around the world – part 41.5 (warsaw)

“Few cities can claim worse luck than Warsaw.  Over time the city has been burned by the Swedes, smashed by Russians and then flattened by Germans.  Not surprisingly all that’s left Warsaw looking like it’s gone ten rounds in a boxing ring.”

Hardly inspiring then.

Palace of Culture - Warsaw, October 2009

 Despite the ubiquitous grey brick buildings and the cold windy streets, there is something appealing about Warsaw though, and I think it is in the spirit of its residents.   They would certainly need it given all they have been through in the last century.

I had no idea, other than a vague understanding, of just how smashed this city was by 1945.   For instance the Jewish Ghetto was so thoroughly destroyed, levelled, that very few traces of its existence may be found today.  The only remaining portion of the wall is found in the courtyard of an apartment building at ul Sienna 55.  No longer than about twenty-five feet, it is one of the few items remaining of the Ghetto.  The area around it was completely transformed after the war, a grid pattern of streets, boulevards, parks, office towers, and of course the mighty Palace of Culture were superimposed over the pre-war streets and alleys. 

 More photos here.

around the world – part 41.1 (warsaw)

A 'gift' from Stalin

When I think of Poland, I think of tragedy.  A country which has been intermittently independent, but more often under the thumb of one empire or another, Swedes, Germans and Russians to name just a few.   Tragic because they sit smack in the middle of the east-west european invasion route and thus were ravaged in the Great War, again in the aftermath of the October Revolution (a little known war between USSR and Poland from 1919 – 1921), and soon after the dismemberment by both Nazi Germany AND The Soviet Union in 1939, the two Warsaw Uprisings (1943 and 1944) which left the city in ruins, and of course the soul-destroying years of the communist regimes.  Poland lost the largest percentage of its citizens of any combatant nation during WWII.

And yet it survives.  I somehow get the feeling that if this country could ever catch a break, they might wield considerable influence within europe – but then again the nature of tragedies is such that what can be imagined never comes to pass.

friends of the twingo

In the latest bit of panty waisted whingeing to appear from our betters on the other side of the pond, Friends of the Earth is in a snit over the latest antics of Top Gear*.   According to FoE, the show “appeared to have gone out of its way to be as crass and juvenile as possible“.**  FoE campaigner Mr Declan Allison said that “The wanton destruction of tens of thousands of pounds worth of machinery impresses no-one. It’s a wasteful extravagance and, in the middle of a global recession, in very poor taste“.

Poor Taste?  Mr Allison, the proles actually enjoy watching TG.  Shocking, yes, and very unenlightened of us, but for a few brief moments it allows us to escape our wretched lives and seek enjoyment in mindless humour.  I know, I know we simply don’t get it, but then that’s what you can expect from the grey mass of  drudges – we’re not like you.  Why we can barely get through a sitting of Waiting for Godot, or plough through a Margaret Atwood novel*** - we just want our Renaults destroyed in the most imaginative of fashions and if there is a tinge of humour about the whole thing, then so much the better.  Oh and a beer or two to chase it down with wouldn’t be out of place.

Maybe FoE didn’t get it;  TG fired a Renault Twingo into the ocean!  What can possibly be wrong with that?   Removing one C02 emitting, gasoline consuming Renault from the planet has got to rank quite high as one of the most unselfish and altruistic acts I’ve heard of in a long time.   Of course if FoE and their ilk had their way the western world would live in perpetual recession,  a sort of purgatory for having had the temerity to produce the most fantastic economic miracle known to mankind.  Instead FoE won’t rest until twingo’s aren’t produced at all (let alone flung into the ocean).  

Quit Whining!

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* Top Gear, for those of you most of unfortunate to have never heard of it, is quite possibly the best entertainment ever produced by the BBC.  Please note that I said entertainment.  It has no other redeeming qualities – but I love it.

** That’s sort of the point, really.

***Obscure and difficult Canadian author.   But there I go revealing my elitest tendancies again.

seventy billion people on earth – where are they hiding?*

Internet game that awards points for people spotting real crimes on CCTV is branded ’snooper’s paradise’.   Who will watch the watchers?

One more reason to avoid merry olde england…..

the money quote: 

‘There are more than four million cameras in the UK so everybody is on camera already, it is just that no one is watching the cameras.’

Players collect points by watching the cameras, which show CCTV images in real-time, and click a button every time they see something suspicious taking place.

*Bonus points for the name of the band and track with this post title as a sample…..

around the world – part 38.5 (the montenegrin riviera)

Coast of Montenegro near Budva

around the world – part 38.3 (white knuckle bus tour – or channelling your inner dictator)

June 09 2009:

Forcing the Plebes to the side of the road

There is nothing quite like being escorted at breakneck speed along narrow winding mountain roads in a motor coach with police cars forcing the plebes off to the side of the road.   With lights flashing, paddle waving and horns blaring our escort emphatically signalled to the unlucky montenegrins that  a bus load of somewhat important persons was hammering down on them and that any time - NOW! – would be a good time to get off the road.     That might sound just a titch unsympathetic and just a bit aristocratic, but really who wouldn’t enjoy this?  The locals I suppose.

Of course, nature being in balance and all that, action counteraction etc etc, it does get a little dicey when the local cement truck decides to challenge the right of way being implemented by the local gendarmes.  Bit of toss up who would have won that, but I would have given it to the cement truck on points. 

But then again no risk, no reward right?

Admit it.  You know that in the darkest corner of your hearts you harbour a longing for an unimpeded route, swept along at high speed with countless locals figuratively bowing before your presence.  It awakens the inner dictator in all of us.

around the world – part 38.1 (syldavia)

June 08 2009:

Ruined Castle near Budva

Syldavia,  a land of barren hills hard by the adriatic – stark and beautiful and sometimes known as Montenegro (although I suspect that Herge might have had Albania in mind) is the scene of my latest wanderings.  I arrived here on Monday the 8th and will depart three days later having barely scraped the surface of this harsh country. In Herge’s imagination, Montenegro, Albania, in fact anywhere in the Balkans was fantastically ‘other’ in a here there be dragons sort of way. I don’t blame him. It is a country that demands your attention – blistering hot in the summer, rocky, stubble covered hills and breath taking beaches and seascapes. The women are all six feet tall, gorgeous and serious. The men, short, fat and attached to the end of a cigarette. Go figure.

Word to the wise: Montenegro Airlines is where old airliners go to die. I flew in from Vienna on a Fokker 100 – about 1000 years old yet piloted by young lads desparate to impress the stunning stewardesses (“shining like a newly minted penny” to quote the corgi). Mind you it is a bit of toss up whether one might want a new and well maintained aircraft adorned with ancient battleaxes schlepping gruel onto your tray (see Air Canada), or the crap shoot of an ancient aircraft populated with amazons –  providing that frisson of interest as one simultaneously contemplates the idea of breaking apart at 25000 feet yet accompanied by some of the best looking women one will ever meet whilst flying. 

To add even more excitement;  the pilots got in on the act as apparently, even a jet liner held together with duct tape can be made to simulate a fighter jet – our hard spine compressing landing was embellished with a couple of good hard tarmac bounces thrown in for good measure, no doubt leaving a few rivets on the runway.  So there I was in in Podgorica (bet you never thought I would wind up there!) happily confronted with the decison to immediately board the motor coach or settle in for a few pints while waiting for the attendees from later flights.  Points to those who guess how many beer I had.