Night train, carry me home

All aboard... the NIGHT train!* [Open in new window so you can listen to James Brown while continuing to read this post in this one]

So there I am in Kraków, half past ten at night, and keen on getting back to W-wa Jeziorki. I wheel my bicycle through the Planty, full of revelers of every nationality, to Kraków Główny station to assess the chances. I'm in luck. There's a TLK train (Tanie Linie Kolejowe - Cheap Railway Lines) at 23:20. It's the long distance night train from Zakopane to Gdynia via Kraków, Dąbrowa Górnicza Ząb (!) Częstochowa Osobowa, Warsaw, Malbork and Gdansk (Główny, Wrześć and Oliwa). And also stopping at small places few have heard of - Krzeszowice, Trzebinia, Jaworzno Szczakowa, Myszków, Prabuty.

The Romance of the Rails is felt at its most intense on a night train. I remember my first night journey by train; from Wrocław to Kłodzko in 1976, steam-hauled by my favourite loco, the Ty-2. I spent the whole time with my head out of the window, catching the soot and burning embers in my face, the smell of coal burning, passing sleeping towns and villages. Being on a night train is not about what you can see out of the window, but what you can imagine...

Miami, Florida
Atlanta, Georgia
Raleigh, North Carolina, hey!
Washington D.C.
Oh, and Richmond, Virginia too
Baltimore, Maryland
Philadelphia
New York City, take me home
Boston, Massachusetts,
And don't forget New Orleans
The home of the blues
Oh yeah
Night train, night train, night train
Night Train, carry me home...

Leaving Blackpool-in-the-Tatras at eight in the evening, it arrives in the town that's the final berthing place of the ORP Blyskawica at eleven the next morning. For me, the time between departure from Kraks and arrival in Warsaw will give me time to snooze a while. The ticket between the two cities costs a mere 51 zlotys (11 quid).

Parking my bike at the locomotive end of the front carriage where it won't block passengers, I get into the first compartment, which I share with a Radio Maryja listener all the way to Częstochowa. A deeply scary experience. Apparently, the European Union is the new USSR. (Funny that - I've not heard of mass deportations, show trials, archipelagos of forced labour camps or executions of millions of class enemies by President Herman van Rompuy's henchmen.) Brussels is run by freemasons ("do you know what freemasons are?"); there is a 14-story building there that houses a gigantic computer, called 'the Beast' that, when the time comes, will control every one of us through microchips. Says a Greek monk from the monastery on Mount Athos, so it must be true. The scariest thing about this lady is that she has a Master's degree and a PhD.

Neither of the two stations before Częstochowa has a single signboard saying what it's called, so my fellow passenger is understandably distressed about the possibility of missing her stop, especially as the train's running late and we don't know where we are. Rather than bemoan the wretched state of Poland's railway stations, Dr Halina continues to warn me about microchips, which have been implanted into the people of Boston in 2001.

Fortunately, I'm spared any more apocalyptic visions as the train pulls into Częstochowa, where extra carriages are added to the train. While they're being shunted into place, I witness an interesting sight. Overlooking the tracks at Częstochowa Osobowa station is a wooden hut; two men are chasing what looks like a small fat beige dog that's broken through the chicken wire fence. Except - it's not a dog - it's a piglet. It's two o'clock in the morning, you will understand. Two grown men are running around the railway tracks in Częstochowa at 2 o'clock in the morning chasing a piglet.

In the next compartment are a group of Polish soldiers, back from duty in Afghanistan, wearing those desert uniforms so familiar from the world's TV news broadcasts, with Polish national colours on their shoulders. The guys have been laughing and joking all the way, so relieved to be home safely. Poland's new-style professional army is something to be proud of, compared to the gangs of pissed-up conscripts who until last year used to disgrace public transport as they ended their 18 month compulsory national service.

As the train pulled out Częstochowa, I had the compartment to myself, so I remove my shoes and nod off, waking up just before W-wa Zachodnia station, where the train arrives half an hour late. It's raining again, so I wait for a Radom-bound local train and jump off at W-wa Jeziorki, arriving home 26 hours after setting off yesterday.

Above: Night train passing through W-wa Jeziorki, en route for Kraków, August 2010

* If you can stand the excitement, watch The Greatest Man That Ever MOVED getting on down to Night Train live. Turn up the volume, set screen mode to full size, and enjoy. Mr M. Jackson is a fruity dwarf by comparison.

A ride across rural Poland

May Day Bank Holiday. The Feast of the Working Man. P'yervomaysk. My plan for the day was ambitious; to get as far as I could to Kraks by bicycle and local train, arriving in time for the Polandian blogmeet. Lots of preparation and planning, and a conscious decision not to take an SLR camera; all photos below taken on my Nokia N95 mobile phone.

I left home at daybreak just before five. The route was planned as follows - home - Piaseczno - Grójec - Nowe Miasto nad Pilicą - Końskie - Jędrzejów. At Jędrzejów, I would pick up the all-stations to Kraków service, getting me in to Kraks by quarter to six in the evening.

The air smells quite different at 5am on a spring or summer day; a beautiful fresh smell that's all but gone by 7am. There's no one about other than the occasional bakery van, the bird song pervades one's consciousness. This is the beauty of cycling. On foot, you're covering ground slowly. In a car you are insulated from the outside world by laminated glass and the sound of the engine, and the landscape is flashing by to fast for you to acquire a more reflective relationship with it. On a bike you are moving three times faster than walking pace, three times slower than by car.

Once clear of Piaseczno and the southern edge of the Warsaw agglomeration, the landscape along the 722 to Grójec is dominated by orchards. If Kent is the Garden of England, then Grójec and the surrounding district is Poland's equivalent. At this time of year, the apple and cherry trees are all in bloom. Beyond Grójec, I pick up the 728, which leads all the way down to Jędrzejów. Here there's still orchard and blossom, but the landscape becomes more undulating. I pass Mogielnica, where my paternal grandmother was born. There is a familiarity of klimat; slight hilliness, orchards, masses of blossom against a darkening sky.

Nowe Miasto nad Pilicą: Holdsworth Triath Elan and Lim-5

Above: 8:30 am. Three and half hours/75km into the journey, Nowe Miasto nad Pilicą, which used to be home to an airbase during the Cold War. [There's still lots of this kind of post-Soviet empire stuff all over Poland. The Lim-5 and Lim-6 were Polish licence-built versions of the MiG-17 fighter / fighter-bomber. Here's a list of all existing Lim-5s, -6s and MiG-17s gracing Poland's public spaces.]

Crossing the Pilica river, the landscape changes, it's flatter, the orchards give way to arable farms, the klimat is 1950s America. I'm in my stride. The road surface is good, slight tailwind, bike working perfectly in harmony with my legs, nicely run in. A while more and I have a break at a petrol station and a light breakfast. As I rested and ate, I observed across the road, a mother (in her 60s) and her son (mid-30s) planting potatoes. He was seated on a tractor and yelling furiously at her. She was bent double over the soil, patiently putting up with it all, as she'd done for a lifetime. This scene went on for several minutes before he finally roared off on his tractor.

Soon after setting off, some five hours after leaving home, it starts to rain. Just spotting at first, it gets more and more intense. There is no alternative but to carry on; there was still 50km to Końskie. When the rain got really heavy, I would shelter for a while. One such stop was in the village of Gowarczów. Below: the hardware store, where you can buy building materials, plumbing and electrical supplies, carpet beaters, artificial roses and bicycle parts.

11:45 am. A guy at the bus shelter is breakfasting on garlicky sausage meat. He reeks of alcohol fumes after a hard night's drinking. Across the street, a group of four men are working out how to buy the alcohol they needed to get them through the day. A tetchy discussion; hands diving into pockets in search of loose change and some tough negotiations ended with their leader announcing in a firm tone: Jest wódka. ('There is vodka').

By the time I'd reached Końskie (pop. 20,000 and falling) just after midday, I'd had enough of the weather; soaked to the skin, my shoes full of water that had wicked down through my sodden socks. Worst of all, the pot-holes in the road were brim-full of rain so as to become invisible. After a couple of metabolism-jarring jolts, I decided it was not worth carrying on, and so I put Plan B into operation.

Rather than heading south for Jędrzejów (another 67km), I turned off towards Końskie's PKS bus station. Making my way there across the town's park, I observed in an archway, three extremely inebriated men manhandling a fourth whose legs were giving way beneath him and who was on the point of passing out despite their aggressive language and actions.

Rural and Small Town Poland is so unlike the Big City Poland so well known to us urban sophisticates as to be quite another country. Different people, different mind-sets and values and life-goals. I shall pursue this thread tomorrow, Poland's National Day.

Above: Końskie's former rail and bus station, now just a bus station. The last train ran from here to Radom on 1 October 2009. You may think the above photo is dull, lacking in interest or spirit of place, in which case my intention to faithfully replicate my emotional response to being here was successful.

Outside this building I picked up a bus for Kielce and the same train I would have caught at Jędrzejów. [Tip for cyclists: Take both wheels off bike, secure them to frame, and there's no problem with getting it into a bus's baggage hold.] 11 zlotys got me to Kielce. From there I bought a ticket to Kraków, which, with the bike, came to a shocking 36.70 zlotys. It was only when I was on the train did the conductor explain to me that the woman in the booking office had mistakenly sold me two singles (one full price, one with excursion discount) to Kraków plus bicycle. The conductor then found a ticketless traveller who boarded the train at a rural halt along the line; rather than sell him a new full-price ticket, he introduced us to one another and passed on his fare (14.70 zlotys, with excursion discount) directly to me! Now there's client-focused thinking - something I completely didn't expect.

And so between home and Końskie I covered 135km, around half the distance between Warsaw and Kraków. I felt no unpleasant side effects (maybe I'd have had aching legs and sore knees had I pressed on to Jędrzejów). On the train I had a half-litre of Coke; on reaching my destination, (the restaurant Nostalgia on ul. Karmelicka 10, Kraków), I downed four large peevoes. Only then, after drinking two and half litres - nearly five pints - of fluid - did I need to go to the toilet - which shows how dehydrated the body becomes as a result of long-distance cycling.

Below: a screenshot showing the route from Warsaw's southern edge to Końskie. Roughly halfway to Kraków. Click to enlarge.

Modernising the railway line

I am grateful to reader Paweł for pointing me to the plans for modernising the railway line that runs through Jeziorki (here (road crossings) and here (track alignment) - big files). This is PLK's Line No. 8, that runs from Warsaw, via Okęcie (where a new tunnel is being built to join it to the airport), through Dawidy, Jeziorki, Nowa Iwiczna, Piaseczno, Czachówek and on south, to Radom, Kielce and eventually Kraków.

By word of explanation; Polskie Linie Kolejowe (PLK) is the state-owned company responsible for the rail infrastructure in this country. The erstwhile monopolist Polskie Koleje Państwowe (PKP) has been split into various companies including PLK and train operators such as InterCity, Przewozy Regionalne, PKP Cargo and regional operators owned by individual provinces.

PLK, flush with EU structural funds, is engaged on a strategic programme of modernising Poland's railways (as I've pointed out, on many lines, scheduled journey times are longer than in pre-war, steam-hauled days). The EU needs Poland's railways to be fast - a country placed at the heart of the continent should not be a transport bottleneck. So things are happening - slowly.

Back to Jeziorki and neighbourhood. The line between Warsaw and Radom will be improved so that trains can travel at 160km/h (100mph). Currently, the line is theoretically good for 100-110km/h, though there are many speed restrictions in force due to the poor state of the track (as a quick look at the rotting wooden sleepers between Dawidy and Jeziorki will atest).

To allow trains to travel at higher speeds, the line needs the kinks ironed out of it. In particular the way the up line (northbound) bows round the island platforms that are a feature of the stations between Okęcie and Nowa Iwiczna.

Removing island platforms will be made difficult because of the coal line running parallel to the main line. So the solution proposed in the project documentation (relevant fragment below*) is to move the down platform (southbound) at W-wa Jeziorki across to the other side of ul. Karczunkowska, to the right of the line. The same solution is planned for Nowa Iwiczna station. (Click for enlargement)


Most radically for inhabitants of Jeziorki, a viaduct will be built over the railway line, replacing the current level crossing. The documentation is unclear as to whether a viaduct will carry ul. Baletowa across the line at W-wa Dawidy (it shown thus above), or whether the level crossing will be upgraded to one with lights and barriers. Similarly, the situation at Nowa Iwiczna station is unclear.

The documentation for the project to modernise Line No. 8 was finalised in August 2007, the rampa na kruszywa is still shown (work to demolish it began in May 2008). Additional halts on the line at Mysiadło (between W-wa Jeziorki and Nowa Iwiczna) and at Stara Iwiczna (between Nowa Iwiczna and Piaseczno) have not been mentioned.

When will this all happen? According to the PLK website, work will start next year and be completed in 2015. My own view? Right now, the road builders have got their act together. Between them the highways authority (GDDKiA), the construction companies, the local authorities and the legislature are working better than ever before in Poland's 20 year history as a new democracy. But the old PKP 'state-within-a-state', even after being split up, is still not functioning as it should. I very much doubt that a 160km/h Warsaw to Radom line will be operational by 2015. I hope to be proved wrong.

[Update 2021: six years late.]

 
Worth following the thread on the modernisation of Line No. 8 on the Skyscraper City forum here (in Polish).

* Diagram from Modernizacja Linii Kolejowej Nr 8 Część 5, prepared by Scetauroute/Nexel Polska

Repair or replace or leave to rot?

Cycling home last week, I noticed that the footbridge (kładka, pron. 'KWUDkuh') over ul. Puławska has been well and truly closed. I decided to investigate today. It transpires that a large chunk of it simply fell off on to the bus stop below. The bridge was instantly sealed off, according to an article in Życie Warszawy. Incidentally, the photo illustrating the story is not of this particular bridge!

The closure means huge inconvenience for those living on ul. Jagielska; coming home from town on the bus, they are unable to cross the six-lane highway. The alternative is walking one stop from either Karczunkowska or Kapeli. This is also a useful bus stop for the Las Kabacki forest, I wonder how many people were left stranded here this weekend.

Taking a closer look, one can see the enormity of what had happened (right). Imagine standing at the bus stop when all of a sudden a large slab of reinforced concrete falls on your head. Or crossing the road and suddenly plunging 20 ft onto the pavement below.

The bus stop has been moved several metres south; a mesh has been slung under the gaping hole to catch any falling debris.

The question now is - what next? Many of Warsaw's kładki of this era have been replaced (such as the ones along ul. Czerniakowska). The work went on for months and led to traffic misery. Rush hour traffic here is already miserable at the best of times. Will it be repaired? A structural engineer will have to answer that. Repairing it would still necessitate lane closure. The other alternative - just leave it. To the annoyance of locals and visitors to the forest. But there's a local election coming up in the autumn...

The classic Warsaw kładka such as this one was a nuisance for cyclists and parents with pushchairs or prams - for the wheelchair-bound, without a very strong person helping, getting up and down the steps was impossible. The iron ramps were too steep and too narrow. New kładki have wheelchair lifts at either end, or, as in the case of the super-kładka across Al. Niepodległości by the Pole Mokotowskie fields, a spiral ramp for cyclists to ascend and descend without having to dismount. Plus wheelchair lifts. I doubt if the city's budget would stretch to one of these.

I hope they don't demolish it. I've taken some good snaps from up there... like this one, and how it looked in the days when traffic jams had just ceased to be tolerable.

UPDATE 1 May: Temporary traffic lights have been installed on Puławska by the closed kładka. For you motorised, important, self-impatient wozidupki driving your big, black four wheel-drives with darkened rear windows stuck in the resultant jam, all I can say is that they were designed for muddy fields.

Jeziorki spring update

The terrible national tragedy that befell us two weeks ago eclipsed the perennial story of nature coming back to life after a long and snowy winter. Over those two weeks, leaves have appeared on trees, migratory birds have returned for the summer, the day has gained nearly an hour in length. It's time to sum up in photos how spring looks this year in Jeziorki.

The eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815 threw up vast amounts of ash into the atmosphere, creating spectacular sunsets that were said to inspire the paintings of J.M.W. Turner. Above: The sunset on 16 April, two days after the second Eyjafjallajökull eruption that caused the shut-down of aviation over much of Europe. The photo is entirely unretouched in Photoshop - it is shown as is. Compare to this photo taken the previous day. Can you see the 'volcanic lavendar'?

Above. No, not a volcano erupting in southern Warsaw - rather another rare occurence of mammatus clouds. Not as nice as these ones photographed three years ago, but an awe-inspiring sight nevertheless. These cloud formations appear in the wake of storm fronts that sweep over on warm spring evenings.

Below: Flying home to Warsaw on Tuesday 6 April, our plane passed over the end of ul. Trombity. The photo shows the extent of the flooding caused by the large volumes of melted snow. The road nearest the camera, ul. Dumki, is entirely submerged for much of its length in this picture.
Below: the wetlands, wetter than usual. The view is from the ul. Kórnicka side (the right-hand side of the photo above). The frogs, which had been croaking loudly last week, were strangely silent today. To put into perspective, compare the view with this map and post blogged over three years ago.

Below: the wetlands looking south-west from ul. Dumki towards Kórnicka. The land is extremely waterlogged, despite low rainfall this month, the water levels have not receded much. Still, I was able to do something today I couldn't do a week ago - wade in my wellies along flooded ul. Dumki.

Below: corner of ul. Karczunkowska and ul. Buszycka this morning. I've just been for water at the studnia oligoceńska, and I catch a train-load of empty coal wagons heading back to Okęcie sidings from the Siekierki power station. A classic view of Jeziorki, I think.


Right: Later in the day, walking alongside the track, I catch sight of the Palace of Culture, eight miles (13km) from here as the crow flies. The foreshortening effect of the Nikkor 80-400mm lens makes the density of farm buildings in Jeziorki seem greater than it really is.

Below: Spring in Jeziorki, ul. Nawłocka. The narrow field running alongside the road, ploughed and ready for new crop; trees in blossom, blue sky. A view that never fails to bring on those flashback moments. Another timeless classic view of Jeziorki.

Missing words

Working every day in the linguistic space between Polish and English, I always find it interesting to winkle out those blank spots in either language. Having spent all of my life inhabiting that space, I am sure they say so much about the difference between the two nations and cultures.

And today's word is: 'grumpy'.

Getionary gives the best Polish word for 'grumpy' as zrzędliwy, which the Oxford PWN dictionary confirms. I must say, I've never heard this word in Polish - ever!

My Polish colleagues suggested marudny - which Oxford PWN indeed gives as 'grumpy', but grumpiness is rather a passive state of mind, and not the more active marudzić, which I'd rather translate as 'moaning' or 'whinging'.

Could this be that the English are less able or willing to externalise their woes than Poles? Is one nation more emotionally open than the other?

Interestingly, Grumpy* of the Seven Dwarfs in Polish becomes... Gburek. Gburek is the diminutive of gbur, which means 'a boor,' with overtones of surliness.

We had been discussing the stereotypical phlegmatic nature of the English, in reference to Rudyard Kipling's If... The Brits (especially Victorian ones), were expected to keep their emotions under control. Poles, on the other hand, are prone to dramatic gestures, such as this one.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis made the link between language and thought (you cannot communicate a thought if your language lacks the words that express it). The corollary to the hypothesis is that if your language lacks certain words, you cannot even think that thought, leading to differences in behaviour between speakers of different languages.

This, then, is why languages introduce loanwords. It is the epitome of revanchist schadenfreude**.

*Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, Dopey become Mędrek , Gburek, Wesołek, Śpioszek, Nieśmiałek, Apsik, Gapcio respectively.

** There's chutzpah for you.

The answer to urban commuting

It's back on the road - my daily commuting bike from the days when I rode to work in London every day in the mid '90s. My Brompton has a new chain tensioner and handlebar grips, and works like a dream.

The genius in the Brompton is how it folds and unfolds. Around 15 seconds each way, leaving people gawping in amazement. I can zoom up to a bus stop as a bus pulls in, fold the bike and hop on before the doors close.

To prove just how useful a commuting tool it is as part of a multi-mode transport solution - take a look at my travelling day today.

Home - station by bike. Train into town, station to office by bike, then on by bike, jump on bus for three stops to get past an unpleasant stretch of roadworks, cycle a bit, train again, bike again to lesson, then bike to the Central Station to meet Moni off a train from Poznań, then taxi home with bike and suitcase in the boot.

As a full-size bike, it handles well enough around town, accelerating away briskly from traffic lights, yet the small wheels don't like Warsaw's pot-holes and it's best on runs of up to 10km (6 miles) although I once rode this bike 160km (100 miles) from West London to Bath.

No worries either about having to padlock it outside shops - just fold it up and take it in.

The Brompton is becoming as iconic a part of London's transport as the red bus and the black cab. Wear a dark suit and tie, a helmet, a fluorescent Sam Browne belt and you're looking as London as can be.

You can now buy Bromptons in Poland.

The Brompton comes in several flavours - there are options to do with gears (from one to six), dynamo lighting and luggage rack, and titanium components to save weight. For unhilly Warsaw, a lightweight single-speed Brompton would do the trick admirably - mine has three (hub) gears and a rear rack. I bought my Brompton (Serial Number 2892) from Andrew Ritchie, the company's founder, back in 1991 when I reviewed it for Bicycle Magazine. I liked it so much I bought it.

UPDATE: This very day, Brompton won the Queen's Award for Enterprise - for International Trade (for the second time, the first being in 1995), and for Innovation. The Queen's Award for Enterprise is the highest honour that can be bestowed on a British company).

Making sense of Polish politics

In case my British and American readers have been puzzling over the recent descriptions in their media of the late President Kaczyński as being 'right wing', here's a simple graph above that I prepared ahead of the 2005 elections to show that the Anglo-Saxon concepts of 'left' and 'right' don't make too much sense in the context of Polish politics.

You need to operate in two axes. A social one, where 'right' means traditional, conservative, patriotic, religious, espousing traditional family values; while 'left' means modern, secular, tolerant, cosmopolitan, liberal. And an economic one, where 'right' means the free market, privatisation, laissez-faire, small government, low taxes, while 'left' means statism, dirigisme, big government, redistribution of wealth; tax and spend. You can argue about where exactly one should plot the position of the given parties on the graph, but essentially, the point is to put the parties into one of four quarters.

In the above graph, you will see the two biggest parties in Polish politics occupying quarters that neither of the main British or American parties occupy. Hence the problems with understanding Polish politics. Supporters of Poland's Law & Justice (PiS) might see eye-to-eye with American Republicans on Christianity, patriotic duty, abortion and gay rights, but would disagree on the primacy of free enterprise over the state.

The word 'liberal' in the US (and in the UK to a lesser degree) means 'social liberal'. In Poland, it means both economic and social liberal.

If anyone would occupy the same quarter as PiS, it would be - further to the right - Generalissimo Franco (God-fearing, patriotic, anti-communist, syndicalist, suspicious of enterprise) and, more moderately, the French Gaullists.

The forthcoming Polish presidential elections will be fought over an entirely different battleground than the UK parliamentary elections. What the respective media of both countries will make of the elections in the other will no doubt be sprinkled with much misunderstanding.

The post-communist Polish 'left' (the SLD) is more free market than PiS and more socially liberal than PO; but it is increasingly marginalised. Its place in the nation's debate is becoming irrelevant. A comparison with Irish politics (Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil) is apt; two parties that you'd be hard pressed to tell apart (one is Christian Democrat Centrist, the other Conservative Centrist). The fault line between the two is which side their grandfathers fought on in the Irish Civil War - the Pro-Treaty side, ready to accept the compromise that left the Six Counties British, or the Republican side, that would not give up the struggle to unify Ireland. 87 years ago.

The parallel with Poland is clear. PO is seen as the successor party to the wing of Solidarity that accepted the Round Table compromise which left the communists unpersecuted in return for giving up power, while PiS is the successor to the harder-line anti-communists that insisted on the heirs to the PZPR being brought to book for their crimes against the nation.

The Smolensk tragedy may lead to a mould being broken, a destiny to follow the Irish path for decades to come may not come to pass.