Trams in the snow

It was another snowy day in Warsaw, anomalous weather for early April. But unlike some other European capitals I could mention, no traffic chaos, no  stranded motorists, no broken-down public transport systems. In fact, at work no one even mentioned the snow, other than in reference to a wish for winter to end and for spring to burst forth. Out in the streets, it was business as usual. Below: snow clearing, corner of Al. Ujazdowskie and ul. Piękna.

Below: a northbound 16 makes its way up Al. Niepodległości. Now the 13N trams have disappeared from regular passenger-carrying services, the square-cut Konstal 105N trams are the oldest in the fleet, some dating back to the early 1980s. They have a high-floor design, making them inconvenient to get in and out of.

Below: two trams pass on ul. Marszałkowska between Pl. Unii Lubelskiej and Pl. Zbawiciela. On the left a south-bound 18, on the right a north-bound 35. This stretch of Marszałkowska is one-way for road traffic (two lanes heading north into the city centre) but trams run in both directions.

Below: looking west along Al. Jerozolimskie, traffic moving smoothly. On the left a Konstal 105N2, a modernised version of the 105N; still high-floored and slab-sided, but with updated electronics and new-style cab. Behind it a PESA Swing, the latest additions to Warsaw's tram fleet (from 2010). We should be getting many more during the course of this year, replacing some of the oldest 105Ns.

The PESA Swing is low-floor, articulated so one can walk through its entire length. Definitely the tram of the future, well-liked by passengers. Below: a Swing stands at Nowowiejska tram stop on Al. Niepodległości.

Left: a Most unusual sight! Captured from the 30th floor of the Rondo ONZ 1 building, through falling snow, a retired 13N tram coupled to a 1925-vintage Linke-Hofmann Lw, make their way northward up Al. Jana Pawła II. The sign on the front of the leading tram says 'Przejazd techniczny' - technical journey. (Can any reader come up with a better translation?)

Above and below: lack of snow on the roof of the Lw tram suggests it was garaged overnight. The trams are travelling over the diverted track that passes the underground construction work on the second Metro line.

This time last year:
Will the A2 motorway be finished for the football?

This time two years ago:
Old-school retail experience: PRL-flavoured carrot juice

This time three years ago:
Easter Sunday - Lent's over

This time four years ago:
Węzeł Lotnisko - site cleared - ready for construction work

This time five years ago:
Classic Polish automobile - the Polski Fiat 125P

This time six years ago:
Jeziorki in Google Earth

O, Karczunkowska, where is thy pavement?

At times like this (indeed at any time between late October and now), ul. Karczunkowska is no street for pedestrians. You are forced to choose between walking along the asphalt, or sinking ankle-deep in snow or (worse) slush or (even worse) mud. Being able to move freely about things are just about bearable - but for an elderly person or one pushing a pushchair or pram, walking along Karczunkowska is an extremely dangerous endeavour. The other evening, walking home from PKP W-wa Jeziorki station, an oncoming car forced me to leap clear into the muddy verge, dirtying my shoes and trousers. Why do citizens of the capital of the EU's sixth-largest member state have to endure such indignities and such danger?

If you want to see the whole experience of what it's like to walk along Karczunkowska from Puławska up to the borders of Warsaw, 2.2km away, I recommend watching Jeziorak's film - a raw and intense documentary that portrays the deeply unpleasant experience of being a pedestrian in winter on this road.



The film, with Polish commentary, portrays the lack of civilised conditions with which we locals have to contend on a daily basis. Below: the guy rushing for the bus, back to oncoming traffic, is taking a risk, but he has crossed the road legally at the pedestrian crossing.

This is an intolerable state of affairs that cannot be allowed to go on for much longer. The local authorities have postponed plans to widen the road (at huge cost), and are not prepared to make a more modest investment in order to improve pedestrians' safety.

This time last year:
Architectural detail from Edinburgh

This time two years ago:
Spring explodes in Jeziorki
(+18C! Today it's around zero and snowing!)

This time three years ago:
Along the way for Warsaw's southern bypass

This time four years ago:
Quintessential Warsaw vista

This time five years ago:
Jeziorki on Google Earth

Swans in a changing climate

Over the past years, I've noted the swans returning to the pond at the end of ul. Trombity as they've done since 2008 around the end of March. This year they've been caught out by the weird weather. Normally at this time, przednówek, that Polish season following on from winter proper, is giving way to spring.

This portrait of a puzzled swan looking around unhappily at its partially frozen pond was taken with my new 55-300mm Nikkor zoom (more about this optic anon); click to enlarge - and note the tiny streaks of snow mixed with rain falling from the sky. It was +1C; horrible weather. One degree Celsius makes a big difference.

The local swans seem to have taken a greater liking to this part of Warsaw than nature intended; they were still around in December, walking on ice, which is, apparently, not good for them (unlike ducks, which have blood vessels in their legs that constrict in cold weather, allowing them to tread comfortably on snow and ice). Let's hope the snow soon melts and is replaced by warmer, sunnier weather.

The weather is indeed anomalous. Today, as I was shovelling tonnes of heavy, wet snow off the drive, I could hear a skylark overhead... Strange days indeed.

Bedfordshire in the snow

More photos from last week, which time prevented me from uploading. Here's an artsy sequence of photos taken from the window of an East Midlands Trains 125, en route from St Pancras to Luton Airport Parkway. London has receded into the distance, and rural Bedfordshire, cloaked in spring snow, issues a timeless resonance. I feel transported to Edwardian times, and through them back to Shakespeare's England of Poor Tom and 'poor, pelting villages'...

The monochrome is as it was; I have not tweaked colours nor lessened saturation in any way. Thus it was.

First town in the UK where Poles are majority

The latest data release from the UK National Census 2011 emerged from the Office of National Statistics last Tuesday. After a few days of poring over the data by the UK media, it emerged that Fulling in Lincolnshire (population 5,500) is the first town in the UK where Poles form a majority.

Census data for the AF1 postcode area (Watt-Waddle District) shows that the number of residents 'born in the EU Accession Countries - Poland' is 50.1% of the total population. The news was not surprising for locals, as the majority of the town's employers - mainly food processing and fruit & veg and flower growers - rely almost totally on Polish migrant workers.

The picturesque market town, which has been experiencing a population decline since before WW2, has witnessed the first rise in residents since the 1931 census. The past decade's influx of Poles to pick, pack and process the region's crops has spawned many Polish-owned businesses (Fulling has six Polish delis, four Polish hair-dressing salons and a Polish pub). Leader of the local Polish community and landlord of the Orzel Bialy pub Zbigniew Bzdura, has said that he will be standing as Fulling's mayor in the 2013 local elections.

Several other towns in Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire have also been revealed as having significant Polish population approaching the 50% mark. These include Pinching, Little Itching, Legple and Finger's Cross.

Fulling has taken its new Polish-born population to heart. Local businessmen have welcomed the influx of workers and are expanding production. A French fish processing factory, Avril-Poisson, opened in Fulling last year, having moved there from Boulogne-sur-Mer because of the high taxes imposed on the owner by François Holland's government.

Today, as for the past five years, Fulling is celebrating Easter Monday the Polish way - Śmingus Dingus. The traditional Wet Monday celebrations involve throwing bucketfuls of water at passers-by in the street. Local resident Edna Codd, said "I don't mind them doing it when it's 20 degrees, but on a freezing day like today, it's enough to make any right-thinking person vote Ukip".

This time last year:
Lost legend of rock'n'roll: Johnny Kołyma

This time two years ago:
Stalin's plans to escalate nuclear Armageddon

This time three years ago:
Warsaw's favourite weekend destination

This time four years ago:
We are two

This time five years ago:
Crushed velvet dusk in my City of Dreams

This time six years ago:
My very first Jeziorki blog post

Easter Sunday in the snow

I cannot remember an Easter Sunday with so much snow. Even if it comes early, Easter Sunday is rarely accompanied by winter's late return. This year, snow is back in fashion. The temperature has been relatively mild - hovering around zero degrees Celsius - but the snowfall was intense. It snowed pretty much all day. The climate is indeed becoming stranger and stranger.

Below: the wind blew the snow in from the east, swirling around the houses before settling. The satellite dish is plastered with wet snow (dry powder doesn't settle like this).

Left: looking out of the west-facing kitchen window - the snow is piling on the trees and bushes, despite the wind. Colder and drier snow would have shaken off, but this wet stuff has greater adhesion.

The online thermometer measuring temperature at Okęcie airport, just 3,570 metres away, never showed less than zero, with a daytime high of +2C.

Below: warm glass (even triple-glazed) and wet snow meant it turned to water on touching the windows. This type of snow is heavy and unpleasant; a day to stay indoors rather than to go out in search of winter fun.

Below: out on the balcony in front of the house, sheltered from the wind and snow flurries. Note how the snow is sticking to east-facing surfaces.

The cats showed no interest whatsoever in going out. At winter's onset, they couldn't wait to get out in the snow. But today, what was going on in the Great Outdoors was of little more than academic interest. They looked out of the windows at the wintry scenes, but decided that there were far more amenable places to spend the day.

On top of the TV set, for Lila (also known as Little Chiski, aka Jinx the Sphinx, left). Or on a bed in a warm bedroom for Papusia (aka Big Fat Chisko, the Feline Zeppelin, below)

Edinburgh continues to fascinate

Pictures from the week before last; finally I have time to upload them to my blog. Edinburgh is a visually stunning city, with so many vistas to delight the eye. Click to enlarge...

Panorama of North Bridge; Balmoral Hotel (left), Scotsman Hotel (right )

Atholl Place meets Palmerston Place. Auld Reekie's grimy past still visible

Rutland Court; Horse and Rider by Eoghan Bridge. Flakes of snow are falling.

Detail of the Royal Scottish Academy building (William Henry Playfair, 1822-26)

Balmoral Hotel, Princes Street; equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington

The Theatre Royal Bar, Leith Walk

Leith Street (right) passes Calton Road (left), which passes under Waterloo Place

Calton Rd runs under Waterloo Place, which is the A1 starting its way to London

Searching and believing

When Joni Mitchell sang "we are stardust/billion year-old carbon" in her 1969 song Woodstock, she was not articulating a pretty metaphor, she was stating a scientific fact. There are particles of you and me that are billions of years old, and have been inside stars. Atomic particles, to be sure, but eternal in every sense of the word. Electrons spinning around their nucleus since shortly after the Big Bang.

I believe in God; the driving force, the guiding force behind the progress of our ever-expanding universe made up of hundreds of billions of galaxies each consisting of hundreds of billions of suns, a significant number of which also contain sentient life. Our God, yes, their God too. The universe is moving towards an ever-more perfect state; one day, in billions or trillions of years time, it will reach that state; everything will be with God, everything will be God. Understanding and memory of everything that has ever been. Imagine what it could be like to be able to understand everything. The difference between us and an amoeba multiplied by an infinite power.

The notion of biological evolution goes hand-in-hand with spiritual evolution; consciousness evolving onward. We here on our planet consider ourselves to be the most highly evolved species, with the highest level of consciousness. Over the coming aeons we will evolve biologically and spiritually.

Negativity and pessimism - this is what holds us back in life, what retards our progress. Doubt, anxiety and fear. Levels of negativity can be reduced within human society by increased trust - and by prayer (more on this in a moment). We may have many gripes and issues with modern life - but it has progressed (albeit with some tragic regressions along the way) quite considerably since 1 AD, if only in areas such as healthcare, universal suffrage, the widespread use of labour-saving devices and ready access to information.

Prayer - one fundamental reason why I believe in God - prayer works. The dialogue held in silence between a calm mind and a listening God; primarily focused on grateful appreciation of what it is to be conscious, and breathing, and enjoying good health. And asking for only the basic things - that that state continues, health for one's loved ones and oneself. You cannot pray for a lottery win - it won't happen. But pray to God that your levels of fear and anxiety recede - and they will. God will grant you courage.

Returning to those atoms within us, and those electrons whizzing around those nuclei for eternity - we know more and more about them, and yet very little. Can they hold memory? What keeps those electrons moving? Will? It's worth reading about the atom, and about the history of philosophy. The Truth lies between the worlds of science and religion; we must all strive to seek, to keep investigating, thinking, discussing... moving ever closer to God, though God be half an eternity away.

....

Lent has ended. I've kept to my vows, I've not touched meat, drank no alcohol or coffee these past 46 days, I've exercised regularly (50 sit-ups twice a day, 22 press-ups twice a day) - yet I've lost no weight nor girth (still 11st 10lb, 39 inches). But this Lent for the first time I placed a proper focus on the spiritual aspects, and feel much better for it. Time to make myself a coffee and a ham sandwich.