Kazimierz Dolny holds its own

I have reported how over-tourism is becoming a serious plague for any attractive destination, from Sandomierz to Prague. Kazimierz Dolny, a historic town on the Vistula, has bucked the trend, largely by channelling the ice-cream-and-cake crowd in and around the tiny market square, while the more distant parts remain attractive. Much attention is paid to the town's architecture; new houses are being built all over the place but they have a common look.

Below: view from the riverbank looking up the escarpment, with the castle and tower upon it. The town's location on the steeply sloped Vistula gorge. The castle, like so many others I've visited in  Poland (Czersk, Chęciny, Ciechanów to name but three beginning with 'C') had been destroyed by the Swedes during the course of their invasion of Poland (1648-67). According to Wikipedia, the Swedes destroyed 188 towns and cities, 186 villages, 136 churches, 89 palaces, and 81 castles at that time. 

Below: Kazimierz Dolny was an important wheat trading centre in the Middle Ages, a staging post between Kraków and the agriculture of Małopolska, and Warsaw, Gdańsk and the Baltic beyond. At the height of its importance, there were 60 of these granaries along the waterfront in Kazimierz. Those that survived today serve as hotels, apartments or private residences – as well as inspiring generations of architects.

Below: view of the Vistula Gorge from the castle turret. Across the river in the distance, Janowiec (for tomorrow's blog post).

Below: similar view from the Three Crosses Hill, further back and higher up.

Below: ruins of the castle. Damn Charles X Gustav of Sweden.

Below: stunning views from the top. Which to choose for the blog? All of them!

Below: modern houses are above all, tasteful. I suspect the local heritage conservator has a great deal of say as to what gets built and how it all looks. Lots of white- or cream-coloured stone facings, wood and local building material, and a style that strongly reflects the historic architecture of the region. 

Below: new house, old style. There are many such dwellings dotted around the outskirts of Kazimierz Dolny; each individual, and yet conforming with a local traditional architecture. Love it!

One interesting observation: menus in cafés and restaurants are exclusively in Polish; in four days I saw two cars on German plates, one Austrian registration and a motorbike from Finland. Kazimierz Dolny is neither much known nor much frequented by foreign guests, despite being well-known and loved by all of Poland.

Below: a nice bit of old-school photo challenge. Architecture and automobile in sync.

Below: four nuns out on the town.

Below: a herd of goats, and a stall from where absolutely delicious goats' cheese can be bought. Recommended – the one with sun-dried tomatoes and garlic was excellent. Eaten in one go, despite my best intentions to save some for later.

Below: brilliant busking from a youthful six-piece brass ensemble, Calidum, inspired by New York Metro buskers Lucky Chops. Highlight for me was the former's cover of the latter's Funky Town/I Feel Good.

  

Also of note musically was a violinist whose pitch was on the riverside promenade; her renditions of traditional Irish music from the Chieftains and bluegrass in the Down from the Mountains style also drew an appreciative crowd.

More tomorrow.

This time two years ago:
Legnica, south-west Poland

This time three years ago:
Warsaw, midsummer's day, midsummer's night

This time five years ago:
Rural rights of way

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

This time ten years ago:
Dreamtime supernatural

This time 12 years ago:
Baszta – local legend round these parts

This time 14 years ago:
Downhill all the way to December

This time 15 years ago:
What do I want for Poland

This time 16 years ago:
Summer holiday starts drizzly

This time 17 years ago:
Israeli Air Force Boeing 707 visits Okęcie

Łowicz – history, religion and folklore

Each year on 22 September, Europe celebrates Car-Free Day, and to mark the occasion, Koleje Mazowieckie offers free travel on its entire network. The provincial rail operator ran its normal Sunday service, and the chance to get to Łowicz and back without paying a grosz was appealing. Łowicz is on the Koleje Mazowieckie network but lies outside the province of Mazowsze; the limited-stop RE3 service from Warsaw to Płock makes the 77km journey from W-wa Zachodnia to Łowicz Główny in a mere 42 minutes. And today – for free. The double-deck train was on time in both directions but crammed; passengers had to scramble over piles of bikes in the vestibules to get to the seats.

And so – on to Łowicz. Below: first impressions of the town – the post office building between Łowicz Głowny station and the old town. Good to be here.

Below: the Piarist church of the Merciful Mother of God, Łowicz. A beautiful piece of baroque architecture from the mid-18th century. The Piarists (the Order of Poor Clerics Regular of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools, or Ordo Clericorum Regularium pauperum Matris Dei Scholarum Piarum) are a religious order of the Catholic Church dedicated to education, founded in 1617. Photographed in late afternoon as the Equinoxial sun starts creeping around to illuminate the western side of the church.

Below: the gorgeous interior. Music quite splendid too. The gilded angels, the silver clouds, the paintings, the marble, the statues, all designed to impress. 

Baroque architecture was designed to appeals to the senses. This was the Counter-reformation at full blast. Protestantism eschewed decoration and song, its black-frocked pastors read and prayed in the vernacular in their bleak chapels. The Catholic Church, however, knew how to draw the crowds on a Sunday after a week's toil in the fields. An hour or so spent immersed the splendour and mystery of God was an attraction not to be missed. Incense and angelic voices, the architecture and rich visual treats drawing the spirit to a closer communion with the Numinous and Eternal. 

Below: the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Nicholas, Łowicz.  A neo-Gothic structure dating back to 1420, standing on the site of an earlier wooden church from 1100. Refurbished in the 17th century in the baroque style, it competes with the Piarists' church in terms of gorgeousness. Stunning in the sunlight.

Below: the interior of the cathedral, looking towards the southern nave. The high altar is around the corner and to the left. Magnificent.

Łowicz was home to the primates of Poland from Gniezno, who resided in the castle (now in ruins) to the north-west of the town centre, the cathedral served as their church. 

Rich as the ecclesiastical history of Łowicz is, the town is probably best known for its folklore. In particular the colourful striped cloth used for costumes. 

Left: a plate from the 1960 Encyklopedia Powszechna PWN (a copy of which can still be found in most Polish households today!) illustrating Polish folk costume (stroje ludowe). Those from Łowicz on the right of the middle row. The town's influence on folk culture is out of all proportion to its size. [Incidentally, I'm thinking that Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa would have better been translated into English as the 'Polish Folk Republic'.]

Łowicz has an excellent local museum in the Old Market Square, opposite the cathedral. (Between the two is the Hotel Polonia, where Napoleon stopped to dine before setting of on his ill-fated invasion to Russia.) 

The museum itself focuses on the folk culture and traditions, as well as putting the region into a broader historical context. There's a strong emphasis on the folk costumes themselves; the process of spinning linen into thread,weaving the thread into material and dying the material with vibrant colours.

There are several rooms dedicated to naïve art from the region, with its own characteristic style. Best known are the wycinanki, intricate, colourful cut-outs used to decorate items or as artworks in their own right. Seeing how time-consuming their production is makes a modern person realise just how attached we've become to our devices, how much easier, and less creative, the battle with boredom is these days.

In the gardens stands a skansen – a replica farmstead from the end of the 19th century, showing how rural people would have lived and worked at the time. Below: an 'izba' or room in which families would cook, eat, sleep and spin and weave. Note the decoration: cornflower-blue walls, wycinanki on the walls and beams, and a floral garland hanging from the ceiling.

Below: Polish consumers from whatever part of the country they're from will be familiar with the logo of OSM Łowicz, a dairy-produce company based in the town. The logo refers to the 'paski' or colourful stripes.

Below: two tunes from Łowicz on Volume 1 of the Mazowsze song and dance ensemble (of whom my uncle – my father's older brother – was first violinist). It would be from this LP that was born my earliest recognition of Łowicz as a concept.

Łowicz has not one but two market squares; the Old Market (Stary Rynek) and the New Market (Nowy Rynek), except that the new one is not a square but a triangle, the only triangular square in Poland. Below: fragment of the buildings on the eastern side of the new market.

On the way back to the station to catch the 18:30 train back to Warsaw and then on to Chynów. A final glimpse of the Old Market square. Too many cars – I'm sure this will change before too long.

This time last year:
Car-free day: Góra Kalwaria by train

This time three years ago
Into darkness

This time six years ago:
Summer's end

This time seven years ago:
In which I lose a lot of data from my old laptop

This time eight years ago:
Konin - town of aluminium, electricity and coal

This time 11 years ago:
Car-free day falls on a Sunday

This time 12 years ago:
Vistula at record low level

This time 15 years ago:
Car-free day? Warsaw's roads busier than ever

This time 16 years ago:
The shape of equinox

This time 17 years ago:
Potato harvest time in Jeziorki

Ciechanów

Let's go back to communist Poland in the mid-1970s. Local voivodes (provincial governors) were getting too big for their boots. The party's central committee, led by Edward Gierek, wanted to cut them down to size. So out of 17 voivodships, each the size of UK regions, 49 new ones were created, each the size of small English counties. Some of these new voivodships were based in towns that historically had served as administrative centres (a gród, surrounded by its ziemie) in mediaeval Poland.

Such a town was Ciechanów, with its 14th century castle (below), once home to the Dukes of Mazovia, but by 1975 a bit of a backwater with a population of just 25,000. As such, it was one of the smallest voivodship towns between 1975 and 2000, when the territorial administration of Poland was again reformed, returning (more or less) to historical voivodship boundaries.

The territory that constitues today's Mazowieckie voivodship (Mazowsze/ Mazovia/ Masovia) was carved up into five smaller units – the Warsaw voivodship surrounded by the voivodships of Radom to the south, Siedlce to the east, Płock to the north-west and Ciechanów to the north. 

Discovering by chance that there's one train a day linking Chynów and Ciechanów, I decided to go. My intention was to see the castle of the Dukes of Mazovia and then to look around at a small town that between 1975 and 1999 had been elevated to the seat of a first-order administrative division. Before setting off, I consult Filip Springer's Miasto Archipelag, a collection of reportages from those 30 towns that after 2000 lost their status as voivodship capitals (thanks again, Ula – a book that's come in very handy!). Written in 2016, Miasto Archipelag also serves to show just how strongly some of these towns have bounced back in the few short years since it was written.

And so, I wake at 04:30, catch the 05:37 Kamienna Koleje Mazowieckie limited-stop service that goes straight through to Ciechanów via Warsaw. The journey is perfect (only imperfections: train announcements were one station-stop out of synch with reality, and the station clock at Pomiechówek was broken). I arrive to the minute at Ciechanów (07:39), having travelled 138km in just over two hours, for a little over 20zł (£4) with my senior's discount.

Below: today, this office building is the vastly oversized for what it is seat of a second-order administrative division (poviat, or district). But when built in the mid-1970s in its copy-paste style, the Ciechanów voivodship office brought a touch of big-city glamour to a somewhat sleepy town. Across the road from this building, one could hear roosters crowing and hens clucking. Several times smaller than Siedlce or Płock, let alone Radom, Ciechanów was the outlier among the voivodship capitals. The communist authorities said that Ciechanów's population would soon double – it did not, rising only to around 41,000.

Below: Ciechanów's historic town hall still functions as such. Built in 1844, designed by Enrico Marconi, it stands in the corner of the old market square, which today is little more than a concreted-over car park.

Today was the last chance to catch winter opening times (08:00-16:00). From tomorrow, it doesn't open until 10:00 (to 18:00, Jun-Sep). From the moment I arrived in Ciechanów, my eyes were subconsciously drawn to the horizon; seeking a hilltop upon which a castle would naturally stand. But this one could not be seen. Having walked down from the market square, I find it (below), located not atop a hill but on a water-meadow, by the river Łydynia, which arcs around the castle to the south and east.

My dictum – get your sightseeing in early – pays off. It's not yet nine; the castle has been open for less than an hour, and I'm the first visitor. As such, I get VIP treatment; I'm shown how to download the audio tour-guide app (in excellent English!) and get to enjoy the entire tour without bumping into a soul. Below: the castle's two towers face out towards the river; the main building (destroyed during the Swedish invasion of Poland in 1655) was to the right (you can see the square holes in the wall where the rafters were inserted. Incidentally, the redness of the brick is not a tweak in Photoshop, rather it's the morning sun.

The mediaeval history of Poland is essentially about the folly of Bolesław III Wrymouth (Krzywousty) who divided the Polish kingdom among his sons. This led to the fragmentation after his death in 1138 of the Polish state into dukedoms, of which the Duchy of Mazovia was one. The Dukes of Mazovia died off (or were murdered) and by 1526, the duchy was incorporated back into a Polish kingdom. (Having visited Ciechanów, I am minded that a visit to nearby Czersk and its castle is very much in order).

Left: Ciechanów's other famous sight, the toroidal water tower, perched on top of a hyperboloid tower. Built in the early 1970s, this amazing structure fell into disuse and disrepair by the 1980s, and remained in a lamentable state until a thorough remont in 2017 and incorporation into the Ciechanów Torus Science Park. By late morning, the car park and the museum part of the complex were both full. To the right of the tower is the local firefighters' training wall.

Below: ulica Warszawska, a main shopping thoroughfare, beautifully restored and pedestrianised. The town has good cycle infrastructure and local bus provision.

Below: at the western end of ul. Warszawska. Kamienica Brudnickich, nicely restored. EU parliamentary elections (Brexiteers – you know, elections for those 'unelected Eurocrats' you talk about) take place in two weeks' time. Many posters all over town. Slight numerical advantage for PiS over KO and Trzecia Droga.

Below: bit by bit, the town of Ciechanów is restoring its old buildings. Here, just off the road from the main railway station to the old town centre is an early-20th century tenement that's approaching the end of its remont; note the period lettering on the brickwork.

To the south and east of the railway station is a district of Ciechanów called Bloki ('the blocks').  It doesn't sound appealing. Neither does the district that lies across the tracks called Śmiecin ('Trashville' or 'Rubbishton'), yet Bloki is architecturally and historically interesting. This section of town was built during WW2 by the Germans; it reminded me of the low-rise modernist functionalism of Zbąszynek (Neu-Bentschen). As Gartenforstadt Zichenau, it was meant as a model garden suburb for Nazi administrators of their newly occupied lands. They were, however, not destined to live here long. [See this excellent two-part blog about Bloki by Jerzy S. Majewski starting here.] Below: ulica Henryka Sienkiewicza retains original German cobblestone, you can see the typical building style and the tree-lined avenues of Bloki on the corner of ul. Spółdzielcza ('Cooperative Street'). Ironically, there's a Lidl just down there.

Below: Ciechanów has some church architecture worthy of note too. The gate/belltower of the late-Gothic (16th century) Church of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Below: just across the road from the late-Gothic (16th century) Church of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary is the late-Gothic (16th century) Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Next to it sands a neo-Gothic (19th century) bell tower. Despite similar names, the two churches are entirely different structures; the one below serves as the parish church for Ciechanów's St Joseph's parish, whilst the one above used to be the church of the Augustinian convent; today it serves as the parish church for Ciechanów's St Thecla's parish.

And now let me turn my attention to railway matters. On my way from the station, I passed this beautifully restored steam engine, a reminder of the times when a narrow-gauge railway ran through Ciechanów. This was part of a network of lines running out of Mława (Mławska Kolej Dojazdowa) that was axed in the mid-1980s. A mere rump of it remains (around Mława to the north). The monument stands close to the site of Łydynia station (more accurately a halt); looking along ul. Sienkiewicza towards Ciechanów's main railway station, you can see that today's cycle path follows the old narrow-gauge line's track alignment.

The main line from Warsaw to Gdańsk runs through Ciechanów, so the town is well-served by InterCity trains. Modernised in recent years, the line is adapted to running Pendolino trains at high speed, so almost all level crossings between Warsaw and Ciechanów have been replaced by tunnels or viaduct (even unimportant local roads). I recommend Ciechanów as a worthy day trip out of Warsaw; you will not be disappointed.

This time five years ago:
It's the 31st of May and where's the viaduct?
(six months from its eventual opening)

This time seven years ago:
My mother's school – subject of exhibition at national army museum

This time eight years ago:
Stormy end to May

This time nine years ago:
Where's it better to live: London or Warsaw?

This time ten years ago:
Jeziorki, magic hour, late-May

This time 12 years ago:
Świdnica, one of Poland's lesser-known pearls

This time 15 years ago:
Spirit of place

Skarżysko-Kamienna and Starachowice

To Starachowice to address a group of local business owners from the Special Economic Zone interested in exporting to or investing in the UK. To get there I had to wake up at 03:25, leave home at 04:07, catch a southbound Koleje Mazowieckie train to Piaseczno at 04:22. Here I waited over half an hour for the slightly late night train from Kołobrzeg to Kraków, which conveniently calls at Piaseczno and Skarżysko-Kamienna (07:34). From here I travelled onward to my destination, Starachowice, catching the 08:11 service there.

This train arrived punctually at Starachowice, where I had a second breakfast at the Bar Miś near the station (scrambled eggs and ham, small salad, brown bread, and ground coffee, all for 8zł - £1.57). A walk to the Zone, I met up with colleagues from our Kraków office for another coffee and carrot juice before the meeting.

Below: Skarżysko-Kamienna railway station. An interesting junction town with a history of manufacturing. Just before daybreak. Time for a walk around.

Below: this magnificent beast is a Pt47, a Polish-designed and -built fast passenger locomotive. This example has been preserved, and this location shows it off nicely. Note the water pipe to the left.

Below: front view of the engine, which was in mainline service into the 1980s. The semaphore looks particularly effective, and helps evoke an era in Polish railway history.

Below: rear three-quarter view showing the original tender; these were mostly replaced in the 1970s

Change of era on the rails - I board the 08:11 service to Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski, calling at Starachowice. This is a Polish-designed and -built Newag Impuls, newly in service with Przewozy Regionalne. Below: the train's seating is like that of a passenger jet. This is the age of the train.

Below: I arrive at Starachowice. I am minutes away from breakfast and a strong, black coffee.

Below: on the way back, I walk into Skarżysko-Kamienna from the hotel in which we had lunch. I'm passed by a somewhat older Przewozy Regionalne train, heading for Kiece. In the distance, a girder bridge spanning the Kamienna river.

Below: sunset at Skarżysko-Kamienna, looking over the tracks from the footbridge. Soon, I'll board a northbound train for Radom, changing there for a slow local train back to Warsaw via W-wa Jeziorki.

A long day, but a rewarding one. I just love the rhythm of the clickety-clack.

This time last year:
The world mourns the loss of David Bowie

This time three years ago:
Where's the snow?

This time five years off:
Two drink-free days a week, British MPs urge

This time six years ago:
Depopulating Polish cities?

This time seven years ago:
Powiśle on a winter's morning

This time eight years ago:
Sunny, snowy Jeziorki

This time nine years ago:
Eddie's giant soap bubble

Konin - town of aluminium, electricity and coal

Little did I realise as I left home this morning that I'd spend the day in Konin - a town some 200 west of Warsaw, on the way to Poznań. By 11:30 I was on a TLK train, freshly-printed ticket in hand (51 złotys, about ten quid), ready to go to Konin to give a presentation to local entrepreneurs about exporting to and investing in the UK.

Before continuing, a few more words about Polish railways. TLK trains are the low-cost arm of PKP InterCity, giving you InterCity style speed with prices that are significantly cheaper - at the expense of comfort. Instead of a modern Pendolino or Dart train as in the full-price IC services, or at worst fully pimped-out old carriages refurbished with all mod-cons, the TLK trains offer no buffet car, no Wifi, no electric sockets, eight seats rather than six to the compartment and doors that need the heft of a sumo wrestler to open. My TLK train - in both directions - was a long-distance service from Białystok to Szczecin and back. No buffet car for all that distance. Still, the train was fast and punctual, and in less than two hours I was in Konin.

I've been to Konin before - in 1977, on one of our Montserrat holidays for the youth of our Ealing Polish parish. Konin is round the corner from Licheń, which we visited before it became the liturgical Disneyland it's become today. In Konin, however, we came to visit the aluminium smelter. From 1960 to 1975, the town's population tripled as the aluminium plant, the opencast lignite mine and the ZE PAK group of brown-coal burning power stations (three of the four are in Konin) were built.

I didn't have time to see the Old Town, but I had a look round the new town centre, to the south of the railway station, mostly built in the 1960s and '70s, and using lots of aluminum for facades, windows and doors, as one would expect.

Below: very period, ostentatiously modernist department store in the town centre. Kinda reminds of Marineville out of Stingray. Across the road, the Hotel Konin obviously once had lovely neons advertising its restaurant; the tubes have gone, the signs remain, sadly unlit, but a beautiful typeface. The smiling face on the cube with the clock is saying: "The happy don't count time. Smile."

Below: aluminum everywhere. Lots of shops clad in the stuff, and those PRL-era aluminum doors that rattle when you open them.

Below: "By their street names, thou shalt know them" Konin has a 1st May Street too.

Below: the 1970s housing was well laid out, campus style, and is close to the town centre and its amenities, which include Klub Hutnika ('Smelters' Club') which advertises dancing on Friday and Saturday nights. Socialist planning on a human scale. The aluminium smelter - Poland's only one - closed in 2009, when the price of electricity became too high to profitably produce aluminium from ore. Unemployment in Konin today is 10.1% (end July 2016).

Konin lies on the main east-west railway line running from Berlin through Poznań and Warsaw, via Minsk in Belarus, and on to Moscow. It's a busy line.

Below: before reaching Konin, I walked from the hotel where the conference at which I was speaking was held. I walked some 5km to the station, through lovely fields, parallel to the railway line, until I reached the industrial outskirts of the town. Massive flashbacks, those anomalous memories to... what?

Today was equinox day; from now until 21 March next year, the nights will be longer than the days. It was also car-free day - free public transport in Warsaw all day. Today, I walked over 23,000 paces (18 km).


This time three years ago:
Car-free day falls on a Sunday

This time four years ago:
Vistula at record low level

This time seven years ago:
Car-free day? Warsaw's roads busier than ever

This time eight years ago:
The shape of equinox

This time nine years ago:
Potato harvest time in Jeziorki