with interesting tastes, different styles, made by people with a passion rather than a focus on the bottom line and quarterly profits.

But step outside the metropolis, and you'll be hard-pressed to find this variety in a bar. Yesterday Śródmieście, today Ochota, tomorrow Piaseczno? And who knows - Jeziorki?

This time last year:
The Holocaust and the banality of evil

This time two years ago:
Snow scene into the sun

This time three years ago:
More winter gorgeousness

This time four years ago:
New winter wear - my M65 Parka

This time five years ago:
Winter and broken-down trains

This time six years ago:
General Mud claims ul. Poloneza

This time seven years ago:
Just when I thought winter was over...

Warsaw's abandoned goods station

See it while you can - an abandoned railway station in the heart of a European capital. Warsaw's old goods station is completely accessible on foot - indeed even by car.  I've written about the Zachodnia end of this vast expanse of sidings and abandoned railway infrastructure here and here (with map); I promised to return to finish the job, so here pics from the ul. Towarowa end.

Between the Railway Museum and post office on ul. Towarowa is a cobbled street (below) that leads to the platforms of the goods station serving the post office. There are no barriers, indeed no signs, prohibiting you from strolling right in.

And what do you find? This is at the eastern end of the mass of railway sidings that stretches all the way from W-wa Zachodnia station through to the old W-wa Główna Osobowa on ul. Towarowa (now the railway museum).There were four platforms serving mail trains; vans would drive down between the platforms.

I remember in my first job in Poland, around 1997-98, coming here around midnight to witness the dispatch by mail train of hundreds of thousands of cable TV listings magazines (of which I was publisher) to various towns around Poland.

Below: on the horizon, a new development is appearing on the skyline; Warsaw's '19th District' - which would be an apt name for this vast area of abandoned sidings between the districts of Wola and Ochota.

Below: to the right, an abandoned warehouse; to the left, across ten abandoned tracks and six tracks still in use - the modern buildings of Al. Jerozolimskie.

Below: an abandoned water crane standing amid hectares of wasteland north of Al. Jerozolimskie

Below: in the distance, the Palace of Culture; to the right the neglected exhibits of Poland's national railway museum, resting and rusting, await a new home. To the left, the old post office warehouse.

Left: one track still show signs of life, i.e. there are no trees growing up between the rails. This is the track that connects the railway museum to the outside world.

One day in the not-too-distant future, the museum's collection will need to be hauled out of its open-air home to what will hopefully be a more fitting resting place in Odolany. Properly restored, under a roof, the old steam locos will, I hope, be spared any further indignity and will give delight to many generations of Varsovians to come.

Below: the end of the northern-most platform of the goods station, looking towards the city centre. Trees are sprouting everywhere. Nature, left to its own devices, would soon obliterate the buildings.

Below: tracks disappearing into an urban forest, south of ul. Kolejowa. Tons of dumped rubbish blight the area; otherwise, this could be a Most interesting alternative picnic spot in the summer!

Below: looking westward toward W-wa Zachodnia in the far distance; the yellow gates belong to PKP PLK's diagnostic centre.

I'm sure that in five years time, this area will be a massive building site, and in ten years time this will be a posh new part of central Warsaw full of shops, offices and apartment blocks. See it while you can, catch the atmosphere.

Update 2019: "in five years time" this has become a hipster all-nite food court.

This time last year:
Social justice - the Church and inequality

This time two years ago:
Google Street View comes to Poland

North-east of Warsaw West revisited

I was here back in September, promising to return. The fate of this fascinatingly ignored part of Warsaw, just three tram stops from the city's epicentre, needs to be documented. One day, this will be offices, shops and apartments. The land north of the main east-west railway line, between W-wa Zachodnia and the defunct (since 1997) W-wa Główna Osobowa station, is ripe for development. Last summer, Cushman & Wakefield announced that it would be PKP's advisor for the sale of this site.

So then - here are today's photos.

Below: redundant tracks between the passenger platforms and ul. Tunelowa are being lifted. I could see literally kilometres of track here. What will happen to it? With these concrete sleepers, this track is in much better condition than the wooden sleepered tracks on the Radom line running through Jeziorki.

Below: a huge collection of clips used to fasten the rails to the sleepers. Tons of the stuff. In the background, modern office and residential developments along Al. Jerozolimskie.

Below: construction equipment parked alongside the tracks. Note piles of lifted rails to the left, the old gasworks on ul. Prądzyńskiego to the right.

Below: looking east from ul. Tunelowa. A mass of abandoned track continues for hundreds of metres in the direction of ul. Towarowa. A good view of Warsaw's skyline, the Palace of Culture being obscured by a tall bush in this photo.

Left: I follow the middle track, forcing my way through bushes which have grown up around and between the rails. They have not been used for at least a decade.

This is prime property, a ten-hectare site surrounded by the western edge of Warsaw's city centre. At last it is going to be developed, but one does wonder why it took PKP so long to get around to selling the site.

I press on eastwards, towards the city centre, along long-abandoned tracks. After a few hundred metres, I come across this building, below, a warehouse alongside the goods sidings. Let's have a closer look, shall we?

Below: abandonment on this scale could be expected in Łódź or Białystok, but not in the heart of Warsaw. A superb klimat for urban hunters of industrial ruins. Lots of evidence of rough sleepers and outdoor drinking dens around here, but for now, in mid-February, deserted.

Below: turning back towards W-wa Zachodnia station, I glimpse through the trees and bushes a new office development on Al. Jerozolimskie catching the last rays of the setting sun. There's much construction work on both sides of the tracks - in Ochota to the south and Wola to the north - but so far nothing in between.

Below: approaching ul. Tunelowa again. If this area is to gain in prestige (which it should thanks to its central location), it will require careful landscaping to take it up market. Right now, the whole area between Tunelowa, Kolejowa and Prądzyńskiego feels depressingly shabby.

Below: the area slated for redevelopment highlighted in yellow on a Google Earth map of Warsaw. Ul. Towarowa is to the right, Al. Jerozolimskie below it, ul. Kasprzaka is top left. The map has been rotated clockwise slightly to fit the page better.

Definitely worth another visit, next time starting from the W-wa Główna Osobowa end (current home of the railway museum - read the latest news about its move here). And exploration of Ul. Kolejowa, the northern border of the redevelopment zone.

This time last year:
Looking for answers

This time two years ago:
Fresh powder in Warsaw's parks

This time four years ago:
Another Lent starts

This time six years ago:
Okęcie dusk

Szczęśliwice visited for the first time

In my 16 years in Warsaw, I've never been to this part of town despite it being famous for its man-made hill, rising some 44 metres above the city's ambient altitude. After a meeting on ul. Włodarzewska, I headed into town through the Park Szczęśliwicki, and very glad I am to have taken to detour.

Włodarzewska and the surrounding area did not impress me - a narrow, busy street with narrow pavements, off which run smaller streets with names like ul. Usypiskowa (lit. Tip Street or Dump Street). But around half way down Włodarzewska, which runs from ul. Grójecka to Al. Jerozolimskie in furthest Ochota, you will find a pleasing park with a pleasing lake, across which you will find a hill rising above the flat Mazovian landscape.

The hill began as a tip for the rubble from the post-war ruins of Warsaw, to which later was added regular municipal waste; the spoil-heap grew to 138m (rising 32m above the level of the lake seen in the foreground).

I made my way up to the top, cutting across the paths that spiral up the hill. Nordic walking seems increasingly popular in Warsaw, and not only among the elderly... its health benefits are manifold.

Up at the top. A strange vista, like the Berlin Wall perched on a suburban hillside. Down below, in the distance, the sound of construction - lots of new apartment blocks being built, well located for the park and close to Al. Jerozolimskie railway stations and bus stops. But the way to the summit is sealed off from the curious visitor by high fences and concrete walls.

Below: the artificial ski-slope offers a 224-metre run at an 11-degree angle, in effect a blue run. All this familiar-looking ski infrastructure looks out of place in Poland's capital in summer - or indeed in winter.

Below: a LOT Polish Airlines Boeing 767 takes off from Okęcie airport over the stationary chair lifts of Szczęśliwice. The highest point of the ski run is 152m above sea level, 44m above the land on which this artificial hill was built.

Below: here's the area in Google Earth; you can see the green of the ski-slope, the surrounding lakes, and, to the upper left, the Tsarist fort. I feel a fort post needs to be written, as Warsaw is ringed by these objects that predate the First World War, and Fort Modlin was recently sold for 18m zlotys (€4.2m).

This time last year:
On the road from Dobra, again

This time two years ago:
August storm, ul. Targowa

This time three years ago:
Warsaw Central's secret underground kebab factory

This time four years ago:
Cheap holidays in other people's misery

This time five years ago:
Steam welcomes us to Dobra

This time six years ago:
New houses appear in the fields by Zgorzała