a binary life » warsaw

European day without a car

ana — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 19:11:44 +0000

…was a rather grim affair in Warsaw. Here are photos, which hopefully illustrate just how grim:

“European day without a car. 22nd September” hu-effing-rahh

this one says “Free bike rental”. Location unknown.

Turns out the renting booth was some 20 meters away on a parking lot, nearby the central tube station. I asked the gentlemen who were looking after it how’s the renting going and they said “well… so-so”. Judging by the amount of bikes I saw there about 3 p.m. that so-so meant “rubbish”. Apparently there were 3 spots in the city one could borrow or drop off a bike.

I can see the way it went in the Environmental Office in the City Hall. “So guys, we have this day without a car, what can we do to put as little effort in as we can and spend some public money?”.

I mean, I understand I’m a touch crowd when it comes to information. I hardly watch TV, I don’t listen to the radio and when I go online I spend 2 hours checking the websites I always check. But come on! Had I not been on my bike already, I wouldn’t even see those morbid little signs.

#BikingWarsaw

ana — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 15:07:01 +0000

I thought today that I’d like to have a coffee holder on my bike, so I could bike to grab lattes from the nearby Starbucks. #HelloI’maDouche! Meet my old/new best friend.

At the age of circa 13 I demanded a bike – as many 13 years olds do. My mum got me this lovely yellow “Piranha”, which was also the bike I wanted. Love affair lasted about a week. Then it stood in my room gathering dust, although still being an object of my adoration. Then I moved out and my room at my folks’ place turned into a storage any way. Then I moved to London and considered buying a bike for the 4 years I was there.

Cut to 2010. In an effort to be a get a bit more fit, avoid public transport and see more of the city I dragged the bike down to a friendly bike shop and got it taken care of (by a rather good looking young gentleman, may I add). I installed a tracking app on my Android G1. And I got sucked in.

I use it for transportation, but if the day goes by without going anywhere I take it on a ride in the evening. This is as close to Hunter S Thompson as you get in Warsaw. Was I living in Aspen, I’d probably buy a rocking motor and drive at 120 km/h out of the town. Living in the center of almost 4 millions strong city I can only comfort myself with the thought that I’m eco friendly.

If you’re a rather stationary geek, like myself, there’s nothing better to get you moving than adding a bit of tech into your biking. Trust me. Endomondo does it all, tracking, times, maps, networking yada yada. And by default your weight is only visible to you (how thoughtful). It’s works on a bunch of different make and models phones. If you go for it search for “Ana Bee” and add me as your friend. Predictably, I’m rather lonely with my passion for techo-workouts.

This came bang on time, since a very talented designer and a friend, Emma, is working on a website for her custom, recycle-savvy biking parts business. We’re working on temp website before hopefully launching an online store. It shall be unveiled soon. Meanwhile expect some biking posts over here and healthy portion of boasting about my sad achievements across social media.

Warsaw photo log #7: Chlodna 25

ana — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 15:23:03 +0000

I went to Warsaw for just over 14 days and promised myself to publish a photo every other day – so here goes the one photo I was short of. I’ve been told I should have done wider perspectives as most of the photos in the log are very much of details, but I guess this is also a testimony of what I have been looking at. As well as laziness in changing from my favorite 50 mm lenses…

Click to enlarge

This a part of wallpaper in cafe called Chlodna 25. I won’t even start on the matter of google overtaking the universe – we were actually establishing where to meet using my maps on google maps…

There is more to say about the place itself: one of our favorites , if only for the fact that it can be counted on to be opened through Christmas and collect all the refugees from family dinners. Also it’s filled with happy memories and serves one and only cheap polish cherry vodka (I only managed to find an article in the Polish wikipedia, apparently in English it’s referred to as Cherry Cordial).

So this will be it for the log till the next time – probably in April, or if I manage financially towards the end of February. This might not be the most impressive bunch, but as I predicted I was too busy being in the place.

Warsaw photo log #6: sky over Warsaw

ana — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 00:33:31 +0000

This is Warsaw, how I remember it all the (20) years growing up – this precise sky color and this sky line. This type of a building is characteristic for where I used to live, but not solely. It takes over most of the city outside the strict center. But I wrote about that before. What struck me here were the exact colors that are always on my mind when I think of Warsaw – at any time of the year really. If you ever come here, you will know what I mean.

Warsaw photo log #5: back street

ana — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 01:41:36 +0000

I photographed this the other night on the way back from my gym at the Hilton hotel. I’m not, thank you very much, mentioning this to show off. I hope the gym effort will excuse the poor quality of this photo, I really wanted to post it and mention that this place is near a Hilton hotel (take this, Paris), because it show one other characteristic of Warsaw: everything is mashed in together. Rich, poor, cheap, expensive, flat, tall, cultured and rough, everything goes. No mercy and no sleep for the wicked – or something.

Click to enlarge:

Also near by is one of Warsaw’s favorite cafes / culture clubs Chlodna 25. Do pay visit if you’re ever in town, you won’t regret it.

Warsaw photo log #4: Tram no 10

ana — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 22:34:44 +0000

I believe in States these are called streetcars? As in Streetcar Named Desire, where – accidentally – Marlon Brando played a character of Polish origin. This, however is not why I took a picture of it. This particular one, number 10, starts in the neighborhood in which my parents live, equivalent I would think of end of zone 2 in London, except there’s huge estates and Warsaw only goes as far as 3 zones – and that if we’re being generous. It goes further through the strict city center through to near where my flat is and one of Warsaw’s favorite parks Pola Mokotowskie. Pola is a nearly mythical place for me and my friends, as it’s packed with pubs of dubious quality in which many a nights turned mornings were spent. Warsaw is blessed with many 24/7 alcohol shops and we’d never restrain from buying that last beer outside my house. I also used to go to school on this one, but that memory I hold less dearly.

This is a plate form said tram, it’s one of these old school ones, from before electronic displays and warm-voiced ladies announcing arrival at a destination.

Warsaw photo log #3: watching the time

ana — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:28:01 +0000

Long story short: this was a happening, which took place in the main hall of the building of Warsaw Stock Market. It was a part of series of events by one of capitals theaters. They are all dealing with reality and creation of illusion using low-tech solutions . The Stock Market event was several people building a clock 12 meters wide and 4 meters high, which was completely manual. To keep the clock running for twelve hours (midday till 00:00) they had to make 805 changes to the construction.

This is on of the performers changing the minute. We were literarily sitting, watching the time go by, or rather being moved by.

We had one camera between two so I think I can’t claim this one, I think it was taken by my friend, Tomek. I like to post one photo that explains what I want to say, but I think this time some more visual explanation is needed. This is how the complete thing looked, except it was never really properly complete.

Warsaw photo log #2: large scale estate

ana — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 23:01:17 +0000

This is the entry hall to the large scale estate my parents live in. The building is 5 entrances long and 12 stories high. Each entrance gives access to 3 flats per floor, so in total it’s 180 flats in one building. Something a bit like this. It’s difficult to talk class in Poland (almost 50 years of the grand communist experiment made the western European categories of class pretty useless in relation to the Polish society), it’s equally difficult to fully say who lives in this sort of buildings. After the World War II over 85% of Warsaw was demolished flat, so the post-war buildings were mainly supposed to house many people and quickly. Not much concern with the aesthetics or functionality. Unfortunately post-war in this instance lasted till early 1990s.

Please click to view large.

I chose to photograph the hall way, because there have been millions upon million pictures of the outside of these buildings taken. And i think this shows pretty well what uncontrolled habitation can cause in terms of quality of living space. This has been at the moment when post boxes were taken off to be replaced with new ones chosen along the rules of the European Union.

There are several layers of paint (this yellow-y paint – color and gloss – is default in all of these buildings, everywhere) on every wall because people ‘draw’ on them no end. Draw, interestingly enough mainly penises and dubious quality tags. All of this gets periodically painted over with a paint which rarely matches the color of the previous one.

There’s definitely something different about estates in Poland in comparison to England. But I can’t quite put my finger to it. It’s part of this cultural awerness one just has when they were brought up somewhere, cultural capital if you like. Being the hibryd that I am, living in two places, I’m always interested in this type of knowledge and how difficult it is to translate both ligustically and when it comes to merits.

Warsaw photo log #1: Palace of Culture and Science

ana — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 23:41:22 +0000

I’m always very ambitious about documenting my trips to Warsaw. It is, indeed, a very special city and quite like nothing any one in London have seen. Potentially great blog material, especially now, that the city is coming to live with more artistic and cultural enterprises than one can count. So every time I go I ambitiously pack a HD camcorder (with addition gear: external mics, tele adapters…) and a faithful digital SLR (with even more gear: 3 sets of lenses, endless batteries, memory cards, flash guns and so on). The moment I arrive, having dragged a suitcase way heavier than necessary (see: the gear), preciously unpack it – and that’s pretty much where it stays.

There’s never good time to take photos while I’m home. For starters I tend to be ridiculously busy trying to cram all the people I want to see into the 2 weeks I usually have, trying to go all the places I can’t go through the rest of the year and trying to rest at the same time. Secondly taking photos remove you from the situation to an extent. It’s a step back from a given moment and place in order to focus on seeing it as a composition. And when you’re given only 2 weeks in the time and place and with the people you hardly want to remove yourself. So I always put it off till tomorrow, always plan photographic trips that there is never time to go on in the end.

So here comes my latest (and possibly final, if it fails) attempt: a Warsaw photo blog. I hereby commit to a photo every other day (I need a day breather in between) – marked with this stamp. In case you’re wondering the car pictured is a 1950s genius of polish engineering called FSO Warsaw, one of the first cars to ever be driven in Poland on a mass scale. You can see the national pride in its full glory here. Also, rather ingeniously portrayed here.

To start us of here goes the controversial landmark of Poland’s capital. We got it as a gift from brotherly government of the USSR in 1995. It’s called Palace of Culture and Science and was originally dedicated to the name of Joseph Stalin. That was, dear kids, before Khrushchev’s speech of 1956 about the crimes of Stalin’s era. It was also – more famously – at the center joke of one of Poland’s most beloved comedies ‘Killer‘. Another anecdote is that approximately 4000 builders who took part in the construction lived in barracks, in a specially build neighborhood, with it’s own cinema and club. Later on the barracks were transformed into student accommodation (yes, students and builders always get the best deal) where yours truly attended some of her first proper house parties at the age of about 15. But mainly it is controversial because it came to be a symbol of Warsaw’s landscape, even though – as a proper representative of modernist architecture of socialist realism, or socrealism – it is indeed fairly ugly. This is how it looks at night in monochrome.