Mycelial roots of coincidence

And thus did it occur to me, as I was walking up the escalators from Metro Centrum and across the patelnia on my way to Warsaw Central station, en route to Wrocław. 

That like the mycelial network of fungus under a forest floor connecting colonies of mushrooms, there is a similar unseen network of coincidence that holds events together.

A beautiful intuition! It draws me back to this worthy post from Lent 2021. 

Literally, the roots of coincidence. As in the title of Arthur Koestler's seminal book of that title. It's a book I read back in the late 1970s, when it was all the rage among students. [With the perspective of the decades, I'd argue today that Koestler's attempts to explain metaphysical phenomena using the scientific method were doomed to fail.]

But if you accept it as it is, and understand it, you can use synchronicities or observed coincidences to ward off misfortunes, as you walk your daily life along the edge of chaos.

To do so, you need to do just two things:

1) Accept that coincidences do contain meaning. This means stepping above the materialist reductionist mindset that would dismiss synchronicities as meaningless. 

2) Act consciously upon observed coincidences. If you consciously observe two people on crutches within a short space of time, it doesn't mean you will have an accident that results in you walking on crutches - rather it is a suggestion offered to you to be aware of the possibility of an accident occurring to you. 

There is a balance, between obsessively over-reacting to every possible manifestation of coincidence - and just outright ignoring this phenomenon. Seeking coincidences where there are none is as dangerous as dismissing coincidences that you do become conscious of. As I wrote two and half years ago, "don't go out of your way to look for coincidences; but when you do notice them - don't ignore them!"

The effect is weak but noticeable over the long term. But it will grow in strength as we evolve spiritually. Consciously observed coincidences can be a powerful set of signals to point daily life in the right direction.

This time last year:
Personal reflections upon the death of Queen Elizabeth II

This time four years ago
Best sandwich ever

This time five years ago:
Pictures of Warsaw

This time  eight years ago:
Scotland's independence referendum looms

This time 11 years ago:
Summer comes crashing to a halt

This time 12 years ago:
The atmosphere of impending autumn - Mono no aware

This time 13 years ago:
Time to recycle.

This time 16 years ago:
Coal train running

Do less. Seriously.

Am I promoting laziness? I am and I'm not. I'm certainly in favour of cutting right back on mindless activities - activities that add no value, nor preserve value; and particularly cut back on activities that damage the environment (even by one eight-billionth of a percent).

I take as my starting point for today's post an article in this week's The Economist (here, but behind paywall), entitled The best bosses know how to subtract work. We may have an innate inclination towards laziness but: "doing less goes against the grain in many ways - one is how humans are wired." The piece quotes a study, published in Nature in 2021, in which people were asked to think of ways to improve something, revealed that without an explicit prompt to think about subtraction, participants would tend to add features rather than taking them away.

On the działka, it's easy for me to find things to do; indeed there's too much. And so I focus on the Important and Urgent (as I wrote the other day), paring down those activities which are neither. Exercise is important; were I to stop doing my daily sets, I would be inviting health issues further on up the road. Cleanliness and personal hygiene is important for the same reason; but spending too much time and effort on press-ups and polishing also needs to be avoided. And don't mow lawns!

The article ends with the following exhortation to corporate leaders:

Add value. Do less. ■

It's not just CEOs who need to follow this - it's all of us. 

Do less. Buy less. Consume less. Waste less. Eat less meat. Eat less sugar (well, no sugar, really). Expect less (of the material stuff). Walk more. Think more. Do all the above, and you can expect more simplicity - and more joy - from life. Below: graffiti from a wall in Kraków, late November 2019. (Ulica Smocza 10 - indeed you can see it on Google Maps Street View.)

That is all.

This time last year:
Nothing but trees and sunshine

This time two years ago:

The year has achieved fruition

This time three years ago:
Jabłkowizna!

This time eight years ago:
Low water level - Jeziorki lakes

This time nine years ago:
Around the Czachówek diamond, again

This time 12 years ago:
Second line of the Metro runs into delays

This time 13 years ago
Army helicopters in action at Kielce defence show

This time 14 years ago:
World's largest helicopter over Jeziorki

Retrocausality and the Goneself

If you are into Possibilianism, consider this scenario: rather than incarnating from a historic past life into this present life and then on into some future life - you reincarnate into the same time and same place, over and over again. Each time you grow in terms of spiritual evolution.

In such a scenario, there was no past before your birth, there will be no future after your death - just an endless loop of lives lived that span the 20th and 21st centuries. But each version in which you participate will become incrementally better and better, tending towards a perfect future, that's always just an eternity away. 

Imagine being born again as you, to your parents, only they are just happen to be ever so slightly wiser. Everything in this new iteration of the life you currently live will be an improvement; there's less anger, aggression and violence. You have better teachers, better food. And there's a better environment - with greater ecological awareness in more people's mindset and habits. A kinder, happier, healthier world. One notch up. And so on, and so on, into infinity. From the mid-20th to the mid-21st centuries, over and over and over again. Your consciousness never experiences the late-21st century; nor will you ever get to peek into the 22nd century. And why ever not?

I woke up for a wee at 04:30; just as I was dropping off, the words { messaging information... } appeared in my mind - not as an auditory hallucination, just a telepathic signal that I could not ignore. I dropped off to wake up at 06:30 to receive the words { ...to the goneself.} The gone self; the self that has gone. 

But which self? The ego or the consciousness? The material self or the spiritual self?

The spiritual self doesn't go. It is eternal. Ask yourself the question - who you'd have been had your parents never met? The biological you is a product of that pairing, shaped also by the environment in which you grew up and in which you live. Your consciousness would have been in a different biological form had your parents never met - but it would still be around.

So the goneself is a previous biological self. But messaging information to it?

My intuition, based on a lifetime's anomalous qualia memory events, leads me to believe that the goneself is now historical. That guy born around 1920, died in 1957, lived in the US; my canonical past-life dreams place him growing up around Kentucky or Ohio, taking part in the Pacific War as a mechanic in the US Marine Corp, re-enlisting in the USAF around the time of the Korean War, then working for a private corporation developing, making and selling military equipment. Died in a motorcycle accident (preventable had a helmet been worn, had that corner been taken more slowly, had beers not been consumed beforehand, had there not been an early frost that night).

What { information } could I { message } to my { goneself? } It can only be transmitted in the interstices between being awake and slipping into sleep... A message should be prepared - a warning, maybe? But wouldn't that change history, removing my consciousness from my current body, giving it several more decades in the past one?

Or does { messaging information to the goneself } prove the existence of parallel universes?

One for me to ponder on.

This time last year:
Many Machcins

This time four years ago:
The Long Dark Half-Hour of the Consumerist Soul

This time five years ago:

Early-September travel news

This time six years ago:
Fields filling up with houses

This time 13 years ago:
Battle of Britain: Poland's contribution

This time 14 years ago:
Sewer under ul. Karczunkowska

The Unbearable Pleasance of Flashedback Familiarity

On the train to town this morning, a family boards at Nowa Iwiczna and sits across the aisle from me. Mum and dad, son and daughter. Along with them, a smell - a blend of suntan oil, perfume and stale tobacco - wafted from their clothes. I'm looking the other way, out of the window at the blue sky over the passing fields between Dawidy and Okęcie, and I'm also conscious of the smell. It's familiar. It flashes me back to summer holidays in Stella-Plage, Northern France in the 1970s.

Instantly I'm hit by a deep yearning to return there, to experience that precise moment once again. 

This is a typical triggered qualia flashback in which a sensory stimulus sets off a memory of a past conscious experience. The other forms of qualia flashback are the bidden one (where I can conjure up a memory of a past conscious experience), and the spontaneous one – the rarest – which out of the blue serves me up a qualia memory, despite a lack of stimuli or willing it into existence.

These sharp pangs of nostalgia are always pleasant, bringing me through their very familiarity deep joy and comfort; yet they are tinged with the frustration of knowing that the qualia once experienced and remembered cannot be returned to. All that can be re-experienced is a congruent simulacrum of that exact original qualia moment. 

And when that qualia memory happens, it needs to be savoured; rolled around in the mind for a while before it evaporates (though this time, that lingering smell helped keep it it there longer). Unbidden and untriggered qualia memories are the most ephemeral – I love the moment when I can catch the original experience, and say to myself – "ah, that's _______" - and pin down precisely where and when the experience was felt.

[It is important to note that qualia memories are different to memories of specific events. Qualia memories refer back to the conscious feeling of experience, of being there, rather than a sequence of things that happened, or were said.]

Later today, in the evening, out for a walk in Jakubowizna, I had another flashback - but this was not from this life, one of those anomalous qualia memories - xenomnesia or exomnesia - just as pleasantly familiar, but seemingly related to 1950s America. Certainly nothing from my West London youth. These are most likely happen most when the sky is clear, the sun bright, and around the changes of the seasons. Landscapes also seem to be a factor. I have them more often around Jakubowizna than in Jeziorki; I have them far more often than I used to when living in London.

The anomalous qualia memories are less frequent but no less intense as the ones I can put my finger on. How they happen is beyond me; I have written before that the vectors which convey exomnesia could be quantum in nature, or electromagnetic radiation, or carry through DNA (atavistic resurgence), or passed through gut flora – I just don't know. I am, however, aware that I have experienced this phenomenon since childhood, and seeking an answer to this is something that keeps me going.

"But when you get right down to it, don't you want to relive this moment again? All over again, all over again, just live it again..."

"Let's get together and do it again..."

"Can I take you back there, can I take you back..."

This time last year:
The imperceptible end of summer

This time two years ago:

Another new bus stop for ul. Karczunkowska

This time three years ago:
Energy, focus and state of mind

This time four years ago:

50 years on - Gunnersbury Grammar school reunion

This time six years ago:
All things visible and invisible

This time eight years ago:
Work starts on Warsaw-Radom rail modernisation

This time nine years ago:
Won't be long 'til summertime is through

This time 11 years ago:
It was a good year for the apples

This time 13 years ago:
Early-September moan about the commuting

Passing late-summer storm

Weather's strange; yesterday we had 'Augtober' - after the recent heatwaves, a sudden cooling; autumnal mist shrouded the tops of Warsaw's tallest building - greyness and damp permeated the air. But today, summer returned; sunshine, heat, growing humidity, and by the late afternoon, on the horizon - glowering storm clouds. Time, then, for a stroll - it may not be a long one, I fear.

Below: a semi-fast service from Warsaw to Skarżysko-Kamienna approaches Chynów, locomotive at the rear. This train does Warsaw West-Chynów in 35 minutes.The sky is beginning to bruise...

Below: the DK50 as it runs through Nowe Grobice; rain clearly visible on the western horizon. However, it's the dark streaks off to the right that I need to worry about; the wind's in the north-west.

Below: a downdraft is whipping up a sudden wind and the heavens are just about to open. I reach for my waterproof Gore-Tex jacket in my rucksack.

Below: the storm at its peak, ul. Miodowa, Chynów. Click to enlarge - note the white streaks, and the white dots on the track - hailstones. Mercifully, the deluge was as short as it was intense. It passed quickly, as hail can do damage to orchards full of ripe fruit.

The storm has passed, taking no more than five or six minutes to do so. I'm at the edge of a cornfield (first time I've seen corn planted within walking distance of my działka).

After supper, time for a second walk. The sky had cleared, the low sun falling on the forest on the orchard's edge.

Below: the sun dips to the horizon, Grobice, looking towards Chynów. No trace of the storm that passed through.

Below: approaching Sułkowice station, half an hour after sunset.

Below: blue moon, harvest moon, super moon... the second full moon of August. I watched it rising above the farm buildings east of Sułkowice, by the time I was back in Jakubowizna it had fully cleared the horizon and the telegraph wires. 16,600 paces walked today.

This time three years ago:
"Sod the locals" 

This time four years ago:
If you're really concerned about global warming...

This time five years ago:
The balance between the spiritual and the material

This time six years ago:
End of August, end of summer?

This time seven years ago:
Pavement for Karczunkowska... a bit at least

This time eight years ago:
Gold Train update (the hope! the expectations!)

This time ten years ago:
Poland post the Rubbish Revolution

This time 11 years ago:
Poland's most beautiful street

This time nine years ago:
Getting to grips with phrasal verbs

This time 11 years ago:
What Putin wrote about Molotov-Ribbentrop

This time 15 years ago:
Summer Sunday in the city

This time 16 years ago:
Last bike-ride to work of the summer

Focus on attention; focus on beating procrastination

If I am to list my faults as a biological human being - that shell of foam made of protein currently used to carry my consciousness - it is its inability to stay focused for any length of time.

External deadlines ("this piece is needed for 15:00 today" or "you're on TV in half an hour and expected to cover a subject you hardly know") are great for focusing the mind. If I fail to perform, I have to apologise, explain myself etc. Uncomfortable. In such cases, I carry out the task, and the fact that I get asked back repeatedly suggests that I'm not bad at it.

But when there's no external deadline - just me telling myself what I need to get done? 

Like writing this blog post. You'll see it date-stamped one minute to midnight, Wednesday 30 August - the day I originally had the intuition to write this post. I made notes, I started, but I didn't get round to finishing it. The piece was finally completed on Friday morning - because of procrastination and a mind that wanders off onto other trains of thought.

Procrastination is a feature (or rather a bug!) of our human behaviour that we're all aware of. It leads to a growing list of things to do that have been put off because they're neither Urgent nor Important within our subconscious Eisenhower Matrix. Down there in the bottom right are things like Buying the Battery for the Other Motorbike (which I'll do when I Get Round To It). Or sweeping the floor in the porch. Or getting someone to put up the big mirror. If the list of things-put-off gets too long and unmanageable, it generates unhappiness, frustration and stress, all of which contribute to ill-health.

Having reached the stage of life where I know what is indeed important, and getting older means there's less time to accomplish it, I really need focus. Spiritual focus indeed - the sort learnt by Buddhist monks in their mystical contemplations. A mind that doesn't wonder. Mine's off. I have to confess I'm thinking about breakfast right now... should I eat first, and then finish this blog post?

No - I'll keep writing. One can live for days without food. Focus on the task!

Sitting cross-legged for hours at a time in silent contemplation of the numinous, the infinite, the eternal is a valuable practice when young - when the Zen master prowls the room of seated novice monks with a stick, ready to swipe the backs of those whose minds have clearly wandered off.

As we learn more about our psychiatric behavioural disorders, we grasp the idea that there are many of them, and most of us are touched by one or more to a lesser or greater degree. I have written about autism spectrum disorder (ASD, formerly known as Asperger's Syndrome), but another that affects a significant slice of the population is ADHD - attention deficit hyperactivity disorder "characterised by excessive amounts of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity" [Wikipedia]. Again, it's a spectrum thing. Define 'excessive amounts.' Even small amounts can be pernicious. What counts as 'excessive'?

My phone vibrates. My focus is gone - I reach for the phone. Nothing urgent - the weather forecast has been updated. Sunny today, rain for the weekend. PUT IT DOWN AND FOCUS!

We are all prone to such moments of distraction. Attention is an evolutionarily important trait - I see a cat sitting motionless in a field, among the tall grass. Its attention is focused on the stirrings of a field mouse. The cat is oblivious to me approaching it from the rear... I get closer - suddenly, it becomes aware of me; it has to make a decision whether to run from the human or to stay focused on the mouse. I take a step closer - the cat bounds off. The mouse is spared by this unexpected intervention.

Attention deficit can coexist with ASD. Being 'on spectrum' usually means having those restricted, repetitive behaviours and interests (RRBI),  those intense, fixated interests in specific activities or subjects. RRBI helps with focus. I have written about how the great geniuses of science were often on the autism spectrum ('savants') - something that Stanford School of Medicine's Prof Garry Nolan attributes to differences within the putamen caudate area of the brain's basal ganglia when compared to the neurotypical.

I have written in the past about specialist and generalists - having a deep knowledge or broad knowledge. Maybe it's too simplistic, but I would associate deep knowledge within a narrow area of interest with RRBI (and ASD) and broad general knowledge with the scattiness and ADHD - losing focus on one subject area when another, more interesting one, comes along.

When I was young, I could toggle between both modes; on the one hand being engrossed for hours in deeply focused play (building cities out of Lego), or reading about aeroplanes and comparing their maximum speeds. On the other hand, I could become distracted all too easily and switch from one activity to another. My father would often tell me 'nie łap za dużo srok za ogon' - don't try to catch too many magpies by the tail. He could see that I'd have trouble staying focused on one thing, and that would be his way of telling me.

Both these traits continued into adulthood. I'd give this dichotomy a positive spin - I was good at multitasking, I'd tell myself. Now, I think that more focus is good. Focus on attention. Plan my day. Write a to-do list at the start of each day. Structure. Get more done. Beat procrastination. Life is getting shorter by the day, however old you are - there are things that need to be achieved.

Now I press the 'publish' button, I can make myself breakfast.

This time last year:
The S7 extension opens (and Jeziorki loses its semi-rural tranquility forever).

This time three years ago:
Infrastructure delays everywhere

This time four years ago:
Let's stop spitting at the other tribe

This time five years ago:
Progress on the działka

This time nine years ago:
Changes to Poland's traffic regulations

This time 12 years ago:
Teasers in the Polish-English linguistic space

This time 13 years ago:
Summer slipping away

This time 14 years ago:
To the airport by bike

This time 15 years ago:
My translation of Tuwim's Lokomotywa

Blinded by materialism

In childhood, my desire for possessions boiled down to wanting toys. Diecast cars - Corgi, Dinky and Matchbox - plastic model kits - Airfix, Frog and Revell - and of course there was Lego. Stoking such desire were the toy catalogues; by poring over the colourful brochures, I would compare the features of one toy vs another, and badger my parents into buying them for me, or waiting until my birthday or Christmas to get them, gift-wrapped. Yes, there were books. Books tended to come from Ealing Public Libraries, borrowed rather than collected. I read voraciously as a child, mostly non-fiction reference books about aircraft, military matters, railways and other such topics. The library system worked so well that I didn't actually own that many books as a child. Materially, my childhood was a time of simple wants, safe under my parents' wings. 

One grows up. Fitting into society requires a different approach to things. As a teenager, this was about the clothes you wore, the music you listened to, going out as often as possible. All other material needs still provided by parents.

But once out on your own, with a job and housing to pay for, it became important to show you were by the measure of your material possessions. Car, property, baubles, exotic holidays. Work to spend, spend to show off. Your position in the status hierarchy is determined to a great degree by what you have. Your job, your earnings, where you live, how you dress; your lifestyle. The social self is moulded by groupthink; the young adult tries hard to fit in. Doing a job you don't like to buy things you don't need to impress people you don't know.

And it is in this state of development that many remain for the whole of their lives; living through the prism of social approbation. Unable to progress, autonomous decisions are not from them, because "what will they think?" 

If there is no metaphysical purpose to life, and literally all that there exists is matter, then there is no other purpose to life than mere consumption. Even to question this imperative seems to be a subversive act. For we all need Growth. Growth is good - a bigger cake, bigger slices for all - jobs, money, taxes, government services... And without growth a downward spiral. Unemployment. Poverty. Discomfort. Hunger and cold and ill health. Things falling apart. Entropy. Our life can only hold up through growth! Growth can only be obtained through making more, selling more, buying more, consuming more.

Is this so? Not necessarily. The climate crisis is forcing us to examine our behaviour and change our patterns of consumption. The rich quarter of humanity is threatening the rest of the planet.

Stop wanting stuff. Open your consciousness to higher states; if you must chase after something, chase the metaphysical. Our new digital world offers such vast new oceans of knowledge to interact with; so many great science and philosophy communicators on YouTube, so many wonderful articles on Wikipedia and elsewhere on the web, everything searchable, and AI is about to make knowledge even more accessible. The richness of the inner life now can truly take over from a mindless chase for new things to offer short-term delight.

This time last year:
The Bright Side (where things don't go bump in the night)

This time six years ago:
Waiting for the level-crossing barriers - Nowa Iwiczna and W-wa Dawidy

This time seven years ago:
More Sandomierz photos

This time eight years ago:
All aboard the Gold Train rush

This time 12 years ago:
Dominicans at large, Służew 

This time 13 years ago: 
Late summer moods, Jeziorki 

This time 14 years ago: 
The next one hundred years 

This time 15 years ago: 
"What do we want? Early retirement!
When do we want it? NOW!" 

This time 16 years ago: 
Twilight of Warsaw's greenhouse economy

Dawn tourism - the sights without the crowds

I arrived in Sandomierz on Thursday evening and headed straight to the dinner inaugurating the exporters' conference, which took up the whole of Friday (starting at 8:30am and ending late with another dinner). So to get a chance to see Sandomierz properly, I decided to spend my own money on a second night's stay and check it out on Saturday. This is exactly what I had done on my last visit, this time seven years ago. However, since then, Sandomierz has become a victim of its own success, and like Kraków, it is in danger of becoming over-touristed. Slow death by a million tourists, grazing, gawping, shuffling and being persuaded to part with their money by a thousand garish posters, banners, parasoled pavement tables, cider stalls, post-card stands and fridge-magnet displays.

So to avoid the crowds, which on this, the last weekend of the summer holidays, under cloudless skies, would be huge, I did this. I woke up with the sunrise (05:35), dressed quickly, and without breakfast, I went out to see Sandomierz while there was no one around. And what a visual treat that was.

Below: through the gate and into the old town. Passing through, was one of just three people that I observed over the hour that I was there. The morning light on old bricks and cobbles is beautiful, and the smells of dawn are magical. This is Brama Opatowska, the only one of the four town gates to have survived.

In summer, we're more accustomed to seeing the sun streaming in low between buildings in the evening, when the streets are full of merry throngs on their way to bars, cafes and restaurants. But now - no one at all. It's like wandering around an empty open-air museum.

Below: the old town square with nobody there. It's ten to seven in the morning.

Sandomierz's old town is located on top of an hilly outcrop some 45 metres high overlooking the Vistula. The building below is one overlooking the south-western slopes as they fall away toward a deep ravine. On the far distant horizon, the water meadows of the Vistula.

Below: a prospect towards the south-east - again, the Vistula visible on the horizon (and just about) the bridge linking the town's Zarzekowice district (which is where Sandomierz railway station is inconveniently located). To the left, the vicarage, to the right the cathedral walls.

One of those prospects that creates a double take - isn't this southern Europe? I'd posit that Sandomierz is one of the most northerly located town of southern Europe; climatically it's warm enough for viticulture, and the architecture, when lit by sunshine, isn't dour but joyous.

Although not designed by an Italian architect, like Zamość, 120km to the east, the layout of Sandomierz around the town hall and main square also brings the European south to mind.

Below: a very Tuscan prospect. From here I return to my hotel for breakfast (excellent!) heavily laced with coffee - then a short nap (hence the coffees!) from which I awake to take on the rest of the day.

Below: the Dominican church and convent, and its vineyard. Church and viticulture together - "fruit of the vine and work of human hands". Eight centuries of tradition. Photo taken in the early afternoon.

Climate change has made wine making a more commercially viable proposition for the Sandomierz region; there are now nine vineyards along the local wine trail, one of which is Winnica Św. Jakuba shown above. But local wine-making is a still small scale enterprise (typically a couple of thousand bottles of a single type per year). Destined, however, to expand.

Below: Sandomierz castle, seen from the Vistula's water meadows below the old town. The tourist throng is to be found on the other side of the castle.

Left: two deep ravines run from the heights upon which the main part of Sandomierz stand down to the Vistula river. Note how green the scenery is for late summer. The electric tourist carts stop at the bottom, but few venture up here, preferring instead to buy ice cream and lemonade at the bottom.

Below: peak season, busy with tourists, Sandomierz's entrepreneurial citizens are busy selling krówki (cream fudge), cydr (cider sweetened with honey, with added cinnamon and cloves, and cut with lemonade), and all things themed Ojciec Mateusz, the TV priest-detective series set in Sandomierz. I'd recommend that the local authorities clamp down on the more garish forms of advertising which try to outcompete one another with day-glo colours and shouty fonts. Not visible in any of my photos as my lens tries to avoid such things. They are quite at odds with the town's character.

Cars are banned from the old town, as they should be, but now there are more and more of these electric carts plying their trade around Sandomierz. I noted in 2016 the appearance of faux Model T Fords for taking tourists around the town. These have been joined by fake vintage Rolls-Royces and these things (below), styled after a late-1930s Chevrolet truck; it is quite out of place visually - the Model T Ford replicas are more fitting.

When I was last in Sandomierz in 2016, I was impressed at its progress in establishing its place on the tourist map of Poland. Plenty of new investment, refurbishment, sensitively carried out. However, I fear a tipping point has been reached. There are now so many ice-cream stands and small tourist-tat stalls competing for custom with shrill advertising that it all risks drowning out the visual charm of the old town. 

Below: I thoroughly recommend the hotel in which I stayed, the Sarmata (***). As in 2016, I had one night paid for, the second I paid myself so I could extend my stay and see more of Sandomierz. In 2016 I paid 280zł (then worth £56) for a night, and complained about a poor breakfast. Seven years later, the hotel-night cost 270zł (£52 today) with an excellent breakfast - huge and healthy - lots of fresh fruit, grilled veg, poached eggs, big choice of cheese and cold cuts and fruit juices. And a beautiful hotel complex too, perfectly located for the old town.

So - take my tip, do as much sightseeing as possible around daybreak - before the crowds and the commerce take over. The qualia memories the remain will be that much stronger. And 23,500 paces, the result of two long strolls (and a shorter one back to the bus station).

This time last year:
Bike-ride to the past

This time three years ago:
Muscle memory

This time five years ago:
The journey there, and the journey back again

This time six years ago:
Sandomierz - another outstanding Polish town to see

This time eight years ago:
Food hygiene and lies as Russian foreign policy tools

This time nine years ago:
Asphalt for ul. Poloneza (to Krasnowolska at least)

This time ten years ago:
A welcome splash of colour to a drab car park 

This time 11 years ago:
To Hel and back in 36 hours

This time 13 years ago:
Honing the Art of the Written Word

This time 14 years ago:
Of castles, dams and brass bands