matching tracksuits

fun in threes, sometimes fours

polska

My always obsession...

Warsaw Changes

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.

Świętokrzyska 2017

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.

Świętokrzyska 2019

Two more years after that, an entirely new and modern building had taken its place.

Świętokrzyska 2023

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.

Nearly

Sometimes, you need to write, but not here. Not yet.

Horse and Snow

Taken with Nikon FM, 28mm, on Ilford 25 ISO film

Old Grave New

Kiczory Chapel

A picture from almost 30 years ago when I was exploring the area of southern Poland where I'd just moved...

I found a whole batch pictures from that period that I had forgotten I'd scanned.

Transformation

Nowy Targ Standstill

A photo from a couple of summers ago. It could have just as well been from 1996, though, as that building has not changed at all.

Poland--the country that manages to surge forward and stand still all at the same time.

Swinging 2010

Found a never-posted video.

Pyzówka 2010

Leap Day

I was very surprised for a moment when checking the Time Machine widget at the bottom of the site: only four entries for this day?! And then I remembered the date.

And realized one of the entries had to do with the kitchen remodel Babcia and Dziadek decided to do when K and I got engaged. They'd planned to do something else with the money, but in the end, they went for the remodel. "If we're going to have guests from the States..." I seem to recall Dziadek explaining.

Looking at that picture, I think how much younger Babcia looked. It was twenty years ago, and it hits me: in this picture, she's only a handful of years older than I am now. And the last two decades have simply floated by without any effort and little notice.

And the next two decades?