Over the summer, posts from our 2017 trip to Warsaw appeared, as they do every year, in the timeline feature to the right. I read about looking for baked goods that first morning, and I remembered how very communist-era Świętokrzyska Street looked then, and I wondered if pictures of it were on Google Maps.
I felt like I was walking down the street in a scene from Miś. Those shop windows looked exactly like they did in the early eighties.
Two years later, it was all gone.
Two more years after that, an entirely new and modern building had taken its place.
More of the old Warsaw fades away.
Continuing down Świętokrzyska Street, one reaches ONZ Rondo. In the distance, building after building appears year after year.
Finally, there’s Prosta Street (“Straight Street”). Looking off in the distance, one could see only the ubiquitous Easter European apartment blocks.
Just a few years later, a typical Western city has sprung up in the distance.
The Warsaw I knew in the mid-90s is all but gone. Then I remember: that was thirty years ago. Of course it’s all disappearing.