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Category: Poland

  • Wizz Air (Warsaw Chopin to Bilbao)

    Wizz Air (Warsaw Chopin to Bilbao)

    I’m not sure I need to write too much about Warsaw Chopin Airport given that this is not short on content about the building. There are only so many times I can photograph the same airport before it starts to feel less like travel writing and more like a long-term monitoring project. Still, here we are again (as a friend would say), because I am nothing if not thorough about documenting the movement of myself through transport infrastructure.

    It was busy though and my usual security entrance was closed due to the number of passengers, but there’s another entrance further down into the terminal and that was quieter.

    The lounge was busy, but I was able to get a high table next to a power point, which seems to be something of a theme this week. Anyway, the chicken and carrots were rather lovely, alongside beer, Fanta and coffee. I know how to live. Not extravagantly, perhaps, but with a balanced approach to liquids.

    And some salad.

    I gave myself twenty minutes to get from the lounge to the gate. I hadn’t realised that the gate was literally ten metres away, it’s there on the left and the lounge entrance is on the right.

    There was a long queue to get into the lounge, which says quite a lot about how airport lounge access has changed. I’m afraid there are now too many people doing what I’m doing, although possibly with more sensible travel times and fewer self-imposed routing experiments. Lounge usage is more popular than the space allocated for it, and given that there are four airport lounges at Warsaw Chopin, with two reserved more for legacy airlines, it is an indication of their popularity. The modern airport lounge is no longer a tranquil refuge. It is now a competitive seating environment with pastries.

    I don’t normally pay any attention to what the weather will be like in a destination as I neither care nor worry about it. However, it was hard not to note the temperature in Bilbao and so, as ever, I was pre-annoyed. This is one of my more efficient emotional states, allowing me to be irritated before the actual inconvenience has occurred.

    I wasn’t surprised that it was a bus to the aircraft.

    The aircraft was 9H-WBE which was a new one for me and I’d add that I do realise this interests no-one else, but I like to keep a record for me. Some people collect records, some collect art and I apparently have a register of Wizz Air aircraft registrations, but I suppose we all find meaning where we can.

    The seating Gods had allocated me an aisle seat which had pleased me greatly.

    As for the flight, which I often find myself writing less about, it was once again operated professionally by Wizz Air and the crew were friendly, engaging and helpful. I noticed that the elderly guy sitting next to me had his wife on an aisle seat a few rows up and I decided to be pro-active and helpful offering to swap. That pleased them, so that was my good deed done for the day. I like to get these things completed efficiently so I can return to my normal programme of mild judgement and annoyance.

    A decent number of passengers purchased food and drink from the crew and they completed a few pass-throughs of the cabin. One element of people watching is to see how passengers manage when they’re stuck behind the cart. Some are casual and accept their fate. Some try to calculate whether they can edge past without making physical contact with half the cabin. Others simply stand there looking deeply annoyed, as though the trolley has violated a principle of natural justice.

    I suggest the best approach is to be inwardly annoyed but outwardly calm, looking at one’s phone as though entirely unfazed by the matter. This allows a person to maintain dignity while still experiencing a full internal complaint process. It is a very British arrangement, even when not in Britain.

    As this was a Schengen flight there was no border control and so the whole process of getting through the airport was quick and efficient. I then had problems with finding the bus and ended up at the tourist information office to get help, but more of that in the next riveting instalment….. I appreciate that “Julian struggles to locate bus” may not sound like peak travel literature, but I have built entire posts on less. At least the flight had gone well, the aisle seat had been secured and my brief Warsaw visit had ended with chicken, a power point and a new aircraft registration for the personal archive. That feels like a perfectly respectable little arrangement for under £9.

  • Warsaw – Centralny Port Komunikacyjny (Central Transport Hub)

    Warsaw – Centralny Port Komunikacyjny (Central Transport Hub)

    I hadn’t actually realised until this week that Poland’s Central Transport Hub was still very much an active project, which shows the sort of detailed international infrastructure awareness my two loyal blog readers have come to expect. Known as CPK, and now sitting within the broader Port Polska programme, it is planned as a major new airport and transport hub between Warsaw and Łódź, combining flights, rail and road in one large national statement of intent. The airport is expected to be ready for passengers by the end of 2032, which gives me several more years to develop opinions about it without having to use it.

    The plan is for CPK to take over much of the role currently played by Warsaw Chopin Airport, and I must admit I’ll be a little sad if that happens. Chopin is not perfect, but it is wonderfully convenient, close to the city and connected by rail in a way that makes arrival in Warsaw feel straightforward rather than like the first stage of a regional expedition. There is something very civilised about landing and being able to reach the city centre quickly, cheaply and without issues.

    The new airport may have strong national rail links, including the planned fast line between Warsaw, the airport and Łódź, which could make it genuinely useful as a Polish transport hub. But from the narrow and selfish perspective of someone who mostly wants to get into Warsaw, it does sound like more of a faff.

  • Warsaw Ibis Ostrobramska to Warsaw Chopin Airport

    Warsaw Ibis Ostrobramska to Warsaw Chopin Airport

    I accept that this will be another mundane post, although I rarely set the bar that high. There is a certain freedom in operating at this level of expectation. Nobody arrives here demanding drama, revelation or moral transformation, not even my two loyal blog readers. This was essentially the reverse of the journey I had made the previous evening, but I like to document things. One day someone may need to know precisely how I got from a budget hotel in Warsaw to the airport, and I intend to be ready for that moment.

    This photo was taken just outside of the hotel and I resisted popping into the McDonald’s, which isn’t something that I’ve always managed to achieve. Still, I resisted, which I think shows character. Not a lot of character, obviously, but enough to get me across the pavement.

    I had initially planned to visit some more metro stations before going back to the airport, to complete another half-finished project of mine. But the temperature was just too hot and so I decided that I’d walk to the tram stop and take one of the longer routes into the city centre and use it as a tourist experience.

    The tram was air conditioned so I was all set and this immediately improved the mood of the entire arrangement.

    Pootling along over the River Vistula.

    And back into the city centre.

    There’s Warszawa Centralna railway station in the background and I was already getting quite sad to be leaving Warsaw.

    There we go, the 12:24 from Platform 3.

    It’s the next Warsaw Beer Festival in October and I’ve decided I want to go to that, but the dates haven’t yet been released. I hope I’ll be back in Warsaw before that though.

    The airport train looked like it would be on time.

    And it was. There is something about standing on a platform with an airport train due that makes the trip feel suddenly over, even if technically there is still quite a lot of travel bureaucracy ahead.

    And that was that, my short trip to Warsaw was over. It had been a slightly ridiculous routing, a brief overnight stay and probably not the most sensible use of geography, but it had worked. I had slept, eaten breakfast, ridden trams, resisted McDonald’s, crossed the Vistula and reached the airport without incident. That may not trouble the great travel writers of history, but it was all rather pleasing

  • Warsaw – Warsaw Ibis Ostrobramska

    Warsaw – Warsaw Ibis Ostrobramska

    And another short post as I’ve stayed at this hotel many times before and written about a fair number of them, so I won’t try the patience of my two loyal blog readers for long. There are limits even to my commitment to documenting budget hotel consistency, although admittedly I keep testing them.

    It’s routinely the cheapest of the Accor hotels in Warsaw and it’s not hard to get to on the tram or bus, so it’s a very viable option. It’s probably not the best hotel to use as part of an airport layover, but travel should have challenges sometimes as where’s the fun in efficient?

    I had arrived too late for my free welcome drink, which is never ideal, but they had given me a welcome gift of some teas and a biscuit. These little gestures are always much appreciated.

    Although the hotel is located by a busy road, the view from my window was rather more pleasant.

    And a rather lovely breakfast. The meat looked quite frightening, so I went for some more healthy options. And a heap of bread and pastries at the back, alongside coffee, orange juice and tea. And a big dollop of strawberry yoghurt.

    With that, I had to start planning my return to the airport, which was slightly annoying as I had only been at the hotel for a few hours. But, there were no noise issues internally or externally and I was able to catch up on sleep after a warm night in Faro the previous day. It was not a long stay, but it did exactly what was required which was a clean room, quiet night, decent breakfast and a biscuit-based welcome.

  • Warsaw Airport to Warsaw Ibis Ostrobramska

    Warsaw Airport to Warsaw Ibis Ostrobramska

    I won’t linger too much on this post as I’ve written about public transport in Warsaw so many times before. However, this is the train to the city centre and I’ll note here that a 24 hour public transport ticket is under £3. A single underground journey in Zone 1 in London is the same price.

    The train stopped for a few minutes at Warszawa Zachodnia railway station, which is all new and shiny. This is moderately annoying as I realised that the Ibis Budget I usually stay at had suddenly become available and if I had realised earlier, I would have switched to this one. But, it meant I instead got to see more of Warsaw at night and there are worse things.

    Getting off at Warszawa Centralna railway station.

    I needed to change from a train to a night bus and there’s the Palace of Culture and Science. I sent a photo of this to my friend Liam who asked me why it was purple. Unfortunately, no-one seems to know, but it looks rather lovely at night and it is certainly a bold choice for Stalinist architecture, which is not usually known for its playful approach to mood lighting.

    On the night bus.

    It was quite busy and we sat in the dark for a while which I think was to add anticipation before we departed. Public transport often lacks theatricality, so perhaps Warsaw is addressing this with a brief blackout sequence. Either that or the driver hadn’t turned the lights on yet, but I prefer the more dramatic interpretation.

    Let there be light. And off we went, all suddenly illuminated and reassured that the bus had not, in fact, been designed by people who believed passengers should travel by instinct alone.

    And safely at the hotel. Public transport in Warsaw really is very easy, it’s cheap, frequent and well signed. Their trams and buses are shown live on Google Maps which helps if anything is delayed and, I know I say this frequently, but no-one was playing music or had their feet on the seats. This is a proper culture. A civilisation can be judged in many ways, but “can I sit on public transport without listening to someone else’s phone or inspecting their shoes on the upholstery?” seems as good a measure as any.

  • Wizz Air (Faro to Warsaw Chopin)

    Wizz Air (Faro to Warsaw Chopin)

    After my little beach walk in the morning, it was time to return to Faro Airport just a few hours after arriving there. And, I will admit that the planning element of all of this was a little sub-optimal. I had flown from Norwich to Faro as the Ryanair flight was very cheap and I noticed I could then fly from Faro to Warsaw with the last minute flight availability from my Wizz Air Multipass. I like Warsaw, as I might have mentioned, so my plan was to spend some time there.

    That was until I saw the hotel prices, which have been becoming consistently high over recent months. Warsaw has clearly worked out that I like it and is now attempting to monetise the emotional relationship. I then noticed that there was a flight from Warsaw to Bilbao, which is where I planned to spend a few days. So the new arrangement became Faro to Warsaw, then Warsaw to Bilbao, which looked perfectly sensible on a screen and slightly less sensible when exposed to time, distance and human comfort. Anyway, travel is about the journey and not the destination.

    So the issue was that I had managed to not really think through the fact that the flight from Faro to Warsaw was four hours in length and then I discovered that the seating Gods had given me a middle seat. This flight was looking a little less appealing, especially as I knew that I was flying back to Spain the next day.

    This is where rail ticketing needs to improve across countries, it’s just too expensive at the moment and I ideally like to use trains. But it was going to cost me £18 to get from Faro to Bilbao (via Warsaw) which also gave me two lounge accesses. Google informed me that to get from Faro to Bilbao by rail required six trains, would take over 28 hours and would cost somewhere around £150.

    Security at Faro was efficient from a staffing perspective, but I was slightly inwardly annoyed that the passenger in front of me didn’t know that liquids needed to go in their own bag. This has been the rule for over a decade so perhaps I should be fair. There then followed five minutes while she located her various liquids spread across three bags, as though she had prepared a small toiletries treasure hunt for the benefit of airport security. I remained outwardly calm, which is one of my lesser-known heroic qualities.

    Anyway, after that, I got to turn right at the above sign for the first time, which means that I was heading from the Schengen area. Last time I went left and was faced with long queues due to border control requirements.

    I could see the non-Schengen area and the queues didn’t actually look too bad, although I still preferred the Schengen option of not needing to show a passport.

    I then popped to the lounge, but I wittered on about that separately.

    There were plenty of seats in the terminal, there were numerous power points and it all felt relaxed.

    We were departing from Gate 220 and the whole process was well managed and it was clear where the priority and non-priority passengers needed to wait. The staff here seemed rather laid-back and I noticed that they weren’t checking bag sizes.

    The boarding process was all well managed and we weren’t in the extreme Portuguese heat for long. Did I mention that it was too hot? The aircraft was 9H-WDX which I’ve been on twice before, although as it’s part of their Polish fleet, that’s perhaps not entirely unsurprising. The crew were Polish and were impeccable in terms of their friendliness during the flight.

    The middle seat arrangement isn’t ideal, but wasn’t problematic and I managed to combine sleeping with watching YouTube videos to make the time go a little quicker. The aircraft was clean, the pilots were professional and we arrived into Warsaw a few minutes ahead of schedule.

    Oh good, a packed bus from the aircraft to the airport. Although I was a little time restricted as I needed to cross Warsaw, I knew that there was no border control and so I would be able to get on the train quickly enough. That transpired to be true, it took eight minutes from getting to the terminal to getting on the train, which included buying a ticket from the machine.

    Overall, this flight cost me £9 and everything went as expected, so I was pleased with the whole arrangement. It’s rare that I get the middle seat allocated and the flight was relatively full, but there are worse things that can happen. Once again, I thought that Wizz Air’s operation was all well managed and I was delighted to be back in Warsaw, even if just for one night. It might not have been the most logical routing, but it was cheap, efficient and let me continue my little adventure.

  • Wizz Air (Katowice to London Luton)

    Wizz Air (Katowice to London Luton)

    [Apologies I published this early if anyone saw a half finished post!]

    I was connecting at Katowice Airport to fly to London Luton, although there was no airside connection available. I also discovered that the security area at Terminal A wasn’t open for thirty more minutes, so the process was hardly rushed.

    Mine was the 19:45 flight and I had the advantage of popping to the airport lounge, but I wrote about that separately.

    The boarding process was all efficient, but there was a particular focus on checking bag sizes on this flight. The lady was walking down the queue and she spoke to me briefly before telling me that my bag was fine, but a fair few were being stopped and charged extra money. One guy was charged four times for his family, so around £320, so it was a profitable exercise for Wizz Air. Although, the rules are very clear, so the customers took a risk.

    This lady was charged £80, she might have been a little unlucky. It’s fair to say that she wasn’t very pleased and she asked a couple of us whether we’d been charged as well.

    The aircraft is 9H-WAD, yet another one that I haven’t been on before and this has been part of the Wizz Air fleet since 2022.

    Everything was smooth and well managed yet again, although the seating Gods had given me a middle seat which wasn’t ideal. However, the flight was only two hours so it’s hardly traumatic. The flight cost the usual £8.99 with my Multipass and the aircraft was clean, the crew were friendly and everything worked as it should.

    We landed into London Luton on time and I had a hotel just a short walk away from the airport, which is always something that I look forward to. This marked the end of my one week stay in Poland, Romania and Germany, another successful trip that was made a lot easier with my cheap Wizz Air flights.

  • Katowice Airport – Business Lounge (Terminal A)

    Katowice Airport – Business Lounge (Terminal A)

    With around three and a half hours before my flight from Katowice to London Luton, I thought I’d see how busy the lounge was. Fortunately I was flying on a non-Schengen flight departing from Terminal A, as the lounge at Terminal B has now stopped accepting Priority Pass. I hadn’t realised I had been to this lounge before, but it seems that I came here in 2019. I am a creature of habit sometimes.

    There was a friendly welcome from the team member at the reception desk and it was evident that there weren’t any capacity issues as I was the only customer in the lounge. Indeed, that was the situation for nearly two more hours. That gave me a choice of seats, so I sat near the runway to look out. I’m easily pleased.

    This was the limit of the food (other than for some yoghurts and sausage rolls) and the Caesar salad on the right didn’t look entirely fresh, but the Greek salad was entirely acceptable. And those jelly sweets on the left, let’s just say that the team member in the lounge had to refill those.

    I was impressed at the beer fridge with five different local options from the Cieszyn brewery, which is the longest continually operated set-up in the country. I tried a couple of the beers and it’s a shame that more UK airports don’t offer a local beer, even if they can’t manage five of them.

    This wasn’t a bad set-up, there was a decadent 9% beer, coffee, salad, sausages with insufficient pastry and jelly sweets. This pleased me…. And there were also plenty of power points in the lounge which was handy.

    The facilities were a little limited with just one toilet, but when you’re the only person in the lounge, that proves to be less of a challenge. I’m not sure that it would be worth paying full price for, unless you wanted to drink several beers, but I found it a useful resting and working place for the few hours that I was in there.

  • Wizz Air (Dortmund to Katowice)

    Wizz Air (Dortmund to Katowice)

    Dortmund is one of the older airports which is simply too small to deal with the number of passengers it currently has to handle. There are over three million passengers using the airport every year now and they have been creative about using the space that they have.

    Mine was the 13:25 flight and I took this photo just after I went through security, showing how perilously close I was. Well, by my standards. The security process was slightly problematic as some drunk, mostly older, Polish football fans barged by a few of us in the security line. I decided to take the opposite security line to them and managed to get through quite a bit quicker, and certainly had a quieter time.

    And the aircraft arrives, albeit a little late. The seating arrangement at the airport wasn’t dreadful, but they do need more seats for passengers as quite a few just opted for the floor. There were no power points and the general facilities at the airport were quite limited, but everything seemed to work efficiently.

    I was slightly nervous of a delay as I had a flight from Katowice four hours after this one arrived, but fortunately, there was no impact of note.

    This is aircraft HA-LVD, yet another one that I haven’t been on before, with this one in operation since 2019. The seating Gods had given me a window seat near the back, which suited my needs entirely for a flight of a little over one hour.

    Somewhere over Dortmund.

    What looks like a pretty town, this is Soest in Germany.

    And safely into Katowice and we we hardly late at all, giving me more than enough time at the airport to sit in the lounge for hours….

    The flight cost £9 with my Multipass and was another competently managed operation, with the aircraft being clean, the crew being friendly and the pilots sounding professional. It’s becoming a bit samey I know with Wizz Air, but routinely good isn’t a bad thing…

  • Wizz Air (Warsaw Chopin to Bucharest Băneasa)

    Wizz Air (Warsaw Chopin to Bucharest Băneasa)

    Safely back at Warsaw Chopin airport and ready for my next flight to Bucharest. As usual, there was a minimal wait for the security process and it took under five minutes from scanning my boarding pass to being airside.

    That meant a quick stop in the lounge.

    It was all clean, comfortable and spacious as usual, with plenty of power points available.

    Very healthy.

    The spring rolls didn’t look entirely appetising as they were quite broken up, but it transpired that they were really quite agreeable.

    The boarding process was efficient and I was flying within the Schengen zone, I didn’t have to wait for an hour for the EES system like last week.

    Oh good, a bus gate.

    And ready to board. It’s aircraft 9H-WDS, which entered Wizz Air’s fleet in late 2023 and appears to be yet another aircraft that I haven’t been on.

    Unusually, I was first to board the aircraft. The excitement of it all….

    So here’s a photo of an empty cabin, I don’t get to post these very often.

    The seating Gods had given me a window seat and also no-one sitting next to me, which was all very handy. Wizz Air seems to pad their schedules to cover a small delay so the estimated one hour fifty minutes flight time was actually only eighty minutes. The crew were friendly, the aircraft were clean and, once again, there were no negatives for me to mention.

    Safely in Bucharest on time and able to walk to the terminal.

    I’ve written about Bucharest Băneasa airport before and it’s beautiful, although rather small.

    The central dome of the airport.

    The bus stop is a short walk away on the main road although not overly well signed. Anyway, with that I was on the bus to the hotel.

    The flight cost £9 because of my Multipass, again representing excellent value for money.