Progress on Warsaw Metro's Line 2

Taking a peek into the hole in the ground that stretches all the way along ul. Świętokrzyska, one can see that things are starting to take shape on Warsaw Metro's Line 2. Photo taken on corner of ul. Emilii Plater looking eastwards along ul. Świętokrzyska towards the crossroads between Świętokrzyska and Marszałkowska, where there will be the interchange between Line 1 and Line 2. The 6km central section of Line 2, linking seven stations (Rondo Daszyńskiego, Rondo ONZ, Świętokrzyska, Nowy Świat, Powiśle, Stadion and Dworzec Wileński) will open sometime in 2014.

In the meantime, the entire length of this stretch above ground is in chaos. Cars cannot pass (not a bad thing); I hope ul. Świętokrzyska will be pedestrianised.

Left: view westwards from the 31st (of 40) floor of Rondo ONZ 1, looking along ul. Prosta, the extension of Świętokrzyska.

Prosta is also closed to traffic for the duration. Note how Al. Jan Pawła Marchlewskiego (old taxi-driver joke) has been forced to make a curving diversion. From up here it looks like Scalextric track. And also see just how flat the Mazovian horizon is.

Line 2 is making its way to Rondo Daszyńskiego, thence it is planned to extend into Wola, undoubtedly trendifying the place. I must say, I know Kraków, Wrocław or Łódź better than I know Wola; extending the Metro system westwards will help revitalise this part of Warsaw. The building of the Hilton Hotel, the Warsaw Uprising Museum and several office developments have all helped to tug Warsaw's centre of gravity towards the west. Looking at the map - Ulrychów? Nowe Gorce? Stare Jelonki? I've never stepped foot in these places. Maybe once Line 2 is extended to distant Wola, I will.

This time last year:
Doric arches, ul. Targowa

This time two years ago:
A place in the country, everyone's ideal

This time five years ago:
I must go down to the sea again

Syrenki in Warsaw

The sixteen footballing syrenki or mermaids - one for each nation participating in the Euro 2012 championships (remember the championships, dear readers? How time flies) have been rounded up and placed in front of the Palace of Culture. For those of you not in the know, the mermaid is the symbol of Warsaw.

Though I'd question the way they've been positioned (two rows of four, behind them two rows of three; Poland and Ukraine out on the flanks in front as the two host countries), it's good to see them all together. During the championships, the 16 mermaids were located all over Warsaw, and I'd only manage to spot two (Spain and Sweden).

Below: another type of Syrenka - the FSM Syrena 105, one of the great indigenous triumphs of the Polish automotive industry of the communist period. This is a particularly lovely example, the whitewall tyres might not be strictly authentic, but they add so much to the period feel.

Below: just look at the styling cues inherent in the bodywork; I can see a Volvo 122, a Hillman Minx, a Morris Oxford, a Fiat 1100; for its time (the first Syrenki rolled off the production lines in 1957) a modern, spacious and capable small car. Had Poland not been under the yoke of Moscow, Syrenki could have been exported to the UK and Western Europe.

Half a million were made, the last ones being produced in 1983 - over a quarter of a century in production. Because of its smoky two-stroke engine, the Syrenka has been taken off the road in large numbers in the early 1990s, there a few survivors, and certainly few as nice as this example.

This time last year:
What's the Polish for 'impostor'?

This time two years ago:
Running with the storm on the road to Mamrotowo

This time four years ago:
St Pancras Station - new gateway to London

This time five years ago:
Mountains or sea? North Wales has them both

Newly fascinated by Mars

Well do I remember the first moon landing in July 1969; watching it on black and white television in my primary school assembly hall - the absolute thrill of it all. The entire Apollo programme, James Burke, Also Sprach Zarathustra, Kennedy Space Center, Jet Propulsion Lab, Pasadena, Houston Mission Control, Space Odyssey, Space Oddity - this was the future we were told would happen, and it was happening. All those episodes of Thunderbirds from the mid '60s, Dan Dare in Eagle, the Trajan Empire in Look and Learn; the future was Space. We were brought up to believe it would come to pass - it did. The moon landing was the apogee. I can still touch that optimism. And then came anti-climax; Apollo 13's dramatic return, golf on the moon - Apollo 17 just three and half years later, man's last visit to our lifeless satellite. Then the mundane launches of the Space Shuttle - two tragedies, fourteen dead astronauts - and countless satellites that give us what we take for granted today - multi-channel TV, GPS, Google Earth - the conquest of near space has given us multifarious benefits of which we are only vaguely aware.

Yet somehow Mars never grabbed me - from the outset those 1960s Mariner missions sent back fuzzy black-and-white images of something that looked no different to the moon. The landing of Viking I on Mars in June 1976 somehow passed me by (although those first colour images of the surface of the Red Planet, like the one below, do strike a chord when I look at them again).

Below: frost on thesurface of Mars - photo from the Viking 2 lander. Another world, no less than 54 million kilometres away, ice and blue sky. Photographs taken over 34 years ago! After Viking 1 and 2, it would be another 20 years until man (the Americans, for the USSR and its successor states failed to do this) would get some intelligent machinery back onto the surface of Mars.

Below: in 1996, the Pathfinder lander launched a small remote control vehicle, Sojourner, to roam around taking measurements of things. Sojourner, 65cm long, moved around for some two years, covering about 100m during that time. Below: Pathfinder takes a photo of Sojourner, investing a rock.

The next significant missions to Mars were the twin solar-powered Mars Exploration Rovers MER-A (Spirit) and MER-B (Opportunity), both of which landed in January 2004. Spirit conked out in 2010, but Opportunity is still going strong, sending amazingly beautiful photos back to earth.

Above: a b&w image looking back as Opportunity crawls out of a crater. The lovely colour panoramic photos taken by Opportunity are here. Below: a Martian sunset, taken by Spirit.

Next up - in 2008 - was a stationery lander, Phoenix, which descended on Mars's northern polar region and relayed findings to Earth for over five months. It was looking for traces of water; sadly it did not last out the Martian winter.

Left: autumn on Mars; photo taken by the Phoenix lander, 2008.

Are we amazed any more? The things mankind can do nowadays - are we impressed? Moni isn't. $2.5 billion spent on the current Curiosity mission - to me, that's 36 cents for every man, woman and child on the planet - it's a snip for the show we'll be getting.

Curiosity, which landed yesterday, is nuclear-powered, moves around at 4cm/second (eight times faster than Spirit and Opportunity), will tell us - and show us - more of Mars.

There are interesting things up there. The Caves of Mars, for example, or Martian geysers. Neither are on the agenda for this particular mission, but I must say I'm hooked. Below: photo taken by Curiosity on the day it landed, with Mount Sharp in the background. I'm looking forward to high-resolution colour photos in coming days.

I was born on the very day space travel began (4 October 1957, the launch of Sputnik 1). The first 12 years saw advances that were visibly rapid. The pace of extra-terrestrial exploration has slowed down since, but I would hope that within my life time we shall see men on Mars. What then? After early manned missions (maybe one-way missions), terraforming - making Mars suitable for regular human life. A fascinating thought.

The moon had my full attention as an 11 year-old. Mars is creeping up on me, it's significance - mythic as well as scientific. Seven years ago on holiday I had a dream about a discovery of anomalous artefacts on Mars that I turned into a short story; that dream is universal.

This evening Moni and I watched Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time. And there it all is - that myth. Are we really not alone? A scary thought - but no less scary than the realisation that we are indeed the only sentient beings in this vast universe of ours.

[All photos NASA. Who else?]

This time last year:
Rhetorical question: why the fuss?

This time two years ago:
Varsovians! Ditch the car - buy a quarterly karta miejska

This time three years ago:
The limited interests of mankind's geniuses

This time four years ago:
Into the fading light

This time five years ago:
Ar y Ffordd i Pwyl Rhydd

Spain under Franco - lessons for Poland?

I have just re-read Spain Under Franco a history by Max Gallo. The story of Francisco Franco and the Spain he ran from the end of the Civil War in 1939 right up to his death in 1975 is interesting.

The Civil War which Franco's nationalists won, was essentially a military reaction against the Spanish Republic, a brief chaotic period during which downtrodden peasants and factory workers - among Europe's poorest - felt they had a chance to wrest some power from the traditional dominance of the landowners, bosses and clergy. With the Civil War - a messy coup that took over two and half years to complete - came terror - the Red Terror (Republicans slaughtering Nationalist supporters including thousands of clergymen), and the White Terror (Nationalists slaughtering Republican sympathisers). Because the Nationalists won, the scale of their terror was some three-four times greater in terms of its victims.

Anti-clericalism played a key part in the Red Terror. The Church had supported the status quo, the landowners, the aristocracy. If you were poor, you needed to accept that it was your lot in life. The consequent violence meted out to Catholics in Republic-held areas drove many into the arms of Franco's nationalists.

Franco was a traditionalist; nationalist indeed and deeply Catholic - and that just about sums up his ideology, other than he was against socialism, communism, liberalism, atheism, modernism. He was "a firm believer in the Jewish-Masonic-Bolshevik conspiracy - a conspiracy in which Jews and Freemasons, and leftists, notionally sought the destruction of Christian Europe, with Spain as a principal target", to quote from the Wikipedia page. He was not a Fascist (though he found it convenient to include the Falange in his government), nor was he a National Socialist.

After coming to power, the main aim for the remaining 36 years of his life was to retain power.

In April 1945, the situation looked bleak for Franco. The two men who helped him win the Civil War were no longer in power. Hitler had taken his life and Mussolini was dangling upside down from a meat-hook. The newly-formed United Nations did not want Franco's Spain for a member. Spain's economy after 1945 was in tatters. Six years after the end of the Civil War, grinding poverty, hunger and corruption were endemic, industrial and agricultural production were at pre-1913 levels. The deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, the imprisonment or emigration of many thousands more, left the country in a feeble state. Over 60% of Spain's GDP was spent on the military and security services. [For an idea of what Spain looked like at that time, google images for "Eugene Smith" + "Spanish Village", the photographer's reportage for Life magazine in 1950.]

In the late 1940s, Franco's prospects suddenly looked much brighter. The Iron Curtain was sliding into place, and Franco, for a change, found himself on the side of the good guys. And so, for American and Western European consumption, Spain became an important bastion against Godless communism, propped up by billions of American dollars, courtesy of the Marshall Plan. For domestic consumption, however, Spain was still an important bastion against Godless communism, and democracy, liberalism, materialism, freedom of expression and modernity.

Spain's economy only really got going in 1959 when money from American aid, foreign direct investment and holiday-makers from north-west Europe pulled it out of autarky and nudged it into the globalising mainstream. By then, Franco was old and tired, leaving economic affairs, which he did not truly understand, to young technocrats and the men from the IMF and World Bank.

He died in 1975; fortunately, Spain had a royal family and a bloodless transition from dictatorship to constitutional monarchy ensued.

Spain is a fascinating country; it had a huge colonial empire and yet by the early 20th Century it was one of Europe's poorest economies. There are many interesting historical and political parallels for Poland. Max Gallo's book explains how one man managed to keep hold of a major European state for so long - much of it was down to luck.

Signs of progress along the S2

After returning from our British break, I was curious to see how work along the S2, Warsaw's southern bypass, was progressing. On Friday, I cycled to work along ul. Poloneza. The asphalt on the viaduct is nearly ready; the pavement, cycle path, lighting, ditto. Of course this is all spurious, because the viaduct does not connect up to the tarmacked road network to the south; 240 metres of dirt track separate the viaduct from ul. Ludwinowska. Will the two be joined in the near future? The road builders have erected an earthwork rampart to prevent commuters from taking advantage of the nearly-completed viaduct. For cyclists, there's the minor inconvenience of having to push your bike over the top of this rampart; it is annoying (the viaduct was originally meant to have been ready in December 2010).

Time, then, to see what's happening along ul. Hołubcowa and at the railway viaduct. Let's start at Hołubcowa, the second of two road bridges over the S2 between ul. Puławska and Węzeł Lotnisko. The beams have now all been laid across the supports and now await decking. Knowing how long the bridge carrying ul. Poloneza has taken, I guess it will comfortably be another 12 months before cars can start using this structure.

Above: the viaduct is unusual in that it curves to the left (looking north). The new line of ul. Hołubcowa will not follow the existing one, but swings off towards ul Czempińska. The railway tracks in the foreground lead to the Metro depot and form the only rail link between Warsaw's Metro system and the outside world.

Above: first view from the top. In the distance to the left, we can see work in progress on the railway viaduct, which is being built in situ while the S2 burrows its way under it.

Above: the giant crane that positioned the beams onto the supports. Its reach is immense - it spans the entire width of the expressway. Its work complete, it will soon be gone from here. Now, on to the railway viaduct.

Interestingly, it was only used at nights, when planes were not landing at Okęcie. When extended to full height, it poses a danger to low-flying aircraft.

Below: the first section is ready, and trains are using it. Indeed, all trains passing this point travel over this one single line, both diesel-hauled coal trains and passenger trains on the Warsaw-Radom line.

Below: both north- and southbound tracks on the Warsaw-Radom line have been cut; it seems that the two viaducts will be done together. I'm impressed at the speed the first viaduct was completed, but I fear the complexity of the remaining work (including gouging out the space below for the expressway) might drag on.

Below: a new gantry has been erected to allow electrified traffic to swing across to the coal-train line and use the first completed section of the viaduct.

The scale of the engineering work here is, by Polish standards, complex. Much can go wrong. Yesterday's Gazeta Wyborcza reported that geological samples of the the embankment carrying the S2 between the airport and A2 motorway (Bilfinger Berger's stretch, rather than the bit being built to Puławska by Teerag-Asdag) have show substandard materials and may have to be dug out and replaced - a hideously costly and time-consuming job if indeed this is the case. My earlier estimate of Puławska getting connected to the A2 by Christmas 2013 may prove over-optimistic.

This time last year:
Quiet afternoon in the bazaar

This time two years ago:
The politics of the symbol

This time three years ago:
Warsaw's walls bear witness

Lemmings and Poland's "right"*

Today's Gazeta Wyborcza publishes a text by Adam Leszczyński Lemingi zatopią prawicę ('Lemmings will sink the right'). The use of the pejorative term 'lemming' to describe anyone who's not a paid-up PiSite Smolensk conspiracy theory is not new to me. Two years ago (almost to the day) I had an evening meal at the India Curry with Toyah, a commentator on his blog, Lemming, and a commentator from my blog, AdTheLad. That particular evening's discussions are recorded here. Mr Lemming is notable for me as being the first person that I met to use that term (although as an online nickname for himself, with a probable dose of irony).

The term has now come to suggest lemming-like uncritical followers of The System which will lead them all to their doom. Mr Leszczyński's article is comprehensive in its analysis (if you can't read Polish copy it into Google Translate for a rough idea of his drift), but he is suggesting that the Poland's Young Educated Urban citizens, concerned about mortgages, drinking lattes from Starbucks, playing around with their iPhones and iPads, are not in the least bit interested in Smolensk conspiracy theories and just want to get on with their lives.

Yet by mocking this growingly significant part of the electorate, PiS is cutting off its nose to spite its face - you will never win over people you openly mock. Derision breeds derision.

PiS languishes in the opinion polls around the 25% mark. Mainly the disaffected, the economic losers of Poland's economic and political transformation (mainly, not not exclusively).

Smoleńsk was a national tragedy of proportions unparalleled in Poland's post 1989 history. But let's move on, PiS. Stay focused on this and that 25% will dwindle with every subsequent election (and Jarosław Kaczyński has already lost three).

I remember our curry dinner two years ago, at which Mr Lemming interestingly pointed to Germany's two major postwar parties - the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, saying that this offers a closer comparison to where the fault line lies in Polish politics than a viewpoint comparing Labour and Tory, Democrat and Republican.

If PiS are to rise to the stature of German's CDU, they'd do well to ditch the baggage, stop calling the rest of us names, and offer some constructive policy initiatives on improving the functioning of the Polish state, finding ways of financing infrastructure projects and making Poland's economy more competitive.

[* I use the lazy term "right" in the sense of Francisco Franco rather than Margaret Thatcher. My personal brand of conservatism focuses on the individual taking responsibility for their own fate, their own way in life, and not expecting the State to have to help them out along the way. I believe the State should be small and efficient, its work-rate on par with the private sector, not a bloated, over-sized administration staffed by family and friends of Party politicians. How my credo makes me a lewak is utterly beyond me.]

This time last year:
Mazowieckie province tempts with mini- and micro-breaks

This time two years ago:
Pride and anger [Warning - post contains Smoleńsk-related content]

If you're new to my blog, having popped over from Toyah's, do take a look at all these posts.

Here today, gone tomorrow

It is rather surprising that a business offering investors a 13% return on their capital by investing in gold, then ploughing the money into an airline that could offer 99-złoty flights from Okęcie to several cities around Poland, did not get properly scrutinised by the Polish media. After all, Amber Gold and OLT Express billboards were everywhere...

On Tuesday I went for lunch with colleagues from work, and we noticed the OLT Express billboard, several stories high, on the side of a building on ul. Krucza was still there. As I'd left my camera in the office that lunchtime, I resolved to snap it for posterity on my way back to the Metro that evening. By five o'clock it had gone.

Yesterday morning, I passed an even bigger billboard, for Amber Gold, occupying two sides of a building on the corner of Al. Jerozolimskie, by Rondo ONZ. I resolved to photograph it at lunchtime, when the sun would illuminate both sides. Again, I was too late. So here's a photo taken on Monday morning showing just one panel of the billboard, the one facing Al. Jerozolimskie (below).

Below: and the same spot this morning, the Amber Gold advert had gone. The end of the month, and down go the ads that have not renewed their contracts.

I was puzzled for a while as to why the Konica Minolta ad remains atop this building. The firm, created out of the merger of Konica and Minolta in 2003, ceased making cameras in 2006, when Sony acquired the business. Why would this ad (illuminated at night) still be hear after six years? The reason is that (unlike OLT Express) Konica Minolta as a brand is alive and well - it's just that they no longer make cameras - just imaging technology (photocopiers, what have you).

Varsavianistas can take a peek on Google Maps, Google Streetview or Panoramio on Google Earth to see archive pics showing many billboards advertising recently defunct brands gracing Warsaw's streets. I sincerely hope their number will not swell in coming months and years.

This time last year:
The Twilight Rambler
[my first posting on 2 August]

'W'-Hour, and Warsaw pays tribute

For my father, Bohdan Dembiński, 89, who fought in the Warsaw Uprising in Batalion Odwet.

Each successive first of August is an opportunity to become ever-more closely acquainted with the history of the Warsaw Uprising (see links below for a personal overview of its significance). Today I was on ul. Marszałkowska to mark 'W'-hour (sadly there was no flypast this year), but the sight of an entire city (almost) coming to a complete halt and standing still as the sirens wailed could not have failed to have made a strong impression.

Cycling to work up ul. Puławska, I noticed hand-painted banners stretched out across both sides of the new footbridge (kładka) in Pyry, reading 'God, Honour, Fatherland'...

...and another hung up on the railway viaduct, reminding us that this is the day; that we should remember that the 63 days of the Uprising are indeed a matter of pride.

Below: the PASTA building, just after the sirens had stopped. Scenes of ferocious fighting; the Home Army captured the German communications HQ; in the basement of the former Polish Telephone Company building lay the cables (a bundle several feet in diameter) linking Berlin to the Ostfront. A sign of the times - in the foreground, the Warsaw offices of the Bank of China.


Right: my father told me only recently that he spent most of the Uprising on ul. Noakowskiego. What better day than today to check it out. There is a plaque here saying (and I'll translate: "Politechnika Region: A Warsaw Uprising stronghold from 1 August to 2 October 1944. Unbroken line of barricades defended by soldiers of the 'Golski' 3rd Armoured Battalion, 6th Śródmieście Grouping, Home Army. It survived every ferocious attack by the enemy - On the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of the Uprising - for the memory of generations").

My father spent 44 days (from 16 August to 2 October) defending the buildings at nos. 16 and 18 ul. Noakowskiego. For me, having walked along the street today, and then spoken at length this evening to my father about his experiences (including listening to Mieczysław Fogg sing at the commemoration of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Archecture Department of the Warsaw Politechnic on ul. Lwowska), the link with the Uprising is most tangible. Long may it remain so.

Remembering 'W'-Hour:
Last year.

Three years ago.