Keeping them down for our good

Society has finally learned to recognise and call out the Dark Triad of behaviours – narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism. These traits are particularly prominent in those who are driven to lord it over others. Seekers of power, wealth and status. They gravitate towards politics and business; examples of those who have caused untold damage to fellow humans are all round us. From Putin to Al-Fayed they are easy to spot once they've reached their pinnacle and unleashed their venom.

The arrogant bastard needs keeping in his place (far more rarely, her place). Keep the fuckers down, I say. Don't let them run your country, your city, your town, your company, your anything. Identify their behaviour early on – and shun the shit out of them. Turn your back on them. 

HR departments – learn to identify the power-crazed bigmouths through careful sifting of CVs and by asking the right questions at interviews. Remember, people join a company but leave a manager. And in today's labour market, predicated by continual demographic decline, you don't want toxic twats rising up the fast-track management ladder, chasing promotions until they get that top job. They will cause talented staff to quit in droves.

Political parties – be very careful when selecting candidates. Consider the dangers of what such a person would be like in charge of things. The likelihood is that a person with the Dark Triad in a position of absolute power would eventually end up being an utter disaster for his nation. Hitler is the perfect example.

Narcissists are experts at masking their true nature; they have to. They are skilled at deception, weaving plausible narratives to gloss over their more egregious mistakes. As Machiavellians, they will play one side against another, using people instrumentally, as means to an end. As psychopaths they have zero empathy with those whom they must crush if they get in their way. And here, Stalin is the perfect example. [Trump doesn't have the brains to be truly Machiavellian. But then he makes up for it with his full-blown clinical narcissist behaviour disorder.]

"If only we could have known," people wail with hindsight. But as word spreads about the Dark Triad, as society acquires a better grasp of psychology, those who still hunger for power and status will fall into two categories – those who can mask well, and those who can't. The latter will be kept away from positions of power. Those who can mask will be going out of their way to fake empathy, charity, team spirit and openness. They understand full well that such displays are but a means to their end – power and status. But if we (we the people) are watchful, tell-tales signs will out. Freudian slips, what have you. 

So who should lead us? The humble and honest. But typically they have no desire to lead. The quest to find leadership talent untainted by the Dark Triad is much harder than merely giving in to him who shouts "ME! ME! ME!" the loudest. It should entail coaching and encouragement, persuasion and support once a potential leader is identified.

This time three years ago:
On the importance of observation

This time four years ago:
Rural supply, rural demand

This time five years ago:

Progress on the Radom line

This time six years ago:
Down with this sort of thing! Kler, reviewed.

This time eight years ago:
Britain's Conservatives turn their backs on economic liberalism

This time 11 years ago:
Goodnight Dżerzi – Janusz Głowacki's book reviewed

This time 13 years ago:
More serious setbacks on Second Metro line construction 

This time 14 years ago:
Leonard Cohen in Katowice

This time 16 years ago:
The short-term future of suburban development

A comfortable life – and then what?

"Luxury carmaker Aston Martin's share price sank more than 20% after it said profits will be lower than expected this year," the BBC reported earlier this week. A serenade of tiny violins. What the world needs now is fewer cars, smaller cars, and cars that don't harm the planet so much. The use of a car to project one's status is increasingly being seen as a waste of one's wealth. Could Aston Martin's financial woes reflect society's rising wisdom? Over the past weeks, the YouTube algorithm has been suggesting to me videos about how to become rich by looking poor. Lots of YouTubers have reached the same conclusion as me – that pissing away money on a new car every few years to impress your neighbours is dumb-ass stupid. 

But it's not just new cars. It's new clothes, new furniture, new tech, new any shit. I've got off the materialist treadmill (if indeed I was ever on it) years ago, realising that the consumer lifestyle hurts your wallet and hurts our planet. Result? I feel financially comfortable – not through busting a gut in the corporate rat-race, but by decades of not wasting money on fripperies and foibles.

Being comfortable is a noble aim; there's no virtue in suffering hunger, cold, ill-health or stress. Do I need luxury? No I do not. Do I need surfeit? I don't, and the planet simply could not cope with even two billion of us striving to live in surfeit or luxury. 

But should we worry that if a billion of us suddenly saw the light and stopped spending mindlessly – wouldn't it hurt the economy? I wrote back in June about the effects of a generation holding back on consumption. What would happen if Aston Martin would go bust? Not a whole lot. Or all luxury-car makers? Ditto. Several thousand skilled workers would (briefly) be out of work. Engineering and craft vacancies are hard to fill these days.

If supply of new cars suddenly dried up worldwide, we'd all become like Cuba. Used cars would gain in value, folk would take care of them more, knowing they are irreplaceable. We could go on for decades. The US embargo of Cuba was imposed in February 1962 by JFK; the youngest American car in that creaking, repressive socialist paradise is over 62 years old. There are an estimated 60,000 of them still in daily use, with some dating back to the late 1930s. Dragging iron ore out of the earth, smelting it and stamping out car bodies out of the resulting steel when it's not necessary, only something driven by individual egos, is not right. [Though I would argue that it's not anybody's business to ban car-making – people just need to reach that conclusion one epiphany at a time.]  

But buying unnecessary products creates jobs and generates taxes. Squaring the circle through a top-down policy of de-growth would be destructive – it would hit education, healthcare, infrastructure, security and defence. But I feel that we in the Western world are seeing a gentle form of de-growth; more and more people waking up to the need to spend less. Tough policy decisions are needed, in particular regarding immigration and accelerating green transformation.

Another birthday, another moment for reflection about the arc of my life. I'll keep on working into the foreseeable future (my father worked until three months' shy of his 70th birthday, giving up work to take up grandfathering duties). No great desire to travel, though Stella-Plage calls me back to revisit sometime.

Health and fitness report: better in every metric than the 66-year-old me – the result of stronger willpower rather than muscle power. However, eight pull-ups to the chin now a standard (last year I managed it only twice).

This time last year:
The Ego, the Soul and the Individual

This time two years:
In which I reach the Age of Maturity

This time three years ago:
Golden Autumn, Golden Years

This time four years ago:
Last embers of summer

This time five years ago:
It's that Day of the Year again!

This time six years ago:

Decline and growth

This time seven years ago:
Health at 60

This time nine years ago:
In search of vectors for migrating consciousness

This time ten years ago:
Slipping from late summer to early autumn

This time 11 years ago:
Turning 56

This time 12 years ago: 
Turning 55 

This time 13 years ago:
Turning 54

This time 14 years ago:
Turning 53

This time 17 years ago:
Turning 50

October and the Waning Year

The older I get, the more aware I am of living on the surface of a spinning rocky sphere that orbits a star. And as the sphere progresses around the star, it does tilted at 23.5° from the vertical. As I wrote the other day, this means we spend (just over) half the year with our hemisphere tilted towards the sun (our summer), and (just under) half the year with our hemisphere tilted away from the sun (our winter).

As I wake up on Tuesday 1 October, the temperature outside is 0.3C, although I couldn't see any signs of frost on the ground. For the first time since April, the temperature in the kitchen has fallen below 20C (although it soon warms up as I make coffee). The tipping point is now near, that moment when I have to start heating the house. The thick walls have absorbed summer heat admirably; last year I didn't switch on the underfloor heating or the bedroom radiator until 22 October, but last year broke records in terms of early-autumn temperatures. Colder this year, but still not duvet time, although I've had to take the pyjamas out of the wardrobe.

Even two weeks ago I could leave the house and go into town wearing a shirt, with a lightweight jacket in my rucksack for the cool evening or passing shower. Now, it's back into three-layer weather. The sky is cloudier, but not overcast; the year has been dry – maybe too dry for what farmers need. Climate change won't make Poland unbearably hot, but it will dry the country out. Droughts, punctuated by flash floods with the potential for local devastation as we saw last month.

The temperate climes of this latitude are none too harsh, either in terms of summer heat or winter cold; as the days march inexorably towards the winter solstice I must give thanks for where I live, and indeed how I live.

Below: Warsaw, today. Make a mental note to return to this photo in three years' time; the skyline will have changed even more once the Towarowa 22 (which will rise to the left of the Warsaw Unit tower) and Polfarma developments (behind it) are complete. 

Below: Warsaw, earlier. A view looking towards Rondo Daszyńskiego from the approaches to W-wa Wola station.

Incidentally, I looked up how many people live between 51° and 52° parallels North; it is 45 million people. This band covers London, Berlin and Warsaw, though further east it runs through sparsely populated lands; southern Siberia and northern Canada. The most populous parallel band lies between 29° and 30° North, with around half a billion people – ten times more. This band runs through China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, Egypt, Mexico and Texas. 

This time last year
Marching again (ahead of the election)

This time two years ago:
Levels of Detail

This time three years ago:
Droga donikąd by Józef Mackiewicz

This time four years ago:
Words that pop into the mind, unbidden
[This morning's word: contumely]

This time six years ago:
Hops there for the taking

This time seven years ago:
Two weeks and two days of travel

This time eight years ago:
Final end to a local landmark

This time 13 years ago:
Independence Day

This time 14 years:
Out and about in Jeziorki

This time 15 years ago:
Funeral of Lt. Cmdr. Tadeusz Lesisz

This time 16 years ago:
Puławska by night

Back to explore deeper

So taken was I by the forest west of Sułkowice (which no map seems to want to name), I returned again today, this time with Moni who had popped over. Learning from my brother that the forest's most prominent feature is an esker, a "long, winding ridge of stratified sand, examples of which occur in formerly glaciated regions of Europe", we decided to check out more of it. Sunlight and clouds added drama.

Below: cross-section through the esker showing the stratification of the sand.

Below: we followed – as far as possible – the top of the ridge, as it snaked around from south to north.

Below: the highest point, Hill 133, marked by a geodesic post. This is over 20 metres higher than the river Czarna which runs between the forest and Sułkowice. This may not seem much to mountain folk, but in Mazowsze – that's a lot! 

Below: a thinning of trees, whitish undergrowth – lichens growing among the moss.

Below: close-up of the forest floor. Lichens and mosses. This part of Poland experienced a total of six waves of glaciation; Czechia, where Moni lives, experienced none. Consequently, she says, the soil in forests there smells different.

Below: towards the south-western end of the forest, a hunter's pulpit. Hoofprints in the sandy soil suggest the presence of deer. May the hunters miss.

Below: on the way back: the bridge over the river Czarna, which separates the village of Hipolitów from Sułkowice.

"I live in a part of the world that is SHUNNED by space aliens."

This time last year:

Hottest September in Poland?

This time two years ago:

Box-top art in the Sublime Aesthetic

This time three years ago:
Trains of thought, insights and 'voices'

This time five years ago:
Parliamentary train at West Ealing station

This time six years ago:
Progress in Jakubowizna

This time eight years ago:
Miedzianka by Filip Springer

This time nine years ago:
Out of the third, into the fourth

This time ten years ago:
Inverted reflections

This time ten years ago:
Observations from London's WC1
and Observations from the City of London

This time 12 years ago:
Civilising Jeziorki's wetlands

This time 13 years ago:
Warsaw's Aleje Jerozolimskie

This time 15 years ago:
Melancholy autumn mood in Łazienki

This time 16 years ago:
Autumn gold, Zamienie

This time 17 years ago:
Flamenco Sketches – Seville

Anomalous landscapes amid local forest

This is quite something. For some reason known only to geologists, the large forest to northwest of Hipolitów and southeast of Sułkowice contains a hilly ridge running through a landscape that's largely flat. Pines, birches and oak trees dominate the hillsides. The contoured sandy soil is exposed to the elements with several areas each of a couple of thousand square metres appearing to be sand pits.

I visited this fascinating landscape last Wednesday and again this morning, catching a train one stop south to Sułkowice and walking home (on Wednesday I did it the other way around – walked out, train back).

Below: a most unusual sight for this part of Mazovia; I am immediately reminded of Oxshott Heath, a frequent family weekend destination in my childhood, and the forests and dunes around Stella-Plage in northern France.

Below: trekking uphill, suddenly the vista opens up to a vast sand pit.

Below: the second sand bowl, to the northwest, this one popular with the quadricyclist community. Aerial images of this feature show that a lake can form at the bottom; it's now totally dried out without a trace. 

Below: after sunset on Wednesday evening, 25 September, the destination of my equiluxial walk. 

Below: and a few minutes later; dusk descends upon the scene. Through the forest I return to Sułkowice in darkness. It's 3km from here to Sułkowice station; I'm in good time to catch the 19:08 train; three minutes later and I'm back in Chynów.

Below: from geoportal.gov.pl, an orthophotographic map of the area showing the raised land snaking across a flat landscape, with the sand pits gouged out from the hillsides. The questions are: what geological event caused this S-shaped formation to rise some 20 metres above the surrounding flatlands? And were these sandpits once commercial excavations of building sand? (The sandpit at Oxshott Heath was originally dug to fill sandbags used in WW1.) 

Below: from Google Earth Pro, satellite imagery from 2011 and 2020. The maps can be aligned with the orthophoto above by means of the forest road running southwest to northeast. Note how their shape and size had changed over those nine years.

UPDATE 30 SEPTEMBER: My brother Marek points out that this feature is called an esker (in Polish, an oz). The Polish page is interesting in that it says that such features are found in the Grójec district.

"An esker or os is a long, winding ridge of stratified sand and gravel, examples of which occur in glaciated and formerly glaciated regions of Europe and North America. Eskers are frequently several kilometres long and, because of their uniform shape, look like railway embankments."

Below: fragment of a geological map of Poland, the forest west of Sułkowice enlarged, and within lies an elongated feature in orange marked with the number 35. As with many maps offered by the Polish state, there's no legend explaining what the numbers mean, but the location and the shape tally (compare the orange squiggle with the orthophoto above), so I can only guess that all features with the number 35 are indeed eskers, serpentine shapes in a sea of numbers 40 and 38. Whatever those are.

This time four years ago:

W(h)ither the DK50?

This time five years ago:
A change in the weather

This time six years ago:
Zamek Topacz classic car museum

This time nine years ago:
Curry comes to Jeziorki

This time ten years ago:
Why we should all try to use less gas

This time 11 years ago:
Polish supermarket chain advertises on London buses

This time 16 years ago:
Well-shot pheasants

Equilux, and the struggle between Light and Dark

Equinox (from the Latin, meaning 'equal night') is an astronomical notion referring to the moment when the sun crosses the equator. After that moment during the autumnal equinox (falling either on 22 or 23 September), the sun sheds more light on the Southern Hemisphere; after the vernal equinox (which occurs on 20 or 21 March), the sun sheds more light on the Northern Hemisphere.

We have been led to believe that on those two days of the year, every point on earth receives exactly 12 hours of daylight, and night is exactly 12 hours long.

This is not so. At our latitude, this actually happens a few days after the autumnal equinox and a few days before the vernal equinox. Looking at Warsaw, for example, the day on which we get nearest to a 12/12 split is today, the 25th of September, when the sun rose this morning at 06:27 and will set at 18:26. On Sunday, the day of the autumnal equinox, there was still 11 minutes more day than night. We have the same situation in spring; equilux occurs three days before the vernal equinox (sunrise at quarter to six am, sunset quarter to six pm). On the day of the vernal equinox, there's already 11 minutes more day than night.

So on the scale of a year, we have 27 weeks with more day than night, and 25 weeks with less day than night. Which is quite a good deal given that in theory it should be exactly half and half. A reminder that in the cosmic scheme of things, Light triumphs over Darkness.

Below: the evening before Equilux, between Chynów and Węszelówka.

Below: awaiting the last sunset to be separated by less than 12 hours from the next sunrise until 18 March 2025.

Out of interest: in Macapá, Brazil, a town which straddles the equator, the year's longest day is 12 hours, 7 minutes and 28 seconds (on 21 June); on the year's shortest day it is but 12 hours, 7 minutes and 21 seconds (on 21 December).  Meanwhile, in Longyearbyen on the island of Svalbard, the town nearest the North Pole, the longest day lasts five months and six days – from sunrise on the morning of 19 April until the sun finally sets on the evening of 25 September. And the sun never rises above the horizon here between 26 October and 15 February. These disparities occur because the Earth is tilted at 23 degrees to the sun; the North Pole is closest to the sun on 22 June, the South Pole on 21 December, and on 20 March and 22 September, the earth faces the sun side-on.

This time three years ago:
S7 construction update

This time four years ago:
Covid – we still really don't know where we are

This time ten years ago:

Thoughts occasioned by today being equilux

This time 13 years ago:
The magic of Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand's Marlborough region

This time 14 years ago:
Grandson of Poles elected to lead UK's Labour Party

This time 16 years ago:
Give me sunshine!

Łowicz – history, religion and folklore

Each year on 22 September, the world celebrates Car-Free Day, and to mark the occasion, Koleje Mazowieckie offers free travel on its entire network. The provincial rail operator ran its normal Sunday service, and the chance to get to Łowicz and back without paying a grosz was appealing. Łowicz is on the Koleje Mazowieckie network but lies outside the province of Mazowsze; the limited-stop RE3 service from Warsaw to Płock makes the 77km journey from W-wa Zachodnia to Łowicz Główny in a mere 42 minutes. And today – for free. The double-deck train was on time in both directions but crammed; passengers had to scramble over piles of bikes in the vestibules to get to the seats.

And so – on to Łowicz. Below: first impressions of the town – the post office building between Łowicz Głowny station and the old town. Good to be here.

Below: the Piarist church of the Merciful Mother of God, Łowicz. A beautiful piece of baroque architecture from the mid-18th century. The Piarists (the Order of Poor Clerics Regular of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools, or Ordo Clericorum Regularium pauperum Matris Dei Scholarum Piarum) are a religious order of the Catholic Church dedicated to education, founded in 1617. Photographed in late afternoon as the Equinoxial sun starts creeping around to illuminate the western side of the church.

Below: the gorgeous interior. Music quite splendid too. The gilded angels, the silver clouds, the paintings, the marble, the statues, all designed to impress. 

Baroque architecture was designed to appeals to the senses. This was the Counter-reformation at full blast. Protestantism eschewed decoration and song, its black-frocked pastors read and prayed in the vernacular in their bleak chapels. The Catholic Church, however, knew how to draw the crowds on a Sunday after a week's toil in the fields. An hour or so spent immersed the splendour and mystery of God was an attraction not to be missed. Incense and angelic voices, the architecture and rich visual treats drawing the spirit to a closer communion with the Numinous and Eternal. 

Below: the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Nicholas, Łowicz.  A neo-Gothic structure dating back to 1420, standing on the site of an earlier wooden church from 1100. Refurbished in the 17th century in the baroque style, it competes with the Piarists' church in terms of gorgeousness. Stunning in the sunlight.

Below: the interior of the cathedral, looking towards the southern nave. The high altar is around the corner and to the left. Magnificent.

Łowicz was home to the primates of Poland from Gniezno, who resided in the castle (now in ruins) to the north-west of the town centre, the cathedral served as their church. 

Rich as the ecclesiastical history of Łowicz is, the town is probably best known for its folklore. In particular the colourful striped cloth used for costumes. 

Left: a plate from the 1960 Encyklopedia Powszechna PWN (a copy of which can still be found in most Polish households today!) illustrating Polish folk costume (stroje ludowe). Those from Łowicz on the right of the middle row. The town's influence on folk culture is out of all proportion to its size. [Incidentally, I'm thinking that Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa would have better been translated into English as the 'Polish Folk Republic'.]

Łowicz has an excellent local museum in the Old Market Square, opposite the cathedral. (Between the two is the Hotel Polonia, where Napoleon stopped to dine before setting of on his ill-fated invasion to Russia.) 

The museum itself focuses on the folk culture and traditions, as well as putting the region into a broader historical context. There's a strong emphasis on the folk costumes themselves; the process of spinning linen into thread,weaving the thread into material and dying the material with vibrant colours.

There are several rooms dedicated to naïve art from the region, with its own characteristic style. Best known are the wycinanki, intricate, colourful cut-outs used to decorate items or as artworks in their own right. Seeing how time-consuming their production is makes a modern person realise just how attached we've become to our devices, how much easier, and less creative, the battle with boredom is these days.

In the gardens stands a skansen – a replica farmstead from the end of the 19th century, showing how rural people would have lived and worked at the time. Below: an 'izba' or room in which families would cook, eat, sleep and spin and weave. Note the decoration: cornflower-blue walls, wycinanki on the walls and beams, and a floral garland hanging from the ceiling.

Below: Polish consumers from whatever part of the country they're from will be familiar with the logo of OSM Łowicz, a dairy-produce company based in the town. The logo refers to the 'paski' or colourful stripes.

Below: two tunes from Łowicz on Volume 1 of the Mazowsze song and dance ensemble (of whom my uncle – my father's older brother – was first violinist). It would be from this LP that was born my earliest recognition of Łowicz as a concept.

Łowicz has not one but two market squares; the Old Market (Stary Rynek) and the New Market (Nowy Rynek), except that the new one is not a square but a triangle, the only triangular square in Poland. Below: fragment of the buildings on the eastern side of the new market.

On the way back to the station to catch the 18:30 train back to Warsaw and then on to Chynów. A final glimpse of the Old Market square. Too many cars – I'm sure this will change before too long.

This time last year:

Góra Kalwaria by train

This time three years ago
Into darkness

This time six years ago:
Summer's end

This time seven years ago:
In which I lose a lot of data from my old laptop

This time eight years ago:
Konin - town of aluminium, electricity and coal

This time 11 years ago:
Car-free day falls on a Sunday

This time 12 years ago:
Vistula at record low level

This time 15 years ago:
Car-free day? Warsaw's roads busier than ever

This time 16 years ago:
The shape of equinox

This time 17 years ago:
Potato harvest time in Jeziorki

Geomancy: in search of magical places

The other night, I woke with the thought which I immediately wrote down: "Places that bring biological energy and healing/places that bring wisdom & inspiration."  I went back to sleep and dreamt I was on my way to a business meeting in London and had to change trains at Hammersmith; the escalator between platforms turned into a stepladder which was getting narrower and narrower...

In the morning I looked up the notion of geomancy on Wikipedia: "The term geomancy was originally used to mean methods of divination that interpret geographic features, markings on the ground, or the patterns formed by soil, rocks, or sand. Its definition has expanded over time (along with the recognized definition of the suffix -mancy), to include any spiritual, metaphysical, or pseudoscientific practice that is related to the Earth. In recent times the term has been applied to a wide range of other occult and fringe activities." Earth mysteries, in other words.

Yes, this clicks. All the stuff about stone circles, ley lines, chakras, feng shui and the like; fine if you live in Wiltshire, but I'd like such a place within walking distance of my działka. A place that resonates with my aesthetic preferences, a place with a strong spirit of place, where everything fits together in harmony. I have been writing about spirit of place more or less since setting up this blog over 17 years ago, yet I am now drawn to a deeper search for what geographical location and alignment of horizon mean for the human experience.

Today I was drawn to return to Hill 126, in the forest to the west of the railway line, between Sułkowice and Czachówek Południowy. Other than a cyclist heading the other way as I entered the forest, I saw no one for an hour and half. It was blissful – the last day of astronomical summer, a cloudless sky, the temperature topping out at 25C. Despite autumn being near, there were no signs of it. No first leaves falling from the trees. No profusion of spiders' webs – just the odd strand here and there. No mosquitos. I could hear woodpeckers, tits and chaffinches. Otherwise silence (broken near the end of my sojourn by the sound of a distant chainsaw). The spell had been cast. The magic moments were recorded on my mobile phone because... (see below)...

I took a series of photographs in the forest on my Nikon Coolpix A. Getting back home, I took out the SD card to transfer the files to the laptop. As I did so, I noticed that every single shot I took in the forest had disappeared. Only one photo, taken on the way, remains on the SD card. This hasn't ever happened to me since taking up digital photography in February 2007. Second coincidence: yesterday on a call, discussing the recent discovery that the earth has an electric (as well as an electromagnetic) field, I mentioned the phrase 'earth mysteries' – and at this exact moment, a gust of wind blew the 20+ kg stone used to prop the front door open so hard, it caused the door to slam shut (and I have two witnesses!). Third coincidence. I'm writing this post and a colleague from work emails me about getting to a business meeting in London and changing underground trains at Farringdon station... (see dream at the top.)

So – hunting those magic places where physical effects have no physical cause is to be my calling.

Incidentally, the list of posts from this time in past years shows how strongly spirit of place affects my consciousness, creating those qualia experiences.

This time two years ago:
Gathering moss – and hops

This time three years ago:
Gdańsk, Northern Europe

This time four years ago:
Herons in Jeziorki, summer's end

This time five years ago:

Sublime September sun, Ealing

This time seven years ago:
Stepping up the pace

This time eight years ago:
Evolution of human consciousness

This time nine years ago:
Farewell to Ciocia Jadzia

This time ten years ago:
By train from to Konstancin and Siekierki

This time 11 years ago:
Summer's end, Jeziorki

This time 13 years ago:
Ząbkowska, Praga's newly hip thoroughfare

This time 15 years ago:
Catching the klimat

This time 17 years ago:
Road to Łuków - a road trip into the sublime