North-east of Warsaw West

Cross the tracks from the passenger platforms at Warszawa Zachodnia (the Clapham Junction of the East, no longer Poland's Worst Railway Station since proper signage was installed last year), and enter another world. Away from the hurly-burly, the mad rush to catch the 17:08 to Łódź Kaliska, you can step into an abandoned space that resonates with the atmosphere of the Zone in Tarkovsky's magical film Stalker. Below: if you've seen the film, all that's needed is a loudspeaker blaring out Beethoven or the Marseillaise.

Below: further on down the track, a rake of wooden-bodied wagons for railway workers to sleep in, complete with chimneys and TV aerials.

Moving forward, towards the city centre. Beyond the trees to the left, the main railway lines between W-wa Zachodnia station and Dworzec Centralny (or 'Shentroo Wailway Shtation' as its called in English on Warsaw's buses and trams). But here, around where I'm standing, empty tracks unused real estate all the way to ul. Towarowa.

As Eddie points out, looking at the 1935 map of Warsaw on Google Earth, based on aerial photos taken by the Polish military, this area is all blacked out for security reasons. This is proof that there's no 'previous title' to this land as there is in much of the capital. Bierut's Decree (dekret Bieruta, the appropriation of private land in Warsaw by the communist state in 1946) ensures that to this day developers can never be sure that there may be a claim against their ownership of the land. According to Wikipedia, Warsaw paid out over 415 million złotys in 2011 and 2012 to recompense the heirs of the former owners who had their property seized, and 8,000 court cases are currently underway in this regard.

So PKP PLK S.A., the administrator of this land, is sitting on one huge parcel of real estate just to the west of the very centre of Warsaw, land that if sold, could make a colossal difference to the financial standing of Poland's railways as they try to shape up for privatisation. But then again, there's so much EU money sloshing around, which PKP is also failing to use, that even if this land were to be sold and put to better use, the money wouldn't be utilised effectively.

Left: on the horizon, the Palace of Culture, flanked by Daniel Liebeskind's Złota 44 to its left, and further off to the right, the Marriott Hotel. This wasteland would once have been the sidings that led up to Warszawa Głowna Towarowa, the goods station. All that's left of it today is the Post Office's siding, accessible from the main line via another track. Warszawa Główna Osobowa, closed as a station in 1997, now serves as Poland's rather forlorn national railway museum. Even if this is left in situ, there is still land a-plenty that can be redeveloped.

I'm sure there are readers who can give some more details as to the current status of the railway museum and this whole area. It is very unusual to see so much neglected land in a capital city lying idle for so long; the atmosphere is unique - an part of Warsaw worth visiting if you're into this klimat of abandonment.

Below: clubhouse of Steel Roses MC, Bar Motocyklowy on ul. Kolejowa. On a quiet Sunday evening, only one bike (a lovely '60s retro-styled cafe racer) parked outside.

This time last year:
Draining Jeziorki - the beginning of major local works

This time two years ago:
Late summer/early autumn moods

This time three years ago:
Battle of Britain, 70 years on

This time four years ago:
Why I don't watch Polish television

This time five years ago:
Warsaw - a city of car crashes
[five years on - little's changed]

This time six years ago:
My favourite tree

Laying down the sewerage

I rejoice at the sound of the excavators, the inconvenience of the mud-caked drive, the diversions to get the car out onto the main road - they mean that after 11 years and nine months, we shall be free of the tyranny of a septic tank that needs to be emptied fortnightly(at 230 zł a go). Like 99% of Dutch households and 96% of German households, we'll very soon be connected to the town drains

Below: it's all action on our road. The workmen are putting in long days and work weekends too. It may all be over by the end of October or even sooner. Our drive is out of action, so everyone has to leave their cars in the street. And it's safe - even in the middle of the night there are two guys minding the site, checking the pumps at the bottom of the new collectors.

Left: outside our house is a small manhole (vertical pipe) which runs down towards the street. The pipes have yet to be installed, so there remains much digging and a lot of mud will have to be moved. Let's hope the weather will remain generally dry over the coming weeks.

The main engineering feat once the main pipe has been laid running down our drive will be to puncture the septic tanks outside each house and to connect them to the manholes via lateral pipes. I'd guess the septic tanks would have to be filled with concrete up to the level of the lateral pipe, so they'd not collect waste water.

Below: outside on ul. Trombity, the diggers are at work. Note the one on the left is a Zeppelin. These days, Junkers make hot-water boilers, Messerschmitt make luxury yachts.

Sadly, the works meant finally disposing of my Nissan Micra (below), which has stood outside our house for almost two years, acting as a gate-guardian. It was a very good buy, the best money I've ever spent on a car. The Micra, which I bought in May 1993, has 116,000 miles on the clock; I'm sure the engine will go to a good home.

This time last year:
Still awaiting the official opening of viaduct on ul. Poloneza

This time two years ago:
Fixie composition in blue and red

This time three years ago:
What's the Polish for 'guidelines'?

This time four years ago:
Ul. Rosoła's cycle path - new route to work

This time five years ago:
First apple

This time six years ago:
Late summer spider-webs

Return from Radom

Radom... what a strange town. Just as Opole indicated that not all was right economically with a display of employment agencies offering jobs in Holland and Germany, so Radom suggested something unusual with a series of bureaux de change (kantory) literally one next to the other. Migrant workers changing their pounds and euros into zlotys big-time? And the shops... second-hand clothes, pay-day loans (lombard = pawnbroker) and 'everything for 3zł/4zł/5zł' shops. Precious few restaurants to be seen. This is a town with 23% unemployment (Warsaw's is less than 5%), and it looks it.

I feel sorry for Radom; the city of 220,000 hit a bad patch after the 1976 riots - it was punished by the communist party which switched off investment - and it never recovered. Unlike Łódź, which has been very successful in attracting foreign direct investment, has focused itself on the manufacture of fast-moving consumer goods, household appliances and electronics, and has a world-class film school and thriving creative sector - Radom has little to show for itself and consequently its unemployment rate is double that of Łódź. And five times that of Warsaw.

Anyway, I left Radom by the Koleje Mazowieckie service direct to Jeziorki, and caught a glorious sunny late-summer evening from the train, dreamily watching the sun go down over some lovely rural parts of Our Province...

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day...

...and each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds.

This time last year:
Up up up with the Cosmopolitan

This time two years ago:
New urban toponyms: "P+R Al. Krakowska" = Okęcie

This time three years ago:
Politics - a change of gear

This time four years ago:
On preference and genetics

This time five years ago:
"GET IN THE BACK OF THE VAN!"

Posting on the go... a traveller's tale

It's a busy week - Monday Opole, today Wrocław, tomorrow Radom. Many interesting lessons learned, which I'll share with my loyal readers.

My journey from Opole was somewhat fraught - I turned up at the station in good time to catch the 15:58 service to Katowice, to find that it was running 40 minutes late. Given that according to the timetable, I had 43 minutes at Katowice before the departure of my scheduled train to Warsaw, the chances of catching it were slim. So I boarded a local train from Opole to Gliwice (itself 20 minutes late departing Opole), paying an extra 16 złotys. This old-school clattery elektryczka EN57 got me to Gliwice with ten minutes in hand to cross platforms and catch another local train on to Katowice (5 złotys). This was a new PESA train in Koleje Śląskie colours; it was punctual, clean and crewed by polite and efficient staff. As soon as I was aboard, I felt confident that it would get me to Katowice in good time to catch the connecting train to Warsaw - which I did. A big thanks to Paweł in my office who kindly SMS'd me train times from Gliwice, sparing me uncertainty and anxiety.

In cases like this, a little local knowledge of alternative connections is useful. There are two routes from Opole to Katowice - one via Kędzierzyn Koźle (105km), the other via Strzelce Opolskie (72km). Guess which route the inter-city train (from Wrocław to Kraków) takes? Yes, the long one. It takes two hours to cover that distance - a mere 65 miles. Moral - when travelling by train in Poland, assume nothing, check and re-check timetables, work out alternatives and don't be a passive victim of lengthy delays.

Now I'm writing to you from the PolskiBus.com to Wrocław. As I've written before, Wrocław may just as well be in another country to Warsaw, as after 68 years, Poland's rulers have failed to connect the city to the capital by road or by rail. Things are not likely to improve much by the end of this decade; still no promise of a direct rail route, or of a motorway link. [Correction: the S8 should offer an expressway linking Warsaw to Wrocław by next spring, thanks for the observant comment, Anon.]

There are only three direct InterCity rail services a day between Warsaw and Wrocław, and three direct rail services a day between Wrocław and Warsaw. The fastest takes 5hrs 11mins, the slowest just under six hours. Cheap rail operator TLK does Warsaw-Wrocław too, (seven services a day) but these go an even slower way, managing to occupy nearly eight hours to get you from A to B.

You can fly. But unless you book weeks ahead, you either end up paying some vast sum (800 zlotys), or find that all the flights have been fully booked.

If you want to go to Wrocław for the day on business (as I'm doing right now), therefore, the options are limited... And then along comes PolskiBus.com - the game-changer. The journey time is 5hrs 50mins, in other words comparable to InterCity, two hours shorter than TLK. Price-wise, my ticket booked online the day before departure, cost just 62 złotys return (12 quid). This compares to 268 złotys (52 quid) second-class return by InterCity.

How's the journey? The first impressions were entirely positive. Comfortable leather seats, free (though somewhat patchy) Wi-Fi  and power socket by each seat means you can work the whole journey, and, on routes served by the bigger 89-seater double-deckers, a free on-board snack service. PolskiBus.com's two Warsaw terminals are both by Metro stations (Młociny and Wilanowska), both of which are (now) very close to the expressway/motorway network. And so minutes after leaving Młociny, the Wrocław-bound bus (which calls at Łódź) was heading south along the A2. Great! One hour and 25 minutes after leaving Młociny... ufffff... we re-join Polish reality at Stryków, turning off the A2 and into dense rush hour traffic heading for Łódź city centre. Leaving Łódź, the road for Wrocław is busy, bumpy, narrow and slow.

PolskiBus.com is a great success story; the firm will have 75 buses in Poland by the end of this year. The new market entrant is shaking up the bus and rail operators, by offering a high quality of service at a low price. As Poland's motorway network improves, journey times between cities will plummet, and road transport will give inter-city railways some fierce competition.

I doubt it PolskiBus.com's business model leaves much in the way of profit; carrying 60 passengers (100% capacity is 70) each paying 31zł one-way gives a revenue of 1,860zł, from which fuel, crew, bus terminal access, back office,  IT, and all taxes have to be paid. As well as the leasing of the bus. But the growth model is working, and after two years, the big red buses have become an everyday sight on Poland's trunk roads.

Below: beyond Łódź, the roads get... bouncy. The bus goes via Sieradz on the DK14. Here's a tip - don't sit to close to the front of the bus - it goes up and down like the prow of Viking longboat weathering rough swell. This bit of the journey is slow; the road goes through village after village and is busy.

The wi-fi is not all that good. I could not visit my own blog, which was blocked by the server's administrator. Annoying. On the way back to Warsaw, it was working about 40% of the journey (good at the beginning and end, rather rubbish in the middle).

This time last year:
One for the record - hot September day (30C)

This time three years ago:
The half-closed airport

This time four years ago:
Last of the summer bike rides to work?

This time five years ago:
My own Polish Adlestrop

This time six years ago:
Laurie Anderson's chillingly prescient 'O Superman'

Opole - unknown Polish town

The capitals of Poland's voivodships (provinces) are generally well-known cities - Warsaw, Kraków, Gdańsk, Poznań, Wrocław, Katowice, Łódź, Białystok, Szczecin, Lublin... then there are slightly less-well known Polish towns (Rzeszów, Kielce, Olsztyn); then there are those voivodships that have two capitals (Kujawsko-Pomorskie's Toruń and Bydgoszcz - both well-known - and Lubuskie's Zielona Góra and Gorzów Wielkopolski - not so renowned). And then there's the smallest of all the voivodships - Opolskie; its capital and indeed only significant town is Opole (pop. 125,000).

If I were to redraw the map of Poland, I'd chop up the artificial construct of Lubuskie (or Ziemie Lubuskie); Where should Gorzów Wielkopolski be but in Wielkopolska!?!? Give the top bit to Zachodniopomorskie (capital Szczecin); the bottom bit to Dolnośląskie (capital Wrocław) and the rest (including Gorzów) to Wielkopolska (capital Poznań). And Opolskie... its very raison d'etre is questionable (a cultural separateness caused by its German minority). I'd donate most of this tiddly province to Dolnośląskie where it firmly belongs, with its eastern fringe going to Śląskie.

Having done that, I'd create a new voivodship consisting of Warsaw and the surrounding nine poviats (districts). This super-wealthy (by Polish standards) province could go it alone while the rest of Mazowsze minus the agglomeration would then be eligible for extra EU funds as it is easily as poor as the 'eastern wall' provinces that currently also receive hand-outs from the whole of Mazowsze including all those poor bits. Radom, Ostrołęka, Ciechanów, Siedlce... these are poor towns. [Indeed, my ideal would be to return to the immediate post-war administrative map of Poland to maximise the effectiveness of regional government, though without a separate Łódź and with an expanded Warsaw Agglomeration. And Radom in the same voivodship as Kielce.]

ANYWAY... having assailed you with my plans for reforming Poland's administrative borders, what I really wanted to share with you, dear readers, were my impressions of Opole (Oppeln until 1945).

Like Świdnica that I visited last year, a small German town before the war, with its German railway station (high wooden platform canopies, red-brick building, white-tiled subways), German town hall and German churches, Opole fits into the stereotypical post-German Polish town.

What sets it out from other such towns in the west of Poland is that every second shop front is an employment agency, offering jobs in Germany or Holland. A large number of citizens of Opole work (and have historically worked) in those two countries, mainly as a result of dual nationality, though less than 2.5% of its 125,000 population currently claims to be ethnically German.

Below: Alte Oppeln, a scene little changed from the 1860s, when the sluice was built. An undeniably Germanic klimat.

Below: the town's main post office also smacks of Teutonic solidity, built to house armies of efficient, stamp-wielding clerks, ensuring that vital administrative letters reach their intended recipient.

Below: I like the old town square. The angular town hall is nicely countered by the rounded turret ending the square's north terrace.

And here's the town hall - ratusz or rathaus. Though officially the 1864 tower is neo-renaissance and refers to Florentine architecture, I can sense the Mongol, the Eurasian, the exotic East in this structure. Let us not forget that the Golden Horde had advanced as far as Legnica, over 150km west of here, in 1241.

Below: monument to a region's inferiority complex. The cannon is fashioned after the 13th C. Piast Tower, one of Opole's landmarks, named after the first dynasty of kings that ruled the Polish nation state; the slogan on the pedestal is "Let us defend our Opolskie" (the name of the voivodship). If anything, this sculpture shows the administration's fear that one day, Warsaw might see the absurdity of such as small regional authority has as much reason to exist as the county of Rutland did in its day.

Left: what's this I spy hidden away in an Opole courtyard drive? It's a 1955 four-door Buick Special, no less, in immaculate condition. It was behind a gate, but I managed to push my camera in to get this shot.

A reminder of the time when America's auto industry led the world, when everyone wanted to drive an American car. What a woeful decline since those glory days. Today's Buick Regal is an Opel Insignia with a different badge on the front.

This time last year:
Raise a glass to Powiśle

This time three years ago:
Mud, rain and local elections (Mrs G-W gets a thumbs down)

This time five years ago:
There must be a better way (commuting woes, again)

What a waste, what a waste...

Here we are then, at the southern stump of the S79. The bit of the contract beyond the turn-off for the S2 and Poznań.

One day, after the next lot of EU funds has been earmarked for specific infrastructure; and those funds have been converted into specific projects; and those projects have been put out to public tender; and the optimum bidder (hopefully the best, no longer the cheapest) has been chosen; and that company finally connects Węzeł W-wa Południe to the next junction to the south... THAT day, dear reader, the lights can be turned on... but that day may well be in eight years' time.

Left: the lightbulbs are all in place. Left to weather eight winters, I doubt many will be in working order when the S79 finally extends southwards.

In the meanwhile, the contractor who completed the S2/S79 (Austrian firm Porr) has installed all the lighting, including the section that will remain unused until the S79 is finally extended southwards.


In total, there must be hundreds of lamps, bulbs and standards, all in rust-free, pristine condition - except there's no need to switch them on for many years. This includes the ones lighting the carriageway from the S2 to the S79 (south); from south of the point where the slip-road from the S79 to the S2 swings off westward (both carriageways); and from the end of the contract along the slip-road onto the S2 (east). All delivered in perfect working order. But will they be in perfect working order when they are actually needed? At the very least, the bulbs should all be taken out and safely stored until that day.

Who insisted that all this work be done now? What were they thinking?

S2-S79 opens - partially

As of Thursday night, motorists driving eastwards along the newly-opened S2 expressway can proceed a further 5km from Al. Krakowska to Węzeł (junction) Warszawa Południe (Warsaw South), and thence make a 90 degree turn northward, to join the S79 which will take them to Mokotów.

The final 2km-long section of the S2, connecting Węzeł W-wa Poludnie to ul. Puławska, is still unfinished, though this stretch is expected to be ready by the end of this month.

The S2, looking east towards Węzeł W-wa Południe, from Złote Łany bridge.

I must confess to being positively surprised by the sudden spurt of activity. What I saw on my bicycle journey along the S2 and S79 on 11 August offered little hope that the new expressways would be opened sooner than November. In particular the huge canyon that was the Kanał Załuski crossing under the S2 seemed to require months of work to complete - and now here it is, ready, with traffic flowing smoothly over it.

So then. Two cheers. When the S2 reaches Puławska (15 months late), it will stop there; and judging by the poor pace of infrastructure development, I'd be surprised if Warsaw's Southern By-Pass (Południowa Obwodnica Warszawy) actually becomes that - a ring-road allowing east-west transit traffic to skirt the city entirely - much before 2020.

The whole S2-S79 development that I've followed on this blog since January 2009 leaves Warsaw with three stumps going nowhere; the S79 at the southern end (terminating abruptly in a muddy field in Dawidy), the S79 at the northern end (terminating abruptly in front of an office development) and the S2 at the eastern end (terminating abruptly in bushes round the back of a shopping centre car park). As of now, there are no planned dates for commencement of work to drive these roads to their intended destinations.

Today's Gazeta Stoleczna has dedicated a whole page to the absurdities that surround the S2-S79 investment, the unfinished stumps, the 650m-long footbridge on ul. Marynarska to a bus stop that won't be functioning for years, the junction on ul. Wirażowa with traffic lights, zebra crossing, road markings... but no road running off from it. And at the other end, the badly-positioned sign posts that confuse drivers, the badly-synchronised traffic lights, the ill-thought-through lane markings... the usual aftermath of a newly (partially) completed road. It will all fall eventually in place, but when it comes to delivering transport infrastructure, Poland as a state still has much to learn.

Fingers crossed, then, that in a couple of weeks the citizens of Ursynów will wake up and be able to drive all the way to Poznań, Berlin and Lisbon from ul. Puławska without encountering any traffic lights.

This time last year:
Warsaw's second Metro line - progress in jeopardy
[a year on it's still years from completion]

This time three years ago:
Let no one send us to Kielce!

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

A green light for consumer spending

I once pledged that my first trip to Ikea would also be my last; a beautiful design museum with an ugly warehouse underneath it. You see something you really like, then you learn that you need to go to your nearest forest (map supplied), cut down a tree (axe not supplied) and follow the instructions in the box to construct that kitchen table. I like Ikea's style and design, but believe that furniture should be sold finished, not semi-finished.

Anyway, that was years ago. Eddie said he needs a new mattress for his Ikea bed; the old one had springs poking out of it. Mattresses, I reasoned, don't require self-assembly, so we set off for Janki.

The car park was bursting at the seams, with desperate shoppers parked up on verges and traffic islands. We cruised around for several minutes, waiting for a parking space to become available. Once inside Ikea, we headed for the showrooms upstairs,  jam-packed with families on a Grand Retail Experience.

We'd soon found a suitable mattress, the Bjørdsmaärg. It looked good, Eddie felt comfortable on it, the price was some 200zł less than a comparable mattress at Auchan (!), so we pressed on, past many more 'opportunities to buy', to the warehouse. Here in bay 45.11 we found the mattress - rolled up so tight that it needs 72 hours to straighten out. So it should be ready to sleep on... by Tuesday evening.

We joined a long queue (five trolleys ahead of us) at the check-out. Returning to the car, it took 12 minutes to exit the car park, so heavy was the traffic.

Is it like this every week in Janki? Or is it that Varsovians have collectively felt that the worst is behind us, and that recent releases of macroeconomic data are telling us to spend?

Poland's GDP grew by 0.8% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2013, up from 0.5% in the first quarter. Unemployment is nudging down (13.1% nationally, 4.9% in Warsaw), and Poles are feeling less anxious about their jobs than they have for a long while. Consumer spending in the year to July was up by 4.3%... Happy days are here again?

I worry when I see absurdities in the economy. Growth must be both sustainable and balanced. (Translate that into Polish!) Is it? Or is Poland's economic recovery in the same danger as the UK's - over-dependent on consumer spending?

But here, I'm of an optimistic frame of mind. Poland's exports are rising nicely, as imports are falling (the former up 6.0%, the latter down 2.3% in the first half of 2013 compared to the same period last year). The balance of trade is almost level (a mere half-billion euros in the red). Investment in the private sector could do with a boost, but public sector investment is strong - though driven by EU funds.

Should we rejoice and go out spending willy-nilly? We should spend with reason. I believe that some forms of spending benefit the national economy more than others. Buying land and building on it is the best form of investment a consumer can make in their economy. Once you've built (or even bought) a house or apartment, it needs fitting out. And given that Ikea sources many of its products from Poland, it's as good a place to buy from as any.

I also believe that spending money in restaurants is good for the local economy - most of the ingredients are bought locally, and yet most of your cash goes to pay for service and into supporting local jobs.

Spend your money with thought as to the consequences thereof.

This time last year:
Procrastination - is it the same as laziness?

This time four years ago: This time three years ago:
Remembering the outbreak of WWII