Jeziorki in the snow

Above: On the way to work - the new PKP timetable comes into force. (As indeed, new timetables do right across Europe on this day). Worse in the morning, worse in the evenings, it transpires. A 30 minute journey has now become 37 minutes. Changes makes things chaotic, snow makes it worse. The platforms of W-wa Dawidy (the station that's devoid of a single sign telling passengers where they are) are, funnily enough, swept.

Unlike W-wa Powiśle, (right) which hasn't had any snow clearance all day long. This is a busy inner city suburban station, and leaving the platforms in this state is asking for trouble. The station's four clocks all stopped at four minutes past six (am or pm who knows), the trains were all running late (new timetable). Bałagan, Panie.

Above: Not much better out in the suburbs. Back in Jeziorki, ul. Buszycka's road surface offers the traction of a well-polished skating rink.

Cheaper by taxi

Coming back from a lads' night out (celebrating Adam R's 49th), I take a cab from Metro Wilanowska. It delivers me at home eight minutes later, where I receive a pleasant surprise. The fare is a mere 34zł 80, lower than it's been in years. Later, I realise why. On Karczunkowska, I see a new roadsign (above left - looking west, right - looking east towards ul. Puławska). This is the second (outer Warsaw) taxi zone boundary, and it has been moved from ul. Ludwinowska to Jeziorki, three kilometres further out. This means a typical saving of nine zlotys for a taxi ride home after 22:00. This is the second southward extension of the taxi zone since we moved to Jeziorki (originally the border was just beyond ul. Poleczki, by the Statoil garage). These two extensions have moved the second taxi zone boundary out 5km further south and save me 15 zł a ride.

Taxi drivers were less than enthusiastic about the move, and intend to take the city authorities to court. However, with these lower prices, I for one will be more inclined to take a cab home rather than the draughty old 709 bus.

By the way, notice the lack of pavement on either side of ul. Karczunkowska. The city was planning to do something back in January - but didn't follow through. All that surveying work went to waste.

Another book launch

To another book launch this week! This time, the book in question is Piotr Frączak's Przypadki Anatola F. A book about the worldview of an ineffectual intellectual, failed by communism, a failure in capitalism, who dislikes the state and the market, who is insufficiently assertive to get the world he believes he deserves for himself. An unhurried dreamer; a bit of a loser. A Polish Everyman. Based on notes taken down by the author since 1984, the painful transition from one system to another, the dreams and disappointments are painfully and comically recorded.

Moni and I attend the packed launch as the book's illustrator is none other than our neighbour, Kamila Wojciechowicz, who provided 50 illustrations that give the book its quirky, offbeat character. Like Ronald Searle, Nicholas Bentley, Willie Rushton or (in particular) John Glashan, whose cartoons gave dozens of humorous British books a specific character, Kamila's illustrations have the potential to turn Przypadki Anatola F. into a Polish cult classic. And this is her first book!

Above: Kamila (left) signs a copy of Przypadki Anatola F. for Moni. In the bookshop where the launch takes place, Moni discovers a copy of Owadzie opowieści, written by her classmate at primary school, Jan Sienkiewicz. It seems the people she grew up with are all making names for themselves - and at such youthful ages!

Later, Moni and I met up in town with Eddie and had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. The children ate themselves into a state of immobility - the portions were huge. As we left, it started to snow. Left: A pause to snap the Palace of Culture with the Hard Roc (missing its 'k') neon in the foreground. A clash of communism and capitalism that Anatol F. would be familiar with.

Under the Liberator

To the Warsaw Uprising Museum for the launch of Bankowe Szańce by Edmund Baranowski and Juliusz Kulesza, both teenage participants in the rising. The book (in Polish only for now) tells several wartime stories with a common thread - banking and finance. The story of Poland's gold - all 38 tonnes of it - and how it was taken out of Poland by National Bank of Poland staff as the Blitzkrieg raged all around, and how it came to end up in London via the Sahara Desert - is thrilling stuff. Equaly interesting is the story of Akcja Góral - the biggest bank robbery in Nazi occupied Europe - which happened in Warsaw on 12 August 1943. The equivalent of over a million dollars at the time was seized by around 50 Home Army soldiers who attacked an armoured car carrying newly printed banknotes. And also the story of how the Polish underground state forged banknotes on a massive scale - and how the Germans found out about this. Co-author Juliusz Kulesza was an apprentice working at the state security printers PWPW at the time.

But there was another story, little known, that appears in the book, concerning the fate of the granddaughter of Leopold Kronenberg, a famous Polish banker. She was executed by the Home Army during the Warsaw Uprising. A medical orderly, she was helping to move a stretcher case, when someone looking through the contents of her handbag found a Gestapo identity card. She was shot by Polish soldiers. It now transpires that she had been working for British military intelligence at the time. During the Q&A session with the authors, an AK veteran stood up to say that he was in the counter-intelligence unit that executed her, and that until this very moment he had been unaware of the fact that she had been a double agent.

Many of the audience today were AK veterans, like my father, in their 80s or even older. Only a handful were on walking sticks. The majority looked well and younger than their years.

The book is available online via Askon publishers (www.askon.waw.pl). Next Askon book launch will be on 29 January in the Royal Castle in Warsaw - Silent and Unseen. E-mail me if you want to come - places are limited and in great demand, everyone wants to meet the author, 96 year-old legend General Stefan Bałuk, commando, writer, photographer, forger and get a signed copy of his book!

In which I walk to work

Well, to Platan Park anyway for my first meeting of the morning. Puławska is now a no-go zone for commuting as far as I'm concerned. I'd rather walk over five and half km from home to Platan Park than 1km from home to the bus stop on Puławska, wait for bus, then stand in a jam-packed rickety old Ikarus that takes 20 minutes to cover the four and half km to Poleczki and then another 1.1km walk from the bus stop on Puławska to Platan Park. Why no bike or car? Tonight I'm dining with clients. Things come to a pretty pass when walking is quicker than public transport!

Everywhere I look I see the destruction wreaked on the land by motorists. Above: across the road on ul. Trombity, neighbours have put out white-painted concrete bollards (from flower-pot moulds) to protect their grass verge. Below: The far end of ul. Dumki. A rat-run chosen by owners of four-wheel drives - the only way around the roadworks on ul. Trombity and Kórnicka.

As I walk, I also notice the derelict houses along the way. Below: One on ul. Dumki. In the UK, property doesn't lie idle; it belongs to someone - if they have no use for it, they sell it and buy holidays, cars, clothes etc. Here, because of uncertain title and uncertain markets, empty properties can just languish for decades.

Below: Derelict house on ul. Sztajerki. This place has also been abandoned for as long as I can remember. What am I doing on Sztajerki?

I'm forced to detour, as Poloneza is now finally closed to pedestrians and cyclists - the contractors have placed security guards to prevent local residents from crossing the railway tracks. So on, via Sztajerki, to ul. Oberka, and another derelict house (below).

Look on this picture and be aware that in a few weeks time this derelict house will be gone - it is smack in the path of the S2 South Warsaw Bypass. There's a barking dog here, which suggest that some homeless people are living here.

I end up walking a lot more today - from Rozbrat bus stop, via my office and the Gromada hotel, to the Old Town, then back to Metro Świętokrzyska. Over 12km (8 miles) walked in a full working day.

S2 at Poloneza

Ul. Poloneza is now bisected at the railway track linking the main line with the Metro depot at Kabaty. Even pedestrian traffic is prohibited. Only the bicycle gets through!

The road was closed a month ago. A viaduct is to be built here. Ul. Poloneza is the main artery that connects my home to Platan Park, where my working day often starts. The viaduct will go over the top of both the railway track and the S2 southern Warsaw bypass (Południowa Obwodnica Warszawy or POW).

So it's gratifying to know that the road's not just closed for the sake of closing the road. Things are happening. I sneaked past on my bike for a closer look. Below: This to me looks like the welding of the metal frames for the pillars that one day soon will hold the ul. Poloneza viaduct aloft.

I can see the situation in two years time: Poloneza is reopened, as a properly tarmacked road, and half of Magdalenka and Lesznowola is going to be stuck here in a massive traffic jam. Unless Puławska Bis and/or Hołubcowa Bis will be built by then - which I doubt!

Bad news - I've just read on Skyscraper City that the Polish Highways and Motorways Authorities (GDDKiA) has just declared the tender for the stretch of road between Węzeł Lotnisko and Konotopa (the eastern end of the A2 motorway) invalid. So we may end up with the POW being an expressway linking Puławska and Ochota.

Candid photography

Once again, it was Eddie who first spotted this from the kitchen window. A very rare visitor to Okęcie indeed! This is an Ilyushin Il-76, NATO reporting name Candid. At first sight to me it looked like a giant BAE Avro RJ 146, taking off lower, slower, more noisily than the far smaller regional jetliner. Comparable in size, though slightly shorter than the C-17 Globemaster III.

This heavy lift transporter (reg. 4K AZ100) belongs to Azerbaijani Silk Way Airlines. What was it doing in Warsaw?

Between ul. Sarabandy and Farbiarska

On the eastern edges of Jeziorki, where it meets Dąbrówka, there's a small pond ( 52° 7'14.00"N, 21° 0'34.00"E) which used to be surrounded by fields, but which is now being encroached by houses. I wonder how much longer it will be possible to walk freely across from ul. Sarabandy to ul. Farbiarska.

Once upon a time, ul. Farbiarska had little roads running off it with houses addressed A to H or A to K as suffixes to a number on Farbiarska. Today these roads have their own names - ul. Czysta, ul. Głęboka, ul. Ługi. This makes more sense. But as the plots between houses fill up, so ancient rights of way disappear. Right of way has never been as sacrosant in Poland as it is in Britain. In the UK, public footpaths yield with difficulty to the advancing tide of development. But here, where rights of way have never been clearly demarcated, they can disappear just like that. A path between ul. Dumki and ul. Sarabandy, for example, has been cut by a fence and a building plot. Your family may have used it for generations, but now it's gone.