And then it rained

Last night's rain will become legendary; it was the rain that prevented Poland from playing England in the World Cup qualifying match at the National Stadium. Yes, there's a sliding roof, but it, er... doesn't work when it's raining. It's been a very dry summer and a dry start to autumn, but last night it poured.

Below: rain spills out from guttering at W-wa Ochota station, it's quarter past eight and the match is due to start or not. "The weather is something beyond everyone's control" states Roy Hodgson, England manager, in the tradition of football truism.

The match is called off, it continues raining, I wade home from W-wa Jeziorki station.

The morning. Ul. Taneczna, near Poleczki (below). Submerged from edge to edge. Pavements under water too. The risk of flooding one's engine is high, so drivers are moving through the water at less than walking pace.

Polish streets - even recently built ones - don't have storm drains and kerbside guttering the way British ones have. So when the rain really comes down - disaster. Below: looking towards Poleczki. Notice the way all the cars are hugging the left side of the road - British style!

Onwards, toward the city centre via the airport. On the 148 bus, at ul. Wirażowa; it already gone 11am. The flood water has subsided somewhat, but a few hours ago, there was complete traffic chaos at this junction, a major thoroughfare between south-west and southern Warsaw.



When ul. Wirażowa was rebuilt as a dual carriageway a few years ago, there was a massive flood water retention reservoir built to drain off this type of deluge. This reservoir was built... in the path of where the S79 was planned to go (why this happened no one knows). The S79 has been under construction for three years, and one of the last obstacles in its way was the flood-water retention reservoir. Which a few months ago was filled in and tarmacked over. So now - where does the flood water go? It stays on the road surface (below).

Fortunately, today proved sunny and warm (14C), and by the evening, most of the water had evaporated or soaked into the parched earth. During a really wet spell, Warsaw may not be so fortunate.

This time two years ago:
The autumn sublime in Warsaw

This time four years ago:
Lublin and its charm

You've either got or haven't got... class

A word that came up in three conversations over the past two days made me stop and think. The word was klasa – class – as in a personal characteristic (be it a colleague, a politician or a celebrity).

It's a near synonym for the English word 'class', but doesn't carry with it any baggage connoting social hierarchy. Klasa does not come from breeding, but does come from the home; it is not the product of wealth, but it's not associated with squalor. It doesn't necessarily go together with sophistication, but it certainly isn't primitive. Klasa is a seemingly effortless self-discipline; it's about being well-turned out, immaculately clean, well-dressed without conspicuous display. People with klasa avoid vulgar language, are polite to one and all, cheerful yet respectful. People with klasa are never impatient, yet do not hang about – they're not lazy either.

A person with klasa doesn't give in to anger but can talk with precision about their* feelings. Klasa in the home is visible. Tidiness, cleanliness, fresh flowers. Plenty of books. Signs in the kitchen of healthy eating – fresh fruit, cookbooks hinting of imaginative cuisine. And whatever car a person with klasa drives – one part of it that's never used is the klaxon.

Politicians with klasa are more convinced about their convictions rather than with using political power to gain advantage for themselves or their coterie. I will not name names here, but it's worth looking at some of our elected officials through this prism. People with klasa age gracefully, neither trying to artificially maintain an illusory youthfulness in increasingly comical ways, nor slumping into the abnegactwo (self-neglect) of terminal decline.

Below: enjoy Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin convincing Bing Crosby that you've either got or you haven't got style - or indeed class. Or charm!



* I have given into the recent shift in English usage to replace the singular possessive pronouns 'his and her' when used together with the plural possessive pronoun 'their', even when it doesn't confirm with a singular noun. The BBC has taken to doing this; it is less clumsy and – more importantly – politically correct. 

This time last year: 
First frost 

This time five years ago:
First frost 

[this year's one should be coming up soon... first snow 29 November?]

He could have been a contender

He died a śmierć Polaka - 'a Pole's death', one that was futile, avoidable, and leaving the question 'what if?'. At the end of a drink-fuelled evening in Los Angeles in December 1968, Krzysztof Komeda was pushed off a two-metre high escarpment by writer Marek Hlasko. A scuffle? An angry exchange? Drunken horse-play? The ensuing head injury led to Komeda's death in a Warsaw hospital days short of his 38th birthday. And Hlasko never got over it either. He died two months after Komeda. Suicide?

Here was a man reaching the height of his creative powers; in one brilliant decade, Komeda had written over 70 movie soundtracks, including those to Roman Polański's Knife in the Water and Rosemary's Baby, and recorded several jazz albums.

Who knows what he would have achieved had he lived? This morning, I saw a huge billboard for a ballet set to the music of Philip Glass and Wojciech Kilar. These two composers, both contemporaries of Komeda's, give one an idea of how his career could have progressed after reaching he had Hollywood. He could have been another John Williams (another contemporary).



Above: Jazz from the score of Polański's 1962 film, Knife in the Water, and the haunting lullaby from Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968), below.


Komeda's life and times have been brought to the big screen in a documentary film, Komeda, Komeda, written and directed by Natasza Ziółkowska-Kurczuk. His story is mainly told by his Polish contemporaries, guys who played jazz with Komeda from the 1950s, along with directors Roman Polański and Andrzej Wajda. They're very much alive - guys in their late 70s and early 80s, still playing, still enjoying life, with some great stories to tell.

Born Krzysztof Trzciński in April 1931, he came by his stage name, during the war. According to his sister, he was playing soldiers with school friends, he wrote the word for 'headquarters' (komenda) using an ę rather than an en. 

Komęda - without the Polish nasal diacritic mark - the name stuck.

The film gives an intriguing portrait of the communist authorities' confused attitude to jazz. Music of a decadent, commercial West? Or the music of the downtrodden Negro? Archive film of Polish jazz festivals from the 1950s show Trad rather than Be-bop, When the Saints go Marching In, rather than Scrapple from the Apple. Komeda was into the latter.

The film presents a portrait of a perfectionist - "He'd make us practice a piece a hundred times - the same few notes, over and over, for an hour," said one of his band members. This is one of the marks, according to Malcolm Gladwell, of an outlier. The other is being in the right place at the right time. Sadly for us all, Krzysztof Komeda was in the wrong place with the wrong people when he incurred the injury that would kill him, depriving jazz-lovers and film-goers of what could have been one of the 20th Century's greats.

This time last year:
What gets eaten, what gets thrown away

This time four years ago:
Rush hour in Białystok

Rapid development in the wetlands

It's all happening very quickly. The construction plant parked up on ul. Kórnicka and halfway down Trombity is hard at work. As I related last week, ul. Dumki (below) has been made passable to tracked diggers, hardened and widened.

Below: between ul. Trombity and ul. Dumki one can see the biggest changes. Here, hectares of scrub and reed have been removed; the boggy parts deepened and turned into proper ponds.

Below: view from a four-metre high mound of earth before it's removed. From here I can take in a wide-angle shot of the terrain between the backs of gardens coming off houses on ul. Trombity looking towards Dumki in the distance. Retention ponds have been created and walled in by earthworks.

Below: A similar story off ul. Kórnicka - a deep pond has been dug, hundreds of trees and bushes cut down and a deep pond has been dug. Beyond it, ul. Dumki and in the far distance, ul. Baletowa.

How this will all look once completed is still unclear; there's still much wetland untouched, and this is where most of the wildlife congregates. I trust this will remain as it is. Below: the latest satellite image from Google Earth, from May this year (click to enlarge). Google Earth's imagery of this part of Warsaw goes back in yearly intervals to 2002 (with a few years missing ).



The map has been tilted to fit on the page, north lies to the left. Most of the work so far has been taking place at the northern and southern ends of the wetlands.

This time last year:
Sun shines down Al. Jerozolimskie

This time two years ago:
Warsaw Metro vignette

This time three years ago:
The most dangerous word in the English language

This time four years ago:
What a difference a day makes

More autumnal gorgeousness from Warsaw

On a day like today, one should be snap-snap-snapping away, to capture Warsaw in its autumnal finery.
Below: Ujazdowski castle, and the Piaseczyński canal in the foreground. Trees blaze with colour.

Below: coming out of the Metro station at Politechnika, ul. Nowowiejska. Oily effect on plexiglass caused by polarising filter, not visible with naked eye.

Below: Pl. Zbawiciela, the church of the Holiest Saviour (Najświętszego Zbawiciela), late afternoon. 

Below: ul. Marszałkowska between Pl. Unii Lubelskiej and Pl. Zbawiciela, over the Trasa Łazienkowska. A new-style Swing tram departs towards Wyścigi.

Below: Trasa Łazienkowska towards the end of the working week. Completely solid. At least the bus lanes keep public transport moving efficiently along this major east-west thoroughfare.

Look at all those short-distance one-per-car commuters going nowhere fast - they should give up their cars, take to public transport and leave the road space for those really need it.

This time last year:
The genius of Donald Tusk

This time two years ago:
Tragic road accident kills 18: Has Poland learnt anything from it?

Warsaw, early autumn, photo miscellany

Here is a selection of photos taken of central Warsaw yesterday and today - I hope you enjoy them.

Al. Jerozolimskie, looking west. Above: a bus, headed for Awaria (this side of Trasa Zmieniona). Giant billboards promote men's fashion rather than financial pyramids. Below: another view, later the same day.

Below: outside the Institute of Applied Social Sciences. It's nearly two weeks since the academic year began, and still the University of Warsaw is recruiting students (a result of the deepening demographic dip).

Below: a classic view of Warsaw's ever-changing skyline with two skyscrapers - Zlota 44 (left) and the Cosmopolitan building on ul. Twarda 2/4 (right). The new architecture makes the Palace of Culture look dreadfully dated and threatening.

Below: ul. Chmielna, by Nowy Świat. Lovely pastel hues around sunset. Plenty of shopping, plenty of restaurants and bars, the clientèle a mix of tourists, students and office workers.

Left: work continues at a noticeable pace on the Cosmopolitan building. I counted up to 38 floors, and it's on its way up to 44. Once again I manage to snap it from midway up the Warsaw Financial Center building just across ul. Świętokrzyska.

I like the way these new skyscrapers are modernising Warsaw. I believe cities should grow upwards rather than outwards. In years to come, the skyscraper centre of gravity will move towards Wola, with several developments coming into fruition.

Above: another unattended suitcase brings the city centre to a halt. Police close off ul. Emilii Plater around the Lumen building and the Złote Tarasy shopping mall.The all-clear was given minutes after I took this snap.

Above: a recent mixed residential/retail development on the corner of ul. Franciszkańska and Bonifraterska. Glass windows, floor to ceiling, glass balconies, reflect off the late-afternoon sunlight.

Above: Al. Jana Pawła II, by Dw. Centralny. A Konstal 105Na tram waits, doors open, for the signal to proceed across the busy junction with Al. Jerozolimskie. Note Złota 44 in the background. Right: the Palace of Culture, its upper floors illuminated by a low, early-evening autumn sun, the Sala Kongresowa (Congress Hall) below already in shadow.

Above: Al. Jerozolimskie; trams outside Dworzec Centralny, Warsaw's central railway station.

Left: wooden steps from the fountain terrace by Wisłostrada leading up the Vistula escarpment, at the top of which lies Warsaw's New Town. The brick tower of a Gothic church of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Below: waiting for the neon to be lit - sign at Warszawa Śródmieście commuter railway station.

So there we have it, Dear Reader - Warsaw, my kind of town.

This time last year:
Moaning about the trains again

This time two years ago:
Warsaw streets - Dolna, Polna, Rolna, Smolna, Wolna. Lost?

This time four years ago:
Ditches, landscapes, autumn

This time five years ago:
Golden autumn, Łazienki Park

The pros and cons of acoustic screens

A bitter, and rather one-sided debate has sprung up in the pages of Gazeta Wyborcza criticising the ubiquitous acoustic screens that routinely line the side of any new road as it is opened. These screens are a relative novelty in Poland, and have started appearing as EU funds came on stream. Designed to protect nearby houses from traffic noise, for drivers, they give the impression that you are in a never-ended gully. No scenery to gaze at.

Above: acoustic screens line the A2 around the Grodzisk Mazowiecki turn-off. Driving through built-up areas, one cannot get one's bearings, spot landmarks or notice geographical differences.

While I sympathise with people who wake up to find a motorway at the end of their garden, it would be nice to get some kind of changing visual stimulus when driving.

There are different types of screens - the transparent ones (with black bird-of-prey silhouettes applied thoughtfully to them to stop birds from flying into them), green ones (a favourite of graffiti daubers and the odd true artist), natural ones (which employ climbing plants to make them look like a wall of plant life). And there are the concrete pots, filled with earth, stacked in a triangular profile, with trees growing out of them. These I object to the least; after some years, they will look like regular earthworks, greened over with shrubbery and plants. 

Now, as I recall, the M6 runs through the very heart of Birmingham without screens. Maybe Poland has made a civilisational leapfrog in this respect; by taking away some of the fun of driving, maybe people will drive less. On the other hand, acoustic screens are starting to appear on the side of existing railway tracks. Such is the nature of progress. I'll poll this one, see what my readers think.

This time last year:
Hope in heaven

This time two years ago:
Touched by greatness

This time three years ago:
Fixed wheeling around Jeziorki

This time four years ago:
One day, this will all be asphalt

This time five years ago:
Ireland

Tatra time II

Once again thanks to Kuba from Tychy for this excellent set of photos taken recently in the Tatra museum in Kopřivnice in the Czech Republic.

My first remembered encounter with the aerodynamic Tatra was when driving through Czechoslovakia in July 1966. Czech roads were lightly trafficked in those days; there were humbler Skodas, but these were seen (rarely) on British roads. The Tatra was something else. Its form was quite unlike the Austins, Hillmans, Vauxhalls, Fords or Jaguars that I grew up with.

In those grim industrial Moravian towns of cobble and brick, where a red star on the front of a tram was the only colourful decoration, the sinister shape of a black Tatra, looking like a giant trilobite scuttling about, added to the country's visual uniqueness.

Below: the pre-war shapes of the T77a (right), T87 (centre) and T97 (left) were still to be seen in Czechoslovakia in the mid-1960s. The cars were usually painted black, the occupants either senior party members, factory officials or StB officers. But just look at these shapes. Rear-mounted air-cooled engines, bodies with extremely low drag coefficients even by today's standards.

Right: back of the T97, pre-war car that influenced Hitler's KdF Wagen, the direct antecedent of the Volkswagen Beetle. Rear-mounted air cooled flat-4, like the Beetle; but a more slippery shape.

Below: imagine lifting the back to get to the engine! I have childhood memories of driving behind one of these and wondering how the passengers could see out of the back (unlike the Beetle, the rear window was not in the passenger compartment, but in the engine bay).

Below: a post-war Tatra T600 Tatraplan. Again, rear-engined, though only four cylinders. Note its similarity with the Swedish Saab 92, which was designed around the same time.

Below: the rear of a post-war T600 Tatraplan Monte Carlo two-door coupe. Note split rear windscreen, still separated by a fin, and engine grille. It looks from this view like a puffed-up Porsche 356 coupe.

Left and below: the T603, the last Tatra streamliner, (though not the last rear-engined V8 from Kopřivnice - that was the T613, an angular beast with Italian design that no longer had the Tatra character.

This is a late production version; in yesterday's post we saw an mid-series T603. The T603 was in production from 1956 to 1975. A wonderful beast, proving to the world what Czech engineering could achieve even under the heel of communism.

This post and yesterday's one fill me with a great desire to visit our south-western neighbour; I've only been there for three very short visits in recent years (last one recorded here).

This time last year:
Donald Tusk and Co. get re-elected (yes! it was only 12 months ago!)

This time two years ago:
Poland's wonderful bread

This time three years ago:
An October Friday in Warsaw