Notes on the Geography of Poland: CitiesGlimpses from 1995 of Warsaw, Torun, Cracow, and laggard Lublin. Make default image size larger ![]() Warsaw's Old Town, or Stare Miasto, meticulously rebuilt after 1945 but so picturesque that it makes you feel like you're in a museum. ![]() Perhaps that's not so bad when the alternative is this glorious socialist city. Before you condemn the planners, however, notice that it isn't very different than height-controlled Washington, D.C., on a day without traffic. ![]() Power station? Nope? Monumental subway entrance? Nope. What is it? A glorious socialist food palace, abandoned in the post-socialist economy. ![]() Inside: a security tower, a reminder that not everyone could be relied upon to take only according to their needs. ![]() What killed those Food Palaces? Here's part of the answer: a spanking-new wholesale food market on the west side of Warsaw. ![]() The shoppers are shopowners themselves, buying in quantity. ![]() But not all are shopowners: faith has its privileges. ![]() Ikea shelves, next door to the Warsaw railway station. ![]() The Vistula River at Torun, with St. John's Church standing tall. It contains Copernicus' baptismal font. ![]() A splendid example of brick-filled timber framing. It's in Bydgoszcz and unlikely to go away soon. ![]() On the west side of Torun, foreign investment. ![]() The Florian Gate, the only surviving medieval gate in Kracow. It opens into Florianska Street and terminates in the distance at St. Mary's Church. Notice the establishment on the left? ![]() Yes, it's McDonald's, but very discretely done, as this rear courtyard suggests. Someday, somebody should write about how the company sometimes does things well. ![]() The Jewish Cemetery on the south side of Kracow. It's densely packed, with stones encroaching on walkways and piled on earlier stones until the ground is left in a state of upheaval. If you're here alone on a quiet day, you can imagine hands reaching up. ![]() On the west side of Cracow. ![]() Another neighbor: Oswiecim, or Auschwitz. Here, outside the part of the camp that's preserved as a museum, and with its sinister lettering almost obscured in shade, the old office of the camp commandant survives as an apartment house for Polish military families. ![]() Central Lublin makes a dismal contrast with Cracow's Market Square and Warsaw's Old Town. ![]() A mile east of Lublin, the near-deserted grounds of the Nazi concentration camp Majdanek. A mountain of human ash is preserved, along with the heavy steel doors of gas chambers and thousands of pairs of shoes, carefully sorted by size. |
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