For the past four weeks, Britian’s The Guardian newspaper has run a series it has called New Europe. It has spent one week each analysing Germany, France, Spain and finally in the past week, Poland. The introduction to the series says “Who are our neighbours? Too often Europe is discussed and reported through its common [...]
Here’s a cool and non-controversial thingy: maps of Warsaw and Krakow superimposed with visualizations of where people take photos. They were created by a chap called Eric Fischer, along with a lot of similar maps of other cities that you can see on his flickr page. Using location data added to photos on Flickr and [...]
I confess, I’ve been waiting for something like this to happen and now, sadly, it has. Last Sunday, the police carried out a “routine inspection” of what used to be the “Russian Bazaar” in the Praga district of Warsaw and ended up shooting dead a Nigerian called Maxwell Itoyi. Today there is a protest march [...]
The only journey I make on Polish trains with any kind of frequency is the trip from Krakow to Warsaw. Despite their rarity I’ve come to dread these expeditions. Number one on my hate list is the compartment carriage. Some people seem to like those six-seat cubicles, chiefly because you get to say “Dzień dobry” to the other occupants when you sit down.
I’ve lived in three places since I’ve been in Poland, gradually moving further out each time. My first apartment was smack-bang in the centre of the Embassy district on a street called “Przyjaciół”, the big red X on the map below (click to enlarge). I moved into this apartment after having lived in the Sheraton [...]
I was looking forward to my trip to the British embassy. According to every spy film I’ve ever watched an embassy is supposed to be the sovereign territory of the nation it represents. Also they have secret basements housing jet-propelled mini-helicopters. I have no idea if this is true, but since when was reality more [...]
Any long-term Warsaw resident knows that this city is strangely transformed in the summer months. They will find themselves, as we did the other day, looking around and saying “who are all these people”? You suddenly become a stranger in your own city, surrounded by people who were not there before. It’s as if every [...]
It’s over, it’s over, all over, it’s all over now and the way you looked don’t even mean I’m down. When you kick out the sea and the sun says goodbye there is nothing much to speak of. Feelin’ down, down, down, it’s all over. Feelin’ down, down, down. Baby, baby, it’s all gone, rolled [...]
Welcome to Polandian on Sunday (with a slight delay due to author’s weekend break in Sopot). Here is a brief summary of what happened this week in Poland. 1. Warsaw’s future architecture When you’re having a walk down the Warsaw’s Powiśle neighborhood why not pop into the Warsaw University Library. Since this week it is [...]
Polish place names crop up all over North America and other parts of the globe settled by Poles. Nothing particularly amazing about that, but when you’re lying in bed with the dreaded January virus it’s possible to become a little obsessed with looking them all up. From there it’s a small step to collecting photos [...]