New sewers, new estate

Closed off for four months, ulica Pozytywki is open again (below). Under the newly-relaid paving lie new laid sewer pipes, connecting houses on the street (existing and new) to the sewer main running along ul. Karczunkowska. Some road closures in Poland are in name only - this one was serious. A hole in the ground, some two to three metres deep, stretched from the wall on the left to the fence on the right, with no pedestrian access. This meant my regular walk to Lidl has had to be along the main roads rather than down the quiet ul. Pozytywki and ul. Cymbalistów; noisier, more dangerous and an additional 400m or so along which to carry the shopping home.

Looking back from the junction of ul. Pozytywki and ul. Cymbalistów, the pond to the left. The construction crew that has been on-site since the summer is packing up. Final details are being sorted.

Houses and farms south of ul. Karczunkowska are now connected to the town drains. As is the new estate, which has appeared on the quadrangle of land between Pozytywki, Cymbalistów, Katarynki (to the south) and Czarkowskiego (to the east). 

From my observations, I'd guess that the majority of the builders on this project are from Ukraine, judging from the electro-folk pumping out of loudspeakers on the site.

A dense development ("Each house with 340m² of garden!" shouts the billboard advertising it) of  neo-moderne townhouses; I think it will sell. This is still Warsaw, so it has the cachet of actually being in the capital rather than some peripheral village with no infrastructure. The bus stops of ul. Puławska are within easy walking distance, as is the local Lidl and Rossmann. For young families wanting to escape a block of flats, this should be ideal - a trend the pandemic is likely to reinforce. But just look at the mud!

Mud is a feature of edge-of-town Warsaw. Below: this is ul. Dumki - look it up on any map of the city. The authorities ought to either ban all motorised traffic (which churns it up) or get the street asphalted. But this is disgraceful. Note the white-green-white markers on tree and post, denoting a szlak turystyczny - tourist trail. Good luck with that!

UPDATE 16 January: It had to happen, didn't it... the same puddle as seen above, froze over a week later and got covered in snow; it lay in wait for a car to come this way - and it did. The driver abandoned it to seek help. Abandoned it in the middle of a Warsaw street, the one marked on your Google Maps app as leading from ul. Kórnicka to ul. Trombity.

Evening falls, and a train rushes south heading for Piaseczno. At least the rail infrastructure is sound.

Below: bonus photo from the recently-released orthophotographic map of Warsaw - this is the shadow of our house on ul. Trombity and the neighbours' house plus our gardens thrown onto the newly ploughed corduroy fields. Taken in April, before the trees came into leaf. 

This time last year:

The ultra-rich - deserving, or not

This time five years ago:
Globalisation and its part in PiS's return to power

This time six years ago:
UK overtakes France as the world's fifth-largest economy

This time ten years ago:
Wetlands winter meltdown

This time 11 years ago:
Winter's walk to work

This time 12 years ago:
Winter drivetime, Jeziorki North

The Filth and the Fury

I AM UTTERLY FED UP OF HAVING TO TRAIPSE THROUGH LAKES OF SLUDGE TO GET TO THE STATION EACH MORNING BECAUSE THE USELESS BUILDERS WHO'VE SPENT THE LAST TWO AND HALF YEARS PUTTING UP A VIADUCT TO CARRY A LOCAL ROAD OVER THE RAILWAY ARE TOO BLOODY INCONSIDERATE TO SECURE DECENT FOOTPATHS FOR LOCAL RESIDENTS.

I AM UTTERLY FED UP WITH CONSTANTLY CLEANING SHOES. WITH BRINGING FILTH ONTO THE OFFICE CARPETS. WITH HAVING TO APOLOGISE FOR THE TOTAL INADEQUACY OF THESE HOPELESS BUILDERS WHO ARE A YEAR-AND-HALF BEHIND SCHEDULE.

LOOK AT THIS. LOOK AT IT AND ASK YOURSELVES HOW ANYONE CAN WADE THROUGH THIS SHIT AND KEEP SOME KIND OF CLEANLINESS OF FOOTWEAR OR TROUSERS.

I WANT THE NAME OF THE PERSON RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS SHIT.

No, I'm not alone in complaining. Mieszkańcy Osiedla Etap have had a TVN news crew round; Halo Ursynów has written about this, the situation persists.

I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS!!!

This time three years ago:
Defining the human experience

This time five years ago:
The City of Warsaw wants you to complain

This time six years ago:
Czachówek's wild woods in winter

This time seven years ago:
Vistula freezes over downstream of Warsaw 

This time eight years ago:
Twilight of the Ikars

This time nine year ago:
Polish TV adverts for parapharmaceuticals

This time tn years ago:
Jeziorki wetlands in winter

This time 11 years ago:
A week into Lent

The bacteria that don't kill you will make you stronger

Tetanus, typhoid fever, diphtheria, syphilis, cholera, leprosy and tuberculosis are among the diseases spread to humans by bacteria - microorganisms, around 0.001mm in length, pathogens that can kill humans. Better hygiene and antibiotics have saved many billions of lives since the microbe was discovered in the mid-19th Century.

Yet last month, the US Food & Drug Administration banned the sale of antibacterial soaps. This is the result of research conducted since 2013, suggesting that they might affect natural resistance to bacteria. Not just in our own bodies; flushing this stuff down the drain via wastewater treatment plants, it eventually enters the wider environment where it can increase bugs' genetic resistance to antibodies by natural selection.

From childhood, we've had it drummed into us that bacteria, along with viruses, are a danger to our health, yet the reality is that our relationship with bacteria is far more complex. The human microbiome [this Wikipedia page is well worth reading], consists of bacteria, viruses, fungi and archaea, the last being until recently considered a form of bacteria, now known to be something quite separate. Let's look at the bacteria...

There are between three and ten times as many bacteria living within and on us than there are cells in our bodies. Wow. If you scrape together all the bacteria on this planet, they will weigh in total more than every animal and plant put together. We inhale and exhale, ingest and excrete them in vast numbers; bacteria and us - we symbiose in a general equilibrium with one another.

The hygiene hypothesis suggests that as we evolved into mammals then on into humans, we spent a lot of time in the mud and rotting vegetation, from which we picked up many microorganisms that formed a symbiotic relationship with us, either immunising us, or killing the weaker individuals. But since higher standards of hygiene have spread around the world, our bodies have adapted accordingly. Studies of epidemiological data have shown that various immunological and autoimmune diseases are much less common in the developing world than the industrialised world.

Are we obsessing too much with being germ-free?

An article about former UK minister Michael Heseltine (83) and his garden piqued my interest. Here's a man who had a serious heart attack 23 years ago - and today, this octogenerian seems to be in splendid fettle. The health-giving properties of gardening... yes - I read about this somewhere... Turn to Google... [Short aside - these days, there's no excuse for ignorance other than a lack of curiosity. 'Can't be googled' = intellectual laziness. If you're curious, you can find out more, faster, than ever before in human history. And double-check it. Make sure you're not merely reinforcing your prejudices.]

And I find plentiful articles on the subject. Let's take this one: headline: It’s in the Dirt! Bacteria in soil may make us happier, smarter. "A strain of bacterium in soil, Mycobacterium vaccae, has been found to trigger the release of seratonin, which in turn elevates mood and decreases anxiety. And on top of that, this little bacterium has been found to improve cognitive function and possibly even treat cancer and other diseases." Injecting M. vaccae into cancer patients was found to alleviate symptoms, and improve emotional health, vitality, and even cognitive function. So soil bacteria is good for the samopoczucie (another candidate for a loan-word in English - 'the way your mind and body feel').

It would be hypocritical of me to commend gardening to my readers, as I don't do a hand's turn of it myself, but I do a lot of semi-rural and rural walking, stirring up the biome beneath my muddy boots or breathing the dust kicked up beneath me on dry footpaths in summer.

We need to get the balance right. We shouldn't flood our kitchens and bathrooms with antibacterial sprays and soaps, nor should we live in filth and abnegation. A conscious approach to these matters is all important.

This time four years ago:
Hello, pork pie!

This time This time two years ago:
The meaning of class - in England, in Poland

This time five years ago:
First frost 

This time nine years ago:
First frost 

Muddy Karczunkowska - from Review of 2013

At this time of year, it is impossible for me to get to work in clean shoes. Whether I chose to take the bus or the train to the office, I am forced to wade through hundreds of metres of mud. And this is living in Warsaw, capital of the sixth-largest member of the world's wealthiest trading bloc. Indeed, most villages in Świętokrzyskie province are better provided with pavements than Jeziorki, a part of Ursynów, one of Warsaw's more well-to-do suburbs.

Right: "They want... WHAT??! They want PAVEMENTS??!? The impudent, ungrateful VOTERS! Let them WADE up to their ANKLES in FINEST WARSAW MUD!!!" roars the mayor.

Enough of the town hall's excuses - all we want is a pavement running down the length of Karczunkowska, so that pedestrians, and people pushing buggies, or (God help them!) people in wheelchairs can get to the main road or the train station without getting run down by cars or getting their footwear full of muddy water.

My complaint to 19115 was acknowledged, but as of today, I've not had an answer, other than this automated one...

"Zgłoszenie przyjęte w dniu 08-12-2013 o godzinie 09:19:36 zarejestrowano pod nr 127595/13. Jesteśmy do Państwa dyspozycji 24 godziny na dobę przez 7 dni w tygodniu.
Zapraszamy na Portal www.warszawa19115.pl
Dziękujemy za kontakt, Urząd m.st. Warszawy."

Below: and should they be foolhardy enough to chose the dry asphalt, some reckless, feckless nutcase behind the steering wheel will put them back in their place. Note the distance between the car and the edge of the road. Good thing that pedestrian up ahead was out of harm's way at the time...

Below: the road sign warning drivers of a pedestrian crossing has been knocked over by a speeding motorist. It could have been a pedestrian. A case for 19115, I think... [I think not. I spend 10 minutes on the website and I get this...  "Forbidden You don't have permission to access /zgloszenie-awarii-lub-interwencji on this server. Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request"... I tried using my Chrome browser, I tried again using my MS Internet Explorer browser with the same result.]

UPDATE Wednesday 18 December, 13:00. 19115 is working, I get confirmation that my notification of the fallen road sign has been accepted by The System. So - let's see how long it takes the city's roads department (ZDM) to get it fixed!

I have written about the dreadful state of affairs on this road earlier this year; a year in which many new infrastructure projects have come to fruition, but Karczunkowska's pavement remains a need unmet. I really don't want to get into politics on this one - Guział vs. Gronkiewicz-Waltz, Ursynów town hall vs. Warsaw city hall. Frankly, they've both let me down. Enough already. Let's have a pavement. Policy before politics.

OR - if the local authority responsible for this road cannot afford pavement - at least slow down traffic to 50kmh with speed bumps if necessary. No more pedestrian deaths or injuries on Karczunkowska, please.

UPDATE: Near-neighbour Marcin Daniecki has taken up the case with the European Commission, asking those responsible for ensuring that EU funds get to where they need to be spent who the relevant authority is in this case. The answer? The Marshal of Mazowieckie Voivodship, Adam Struzik. So there we have it - everyone and no one...

This time two years ago:
Ul. Trombity - a step closer to dry feet?
[Asphalt yes, but still no pavement]

This time three years ago:
Matters of style

This time four years ago:
Real winter hits Warsaw

This time five years ago:
This is not Mazowsze, no?

Muddy feet

It's hard to maintain any semblance of sartorial elegance in a city which at this time of year provides many opportunity for a mudbath. This morning I walked from a bus stop unhelpfully called 'PKP Okęcie" (it should rather be '350m from PKP Okęcie') to the station itself. Across the work-in-progress S79 expressway (the footbridge visible on the Google Earth image taken eleven and half months ago is still not complete), along a path of cracked concrete slabs sinking into the mud and driven over by construction vehicles with muddy tyres. (Footbridge here: 52°10'3.57"N, 20°59'8.54"E).

I board the Warsaw-bound train with shoes caked in mud. Around me, other passengers with equally filthy footwear. Some make an attempt to remove the mud with paper handkerchiefs, a futile exercise. Jak się wysuszy to się wykruszy, a Polish saying that mud should be left to dry off so that it will crumble away naturally, suggests a passive approach to the problem of outwear cleanliness.

The sad thing is that the roadbuilders think that getting rail passengers across their roadworks is PKP's problem, and PKP believe it's the roadbuilders' problem. And look at the footbridge on the map. It does not even reach the station. It crosses the S79 - and that's it. No budget to stretch the thing across to the platforms.

Above: looking south from the path leading from the road to the station. No country for well-dressed men.

This time last year:
Cycling and recycling

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

This time three years ago:
Toyota launches the iQ
[Can't say I've seen many on Poland's roads since!]

This time four years ago:
Old school Łódź