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  • Warsaw – So! Coffee (Factory Ursus)

    Warsaw – So! Coffee (Factory Ursus)

    I’m not sure why I haven’t written about So! Coffee before, as I know I’ve visited a few of their outlets before. They are a relatively large chain in Poland, but I like them even though they’re not necessarily the cheapest. This is their outlet in the shopping centre at Factory Ursus.

    The shop was clean and organised, with the staff being ridiculously fluent in English (the Polish exchanges fell apart when I didn’t understand they were asking if I wanted a double shot of coffee) and, as so often in Poland, friendly.

    Latte and apple cake, a perfectly acceptable breakfast as far as I’m concerned. The latte was rich and creamy and the cake had one of my five a day underneath the sugar. All rather lovely.

    And, I’m very easily pleased, so I was entirely happy with the free piece of fudge that comes with the coffee. The shop was a comfortable environment, with seating inside and outside (well, outside the shop, still inside the shopping centre) which was all kept clean.

  • Warsaw – Quo Vadis

    Warsaw – Quo Vadis

    The location of this puzzled me (as many things do) as it’s one of my favourite Latin expressions (where are you marching?), sometimes suitable to describe our politicians…. But, I’ve now discovered it’s also a classic Polish book, written by Henryk Sienkiewicz. One of the characters is Ursus, which is also the part of the city where this road is located and that’s the only reason I can think of why this road has been named as it has….

    Nice though, I’d like to live on a street called this.

  • Warsaw – Wayside Shrine

    Warsaw – Wayside Shrine

    This rather lovely wayside shrine, or Kapliczka, is located on Dzieci Warszawy in the Ursus region of Warsaw. It has been here since the early nineteenth century and inside there was a painting of Our Lady of Częstochowa and a painting of St. Stanislaus. The shrine became derelict in the twentieth century, but was restored in the 1990s and modern copies of the paintings were placed back inside the shrine.

  • Warsaw – Sadist JW

    Warsaw – Sadist JW

    I have no idea what this graffiti means, but I noticed it given my own initials…. Perhaps there’s a deeper meaning.

  • Warsaw – Ursus Parish Cemetery

    Warsaw – Ursus Parish Cemetery

    I don’t have much to add about this cemetery in Warsaw other than to note the remarkable number of flowers on the graves (compared to British ones at least) and how spotlessly clean it was. It was quite a busy cemetery with quite a community feel it and I got the impression that tending graves was bringing people together.

  • Warsaw – Fort V Włochy

    Warsaw – Fort V Włochy

    Fort V, also known as Włochy, is part of the outer ring of the Warsaw Fortress which was constructed by the Russians in 1880s. The fortresses, of which there were ultimately 29, weren’t particularly effective in the defence of the city and they had to be upgraded soon after completion due to them already becoming out-of-date against modern weaponry. Then the ridiculous situation occurred in 1909 when the Russians, to save money, started to withdraw from the forts and they destroyed some parts of them. Then, in 1913, it was decided that they’d better start rebuilding them due to the threat of war. They were bloody useless anyway, the city surrendered to the Germans in 1915 without a fight.

    One advantage in the Russians leaving Warsaw after the First World War was that a decision was made to allow development outside the ring of forts. The Russians had banned this and it had held the city back from growing. After the First World War, the Poles didn’t really do much with the forts, although they were used when fighting the Germans during the Second World War.

    Today, the area of Fort V is a peaceful area with lots of paths and no shortage of lumps and bumps around the place. They could do with some interpretation boards though to try and explain what exactly used to be here, it’s quite a complex site.

    Anyway, some photos of the fort…..

  • Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day 181

    Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day 181

    The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the current health crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored….

    Lamb’s Wool

    Grose is back to his alcoholic recipes again with this definition, which he noted was “apples roasted and put into strong ale”. The phrase first appeared in writing in the sixteenth century, although this was something likely done for many centuries before that.

    The origins of the word aren’t known, although some speculate that it’s from ‘La Maes Abhal’, from the festival of the Day of the Apple Fruit. I suspect it’s just named after the appearance of the drink, which had a frothy top, given that whole eggs were often added and whipped in with the drink. Actually, I’m not sure what the eggs were doing in this drink, just the apples put in strong ale seems enough to me, but there we go….

  • Warsaw – Paperwork to Enter Poland

    Warsaw – Paperwork to Enter Poland

    This is the new two-page form that everyone entering Poland needs to complete. It’s provided by the airline, although it was only handed out after landing and customers couldn’t leave the aircraft until they’d completed it. This is a slightly odd arrangement as it means customers without pens had to borrow them from others, which negates the non-sharing rule, although fortunately I always have a pen in case I need to fill out a voucher for discounted fast food. One customer didn’t seem keen to fill it in and tried to walk off without handing it over, but the Polish authorities stopped him and walked him back somewhere. It’s quite a detailed form, but at least it means that in the case of emergency the authorities can easily get in touch with those who had been on board.

  • Warsaw – Warsaw Chopin Airport

    Warsaw – Warsaw Chopin Airport

    Having arrived in to Warsaw with British Airways, this was the quietest that I’ve seen Warsaw Chopin airport. The immigration check was via a self-service kiosk, so I didn’t have to interact with anyone during that process.

    This moderately concerned me for a while, the signs for the railway into the city centre have been taped over. It’s also fair to say that there were nearly no passengers in the terminal, it all felt a little desolate.

    There’s a McDonald’s at the end of this corridor, that only had a handful of customers. It took me a while to establish what the airport had done, which wasn’t to close the train connection with the city, but simply to shut some of the connecting passages. Unusually for this very precise airport, the signage wasn’t entirely clear, but I was pleased to discover (after following some other people) that they had simply directed passengers to the trains via a different route.

    I do wonder how long airports will be like this for, they seem very sterile places at the moment, although at least that means they’re clean. The airport staff were also checking the temperatures of everyone entering the terminal, which didn’t happen at London Heathrow.

  • Heathrow T5

    Heathrow T5

    Just some photos from Heathrow T5 today, it didn’t feel that busy anywhere.