Lovely concrete

Photo from Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. Over the last 50 years concrete seems to be a material that the French embraced wholeheartedly. And steel. Some more impressions from a recent trip to France can be found here.

Weeping gold

Now that autumn firmly is here and the leaves are beautifully colourful I can't resist to add a photo of the famous "golden Polish autumn". This is in a small park not far from home where plenty of weeping willows stand in a row and form a golden curtain in the fall.

Music evening

In the evening people gathered at the square in the old town to listen to an orchestra playing. Some more of my images from Mexico can be found here.

Welcome to the dentist

I love this long narrow path to the dental lab in the end. The cross on the wall is a bit foreboding...
I happened to come across this place when just walking randomly around in the old town. Just this random walking is one of my favourite ways of exploring new places. You never know what you will get to see.

Westbahnhof

The U-Bahn station Westbahnhof in Vienna. The walls are bright orange, and quite ugly. As an experiment I decided to strip the image to the bare essentials - only black and white. No grey-scales.
A few more of my photos of Vienna can be found in this gallery.

Jazz na Starówce

One of the good things about Warsaw in summer is all the jazz. There is the Warsaw Summer Jazz Days, where Herbie Hancock is playing next week, and Jazz na Starówce, a series of free open-air concerts in the old town. The photo is from the first concert this year and shows Toni Pujol, basist in the Spanish Xavier Dotras Trio.

Warsaw skyline

I took this picture early this year from the Siekierkowski bridge over the river Wisla just south of central Warsaw. Since there are almost no mountains or hills around Warsaw it's hard to find a spot to get a clear view of the skyline.

Balkonger

This is a shot of the balconies of a building in Warsaw. The apartment block is locked in behind a fence and on the parking are only diplomatic cars from Russia. Seems diplomatic life is not always so glamorous, especially if you don't belong to the higher levels of the hierarchy. The building with these balconies lies just next to this abandoned apartment complex rumoured to belong to the Russians. Maybe the rumour is true.

The beach in Warsaw

On the Praga side of the river in Warsaw one can find a few beaches along the Vistula. This is Praska Plaża. It seems like a little oasis in the city, but bathing is probably not recommended.

Fire engine

Today's photo is a fire engine from USA. It was parked in the fire station that I passed every day on the way to my hotel in Cambridge. More photos from Boston/Cambridge here.

The park at night

A long exposure at night in the near-by Park Arkadia.

Fountains and people

Yesterday we went to see the newly inaugurated fountains below the royal palace in Warsaw. We were not alone... There has been much talk about the fountains in the last year - how much they cost; how many trees were removed to make space for them; and after the opening - how great the show is. So, every Friday and Saturday there are a number of 20 minute multimedia-shows at the fountains. We came there not expecting such a crowd. From our point of view we could not see anything of the light-show. But I got some good pictures of the crowd photographing the show.
Btw, the show is (of course) on YouTube, and it looks amazing. I need to go and actually see it some day.

Cycling i Warsaw

Even though conditions for bicycling in Warsaw is slowly improving - new bicycle paths are built, recently the rules were changed to make it easier to follow them - every now and then you see these things that are typical of the attitude towards cyclists. We are not really important, and those who plan cyclepaths have no clue about cycling themselves.

The chimneysweep

Today's photo was taken in Kraków about a week ago. I was there for a conference and was sitting in my hotelroom in the evening, working (really!) when I happened to look out and saw this man cleaning the chimneys opposite the hotel. Against the setting sun he was just a silhouette, and I took a couple of pictures when he was working. When he had packed his gear, out of sight from me, he lit a cigarette and walked off. I managed to catch this image. If you want to see him working a photo like that is on Flickr.

Book café

If asked, many Warsovians will name Czuły Barbarzyńca as their favourite book store. However, I think it should be called favourite café instead. During 45 minutes sitting, I did not see a single person actually buying a book. Many browsed, had coffee, cake, talked and left... including me*. So a more accurate description I think is a café that also sells books.

* Although I have the excuse that they don't sell foreign language books.

Balconies

Saw these balconies today while out cycling. Just liked the picture.

Most Gdański

A couple of days ago I was out in the evening to take pictures of the tram tracks on Most Gdański, a cool truss bridge across the Vistula in Warsaw. The temperature was about -12°C, but with the strong wind on the river it felt much, much colder. My bicycle gloves, which are fine while moving, were completely inadequate for standing still taking pictures.

However, I was apparently not alone taking photos there, though I didn't even see the guys in the picture above until I came home and looked at the picture on the screen.
I also wanted to test my new tripod by taking some long exposure shots of the illuminated Most Śląsko-Dąbrowski. That turned into a fiasco when I realised how much the bridge was moving due to the heavy trucks, trams and buses...

I had to increase the ISO a lot and time the photo to the trams to manage to get a decent picture.

Polish quality roads

I often complain about the traffic in Poland, which is dreadful. However, the roads are in similar class. This is not a village road out in the country, but in the centre of the capital. Unfortunately this state of roads is not uncommon after a hard winter. And when spring comes it is patched together and makes a horrible surface for driving or bicycling. No wonder most Warsovian cyclist have mountainbikes, even if the city is flat as a table.

Churches

One thing that is definitely not hard to find in Warsaw is churches. Anywhere in the city you cannot walk for five minutes without stumbling over one. This large church is less than a kilometer away from this monstrosity.

Krakowskie Przedmiescie

The corner between Krakowskie Przedmiescie and Kozia streets. I like the narrow block where the buildings seem stacked on each other. In the middle building is the nice Yours Gallery.