Moonrise

A good evening to capture a moonrise; I head off towards Nowa Wola to snap the fields as they fill with houses. Suburban living is suddenly becoming in vogue again as citizens seen lower housing density, associated with lower epidemiological risk. Look at the moon (click to enlarge) - I'm lucky enough to catch a plane flying across it - though the lens is too short to do it justice.

This development has sprung up very quickly; these structures have appeared in the last few weeks.

The electrification of the suburbs. All that's missing is the shops, the schools, the hospital, the cinema, the park, the church, the local railway station, bus routes - it's just houses, houses, houses right now - the infrastructure for civilised living will arrive later, spontaneously, believe the developers. I sure hope it will.

Below: rainbow over the new viaduct - sunshine and rain at the golden time of day.

The last rays of sunlight catch the golden hills of soil that have emerged by the S7 extension site

Back to the tracks, where an evening train sets off from W-wa Jeziorki towards town...

...and as it passes, a chance to snap the new houses being build privately on the Jeziorki side.

Below: ulica Nawłocka looking towards ul. Karczunkowska and the eastern ramp onto the viaduct. Beyond that, the giant Biedronka sign that brings this fair suburb light. 

My brother recently mentioned the American photographer Robert Adams in connection with my photographs, while commentator White Horse Pilgrim mentioned the American photographer Ansel Adams in connection with a monochrome shot I posted the other day. Glad my snaps spark off such associations!

This time last year:

Awaiting the Summer Sublime

This time four years ago:
4 June - a date remembered for...?

This time five years ago:
Corpus Christi, rural Mazovia

This time six years ago:
25th anniversary of Poland's transition

This time seven years ago:
Poland's infrastructure progress

This time nine years ago:
Wetlands in late-spring

This time ten years ago:
Jeziorki's flood of floods: Puławska and Pozytywki

Jeziorki's flood of floods: Sarabandy and Karczunkowska

Jeziorki's flood of floods: Trombity and Kórnicka

This time 11 years ago:
Another time, another place

High summer, Jakubowizna

Back in Poland, I venture down by train today to spend a bit of time relaxing on my działka. Jakubowizna is looking fine in high summer; the fruit season is coming on. Below: on my road there are plenty of orchards, the apples still three months away from being ready to harvest. The orchards are well-tended, although here and there I see some that have gone to seed, their owners having abandoned them. I toy with the idea of a cider press...

Below: that old Kentucky klimat is to be found across southern Mazowsze...

On the działka, how's it going? Still a lot to do. Right now the main action is in insulating the foundations - digging a moat round the outside into which insulating granules will be poured so that heat won't escape from the floor (as I have under-floor heating, this is essential)

Two sides of the house already dug (south and east), two to go (north and west). Rain the big enemy right now. Below: the foundations along the east side, by the garage door.

Below: grapes. I have a large number of grapes - like the apples, three months away from being ready to pick. Cherries have come and largely gone (I need a much longer ladder than the one that's here). And plums will be coming along too.

It's an extremely relaxing place to be, very quiet, the occasional airliner making its turn into final descent into Okęcie, otherwise just birdsong. Time to set ofp back to Jeziorki, a 28-minute journey by train. Below: the journey to Chynów station is a ten-minute walk, I get this Eric Ravilious-style landscape along the way.

Below: orchards everywhere. This one not so well tended, not cultivated for efficient harvesting. But it will be a bumper crop this autumn!

Below: if you click to enlarge, you'll see a Warsaw-bound train at the vanishing point. It's still over seven minutes' travel from the platform at Chynów station, approaching Krężel, three kilometres south. The tracks run dead straight for 15km from south of Czachówek junction to beyond Michalczew.

Below: as my train to Jeziorki crossed the Skierniewice-Łuków line, I caught this westbound container train passing under the viaduct heading for Łódź, then onto Duisberg. This is part of the Chinese 'One Belt One Road' / New Eurasian Land Bridge programme to speed up container flows compared to the long sea journey to north-west Europe.

Bonus - Karczunkowska update. Biggest news on my return from a week in London is the appearance of what is likely to be a roundabout at the junction of ul. Nawłocka and the road to Biedronka. In the distance, the viaduct over the railway line slowly takes shape.

Good to be back in Poland!

This time two years ago:
Aerial cavalcade ahead of NATO meeting

This time four years ago:
Ukraine: still an important foreign policy problem for the West 

This time six years ago:
More about Modlin airport

This time nine years ago:
Get on your bike and RIDE!

Karczunkowska's closed again

Coming home after work yesterday, I noticed a new temporary road sign announcing the closure of ul. Karczunkowska (again), so today a walk to investigate was in order. According to local news website, the closure is planned between 23:00 on Friday 27 April and 06:00 on Monday 7 May, in other words the long May week of two public holidays, when many Poles will take three days off work to give nine days holiday. So - good planning... Below: the sign on the road near the junction with ul. Trombity. The message does not seem to get through to drivers, who have to find out for themselves just how closed the road is. To save you the bother - it is closed. Cars will not get through. Bikes and pedestrians - yes.

Below: the next sign is on the road approaching the junction with ul. Nawłocka. But still they come, hoping that there's some way through. There isn't.

Below: across the tracks over the level crossing behind Biedronka and on to ul. Gogolińska. Another sign says the road's closed. And yet those drivers persist.

Below: around the corner, beyond the junction of ul. Gogolińska and Karczunkowska, the road is totally and utterly blocked. Pedestrians and bikes can squeeze through a passage to the right of this pic, but for other road-going vehicles - no. Don't waste your time. Do as you did last time Karczunkowska was closed - go around Nowa Iwiczna or down Baletowa.

Below: a rather crap shot from my Nikon CoolPix P900 (which is never happy in wide angle mode), showing Karczunkowska cut right down its entire width to get at the sewers. Without the ability to shoot in RAW format, exposure is a compromise; the get the detail in the shadows I lost the detail in the highlights.. Still, it shows how serious this work is.

But there are always the adventurous ones. Like the woman in the Yaris on Pruszków plates who first headed south along Gogolińska looking for a short cut, finding none, turning round, to discover that it's impassable to the north too. She sped past me (I was on foot, narrow road, no pavement) with her phone clamped to her ear. The short-cut that people want to make, between ul. Gogolińska and Kurantów, is not on. This bit of Kurantów is formally (and I checked on the land register map) a private road. The main bit of Kurantów runs out of asphalt 200m from this spur; physically impassable to all but off-road vehicles - except that the owners of the land at the top have blocked the path off to stop the rat-runners.

I very much doubt the work will be finished by Monday week. Indeed, I very much doubt the whole project will be completed this year. Even if there are no more major cock-ups such as the failure to detect the clash between sewers and power cables at the railway crossing, even if the guys work weekends and evenings (as they were today), I can't see this happening quickly. It will be fun to come here on Monday morning to see all the frustrated motorists forced to make U-turns.

It's actually comical to see drivers ignoring three, four, five signs saying 'no entry' or 'no through road' or 'diversion' and then being forced to turn around.

This time last year:
Little suitcase in the attic

This time two years ago:
What I read each week.

This time three years ago:
Defending Poland, contributing to NATO

This time five years ago:
Balloon over Warsaw 

This time seven years ago:
Happiness, Polish-style

This time eight years ago:
And watch the river flow...

Foggy, icy, slippery day, Jeziorki

Today, after eight days inside, I felt well enough to venture out. Temperature +1C, fog. Not best for mending lungs, but a short walk has proved entirely beneficial. Here are the snaps, conveying that special atmosphere that the land exudes when bathed in low cloud.

Below: ul. Achillesa at the corner of ul. Nawłocka.

Below: the fields between ul. Trombity and ul. Sarabandy.

Below: farmhouse on ul. Trombity. Last week, we received notification from the local authority of planning permission for some farm buildings to be erected here.

Very Eric Ravilious! Below: looking along ul. Dumki from ul. Trombity.

Below: ul. Nawłocka, looking towards ul. Trombity

Below: ul. Nawłocka, further up, by ul. Achillesa.

Below: ul. Karczunkowska, where the viaduct ramp will one day be. 

Below: ul. Karczunkowska at the junction with ul. Nawłocka.

Below: ul. Karczunkowska looking west towards the railway line.

This time four years ago:
Hannah Arendt and the banality of evil

This time five year ago:
Snow scene into the sun

This time six years ago:
More winter gorgeousness

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

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

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

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

Dreamscapy

Am I walking home or am I dreaming?

One of those familiar dreams where it's the dead of night but it's just like day?

I am almost there, but the paces feel lazy, I want to rest and walk at the same time

Lie down and dream about walking... walking...walking...

Relief and rest, familiarity and consciousness spreading out across the night air.

This time two years ago:
Whatever happened to Poland's Amish?

This time three years ago:
PKP publishes plans for upgrade of Warsaw-Radom line

This time four years ago:
World's largest ship calls in at Gdańsk

This time six years ago:
Raymond's Treasure - a short story

This time seven years ago: 
Now an urban legend: Kebab factory under W-wa Centralna 

This time eight years ago: 
It was twenty years ago today 

This time ten years ago: 
By bike to Czachówek again

Building and the human living space

Every space we've inhabited is a man-made enclosure of space that was once a part of nature. Where you are sitting, right now, reading these words, was once a field, a meadow, a forest - then man came along, levelled the ground, laid foundations, and erected four walls with a roof over them. Building is but the first stage of that magic act of habitation.

As our house was being built, from 1999 to 2002, we'd come over from the house we were renting (it lay less than a kilometre in a straight line from the plot); we'd observing the progress phase by phase, walking into walled-off spaces that would soon become the rooms in which we would be living. An upstairs emerged, accessible at first only by a ladder. And then an attic, under a roof that took shape as the rafters were installed.

This is a process happening all over Poland, sometimes at a faster rate, sometimes pausing for a breather. Big developers, small developers, individual families. And not only houses - offices, shops, warehouses, factories, roads and bridges too. And when finished, when people move in, buildings literally encapsulate the human spirit. The drama that goes on inside, the joy, the pain, the day-to-day activities - as we go about our lives, we slough off dead skin, bacteria; we breathe in and we breathe out, - atoms of us, that were once in us, part of us, mingle with the wallpaper, the carpets, the floor. A shell of brick and wood absorbs us - who knows - our thoughts maybe, and becomes our abode. It's a bit far to go the whole supernatural thing with ghosts and that, but I believe that our houses absorb our personalities, the longer we live there, the stronger the effect gets.

Below: new houses in Jeziorki. It will be a while before they are finished, before families move in. Who will they be? How will the environment shape their lives? How will they shape Jeziorki?

Below: ten years ago - June 2007, across the tracks from the old rampa na kruszywa, new houses going up in Zgorzała. Now inhabited, a dormitory estate with one shop and little by way of character.

Below: ten years ago - June 2007, soon after take-off from Okęcie, the viaduct carrying ul. Poleczki is under construction; no sign of the S79 expressway nor of Poleczki Business Park. Ten years later, those who witnessed the construction have got so used to the way it is now that we've largely forgotten how it once was. Those who moved in, never seeing it being built, have no frame of reference.

Back to the rampa na kruszywa - you can see it in this shot from June 2007, below, at the end of ul. Nawłocka (then still unpaved). Today a large Biedronka sign in the car park is what you'd see if you stood here.

Below: more change in the built environment round these parts: ten years ago, ul. Puławska was being widened between Warsaw's boundary and Piaseczno. While this was happening, traffic was being diverted through the abandoned PGR Mysiadło. Today, Puławska's as busy as ever, these buildings remain abandoned.

Sitting here in my study, looking across at a mature garden, I can still remember when this 45 cubic metres of space that constitute the room I currently occupy, was the outdoors. A field. I can step out, walk around to the side of the house, over the fence - and I'm back in a field. But the bit of field that was once here has lost its field-like quality.

Where we live shapes our worldview.  It helps determine whether or not we're happy. Spirit of place is so important. Choosing exactly where you set down your roots should be determined by your soul, not by a pushy estate agent.

Spirit of place, spirit of age

Lent 2017, Day 12

Time makes its mark on places; the natural pace of erosion, trees topple in high winds, or get struck by lightning; floods, changing watercourses alter the landscape - but man has accelerated the pace of change in the environment. But how have man-made changes affected the spirit of place - the way our aesthetic sensibilities are touched by where we are?

Two photographs, taken at exactly the same spot (ul. Nawłocka, with ul. Trombity perpendicular to it), exactly ten orbits of the earth around the sun. As Jeziorki becomes more civilised, so its klimat changes, the way my consciousness savours it, changes.

Changes... Nawłocka was partially paved in August 2010, with speed bumps as an integral part of the it. The birch in the foreground was cut down, and the verge between field and road narrower, as the farmer tills more of the land. And the house has been built on plot prepared in the autumn of 2007 on the corner of Trombity and ul. Dumki. Aesthetically, that sense of 1950s America that I once used to feel strongly around here (see posts here and here) has evaporated. An ephemeral connection with another time, another place that's gone with progress.

Doubtless the next ten years (may they be peaceful) will bring more change, more development, more progress, and those fleeting moments of anomalous familiarity, congruent flashbacks to another consciousness, will get rarer.

Since childhood I have always been sensitive to spirit of place, preferring this route over that route for purely aesthetic reasons, this vista to that vista, this town to that town, and mourned the passing of buildings that I liked (the Great West Road's Golden Mile was never the same after Victor Matthews bulldozed the Firestone building one bank holiday weekend). Even the interiors of majestic buildings change their atmosphere; South Kensington's Science Museum today still has some galleries that remind me of my childhood, but many of the exhibits in wooden cabinets have been replaced by interactive displays in primary colours.

Here we are, conscious beings moving over the face of Planet Earth, absorbing our surroundings, we're a temporary part of where we live - a place that itself is becoming increasingly evanescent.
Time to wonder about those atoms vibrating about all over.

This time last year:
The crux of the matter

This time three years ago:
10,000 steps is a lot for one day

This time four years ago:
Bary mleczne - Warsaw's cheap eateries

This time five years ago:
Nikkor 45mm f2.8 pancake lens reviewed

This time six years ago:
Old Town, another prospect

This time seven years ago:
W-wa Śródmieście - commuters' staging post

This time eight years ago:
Filthy ul. Poloneza
[Now re-named ul. Kujawiaka]

This time nine years ago:
A sight that heralds the coming of spring

That's it - Karczunkowska's closed.

As promised, I was there with my camera to capture for local posterity the moment the last train passed the level crossing at W-wa Jeziorki. At two minutes past midnight, running nine minutes late, the train from Radom to W-wa Wschodnia crossed ul. Karczunkowska...

...and for the very last time the barriers were raised to let a vehicle through, a van carrying the barriers that would be erected to close the roads off to traffic. More on this in a moment.

I had a chat with the level crossing keeper, who said that the hut would still be manned until Monday, with the barriers permanently lowered. On Monday, a team from PKP PLK, the rail infrastructure operator, will come and remove all the viable equipment (some of which can be seen in the two shots below taken from both side windows).

The shots have the flavour of an O. Winston Link photo - all that's missing is a Norfork & Western freight train hauled by a massive steam engine hammering through. By Monday, all that will be left here will be an empty shell, to be demolished as it stands directly in the path of the viaduct.

I met Dr Marcin, who was distressed that ul. Buszycka and ul. Nawłocka had both been completely closed off by the road-builders' barriers. Now, given that ul. Buszycka is a cul-de-sac, this would have meant its inhabitants would have had their cars stranded. Below: the barriers in place. To get your car into ul. Buszycka would have meant dismantling this barrier as well as the one at the entrance to Buszycka itself (next turning on the right). A number of local residents were none too happy with this arrangement.

By the cold light of day, however, common sense had prevailed; the barriers at the mouths of ul. Buszycka and Nawłocka had been completely taken down and left to lie by the side of the road. The barrier across Karczunkowska had been partially dismantled, allowing access to Buszycka. If you click to enlarge this photo, you will see the level crossing barriers are down; they will remain down until finally removed. You can also make out on the right the path the new pavement will take - from ul. Nawłocka all the way to the station, all 380m of it. Progress!

Below: the temporary bus loop off the access road to Biedronka. The 209 is waiting to depart. Biedronka will suffer a massive drop in turnover, as few shoppers from Zgorzała, Zamienie and Dawidy Bankowe will do the 10km detour to come here. Commuters passing through will shop elsewhere on their diverted drive home,

While Jeziorki will lose the 715 and 319 buses, the number of 209s running in rush hours will rise from two to three and there will also be two L39s an hour throughout the day, although they will turn south onto ul. Puławska, requiring a clumsy change to catch a bus towards town.

The biggest question is: how long before the viaduct is completed and open? As I wrote, it took three years and two months to complete the viaduct carrying ul. Poloneza over the S2 expressway. But this is a more important road. Word from Ursynów town hall is that ul. Karczunkowska will reopen on 24 December ["W związku z przebudową trakcji na skrzyżowaniu z ul. Karczunkowską przejazd zostanie zamknięty od godziny 20.00 w dniu  20 sierpnia br. do dnia 24 grudnia br."] No mention in that sentence of the viaduct being opened - just that the overhead power lines will be in place by Christmas.

As usual with road closures, there are two types. Both are advertised with adequate signage. One type is hermetic - like on Baletowa or Krasickiego. You will not pass. Turn your car around and go back. The detour may be 10km long. But you cannot avoid it. The other type looks like the first - except you can drive right through, unhindered, slowing down for a bit of rough road surface. Because you can't tell until you get right up to the closure, there were many motorists driving up ul. Karczunkowska (2km ) to see there's no way across, then driving back (2km).

This time last year:
What happened to Poland's Amish?

This time two years ago:
PKP publishes plans for upgrade of Warsaw-Radom line

This time three years ago:
World's largest ship calls in at Gdańsk

This time five years ago:
Raymond's Treasure - a short story

This time six years ago:
Now an urban legend: Kebab factory under W-wa Centralna

This time seven years ago:
It was twenty years ago today

This time nine years ago:
By bike to Czachówek again