The future of Warsaw's public transport

Although published in December, this document only caught my eye via a link on TVN Warszawa - the city's plans for the sustainable development of public transport for the capital. In case you wish to download it (a 109-page .pdf document in Polish), it is available here. I take it the city means 'sustainable' rather than 'balanced' because the word zrównoważony, as I've pointed out on this blog frequently, has come to be the Polish equivalent of 'sustainable' even though evidently in Polish it isn't.

Anyway, it is a document that deserves study - it contains much valuable detail about Our City and how it is likely to develop. It also contains lots of interesting facts and figures.

This study doesn't stop at Warsaw's city limits, but takes in the surrounding gminas, or municipalities (one administrative level down from powiat or district). It is an acknowledgement that Warsaw is no longer a city, but a metropolis, spreading far out into the surrounding countryside (the area covered by this study stretches some 70km north to south and over 60km east to west). A joined-up public transport strategy is essential if the main arteries into the capital are not to be clogged up by exurbanites desperately commuting by car for want of an alternative.

Below: towns like Góra Kalwaria are included in this survey; it is 30km south of Warsaw city centre (as the crow flies) and 15km south of the city's borders. It is lucky enough to be connected to the capital by a rail link.

The document is thorough in its demographic assessment. It makes for interesting reading - it shows how young families are moving away from the city centre to raise their youngsters away from a high density urban environment. This will create pressure on suburban bus routes as the children grow up to make their own way to schools and colleges. The city centre is depopulating and at the same time ageing. Between 2003 and 2013, Warsaw's population grew by a mere 36,000 (the bulk in new residential districts like Białołęka or Wilanów), while the surrounding gminas added an extra 112,000 registered residents.

Warsaw also has over a quarter of a million students, some 40% of whom come from outside the metropolitan area - that's a further 100,000 people needing public transport.

There is also an acknowledgment that we don't really know how many people live in Warsaw - the number of niezameldowani (people living without a meldunek or registration of residence). It was estimated at 222,000 in 2010 - a number that would push Warsaw's population to two million.

Warsaw is a rich city; its GDP per capita is three times the national average, and 181% of the EU28 average; unemployment is the lowest in Poland. Hence, the capital will continue to act as a magnet for people seeking material advancement in life. The key question is whether they will settle in the city and its immediate suburbs, or will want to live further out, in a house with garden, and commute to town.

Dividing up the area into 'urban', 'urban-rural', 'rural-urban' and 'rural' (Jeziorki is 'urban-rural', while Dawidy Bankowe across the tracks is 'rural-urban'), we see that only the outer fringes of the furthermost gminas are properly rural. It's worth pointing out that 23% of Warsaw proper is still actually farmland!

The study examines in detail the travel habits of Warsaw residents and those living outside the city limits who travel in and out each day. Fascinating nuggets emerge - Wednesday is the busiest day of the week on the Warsaw Metro - 63% of taxi users are going home - only 1.1% of journeys are made by bicycle.

Crucially, the study considers the future with a number of different scenarios. One is that of urban concentration, the other of de-concentration. Will people cluster around the city centre, or move out to the distant suburbs? This is crucial in terms of car usage.

It is discouraging to see the increase in the number of cars per 1,000 citizens rising to 580 in Warsaw and 612 in the western exurbs (the figure is 416 in Berlin and 212 in Inner London); the hope is that continued improvements in the quality, reliability, frequency and comfort of public transport will slow this growth.

Consider this - in Warsaw, more than twice as many journeys are made by public transport (69%) as by car (30%). In the outer suburbs, public transport accounts for 42% of journeys, car 46%. Where there is good public transport, people will use it.

Over the past years, the authorities have encouraged citizens to use public transport by spending a lot more on it. From 2007 to 2013, Warsaw has doubled the annual subsidy to public transport operators from 724m złotys to 1.45 billion złotys, increasing the amount of subsidy per ticket from 61% to 67%. Politicians calling for free public transport (like that chap from PiS who was beaten by Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz in last autumn's mayoral election) need to understand that this would cost the city's annual budget an extra 800m złotys or so and would lead to an inevitable deterioration of services as planned investments are shelved.

Below: investment in the bus fleet means that all Warsaw buses today are low-floor types; the old Ikaruses, once the mainstay of MZA, the city's bus operator, disappeared finally in December 2013. 

I'm heartened to read that the city is intending to restrict and even close off certain parts of the city to cars, limiting the number of parking spaces, increasing the number of pedestrian precincts and prioritising public transport. There's also a lot of good stuff about bringing stations, bus and tram stops and transport hubs up to the highest standards when it comes to accessibility, and improving frequency and punctuality of services. There's even mention of using GPS technology to monitor punctuality, and to help create more realistic timetables. Nothing, however, about extending the Metro.

Improving passenger communication with better information regarding services is also covered by the study. There's nothing worse than being kept in the dark - your bus or train is late and getting later, there's no announcement, no ability to find it via an app in your smartphone.

The report is hazy about this crucial element of customer satisfaction. While the Metro is excellent, with monitors telling you when the next train is due down to the nearest 10 seconds, and increasing number of tram stops are fitted with monitors, far-flung bus stops or railway stations offer nothing than a printed timetable. The simple - and cheap - answer is to enhance the functionality of the ZTM and Bilkom mobile apps, so that all buses, trams and trains can be tracked in real time via GPS.

Warsaw's public transport has come on tremendously over the past ten years, as EU money is invested and Western European best practice takes root. The ability to buy tickets more easily, gain better, more accurate travel information (not necessarily yet in real time), a joint ticket covering all buses, trams and suburban trains and the Metro, has made travelling around Warsaw far less stressful. Plus, the smartphone means that time travelling by public transport can be put to good use.

I would hope that in another five years, there will be new tram routes, more bus lanes, more cycle paths, an SKM line down to Piaseczno, a real-time GPS system that tells you exactly where that bus you're waiting for actually is, and that more people will give up their cars and take to public transport. It is difficult to do your 10,000 paces a day (as recommended by the World Health Organisation) if you are tied to your car, and as I wrote on the post earlier, cities where the car rules tend to be fatter and less healthy.

Do take a look at the report - it's good that the city of Warsaw is taking public transport so seriously.

This time last year:

Snowdrifts and trains in winter

[This winter PKP PLK has put up snowdrift fences]

This time three years ago:

Back to the blackboard

(on the superiority of Polish schools to British ones)

This time five years ago:

Greed, fear, fight-and-flight - and the weather

This time six years ago:

Where the new expressways will meet

This time seven years ago:

Early spring in London

Keeping warm in January

The last day of the first month, finally a bit of snow although the temperature today refused to dip below zero. Student SGH will correct me if I'm wrong, but on the basis of his comment here last week, this will have been the warmest January since 2007... While it's been warm, it's not been sunny. There's hardly been any sunshine for the past two weeks - dismal.

This has been the first day this winter that snow needed to be shovelled off the drive, though the snow was wet and thus heavy, the covering was thin. Two walks today, the first to Lidl to snap up the rest of the Roquefort (the last four packs, still at 4.99 złotys, or about 89p) and look for an elusive bottle of Neighbour-recommended Burgundy. Below: looking south from ul. Żmijewska (lit. 'Adder Street'), the unasphalted road that allows you to get from Lidl to Biedronka, avoiding the main road.

The second, a longer stroll around the manor - up to the tracks, along Kórnicka and back via Dumki, (below) which has been ploughed into a total mire by drivers who needlessly use this unasphalted thoroughfare.

So - with the month's end time to confront my New Year's Resolutions with reality - and to compare performance to last year. Walking - better. Daily average 10,605 paces (7,647 last year). Less alcohol consumed, with a weekly average of 14.2 units (15.1 last year), and 19 drink-free days (16 last year). More sit-ups (daily average 79 compared to 67 last year). This year, I'm counting my fresh fruit and vegetable intake (4.3 portions per day, less than the 5 recommended, but not bad).

Another tip to make the dark days of winter more palatable - follow our mammalian nature, and sleep in. I'm able to sleep for ten hours without a break at this time of year. Waking up at 05:45 - the dead of night in January - is not good for the organism. However, come May, June - I can get by on six hours' sleep without any problem.

All of this above healthyism has helped me reduce my girth. I have cast off three-quarters of an inch of useless, unhealthy fat from around my middle - from 40 inches to 39-and-a-quarter - or, if you prefer, two whole centimetres, from 101.6cm to 99.6cm. With a loss of bubber around the stomach comes weight-loss - down from 12 stone 0 lbs (76.2kg) to 11 stone 7lbs (73.4kg), my weight at university 35 years ago. This is very welcome.

Only thing that's down on last year, and that's blogging. A mere 12 posts this month compared to 21 last January. I need a return of inspiration.

This time last year:
If you can't measure it, you can't manage it (health, that is)

This time last year:
Sten guns in Knightsbridge (well, Śródmieście Południowe, actually)

This time three years ago:
To The Catch - a short story (Part II)

This time four years ago:
Greed, fear, fight and flight - and the economy

This time five years ago:
Is there an economic crisis going on in Poland?

Barefaced populism exposed

The date of the next Polish presidential elections will be announced on Wednesday; most likely the first (and only?) round will take place in mid-May. The winner will be the incumbent, Bronisław Komorowski. The outcome is so utterly certain that the opposition parties are fielding totally unknown candidates so as to save their big guns from humiliation.

Stalin-Lenin-Dno (SLD), the successor to the Polish communist party, PZPR, will not be fielding its hated leader, Leszek Millllller, the Moscow-educated, former Secretary of the Central Committee of the PZPR. Instead, SLD presents a Ms Marionetka Cucumber, a total unknown, who at least has a pretty face.

Polish peasants' party PSL has yet to announce its candidate - it's unlikely to be deputy prime minister Janusz Piechociński. One rumour is that PSL won't even bother putting a contender into the race.

Law and Justice (PiS) leader Jarosław Kaczyński, having lost the 2010 presidential election to Mr Komorowski 54.4% to 46.4%, does not wish to become a two-time loser. So Law and Justice is fielding... Andrzej Duda. OK, I so never heard of him before either (he's not to be confused with rabble-rousing Solidarność leader Piotr Duda).

I recently started following Law and Justice on Twitter. Travelling home from work this evening, I was reading my Twitter feed, and chanced upon choice excerpts from Andrzej Duda's speech to voters in Grodzisk Mazowiecki. I was shocked by what I read.

"Niska płaca nie uzdrowi polskiej gospodarki,ozdrowi ją popyt. A ten będzie tylko przy większych zarobkach" [Low pay will not heal the Polish economy, it will be healed by demand. And that will only grow through high earnings.] All well and good - but who is to pay for the higher earnings? Maybe the entrepreneur? The small business owner?

"Polska jest nieopresyjna tylko dla wybranych. Zwykli, mali przedsiębiorcy najlepiej to rozumieją." [Poland is unoppressive only to the chosen. Ordinary, small entrepreneurs understand this best." So while they are currently being oppressed, under President Duda, they'll have to be oppressed even more to find the extra cash for higher earnings for their employees - and to pay the additional taxes to ensure the public sector also gets higher earnings. Given that 52% of the Polish workforce is directly employed by Polish small entrepreneurs, I feel that this particular group of voters will not be casting its vote for Mr Duda.

"Obrót polską ziemią będzie uwolniony w maju 2016 r. Jest jeszcze szansa zatrzymania tego procederu. Musimy zabiegać o ochronę polskiej ziemi, nie możemy jej oddać w obce ręce." ["Buying and selling of Polish soil shall be fully liberalised in May 2016. There is still a chance to stop this racket. We must strive to protect the Polish land, we cannot give it up to foreign hands."] Purest demagoguery. Barefaced populism of the most shameless kind.

Surely Mr Duda realises that Poland is a member of the EU? And that in the Accession Treaty, Poland signed up to the liberalisation of sale of agricultural land after a 12-year transition period? And in return, the countries letting Poland into the EU signed up to allowing Polish workers access to their labour markets - in the case of most countries, after a seven-year transition period. Over 77% of Poles voted in the 2003 referendum to join to the EU. So what is Mr Duda proposing? To tear up the Accession Treaty? Plain nuts.

"Skąd mają wziąć się miejsca pracy dla młodych ludzi, skoro zajmują je ich dziadkowie?" [Where will workplaces for young people come from, if they are being occupied by their grandfathers?] Do you know any octogenerians in the workplace, blocking the recruitment of graduates and school-leavers? This smacks of blatant ageism.

And this: "Jak można wprowadzać system przedłużający pracę ludzi, nie dając im nic w zamian? [How can you introduce a system extending people's work, not giving them anything in return?] Mr Duda's populist attack on pension reforms ignores that YES THEY HAVE BEEN GIVEN SOMETHING IN RETURN. It's called A LONGER LIFE. The average Pole lives three years longer today than in 2000, and six years longer than in 1990. Thanks to (yes) improvements in the state-funded healthcare system, as well as other benefits that free-market democracy bestows upon its citizens. As the lifespan of Poles increases, it is economically essential that they spend some of that extended life at work earning money rather than simply withdrawing pensions from an ever-shrinking pot.

Populist politicians trotting out such twaddle are either totally ignorant of the realities of the economy and the way the world functions - and should not hold public office on account of their outright ignorance - or they know damn well how it all works but are shamelessly lying into the electorate's face. It's binary - it's one or the other. Mr Duda is either ignorant or a liar.

I feel inclined to vote in the first round for the attractive Ms Cucumber, in order to totally humiliate Mr Duda and the PiS strategists who decided this lightweight populist should represent their party in a futile one-horse race against a dead-cert. Incidentally, 'Duda' can be translated into English as 'Bagpipe'. Very fitting.

Social inequality, over-regulation of small business, imperfections in the working of the single European market and pensions reform are all important issues that need to be resolved incrementally, by the application of human intelligence, demanding nuanced solutions that take the long term into consideration. Not by a meaningless, impotent litany of 'musts'  and 'shoulds'.

This time last year:
Straż Ochrony Kolei explained

This time two years ago:
The end of winter? So early?

This time three years ago:
How much education for the nation?

This time four years ago:
To the Catch - short story

This time five years ago:
Eternal Warsaw

This time seven years ago:
From the family archives

Warsaw Spire - still getting higher

A visit to (near) the top of Rondo ONZ One offered me the opportunity to see from the city centre how Warsaw Spire - the 44-floor, 180m (220m with masts) skyscraper is coming on. According to a post on Skyscraper City last week, there are two more floors of offices and two technical floors to build yet, so it's still got a little bit to go.

Below: Warsaw Spire pierces the skyline of the western edge of the capital. When completed next year, it will draw the city's centre of gravity westwards towards Wola. The area between Al. Jana Pawła II and ul. Okopowa has seen increasing development in recent years, and the opening of the second line of the Warsaw Metro will link Wola to the city centre and Powiśle and Praga beyond. Photo taken from the 37th floor of Rondo ONZ One, the highest accessible floor to the public.

Below: view from the 28th floor, a wider angle shot taken one hour later. Photo tweaked with the latest versions of Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. HDR allows me to render the pic in a slightly surreal way. Note the (rotating) Mercedes-Benz logo on the Ilmet building in the left foreground. The building - 103m to the top of the logo with 22 floors, was only completed 18 years ago, and yet is now earmarked for demolition and replacement with a 188m-high tower, which will be higher than either Rondo ONZ One or Warsaw Spire.

The broad thoroughfare heading out west is ul. Prosta, the continuation of ul. Świętokrzyska. Both have recently been re-opened ahead of the second line of the Metro. Today I heard from a source very much in the know that there are some serious delays and it might yet be some time before the second line is finally opened (something to do with water leaks).

This time last year:
Plac Zbawiciela, lunchtime, winter

This time two years ago:
Is this winter's end?

This time three years ago:
The other Jeziorki station

This time five years ago:
Launching the General's book

This time six years ago:
A pavement for ul. Karczunkowska?
(For a while there it looked like the city authorities would provide us locals with a pavement so that we could safely walk to the station or bus stop with clean footwear. Six years on - not a bit of it. Still waiting. A Big Boo to Bufetowa)

This time seven years ago:
Taking off over Okęcie

The spread of craft beers - not just central Warsaw

A big thanks to Tim and Andrzej at RSK for suggesting a visit to Mam Ochotę, a klubokawiarnia in Ochota (which sounds like a suburb of Tokyo but in fact is Warsaw's Kensington). Not the very epicentre of the city, but a few bus stops to the south-west. Ochota literally means 'willingness' or 'desire'; mam ochotę literally means 'I want' or 'I fancy'. (A trendy Warsaw bar these days has to have a name with a double meaning - like PiwPaw or Same Krafty)

So, fancying a craft beer, we popped by for an ale or two. The revolution has spread beyond the city centre; although there was no artisan brew on tap, there was a fair selection of bottled ales from small regional breweries around Poland, many various brewing styles.

We plumped for two beers (above), Serce Dębu (literally 'oak heart') from Perun, brewed by the Zodiak brewery in Piaseczno, an American brown ale, 5.5% abv, a complex and multi-layered beer, a good mouthful with lingering aftertaste. Not as hoppy as an IPA, but richly rewarding. The second, Kujawskie, by the Krajan brewery from the Kujawsko-Pomorskie province, was intriguing, not for any intrinsic reason other than its taste gave me an instant flashback to the Polish beers exported to the UK in the 1980s. Żywiec used to taste like this before Big Brewing got its corporate hands on the process. Malty rather than hoppy, strong too at 6.0% abv.

We debated whether the Polish word for malt, słód, formed the etymological origin of the adjective słodkie ('sweet') [Wiktionary suggests that this is indeed the case.] In the days before sugar (cane or beet) became readily available in Poland, malt - germinating cereal grains - for brewing would have been (besides honey and fruit) the sweetest taste commonly encountered.

I must say I prefer my beers bitter and hoppy than malty and sweet, but the latter style is more prevalent in Polish brewing. Andrzej, who hails from Lower Silesia, made the connection between beer-drinking and coal-mining; a miner who'd spent a whole shift underground extracting coal would emerge dehydrated; drinking a litre and half of beer would always be preferable to the same amount of water or to a smaller amount of wine or spirits.

It is good that beer is experiencing a renaissance in Poland. Back in the late 1980s, in the dying days of the communist system, you'd go into a bar and ask naively for a beer - the inevitable answer from the sarky waitress was "we didn't have any beer, we don't have any beer, we won't have any beer". As soon as democracy was re-established the Polish Beer-Lovers' Party won 16 seats in the first parliamentary elections held in 1991. Small local breweries took off, beer drinking took hold in Poland. But the big, multinational brewing conglomerates had an eye on emerging markets like Poland with a large population, rapidly rising GDP and a lot of coal miners. So within 20 years, the Big Three (SABMiller, Heineken and Carlsberg) had a virtual monopoly of the Polish beer market, turning out beers like Tyskie, Lech, Żywiec, Warka Strong and Okocim that all tasted and looked the same, lacked character or conviction.

The revolution started a few years back - the big brewers were (and are) losing market share as regional breweries and craft brewers bounded back with interesting tastes, different styles, made by people with a passion rather than a focus on the bottom line and quarterly profits.

But step outside the metropolis, and you'll be hard-pressed to find this variety in a bar. Yesterday Śródmieście, today Ochota, tomorrow Piaseczno? And who knows - Jeziorki?

This time last year:
The Holocaust and the banality of evil

This time two years ago:
Snow scene into the sun

This time three years ago:
More winter gorgeousness

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

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

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

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

Winter woes and a creativity crisis

First new post for a week - I'm slacking. I come home from work feeling I have nothing new to say or to write, museless; I postpone writing for another evening, then yet another one. This is not to say that I'm beset by depression or seasonal affective disorder, but I do feel spectacularly bereft of creative drive right now. Have I passed 'peak creativity'? Is it all downhill from here? No - as the Rabbi says, if you're having a bad patch, remember, there will be good times up ahead - but be aware when times are good, that bad patches loom. That's life.

So then, a rather pedestrian catch-up.

The weather. 

I'm surprised if this doesn't turn out to be the warmest January on record in Warsaw. The temperature has rarely dipped below freezing; since returning from London last week the sun has not ventured out. It is dull, damp and when the snow falls, it is wet and unpleasant and soon disappears. The constant rain, drizzle and wet snow have turned the unpavemented verges of Jeziorki's roads into a muddy morass; my footwear is perpetually filthy. Cars splash pedestrians with icy water from the edge-to-edge puddles on the poorly drained asphalt. My camera, always around my neck, rarely strays to my eye - there's little that attracts my eye.

It's difficult to do one's 10,000 paces a day when it's raining, so to catch up on below-average walking on Thursday and Friday, yesterday I walked from home to Zalesie Górne, a distance of about 15km, past Mysiadło, Nowa Iwiczna, Piaseczno and Żabieniec, parallel to the railway line. The weather was so miserably indifferent, I was not moved to take any photographs.

Shopping.

Do go to Lidl - the for-special-occasions Deluxe range, which offers delicatessen fare for a budget, has Christmas left-overs at amazing prices. Roquefort cheese, my favourite blue cheese (even beats Stilton say I), is on sale at 4.99 złotys for a 100gm pack (89p), down from the old price of 6.65 złotys (£1.19). Now, this is the real thing - PDO, DOC whatever, matured in caves, made of ewes' milk. Given that Auchan sells a Roquefort for 13.99 złotys (£2.49), this is an offer not to be sniffed at. But like all good things, there's a catch - the sell-by date is 22 February. Still, this is a cheese that does not go off; it matures even further.

The Lidl formula works just the same in Poland as it does in the UK, though with different marketing. In Britain, consumers are exhorted to 'join the Lidlers' and go Lidling with them, rooting out those amazing surprises that appear each week. In Poland, Lidl ads are just a forgettable list of commodity prices which go in one ear and come out the other. Obviously, Poland is considered to be at a 'different stage of development' by the admen; but people like surprises and bargains wherever they live.

Don't go to 5áSec, the French dry-cleaning chain. High and opaque pricing. My three pairs of trousers and a jacket, according to the price-list prominently displayed, should cost 95.96 złotys to clean (£17.29). When it came to paying (up-front, of course), I was asked for 129.96 złotys (£23.16), despite having turned down all attempts at up-selling me with 'fabric treatments' and other tosh. I asked why the price is different to the one advertised. "That is because we'll have to use a different process for these," said the lady at the counter. "And anyway, the trousers may return 'not fully clean', because they have muddy stains around the ankles". I said that if they weren't stained, I wouldn't be taking them to be dry-cleaned. I've used 5áSec before and was disappointed; if it wasn't for the fact that French dry-cleaners go hand in hand with French retailers (Auchan in this case), I wouldn't use this price-gouging bunch of rip-off artists ever again.

Commuting.

Polish railways are unlucky when it comes to taking on new rolling stock. On Thursday I boarded a Koleje Mazowieckie train bound for W-wa Jeziorki at W-wa Śródmieście. It looked new; it smelled new, it boasted that it had WiFi; it had features that I'd not seen on the commuter trains on the Radom line*. The seats were comfortable, there was a flip-down tray-table, like on planes, but made from real wood. Luxury! Except that after two stations, at W-wa Zachodnia, it broke down.

After some ten minutes, the guard decided to inform the passengers - not via the public address system, which was evidently not working - but by walking down the train. It was going nowhere. Another train will be brought onto the adjacent platform, in the meantime, please remain seated, it's warm inside and snowing outside, large, heavy flakes of wet snow. So we all waited. Some 15 minutes later the relief train appeared, pulled into the track across the platform, we crossed over and boarded the empty train, waiting for something to happen. No announcements... But among the passengers were canny folk who knew that at 18:22 the next train for Piaseczno and Radom was due at W-wa Zachodnia. Duly the 18:22 arrived on the next platform. No announcement as to which would leave first. One by one at first, then in a massed rush, passengers left the train I was on and made their way, via the underpass, to Platform 4 to board the 18:22 train. It was already quite full by the time it rolled into Zachodnia, so by the time that three-quarters of the passengers from my train had boarded the other one, it was totally packed. But which one would leave first?

My one. YES! There was a short spontaneous cheer among those who, like me, had decided to stay rather than to risk boarding the 18:22. Lesson? Preserve a zen-like calm, and don't follow the masses.

Health.

This study into ageing and exercise gave me a reason to be cheerful. "A study of super-fit cyclists" aged over 55... What do you need to do to prove you are "super-fit"? Cycle 100km in six and half hours. I'm sure I can do that. If - back in 2010, at the age of 52, I managed 135km in seven and half hours, and last year, at the age of 56, I managed 84km in seven hours (including two half-hour breaks and a significant amount of walking a heavy, fat-tyred mountainbike over stretches of soft sand), it should not be too hard to crack 100km in six hours along roads. Roll on the spring! Roll on the re-birth of creativity!

So. That's it - this represents the sum total of what I've had to say all week. Boring, eh?

I just hope that my creativity will return...

This time last year:
At last! Wintry gorgeousness arrives in Jeziorki

This time two years ago:
Warsaw - the more it snows

This time three years ago:
Get orf my lairnd!

This time four years ago:
A Dream Too Far - short story

This time five years ago:
Compositions in white, blue and gold

This time six years ago:
Dobra and the road

This time seven years ago:
Polish air force plane full of VIPs crashes on landing in fog

UK migration and the NHS

I was in London for much of last week, looking after my parents - on Wednesday, my father (91) had an eye operation, the following day I had to take my mother (87) to the clinic. And while I was round, lots of shopping - in West Ealing, Hanwell, Greenford and Pitshanger Lane.

The main media topic in the UK in the second half of last week was the state of the National Health Service, less than four months before the General Election. (The outcome of this election will be utterly crucial for the future of Britain and Europe, but that'll be covered in subsequent posts).

Key to measuring the performance of the NHS is the time patients are waiting to be seen in Accident & Emergency (A&E) wards up and down the country. Guidelines state that 95% of patients must be seen within four hours of arriving at the hospital. England, Wales and Northern Ireland were measured and found wanting. In England, 89.8% of patients are seen within four hours; the figures for Wales are 81.0%; Northern Ireland 76.7%; while in Scotland - which has a 98% target, 93.5% of patients are seen within four hours.

The NHS has set up a local hospital tracker (link here - you will need to type in a UK postcode to make this work) so every UK citizen can see how their hospital is rated for waiting times, weekly attendance at A&E, emergency admissions at A&E, operations cancelled, and beds blocked. Really useful for seeing which hospitals are overcrowded and which ones offer first-class healthcare.

Anyway, the NHS I saw last week worked above and beyond my expectations - my father's operation took a little over an hour - he had a new lens fitted into his left eye. Thirty minutes after leaving the operating theatre, we were outside the hospital, waiting for a taxi to take us home. The following day, when the eyepatch came off, my father's sight through what used to be his weak eye was actually better than my strong eye when it came to reading. Once he has the other eye operated on, his eyesight will be near perfect. Miraculous! The work of skilled surgeons - all female, and none native English. The lead surgeon was Hong Kong Chinese; she was assisted at the table by two Polish doctors. The nursing staff were from India, Hong Kong and Poland - and were all excellent.

The following day, mother was seen by her GP, from India, in a timely and efficient manner. The clinic was run like clockwork - all the horror stories about the NHS in the British media seem to be relating to a different world.

It occurred to me that the NHS - for all its faults - is dependent on immigrant staff, without which it would collapse. According to the Health & Social Care Information Centre, 26% of doctors working in the NHS were born abroad, while 22% of all nursing staff that joined the NHS in the year to September 2014 were non-British.

With migration and the health service likely to be among the top issues concerning voters ahead of the May election, the electorate needs to appreciate just how critical to the survival of the NHS is its ability to recruit the best doctors, nurses and care staff from outside the UK.

Why is the UK unable to fill its own healthcare system with native Brits? Could it be that for today's generation of young people studying to be a doctor, or working around those pesky patients is too much like hard work?

This time two years ago:
Miserable depths of winter

This time four years ago:
From - a short story (Part 1)

This time five years ago:
A month until Lent starts

This time six years ago:
World's biggest airliner over Poland

This time seven years ago:
More pre-Lenten thoughts

On beer, consumer choice, and the Meaning of Life

Last night the boys from Błękitna Trójka (Third Polish Scout Troop from 1970s London) went for a beer or four at the PiwPaw on ul. Foksal, the splendid multi-tap bar boasting no fewer than 95 different beers on tap. This evening, a smaller delegation from the office visited the original PiwPaw on ul Parkingowa after work, which has a mere 50 different beers on tap.

These two bars are taking the multi-tap concept (as seen in Kufle i Kapsle on ul. Nowogrodzka and Cuda na kiju in the old communist party headquarters on Rondo de Palma) to new levels. Not 12 or 16 beers, but three times - eight times - more. Still, 12 different quality craft beers made by brewers passionate about making something memorable and excellent is a huge advance over what was the norm even three years ago. (Let us recall just how dire the beer was five years ago...)

The days when going for a beer meant a meagre choice between a small handful of mass-produced beers - made by industrial breweries and tailored for an aggregated consumer, defined by focus groups, produced down to a price not up to a standard - are over.

'PiwPaw' needs to be explained to non-Polish speakers. 'Pif-paf' is the onomatopoeic equivalent of the playground 'bang-bang' suggesting gun fire. The pronunciation 'peev-puv' and 'peef-puf' are almost identical. But there's another meaning. 'Piw' is the genitive plural of piwo (beer) - 'of the beers', or beers'. 'Paw' means peacock. So Piw Paw can mean 'The Peacock of Beers' or 'The beers' peacock'. As we can see in the logo (below).

The PiwPaw on Foksal has a range of ciders and perries at one end of the bar, dark porters and stouts at the other, and a wide spectrum of top- and bottom-fermented lagers, light ales, India Pale Ales and bitters in between. The PiwPaw on Parkingowa has a smaller range, though still massive by any measure (plus many bottled beers, so should you be unable to find what you like). You may think that all these unpasteurised* beers with their short shelf life would go off before the barrel's drained - but these bars are so wildly popular even on weekdays that the turnover of stock is satisfactory. [In stark contrast to the multitaps are traditional city-centre watering holes offering Lech-Żywiec-Tyskie; such places are either half-empty or totally dead.]

Helping you get that particular flavour, there's the option of a 1zł (18p) taster, a shot-glass filled with a beer sample. Try several, then buy a half-litre of the one(s) you fancy. Below: Atak Chmielu, ('hop attack') by Pinta, is a favourite of mine (along with King of Hop by AleBrowar). On the bar at PiwPaw on Foksal; in the background you can see around one-quarter of all the beer taps of this establishment.

Choice is what it's all about. The bar staff have been well trained in the stock; if you are after an American IPA with a high IBU (International Bitterness Units), you will be informed what does the trick. The Invisible Hand of the Free Market, which over the years has been denying choice through increasingly oligopolistic practices, has suddenly flipped and said to the consumer - sorry, this has been an anomaly, it's time to redress the imbalance.

Standing at the bar with a half-litre of Ox Bile, a beer from brewers Haust in Zielona Góra with an extraordinarily high IBU of 104, and a taste of, well, ox bile, I pondered on what this is all about - adventure, exploration, reaching out to try something new, pushing the envelope, learning. It is not about swilling back yet another meaningless glass of Tyskie. Which tastes like the last glass of Tyskie, which tastes like Lech. Or Okocim or Warka or Żywiec. [Note to bar person: Ox Bile is pronounced 'oks bajl', not 'ox bee-leh']

And how different the Ox Bile was from our previous round - Dupek żołędny, a dark IPA flavoured with... acorns, from Warsaw brewery Bazyliszek. Trying out such varied ales, made by tiny brewers who really care about giving the consumer something extra-special, become an infinitely greater event than just sitting about soaking in whatever product the global corporation thinks is right for our market.

The Meaning of Life? I think I stumbled upon it half-way through the second beer, but by the time I got home, I'm afraid I'd forgotten it.

* Louis Pasteur must be the only scientist to be name-checked for a process he invented and also for a product that has not undergone the process he invented! 

This time last year:
What's Cameron got against us Poles?

The time three years ago:
Anyone still remember the Przybyl case?

This time three years ago:
Wetlands midwinter meltdown

This time four years ago:
Jeziorki rail scenes, winter

This time five years ago:
Winter drivetime, Jeziorki

This time six years ago:
Kraków, a bit of winter sunshine