About 2700 years ago there was an Iron Age village in Biskupin. Now there is an open air archeological museum and a fair once a year. During the fair, you can take a boat ride, watch mock-up sword fights, watch folk dances, shoot an arrow from a bow, see how food, rope, pottery was made, and more.
Did I mention that I like trains? This is the Pendolino ED250, which can travel up to 250 km/h. It only travels up to 200 km/h in Poland currently, pending track upgrades.
This Pendolino took me from Warsaw to Tri-City: Gdynia, Sopot, Gdańsk.
The restaurant carriage in ED250.
Two ED250 in Gdynia.
And one more in Gdańsk.
Street art in Gdynia.
In Gdynia I visited the Emigration Museum located in a former passenger terminal for ocean going ships. The museum is full of fascinating stories. You can learn about the extreme poverty in Polish Galicia in the 19th century which was driving people to go to America, and about the poverty and lack of freedom in communist Poland in the 20th century, which was driving people to escape to the West.
A bit of Polish history - elected kings? sounds like Star Wars doesn't it?
The poor of Galicia were emigrating en masse in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Emigration of Polish Jews.
A meat shop in 1980s with hardly any meat.
Increasing numbers of illegal emigrants.
Everybody tried to get out, even air force pilots.
This is a picture of Zygmunt Gościniak who successfully escaped in 1956 to Bornholm with his MIG-15 bis.
Gdynia is a major port in the Baltic Sea. Some work was still going on at night when we arrived from Karlskrona.
I need to say a few things about driving in Poland. It is getting easier and faster, thanks to many new motorways, here from Gdańsk to Warsaw.
There are wild-life crossings, sound barriers and some of the bridges are pretty:
But, and this is a big but, the attitude of Polish drivers makes driving in Poland still a very dangerous and stressful affair, especially on country roads. I often felt that the speed posted on the road signs was the minimum speed limit, not the maximum. Only when there was a photo-radar the drivers would slow down to the legal speed. The worst offenders are big black Audi and BMW cars. Is there something in those brands and this colour that attracts the most aggressive people?
This encounter did not happen to me, but it could have. Warning, the audio in Polish contains expletives, mute when watching in public:
It is not just the drivers. The roads themselves make driving dangerous. There are too many road signs, and sometimes too few road signs. On a few occasions I had no idea what the current speed limit was. Maybe 50, maybe 90 or on a new motorway maybe 100, or 120, or maybe 140 km/h. They are often not posted, you are required to figure them out yourself. The speed limit changes at night and also depends on how many lanes there are. Also, Poland together with Bulgaria and Texas has the highest legal speed limit in the world: 140 km/h. Germany does not have a speed limit on motorways, only the recommended speed of 130 km/h. This is the sign that describes speed limits when you enter Poland by car:
When driving at night, you will notice that the horizontal signs - those painted on the road - are not visible. Why is the reflective paint not being used?
One thing that Poland needs to work on as a country is the friendliness factor. There are still too many angry, mean, unhelpful people there ("cham" in Polish, pronounced roughly same as "ham" in British English): the drivers of course, the security guards, including the Warsaw Chopin airport, the ticket controllers on trams and buses. It seems like respect and kindness towards others are not high priorities for many people in these roles.
Another thing is petty-theft and permissible attitude towards some forms of cheating. I left my car at the official Modlin airport long-term parking. When I returned I paid the parking fee, 40 zł to the attendant. To my surprise the attendant pocketed the money, did not give me a receipt, and let me out of the parking lot by opening the boom gate this way: he took the boom gate's post side cover off, turned the power off, and then raised the gate by hand. It seems that he stole 40 zł from his employer, or if he is the owner, he underreported the income to the tax authorities by 40 zł, but that probably would not be worth it.
Cheating during exams is unfortunately still the norm. I wonder how good the PISA results of the Polish students really are. If the students are not supervised well enough, cheating will happen.
Opportunism is human nature, but there should be better systems in place to make the playing ground fair for everyone, and cheaters should be ostracised.
Traditional homes in Sweden often look like these. The reason for the preference for the dark red colour, known in Sweden as Falu red, is that it was easy to make it using a waste product from copper mines. This waste product contained iron, hence the red colour.
I like trains. This one was in Jönköping.
You most likely never heard of Jönköping, but maybe you know the name Husqvarna - the company that makes chainsaws, tractors, and robotic lawn mowers - they originated and still have a factory in Huskvarna (name of the place changed slightly), which is part of Jönköping now.
Sweden must be number one in international rankings in the number of global brands per capita. For a country with 9.5 million people, it seems like every business that ever started in Sweden is known internationally. I know these, but there are many more: IKEA, Volvo, Saab, Scania, ABB, Oriflame, Nordea, Electrolux, Skanska, H&M, Husqvarna, Absolut Vodka.
I finish this short exploration of Sweden in Karlskrona, which has a ferry connection with Gdynia in Poland. A more modern and typical for European cities, architecture of Karlskrona:
Sweden makes its own submarines, obviously :-), and Karlskrona is home to a great maritime museum that houses two. Here is the nose section of one of them, Neptun:
Copenhagen in Denmark and Malmö in Sweden are connected by the Oresund bridge. You can drive or take a train. It takes about 35 minutes to get from the center of Malmo to the center of Copenhagen, and only 22 minutes to get from Malmo to the Copenhagen airport.
While at the Malmo train station we had an up-close encounter with the refugee/migrant problem that is the topic number 1 in Europe currently. There were volunteers/helpers (?) with signs in Arabic, a TV crew, and some refugees/migrants. Why do refugees prefer Sweden to Denmark?
These are not the trains that take you to Copenhagen.
This one is:
It seems Danes have a sense of humor and are not afraid to use expletives in public. These advertisements were all over Copenhagen:
The boat tours of the city start from here. The much cheaper ones take off from the right side of the canal.
Interesting architecture can be seen from the boat:
Driving from Ystad to Malmo is safer and faster thanks to cleverly designed 3 lane roads with a metal wire barrier. The number of lanes in one direction changes from 1 to 2 every few kilometers. This allows easy and safe overtaking of slower vehicles. This design is badly needed in Poland and elsewhere. It does not require much widening of existing country roads, but improves safety and comfort enormously.
Malmö, Sweden: this building reminds me of the Royal Castle in Warsaw. Poland and Sweden were for a short time part of the same kingdom in late 16th century.
Hybrid buses disguised as articulated trams in Malmö.
Old advertisements on a building in the center of Malmö.
I'm back in Australia from a month long trip to Poland (and a few other countries). The trip was educational, but physically and mentally exhausting. I may be getting too old for such trips.
A few highlights:
Vienna, Austria: there are many beautiful streets and buildings in Vienna, but for me the typical old Vienna street looks like this. No trees to soften the asphalt and concrete view. The view of the sky is so narrow that even if there were any landmarks, to help orientate in the labyrinth of 5-story buildings, they would probably be rarely visible. I kept getting lost walking these streets "on azimuth".
A less common view of the famous Hundertwasser house in Vienna with a bit of its neighbour on the left.
Ystad, Sweden: a beautiful little city that has a ferry service to Świnoujście, Poland.
These small houses in Ystad reminded me of Ireland:
I was thinking about passports from various countries yesterday and I noticed a funny thing. Some countries have "fighting" or "warrior" emblems on passports, others not so much. I wonder if there is any correlation between the symbols of the country and how its citizens see themselves, or how would they react if their country was attacked.
Some "fighting passports":
U.S.A:
An eagle with an olive branch and a bunch of arrows. Your choice punk.
Russia:
An eagle with two heads and a mace in one leg - does it say: do not mess with me? I think it does.
Less aggressive, but still showing muscle:
Poland:
An eagle with massive talons, not little "hands".
Germany:
Still an eagle, but smaller - Germany is a pacifist country now.
Not aggressive at all:
Italy:
Leaves, gear, and a star - look like a communist emblem. Not scary in itself.
France:
A rolling pin and a little axe - kitchen tools. :-)
