Talking Heads “Road to Nowhere”

If you were to take a drive in an easterly direction from Krakow city centre, towards Nowa Huta, and travel on Aleja Pokoju, you would find one of Krakow’s newest roads. It is so new in fact, that it does not yet have a name. It is a new way, designed to connect Aleja Pokoju and Aleja Jana Pawla II, passing alongside the large Park Lotnisko green area. When completed, it would connect the two main streets going east and north-east of of the city centre, potentially making cross-city journeys easier. However, the difficulty is that the road does not exactly meet the two roads it seems to be designed to meet.

The principle of the road seems to be a good one; a through-pass which will connect two roads of heavy traffic. It may not be everyone’s idea of the ideal location, as it does pass close to the Park Lotnisko, which currently can be seen as something of a quiet haven in the city. It is a large green area with plenty of trees, open grass areas and paths for walking, jogging, cycling and rollerblading. There are also childrens play areas as well, so the idea of adding more car traffic nearby did not seem to be so well thought out.

However, that was not the only badly informed choice when it came to deciding to build this road. In order for the road to join Aleja Pokoju with Aleja Jana Pawla II, some buildings and houses would need to be circumnavigated, or removed where possible. If you look at the above map though, you can see that our road (marked with the green A) does not ‘connect’ directly at either end. It seems the planners assumed that everyone would be happy for a road to continue there, and proceeded with building the road without finalising moving or relocating those that could be affected. This resulted in an impasse on the Aleja Jana Pawla side, with some houses still standing, and the road ending abruptly.

The below house lies at the end of the road

In one regard, it’s a pity that the road is not in use. It is probably the best road in Krakow, in terms of quality. With it being recently built, and with little or no traffic so far, the surface quality is excellent. There are lots of signs, lanes and traffic lights, and the road markings have not been affected by weather or traffic levels. However, the positive that has resulted from it not being used, is that the road has become a beacon for walkers, cyclists and rollerbladers. On a fine day it makes for an excellent area for a stroll or light exercise, as can be seen below. There are broad paths and are  well built with no damage. They also have designated areas for walkers and bicycle lanes, which are not so common in Krakow. It is absolutlely safe also, with no traffic to currently worry about.

As the road is now ‘off-limits’ for automobile traffic, it has been recently suggested to build a concert hall on the edge of the park, beside one of the side-roads leading off this road. Currently, these roads are going nowhere and end abruptly, as if the road builders went home one evening and forgot to come back on further days. Whether something will be built there will probably get wrapped up in bureaucracy, inside red-tape (inside an enigma). If something does come about, it will only fell like a stop-gap answer instead of the road being used for its original purpose.It would be interesting to know of the reasons for beginning the road and not finishing it as had been planned, but for now it remains an oddity to have such a section of roadway and it lying unused.

As a further part of the lead-in, a survey was also completed in each of the four countries and in the United Kingdom and an overview of the results was presented. And finally, an interactive guide is shown giving information on all EU countries and how they compare in the areas of population, life expectancy, education levels, personal technology ownerships levels, and financial indicators such as cost of living and savings levels.

During the past week of Monday April 4th to Saturday April 9th, there have been many articles related to Poland specifically and they can all be found in the Poland sub-section of the New Europe featured area 0n the Guardian website. The majority of the articles also appeared in the print versions of the newspaper during the week. Below is a quick summary of some of the main articles and highlights from the week covering Poland.

Current Affairs, Politics and History

This section covers some of the articles covering topics such as:

A Jewish renaissance – which highlights efforts by Krakows Jewish Centre in particular in raising awareness.

The giant Swiebodzin Jesus – which of course raises a debate on religion and the Church’s influence in Poland.

Poland gets to grips with being normal – which of course raises a debate on religion and the Church’s influence in Poland.

Feminism in Poland – where the author gives some interesting examples of experiences with industry colleagues being condescending bordering on sexist.

Culture, Sport, the Arts & Entertainment

This section looks at how Poland is developing in terms of culture and other such areas.

Guardian Readers Tips – these include suggestions for cultural options and other highlights, including parts of Poland to visit outside of the urban areas.

How football hooliganism still haunts Poland – While this article does present the spectre of hooligans arranging ‘ustawki’ fights, there are also some other articles highlighting positives that Euro 2012 will bring such as stadium building, infrastructure redevelopment and a podcast from Jonathan Wilson with interviews with Grzegorz Lato and Lech Wałęsa where the hope is that hosting Euro 2012 will help to increase Polands self-confidence as a country.

Seamus Heaney on Czesław Miłosz – with the poem ‘The World’ written in 1943 being a personal favourite of his

Travel & Tourism

This section highlights some of the features presenting Poland cities and other locations and what is worth seeing, including

Top ten Warsaw hotels to consider – these range from Le Meridien Bristol and the Rialto, to a hotel not even yet open – the Old Embassy – which is based in the former Soviet Embassy and not scheduled to open until September.

The locals guide to Kraków and Warsaw – with tips on places that you won’t necessarily find in the regular guide books

Kraków vs. Warsaw – a few more shots are fired in the never-ending debate of which of Polands two main cities can claim to be the best. With a notable appearance from our own Jamie Stokes (also representing the Krakow Post), as he battles with Dana Dramowicz of the Warsaw Life publication. They verbally spar to win the hearts and minds of those not yet decided on the subject.

Top trips in Poland – including Lancut castle, walking in the Karkonosze mountains and taking a steam train in Wolsztyn.

Food and Drink

This culinary section aims to present a taste of Poland, notably:

Guardian Readers Tips – these include suggestions for cafés, restaurants and bars in the main cities in Poland

How to cook perfect borscht (barszcz) – which also includes some free geo-political comments as a discussion builds over who has the best claim to ‘own’ the recipe

A pierogi recipe – or Polish ravioli as it is described on the webpage.

A recipe for roast duck with apples – with a suggestion to try with a dry red wine.

A gołąbki recipe – Suggested as being similar to the recipe of the babcia of the author

Summary

To summarise, the series overall is aimed at increasing knowledge of other European powers for British readers. The series (and articles on Poland) work fairly well in that regard as many pieces of information are presented that would not be known without regular exposure to Poland or Polish culture. However a disappointing recurrence was how the majority of articles were not written by Poles. This lead to some inaccuracies in information presented (often quickly pointed out) and also lead to a ‘parachute’ feeling – where it felt like the author was dropped into Poland for a few days – the article on the Polish family even mentioned how the author just landed with them for a few days, as opposed to presenting the views directly from the family.

Another feature seemed to be some articles being presented (perhaps deliberately) in a way to induce as many comments as possible on the web version of the article. The pieces on ‘Debunking Myths’ in particular seemed to rouse those commenters who shout loudest to say “Poles go home”, “Poles are lazy” and “Dey tuk ar jabs”. Ironically it seemed that bringing out these elements went against the Guardian’s message of getting to know the other countries and cultures.

Overall, it was a good series, but a suggestion for improvement would have been to have less articles (perhaps 20 or 25 instead of the 67 Poland-related ones) which could go into more detail and ensure accuracy of information and present more real views. Some articles felt too short to provide anything more than a discussion starting device which tended to decend into extremer viewpoints being aired.

All images are from the Guardian interactive guide to the EU countries with the original source data coming from the Economist.

There are two possibilities: either there are no lamps for sale in Krakow, or I’m looking in the wrong places. If the first is true, I’m going to start taking a lot better care of the lamps I have because they must now be worth a great deal of money. If the second is true, I will have to reconsider my prejudice that lamps should be sold in electrical appliance shops and address the possibility that they are, in fact, sold in gardening supply or hat shops.

I have made two extended trips to Galeria Krakowska in the past week, something that is almost as difficult to admit as it is to endure. On neither occasion did I find a lamp to buy. Home furnishing shops, the ones that smell of lavender and are impossible to extract wives from, do not sell lamps but they do sell endless varieties of candles and candle holders. Apparently, a return to burning wax or whale oil is currently the most accessible means of illuminating my bedtime reading.

The big electrical shop, a branch of Saturn, sells every imaginable electrical device apart from lamps and kilowatt range free-electron lasers. I toyed with the idea of buying a 48-inch plasma and playing a looped DVD of a switched on lamp with the brightness turned right up, but apparently nobody has yet released one – a gap in the market I will be leaping on.

21/2 hours of relentless 40-watt action (Bonus Director’s Commentary and Bloopers)

The real problem, and this is not the first time it has become apparent, is that I still lack of proper sense of how Polish urban spaces work. Put me down in a British town that I have never visited before and I am certain that I could find a lamp or a fish and chip shop or a copy of a street map in minutes – I just know what kind of streets to look on for the right kind of shops. I’m sure there are lamp shops out there, but I have no idea what they look like or how to find them.

This is a genuine and annoying problem that previously vexed me when I needed to buy a roll of parcel tape (W H Smiths), but it is compounded by the weird transitional state of the shopping experience in Poland. At first glance, it looks as if Poland has all the shops you could ever possibly want. In fact, at the shiny new Galeria end of the market, there is a superabundance of a very limited number of types of shops and almost nothing else.

In Galeria Krakowska, for example, there are seven or eight jewellery shops, all selling essentially the same watches and earrings, at least 30 clothes shops, also selling barely discernible products, and a dozen electrical shops selling slightly different forms of iPhone and laptop. The rest of the space is taken up with a couple of mega pharmacies, a supermarket and a branch of Empik. That’s it.

I know this is also the case in shopping malls elsewhere in the world, but the problem in Poland is that the glittery Galerias have been laid down on top of a highly impoverished strata of existing shops. Outside of them there are a few absurd hardware stores, an extraordinary number of wedding dress shops, endless second-hand clothes emporiums, the occasional bicycle shop and nothing else. Trying to buy an interesting or original birthday or Christmas present is almost impossible. It’s either standard high-street tat that you could buy anywhere in the world, stained glass angels and humorous Jewish figurines or a spanner.

I suppose what I’m really moaning about here is the lack of a broad bespoke luxury sector to cater to the whims of pampered middle-class folk such as myself – giant Stilton wheels, hand-made Faroe sweaters and things of that kind. With that humbling realisation in mind, I’m off to Ikea where I’m sure they have numerous lamps that will cunningly cater to my supposedly sophisticated eye for good design and solid workmanship at prices that can only mean Vietnamese sweat shops.

Using location data added to photos on Flickr and Picasa, Fischer plotted where photos were taken, and then coloured them according to whether they were taken by residents or tourists—a trick he achieved by classifying individuals who took photos in the same city over a period of more than 3 months as residents, and less then 3 months as visitors. Red dots indicate photos taken by visitors, blue by residents, and the yellow are unknown (individuals who took only one photo).

Click the image for an absolutely enormous version covering a wider area. Can you identify the hot spots? There are some clusters in outlying regions that must represent the work of local photography enthusiasts. Anyone we know?

The second map is of Krakow, but in this case the colours represent distance in time between photographs taken by the same individuals. Fischer interprets this as photos taken by pedestrians (black), photos taken by cyclists (red), and photos taken by drivers (blue).

Click the image for a huge version and indulge your compulsive pattern-recognition disorder.

The thousands of minibus operators fill a yawning gap in the nation’s public transport network. For millions of people living in rural areas they are often the only way of getting anywhere. The formerly state-run national bus company, Przedsiębiorstwo Komunikacji Samochodowej (PKS), was in a woeful state when it was broken up and partly privatised in 1992. More recently its monopoly was broken when new laws allowed competition. The minibus companies that sprang up like autumn mushrooms to fill the market are a fine example of the benefits and pitfalls of the free market.

I’m sure there is a stack of perfectly adequate regulation governing this industry, but I’m equally sure that they are completely unenforceable—there are just too many operators. Companies appear and disappear overnight, but the buses and drivers remain the same. Go to any of the multitude of muddy abandoned lots in Polish towns and cities that serve as ersatz bus stations for these crowds of minibuses and you’ll see layer upon layer of ambitious timetables issued by Franek’s Bus Company, Janek’s Bus Company and Auntie Halina’s Bus Company pasted on top of each other.

I have no idea if yesterday’s tragedy was anybody’s fault, but it is clear that the bus was ridiculously overcrowded—and this is certainly the most common problem. If a private operator can cram 47 paying passengers onto a minibus with 20 seats, he will. If you’ve been standing by the side of the road in the freezing rain for half-an-hour, you’ll put the risk at the back of your mind and try and be the 48th. I avoid minibuses during peak travel hours as assiduously as I avoid volunteering as a Chilean miner, but sometimes they are the only option if you don’t have a car—an alternative that I do not regard as significantly safer on Poland’s roads. It’s hair-raising stuff. It is, for example, common practice for the driver to collect money and hand out tickets as he is pulling away from the stop. Four of five people stand clinging onto seats, a couple of feet from the windscreen, as the driver steers with one hand and fiddles with change and the ticket machine with the other. I’ve even seen a driver changing the paper roll in the ticket machine as he is pelting down the highway at 60. Certain catastrophe balancing on a coin edge.

What astonishes me is that these potential tragedies are obvious long before they happen. Two local examples: in Krakow last year there was a series of accidents in the crowded Old Town involving horse-drawn carriages. It was sheer luck that nobody was killed or severely injured. Nobody who has spent time in the Rynek in mid-Summer was even mildly surprised.

Double melex: what could possibly go wrong?

In the past couple of years the number of those electric buggies, sometimes called golf carts (or melex), whisking tourists around the sights have exploded. These things are usually driven by students and often stuffed with ‘excitable’ tourists on pub crawls urging extra speed and louder music.  Melex are not exactly fast, but, fully loaded, and careening down a narrow street they are quite capable of mashing a passerby to a pulp against a wall. It’s just a matter of time, but not until it happens will anything be done.

My wife, who wasn’t even my wife when this started, has suffered through innumerable expeditions to the riverbank to watch me photograph bits of concrete and scaffolding without a murmur of protest—quite a lot of tutting, but no murmurs of protest. My wife is only really interested in things that happen on stages. If they had built the thing on Mam Talent with ‘Bridge Over Troubled Waters’ playing in the background intercut it with slow motion black-and-white footage of workmen waving their hands in the air, she would have watched it 7,000 times on YouTube and cried. I’m as sorry to see it finished as she is glad. If they don’t start building something else dramatic in this town soon I’m going to have trouble filling my days.

It’s been quite a ride: thrills, spills, floods and long, long periods of absolutely nothing happening at all. The bridge plan first came to my attention back in April, 2009 when I wrote A new bridge for Kraków and it was finally opened on 30th September 2010.

The bridgeheads of the Emperor Francis Joseph I Bridge, which stood here from 1850 to 1925, were to be incorporated into the new bridge. Here is the bridgehead on the south bank in the very early stages of the project.

The bridgehead on the north bank receiving the attentions of a giant corkscrew machine (I’m not tremendously knowledgeable when it comes to bridge-building terminology). Whatever the giant corkscrew machine was trying to do, it didn’t seem to work because nothing else happened on the site for months.

Great excitement as the heavily renovated bridgeheads are fitted with big pipe-socket thingies (again, this may not be the technical term) to take the main span of the bridge.

The main span takes shape on the north bank. Already I’m wondering how they are going to get this vast piece of metal into position.

Rapid progress as the pedestrian and cycle platforms begin to take shape.

Doh! Imminent disaster as the river rises up and engulfs the structure in May of this year.

Soggy people struggle to prevent the half-finished bridge being washed away down the river.

Mystery solved: one end of the bridge is floated across the river on barges.

A tense couple of hours as the bridge is inched across the river. The architects were presumably locked away in a room with a bottle of whiskey at the time.

The Laetus Bernatek Bridge, finally, in place. This view rapidly becomes a favourite. It’s a good thing they thought about the design of the underside. The bridge was finished weeks before anybody could access it because the roads and paths leading to each end were not ready.

The completed bridge from the north bank—more or less the same point of view as the first photo above.

The cycle-side (west platform) of the bridge, the other side being for pedestrians. Contrary to some reports, cyclists and pedestrians can use the bridge in both directions, but use different sides. There is, by the way, no physical barrier that would prevent a car driving across the bridge. Somebody is bound to try this at some point. If that person is you, let me know so I can be there to take pictures of the ensuing disaster.

20,000 years of symbolic thought

I was delighted to discover that there are three miniature versions of Krakow scattered about the city: one on Plac Matejki, one on Plac Szczepański and one on Plac Wszystkich Świętych. These models take the abstraction one step further because they are representations of how these areas looked centuries ago rather than how they look now—they are abstract in time as well as scale. In each case these models were installed as part of renovations to these squares, so hopefully there will be more in the future as improvements to the city’s open spaces continue.

The Plac Matejki model showing the area as it was at the beginning of the 20th century. It features the Grunwald monument, the buildings surrounding the square (most of which are still standing today), St. Florian’s church and the street layout of nearby Kleparz market.

The approximate area covered by the Plac Matejki model on a 1914 map of Krakow.

The Plac Matejki model at street level.

* * *

The Plac Szczepański model showing the area as it looked before 1801 when the square was created. A church and a Jesuit college stood where the square is now. You can also see the old city wall, now dismantled, in the background.

Bird’s eye view of the Plac Szczepański model. The view in the previous picture is from the left in this picture.

The area covered by the Plac Szczepański model on a 1785 map of Krakow. The street then called ul. Zydowska (Jewish Street) is now called ul. Świętego Tomasza (St. Thomas’ Street).

The Plac Szczepański model at street level.

* * *

The Plac Wszystkich Świętych model showing the area as it was before Kościoła Wszystkich Świętych‬ (All Saints’ Church) was demolished in the 1830s. Note the braille inscription on the right-hand side of the base. I heard an interview with a blind person once in which he said he always bought tourist models of famous buildings when he visited a new city so he could get and idea of their form—these must be great for that purpose (except in the summer when the metal gets hot enough to burn your fingers).

Bird’s eye view of the Plac Wszystkich Świętych model.

The area covered by the Plac Wszystkich Świętych model on a 1785 map of Krakow.

A street level view of the Plac Wszystkich Świętych model.

There are many decent places in Krakow to eat and everyone knows it.  However, not everyone knows where to go for a quiet meal, a smoke-free atmosphere, a place with good or even great service, thoughtful décor, “unusual” food or, last but not least, very well-prepared food.  I personally prefer a combination of all six points.

Most of the places highlighted in this series are reasonably quiet or only moderately noisy and patrons are not served by people who do not immediately appear to hate their clients, their jobs or life in general. Most of these places are non-smoking or have a separate section for smokers that is well-ventilated.  The interiors are usually well-lit or don’t look like they were decorated by rummaging around in the basement/attic for stuff to put on the walls and… last but not least… the food is either unusual for Krakow or if it is usual (Polish, Italian) it’s well-prepared.

Ex-Pat Necessities Part 1:  Burgers, Bagels and Burritos

Bagelmama, Dajwór 10 – Bagels, sandwiches, wraps (American cuisine), desserts and good coffee. The food is so lovingly prepared that it’s almost wrong to eat it but you won’t be able to stop yourself – it looks great and tastes even better.  Ran by an American who loves what he does and enjoys a chat with his customers. Also, one of the few places in town to get excellent hummus. The menu is mid-priced. Their new (current) place offers ample seating with excellent atmosphere. Fairly quiet in the evenings even with other patrons around. Non-smoking.  Bagelmama will also do parties – they have a nice, big table that can probably comfortably seat 10 or 12 with elbow room.  The interior is spacious (high ceilings), softly but amply lit.  As far as I know this is the one and only place to get a bagel in Krakow.

Burrito Buffet, Warszawska 20 – Take-away or delivered Mexican food. Patrons are strongly advised to call ahead at 12 633 04 09 and place their orders in advance. Let me be clear: this is the best and hottest Mexican food in Krakow, full stop.  To answer the question of “how hot is hot?” I can assure readers that Burrito Buffet will make your food hot (or spicy, to be clear) enough that you can barely eat it. This is hot on the Mexican scale NOT the Polish scale – many lovely pieces of jalapeño liberally sprinkled throughout the food if you ask for it to be hot. Perfect! Their delivery service (with a 4 km delivery radius) isn’t the fastest but if you get your food delivered you will see that they really care – all the food is expertly wrapped, packed or boxed.  Absolutely no squished or broken stuff. The best part is that this is cheap food – 13 PLN for a burrito but a single one will likely fill you.

Love Krove, Józefa 8 – Burgers. These are your upscale burgers with rucola instead of plain ol’ lettuce but are very well prepared. An honest-to-God beef patty – THICK! – that’s by default brown on the outside and just a touch pink on the inside.  Perfect.  Not much seating here but the interior is fun to look at and the service is ok. No vinegar for your chips; this is an American-style place. A burger, plate of fries and a beer will fill you nicely and is reasonably priced (mid-priced) for what you get.  It’s not what I’d call a quiet place but the noise is kept at reasonable levels – enough to hold a conversation at reasonable levels.  There are many places to get a burger in Krakow but this is the only place that you won’t regret it.

Next time:  Steaks, ‘cakes and Sushi

Click for a larger version

A number of questions spring to mind:

1. Why is nobody helping these people?

Possibly the guy who has come off his bicycle is dead, but the guy in front of the car isn’t. Why isn’t somebody at least helping him up? At first I though perhaps the accident had just happened when the photo was taken but:

a) there is no driver in the car;

b) a crowd of onlookers has gathered; and

c) a police officer is already on the scene (under the tree with his back to the camera).

2. What happened?

I’m fairly sure that’s the back of the tram, not the front: I see no driving position and there is a hitching coupling visible. If so, the tram must have been heading to the right, out of the frame of the picture. How did that car get there in that orientation? It looks like it’s come directly off the pavement.

3. How likely is it that there was a photographer right there?

Cameras were expensive and rare things in the 1940s, especially in occupied Europe. It’s an amazing coincidence that there should have been a photographer on the scene, with a loaded camera, within a short time of this incident. The photo looks much more like the kind of thing you would see taken today with a phone camera than the kind of thing you might expect from 1940s photography. Could the whole scene be staged? Is it part of a film set?

These questions and many more will undoubtedly be answered by our indefatigable readers. Or not.

Katedra is less than a kilometre from my front door and it has more varieties of Polish beer than any other Polish pub I’ve seen: in other words, more than two. In fact it has a lot more than two, the spiral-bound beer list is half-an-inch thick. They claim to have more than 40 beers, mostly, but not exclusively, brewed in Poland. Forty Polish beers. How can that be? I’ve only ever seen five beers served in pubs. Why don’t they spread them around a bit? Five beers in 64,964 pubs and all the others in just one. Okay, it’s an admirable exercise in surrealism, but at least tell us that’s what’s going on.

If you think you like beer and have only ever tasted the mainstream Polish brands, stop what you are doing right now and go immediately to Katedra—your mouth, as Ford Prefect once remarked, will love you forever. I’m not saying they are all great beers, some just tasted weird, but the point is: they have a taste. Żywiec, Okocim, and Tyskie are not terrible beers, but they are achingly bland. They’re designed to be bland, so anybody can drink them without complaint. This is not what beer is about, in the same way that wine isn’t about adding alcohol to grape juice.

The breweries turning out this riotously non-standard cataract of beers are young and bursting with hoppy enthusiasm. Browar Fortuna is a prefect example: founded in 1995 it offers a dozen versions of madness-in-a-glass including the devastatingly flavoursome Czarny Smok (Black Dragon—the names need work). Others include Browar Jagiełło, Browar Konstancin and Browar Czarnków; names that will soon become more familiar than presidential candidates if there is any justice in this universe.

I guess I should say something about the pub itself. It’s on Poselska, but on the part of Poselska to the east of Grodzka. It’s the only bar, pub or restaurant on the entire street, which also makes it unique in Krakow’s Old Town. As if two points of uniqueness weren’t enough, Katedra goes one further by being the only Krakow pub I know of that is entirely non-smoking. Nicotine addicts need not panic. The place is cosy enough that standing outside on the ashtray-equipped doorstep you barely lose touch with events inside.

The interior is, apparently, based on the look of a short film inspired by a Jacek Dukaj—it’s geek chic. The adolescent Tolkien-inspired elements are understated enough not to get in the way of the beer experience. In other words, it looks almost exactly like every other Krakow pub except, mercifully, it isn’t underground.

Go there at the nearest opportunity. Feign an antisocial disease to get time off work if you must, or simply slide off into the blazing furnace that is July and hitch south to Krakow—nobody will notice.

Pub: Katerda

Address: ul. Poselska 9

Website: http://www.katedra.krakow.pl/

Bonus: Mention ‘Island1′ at the bar for one free look of blank incomprehension.