Oldschool photochallenge

Left: A Trabant on ul. Fabryczna yesterday; note white-on-black numberplates and the Niewiadów N250 trailer behind the car.

What struck me about this view is the total absense of any element in the picture that could place it any time later than 1991 (when Trabant production came to an end).

Time, I think, to fish out more photos, where car and background hark back to another age. Worldwide, the Trabant is probably the most iconic vehicle of the communist era, even though in Poland it was relatively rare compared to the Fiat 126P Maluch. Yet the Fiat 126's more modern design, and the fact that it was a familiar shape in western Europe, deprives it of icon status outside of Poland.

Right: another Trabant in Warsaw (photo from February 2008). This is ul. Rzymowskiego in lower Mokotów, not too far from Galeria Mokotów. Everything is right in this picture, down to the fetching shade of orange for the waste bin and the pre-MSI signage on the entrance to the flats, built of course using wielka płyta (pre-fabricated units).

Left: FSM Syrena 105 in Saska Kępa. The Syrena, an indigenous Polish design (both body and engine) was built in smaller numbers than the Trabant (half a million vs. three million) and was built mainly for the domestic market, so its communist cult car status is reserved for Poland; sadly the Syrena is not widely known abroad.

The 105, unlike its predecessors, had front-hinged doors. Nicknamed skarpeta ('sock') because, well, it looked like one. Or indeed, as some wags put it - because it smelled like one.

Above: Zielona Góra, January 2009. Another photo where nothing gives away modernity; this could be 1991 or even 1981. The Trabant is a late-model 1.1 Universal, or estate car (kombi). Like the Trabants above the 1.1 was powered by a VW Polo engine rather than the original wheezy and polluting two-stroke unit originally fitted to the Trabant 601 from 1963 to 1990.

Above: W-wa Zachodnia, 2009. Or 1989? Can you see any signs of modernity in this, Warsaw's (if not Poland's) worst railway station?

And so: a challenge to my fellow bloggers: Can you post a photo from present-day Poland that still reeks of the atmosphere of the communist era? Extra points if you can do so in Warsaw, rather than some miasto powiatowe in the middle of nowhere. Photos will be rigorously scrutinised for signs of modern advertising, signage, decoration, fashions, mobile telephony etc.

Original posts are here (Mokotów), here (Saska Kępa) and here (Zielona Góra).

This time last year:
Warsaw's wonderful nooks and crannies

This time three years ago:
Viaduct to the airport

My favourite bridge, from topside

I've written about the Most Poniatowskiego before (notably here); unquestionably my favourite bridge in Warsaw. A damp winter's afternoon, wet snow, just around sunset - a good time to catch some atmosphere on the deck of the bridge before continuing by tram to get to Moni's school meeting.

Below: looking across from Most Poniatowskiego to the railway bridge over the Vistula that runs almost parallel. Four railway tracks are carried across the river, taking trains out of the Tunel Średnicowy and over to Praga and the east.

Below: last tram stop on the west side of the Vistula. Looking towards Praga on the right bank; the lights of the Stadion Narodowy (national stadium) to the left of the picture; construction is moving ahead in good time to be ready for next year's football championships.

Most Poniatowskiego connects two roundabouts named after statesmen: Rondo De Gaulle'a on the left bank and Rondo Waszyngtona on the right bank. Alight at Rondo Wosh (where the row of lights converge) for Sophisticated Saska and Park Skaryszewski.

This time last year:
Illuminating snow from beneath

This time two years ago:
Poloneza drivetime, winter

This time three years ago:
Looking up over Jeziorki

Less well-known Old Town

Think of Warsaw's Old Town, and you'll think of the Rynek Starego Miasta (Old Town Market), the Barbakan, the Plac Zamkowy facing the Royal Castle. But there's more to the Old Town than that. This evening I was on ul. Jezuicka to pick up Eddie from the Teatr Staromiejski where he went with his class to see The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) in Polish.

A good opportunity to take some photos of the less well-known parts of the Old Town. Above: looking from ul. Jezuicka (standing outside the theatre) towards ul. Kanonia.

Above: looking along ul. Kanonia towards ul. Jezuicka; in the background St. John's Cathedral (katedra św. Jana).

Above: ul. Kanonia, the archway to the right opens up to ul. Dziekania. And there's Eddie. Sadly, he wasn't impressed by the play, or theatre in general. It was a cold night; I was glad for the warmth of the big furry hood of my new M-65 parka.

This time two years ago:
Where the motorways will meet

This time three years ago:
Spring comes early to London

To the Catch - Part Two

Their day had gone well; by late afternoon the nets were fuller of fish than either brother could remember, and a dozen well-shot ducks lay in the bottom of the boat. With such a bountiful catch it was imperative for them to get to Pinsk's river market as soon as they could. There was still a long two day's journey ahead of them; after rowing downstream towards the Pina for a more few hours; then they'd tie up the boat just after sunset and sleep in it before setting off early the next morn.

Igor and Borislav unpacked their blankets and bedding and settled down to get as comfortable as possible; the night was mild, there were no mosquitos about as yet; they prayed to God thanking Him for his providence in the day's catch. They woke before dawn and after breaking fast on bread, cheese and milk, they loosed the boat and set off towards Pinsk. The morning passed uneventfully; they took the opportunity to shoot some more duck, one of which the roasted for lunch over an open fire.

Back in the river for an afternoon's intensive rowing, it was Borislav who heard it first - a low chugging sound from downstream; above the treeline they could make out a plume of black smoke. The river here was fairly straight but there were many submerged trees in the breadth of the floodwaters' flow; reeds impaired their view. The noise became louder. Neither Igor nor Borislav could identify it. Clanking and puffing it came into sight - pushing through the reedy waters - a vessel larger than either man had ever seen in his life. Huge it was - a hundred feet or more - dark grey, made of iron plates, broad and low it sat in the water, with a chimney belching black smoke, like from a factory, and on the foredeck a gun turret with two enormous cannon, behind it some superstructure, the bridge, masts, more guns... two paddle wheels, one on either side, churned the water propelling the behemoth towards them.

Igor motioned to Borislav to get down and to reverse their boat deeper into the rushs. Both men were clearly frightened by the strange vessel - nothing they had ever experienced had prepared them for it. They covered themselves with reed matting that they used as hunting camouflage when approaching ducks, and lay low. Though the sight was terrifying, it was fascinating. They decided to inch their boat forward to get a better look.

The vessel was moving towards them at almost the speed of a galloping horse. Sparks were flying out of the funnel amid the black smoke. The ship was not following a straight course but moving in a broad arc towards the left, one beam lower in the water than the other. As the ship passed them, within 40 or 50 feet, they could both clearly make out the forms of three men on the rear deck, motionless; one sprawled out in a chair, two lying prostrate, one clutching a bottle, glass glinting in the afternoon sun. Their elaborate uniforms suggested that all these men were officers.

"Dead drunk?" asked Borislav. "Poisoned...?" whispered Igor. "A mutiny, perhaps..." The paddle wheels churned on crazily, the wake of the heavy vessel passing struck the brothers' boat almost pitching them both overboard. As the waters calmed, they took courage and propelled their craft into mid-stream so they could watch the runaway gunboat charge on down the river. There was still no sign of life on deck. "Look, it will crash!" said Borislav. Sure enough, the mighty vessel was headed for a large stand of partially submerged silver birch trees beyond which lay dense undergrowth and dry land.

They followed the ship with their gaze, standing up to watch it as it smashed into the trees, the sound of splintering birch trunks. After several minutes silence, there was a terrific hissing sound of steam exiting the ruptured boiler. And then again, silence.

Borislav looked at his brother. "Should we go and see? Help the wounded? Or if they're all dead - there must be firearms on board, provisions, clothing, instruments, bedding, cutlery... Let's go and look..."

Igor counselled caution. "Let us go on to Pinsk. God has granted us a rich bounty. We should sell it. We'll be coming back this way, in three days time, to this catch".

This time last year:
Greed, fear and flight

This time two years ago:
Poland: is there a crisis going on?

To the catch - a short story

Mid-April, and Easter would be soon be upon them once again; first the Catholic one, and then – unusually that year – only a week later, the Orthodox one. Both Igor and his younger brother Borislav experienced the anticipation of this period of great joy most intensely. The snows had finally retreated, melting to flood the Pripyat Marshes to their fullest extent, the sun was now shining strongly, rising earlier, setting later, that warmth and light so yearned for during the cold grey months that had just passed. The vigour of the earth flourishing around them stirred their souls, and at this time of day, just before dawn, that familiar smell of returning life filled their smiling nostrils.

They had just set off from their wooden house, situated on edge of the small settlement where they lived with their aging mother. Both men were tall though sparsely built. Each carried a shotgun, a heavy bag and a dense tangle of fishing nets. They wore leather boots, still damp and heavy from wading in the floodwaters the previous day, pulled up over rough woollen trousers, loose cotton shirts hanging down over their hips and shapeless woollen jumpers, and faded, navy-blue peaked caps pulled down over their foreheads.

Their weather-beaten faces, high cheekbones and sky-blue eyes suggested the men to be Polyeshuks – the indigenous inhabitants of Polesye, people who defined themselves as tutejsi – the people from here. Neither White Ruthenian, nor Ukrainian, nor Polish nor Russian – they were the people of the Pripyat, the vast expanse of wetland that split the trade routes crossing central and eastern Europe's borderlands. Mistrusting those neighbours who did not live in the endless cycle of freeze, thaw and flood, the Polyeshuks lived as their ancestors had, fishing and fowling in this watery landscape. Neither did these people define themselves by faith; they'd go to the Catholic church for holy days, and to the Orthodox one for its holy days, remembering how to cross themselves in each, and not to engage in theological discussions with anyone, avoiding eye contact with priests.

Igor and Borislav passed between the silent houses, along a muddy lane between unpainted wooden fences. Here and there a dog would bark, chained to a post. Frogs were croaking in the reedbeds behind the houses. At the settlement's end the path broadened, rutted with cart-tracks, studded with hoofprints, on either side silver birches in new leaf and pinetrees. A moon, almost three-quarters full, was setting as the men walked up to the edge of the swollen river, and clumped along the planks of a rickety wooden platform to which was moored their boat. A light mist hung over the water, an encouraging sign that the day should stay fair. Saying little to one another, the brothers put their equipment into their flat-bottomed, sharp-prowed vessel, untied it and cast off into the mist.

Their day would be a long one; with God's grace, their catch would be bountiful; then they would punt or paddle north east through the flooded marshlands and on, up the Pina river, towards Pinsk, another two full days ahead of them, during which they may catch more fish. On reaching Pinsk, they would steer their vessel into the crowded river market, and hopefully realise a good price for their catch. For the money, they'd buy provisions for themselves, for the house, for their mother.

This is a journey they'd done often times before; both men fondly remembered their many journeys to Pinsk with their father, who'd taught them everything they knew about catching fish, shooting waterfowl and trading in the market. He'd been dead twelve winters long now, but spirit was with them, it was in the boat he'd built, in the guns that he'd saved up to buy his sons.

A rich sunrise delighted their souls as they propelled the boat towards the best fishing grounds where perch and carp swam in abundance. And ducks – they would be keen to ambush a flock or two before the sun rose too high. Stealthy propelling their boat through the reeds, heads down low, between the partially-submerged silver birches, they knew that at this time of year, at this time of day, they could easily bag a dozen or more ducks at rest on the floodwaters. And for the money... and the fish they'd catch! Pinsk would have much to offer the brothers.

Pinsk – the biggest town they'd ever seen in their lives. So many buildings, made of brick and stone; churches, stores, wagons, bridges, factories, a railway line! So many attractions – so much to buy, to look at – and the crowds, Russians, Poles, Jews, Germans... the elegant women... both knew the success of their journey to Pinsk would be determined by the size of their catch and the money they could raise by selling it. But before they could get to enjoy the town, they would need to get there.

The concluding Part II of this short story will be posted tomorrow night...

This time last year:
Eternal Warsaw

This time three years ago:
From the family archives

New winter wear

Impatience, male vanity - call it what you will - I felt the need for a new winter coat. While my M-65 field coat is supremely comfortable outerwear for temperatures as low as -20C, wearing it every single day from late-November to late-March gets a bit, well, monotonous.

So what do I do? - I buy an M-65 fishtail parka. Same concept - US Army garments are hard-wearing, practical, comfortable and... well, iconic. Made in the USA. The American military would never outsource its clothing supply to China.

The Parka, Extreme Cold Weather comes with Liner, Extreme Cold Weather, Parka, and optional Hood, Winter, W/Synthetic Fur Ruff. The detachable liner and hood will both fit into the M-65 field coat. The fishtail bit... the two flaps at the back of the parka enable the wearer to tie the double drawstrings about the thighs for added warmth and mobility.

The obvious advantage of the parka over the field coat is its length; I can wear the parka over a suit without having to tuck the bottom of the jacket into the coat (having suit jacket showing from beneath the hem of a coat is a grave fashion faux pas).

The US Army parka just comes in olive green, unlike the field coat, which is available in several plain colours including black, navy blue and écru, as well as in woodland and desert disruptive camouflage patterns.

Regular readers will know I have a thing about the USA in the late-40s and early-50s; this particular coat is mid-60s but somehow still feels right for me. The predecessor to the M-65 was the M-51 parka (from, of course, 1951), but that has a fixed hood. That was the one worn by mods - the subculture group that tore around England on Vespas and Lambrettas in the mid-1960s (as featured in the film Quadrophenia).

Mine was from the Militaria shop in the underground passage between W-wa Śródmieście and W-wa Centralna stations, 310 złotys (plus 50 złotys for the hood) around £80.

World's best male outdoor tailoring? The US Armed Forces!

A Dream Too Far (Part II)

Joad and I drifted out of the Faber & Faber offices into Russell Square and found ourselves in another office nearby; but it was a quite different setting. Familiar to me, deeply unsettling to him. This time we were in my times, not his. He was evidently confused yet fascinated with what I was showing him. 

A room full of wall-mounted plasma monitors, with people in casual attire gaping at them. I looked up with Joad at the nearest screen. “CNN DATELINE 24 DECEMBER 2012 – LIVE PICTURES FROM MARS PROBE”. Above this we could see against the background of reddish Martian rocks and thin sky, a robotic arm picking up what the voice-over called an ‘anomalous artefact’ – a piece of dusty latticework, like a piece of a plastic tennis racket or a snow shoe. A TV studio full of excited pundits chimed in, live; some voices were trying to explain this away – debris from an earlier mission, a strange geological feature – whilst others attempting to place a historical significance on this discovery. ‘The end of mankind’s innocence’ proclaimed a talking head, before the commercial break.

The office in which we stood erupted into heated debate. Was this real? What would this mean for us all? Soon TV was back with the Martian rover. The camera, which had been focused on the latticework artefact, panned slowly upwards from the floor of the gully on which the probe had been standing. We looked up towards the far end of the gully. There, we were – both out of our time – we thought we could see... a tubular structure crossing from one edge of the gully to the other. By now, digitally-enhanced images of the latticework object were appearing on thousands of websites, some of these being brought up onto the bank of monitors before us. The rover began to roll up the valley floor, its camera zooming in to the top end of the gully. Joad looked at me in amazement. There we were – both out of our own time, myself but a year and half into my own future, Joad more than three-quarters of a century – witnessing above the hubbub of this high-tech office what could be the most significant moment in the history of mankind. 

The TV pundits were quiet. The images were clear, they were being witnessed by hundreds of millions of viewers around the globe – a tubular bridge linking the two banks of this Martian valley. Looking like a huge cigarette, mostly off-white in colour, yellowy-tan like a filter tip at the left-hand end, with what seemed to be windows (reminding me a bit of a pedestrian walkway spanning the motorway at a service station), this was unambiguously a structure of non-human construction.

The pundits were beside themselves. Not just an anomalous artefact. This was some 100ft long by 12ft diameter engineering project erected by some race that had got to Mars before contemporary man. All TV channels were by now showing the same image. A talking head in the BBC World studio put forward the proposition that it could have been an ancient Earth based civilization that built this bridge – Atlanteans. The studio pundits – sober scientists – were in a fluster – all of a sudden Atlantis had become just as plausible to them as aliens from other solar systems.

Joad and I left the offices. We boarded an 88 bus (I had seen a toy London bus with this number in the little shop in the caravan site in North Wales) heading down Oxford Street towards the suburbs. We sat on the top deck. All talk was of Mars. “It was not even like this the day the Great War broke out”, said Joad, somberly. He asked me how I thought this would affect the beliefs of organised religions around the world; would the discovery sharpen or dull mankind’s drive to learn and discover, were these alien bridgebuilders still alive…

I was about to reply when the dream faded, or rather mutated. Joad, the bus, London disappeared, I found myself atop Mount Olympus (no doubt a reference to Mars’ highest peak), surrounded by scantily-clad Greek goddesses...

I woke up sweating. My sweat has a strange smell, like liver sausage pâté on a shortbread biscuit.

Before breakfast I wrote down the key points of the above-mentioned dream, and continued to finish reading Joad’s book. A few days later I was home, holiday over. With unfettered access to the internet I carried out another search to find out more about the author of Experimenting with Time. I, entered a few key phrases into Google’s search box. There were several second-hand copies for sale listed, lots of chaff - D. W. Joads from Australia or California boasting of their sporting prowess or their real estate business – and finally – the info I was looking for –

“D.W. Joad – Aviation Pioneer and Author. Born Westbury, Wiltshire, 18 September 1874, died 30 July 1935, Southgate Asylum for the Insane”.

A Dream Too Far - a short story

As we do each year, we left London for our annual holiday in North Wales stopping off en route in the Derbyshire village of D_______, where lives my brother with his family. With the children all fast asleep upstairs, my brother, his wife and I were sitting up late drinking organic cider and home-made wine, tucking into cheese and crackers and discussing ever-more metaphysical subjects, the mysteries of the universe and such. I was telling him about my latest thinking about the human spirit and precognition, and he fetched me down an old book that he’d bought over 25 years ago while still a student living in Leamington Spa. It was entitled Experimenting with Time by D. W. Joad (3rd edition, Faber & Faber, 1934).

It was written by an early British pioneer of flight who had had many amazing dreams of precognition that came true, dreams of death, dreams of chance meetings, dreams of disasters. After many years of such dreaming such dreams, he committed them to paper along with a theory of how (in light of the latest theories of Einstein) it was possible to see into the future. The second part of the book deals with an experiment carried out by Joad in the late 1920s in which he put together a team of ‘dreamers’ and each morning systematically logged their dreams, searching their content for meaningful coincidences. His aim was to give his own experiences a quantitative, theoretical and analysis.

On holiday in North Wales, I’d spend the August drizzly days reading Joad’s book. The more I read, the more I felt that I should contact him from the here and now. By turning up as a character in one of his frequent precognitive dreams, I could offer him a briefing into how the rest of the 20th Century had unfolded. Every night, I’d drop off to sleep and attempt to dream myself back to Joad’s time, England in the mid-1930s. Yet it would not be easy; his book gave no biographical detail as to where he lived, nor had my research at the local internet café yielded me more information about his life (other than the scarce availability of Experimenting with Time and his earlier book Parallel Universes in the occasional online bookshop).

Night after night I’d drift off to sleep to dream. Once, I was in 19th century Paris (where I’d built a new but ultimately unprofitable Metro system), or in Cairo (featuring my mother blackening her face with mud, head in a shawl, while an English pie-seller and her bedraggled children begged for alms), the Humber Bridge (a typical fear-of-heights dream), Warsaw – (a tram crashing into a police van) – then, one night I’d finally got to London, but on the wrong side of the river – Sydenham, Penge… (I was exploring back alleyways looking for an empty property to squat in – to be finally chased off by a swarm of angry wasps!). Another night I found myself in West London, where a cricket pitch had bisected a number of long gardens along the back of Ealing’s Gordon Road. I’d wake each morning and make some notes. By day I’d be continuing to read this fascinating book, each evening I'd persevere in dreaming myself into Joad’s life and times.

Finally, on the last night of the holiday, I finally found myself where I wanted to be: right place, right time. I dreamt that I was standing on the parapet of the railway viaduct overlooking the Great Western Railway line at Greenford. I glanced down and saw two steam locomotives. I knew that if I were to follow that line, I’d eventually reach Paddington Station. I found myself hovering about a yard above the railway track, travelling forward, with neither engine before me nor carriages behind, at 80 miles an hour through the suburbs, through the Ealings and Actons, past the soot-blackened backs of houses overlooking the line at Westbourne Park and Royal Oak, hurtling inexorably towards the buffers at Platform 1, where I smoothly drew up to a halt. Stepping off the platform, I joined a bowler-hatted throng of City gents making their way up the cobbled ramp towards Praed Street; I continued on foot.

My destination was 24 Russell Square London, W.C.1, Faber & Faber’s offices, as mentioned on the flyleaf of the book. Soon I found myself walking down Devonshire Street. Navigating London’s imperious throroughfares, I soon made it to Russell Square. This was Christmas Eve! No doubt stirred by a memory of a Christmas lunch that I'd attended many years ago at a Russell Square hotel – but this could not be more fortuitous! For as soon as I’d located Number 24 did I realise that the publishers were seasonally entertaining their authors and editors, and immediately I found D. W. Joad. ‘Don’t go to town wearing brown’ the saying went; yet this short man with his pointed grey goatee beard, looking dapper for his years in a brown three-piece tweed suit was evidently up for the day rather than an employee of the publisher.

Mr Joad was holding forth to a small group of inquistive editors when I approached him. I immediately introduced myself as a reader of his books – from 75 years into the future. This led to a titter from his listeners, but Joad at least pretended to take me seriously. I decided not to talk about World War 2, the atomic bomb, the Communist Menace, etc – but rather about advances in science – evolutionary biology, sub-atomic physics (how Schroedinger’s cat was simultaneously both alive and dead until an observer looked). Joad was impressed. The other listeners drifited away, glasses in hand, to less intense chit-chat.

No doubt under the influence of the seasonal cheer, he had found the courage to ask me the one question I felt he’d ask. “What, Sir, do you know of the time and circumstances of my death?” I replied that I had been anticipating this question and that my internet searches (“a collection of powerful computing machines around the world, linked together by telephone lines to form a giant network, searching vast banks of electronic data”) had informed me only of his books, indeed of those bookshops dotted around the English-speaking world holding second-hand copies in stock. I told him, truthfully, that I could find no biographical notes other than a few brief mentions of his pioneering aeronautical work. He showed himself to be at once flattered and relieved.

The dream began to change...

The concluding Part II of this short story will be posted tomorrow night...

This time last year:
Compositions in white, blue and gold

This time two years ago:
Dobra and The Road

This time three years ago:
Plane full of Polish VIPs crashes in forest