To all from Polandian, have a Merry and peaceful Christmas. May the holiday season be one to catch up with loved ones, rest and hopefully eat, drink and be merry.
And now to play us out, we have Ladypank!
POLANDiAN
Livin' la vida Polska
Filed under LUCKY DIP …
Strangely Park, Warsaw – A neighbourhood like no other
While nobody is looking I thought I might slip in a little shameless self promotion. Might also be of interest to our readers (all three of them!), at least that’s my excuse!
I’m writing a story of a fictional neighbourhood here in Warsaw and the wealth of eccentric characters who inhabit the place. Any resemblance to anything or anyone real is purely coincidental, so my lawyers say.
It is written in my usual style, whatever that is, somewhat humorous, a tad satirical, vaguely informative with scattered boring bits. It has a life of its own and at the moment seems to be coming out as a kind of diary although I have a feeling it may wander around a little. Anyway, I hope you visit and enjoy it. Facebook tells me I need 30 “likes” before it can give me some really useful information….I’ve got one so far, and that’s me! Hmmmm.
Here’s a random sample for you:
Monday, November 12th
Update on the garage works.As predicted but no less disappointing for the inevitability, the garage was not useable on Saturday, nor Sunday, not today either. I sometimes wonder why they bother typing these info-notes. Even if it was, the Holy Toyota, which was pushed out so they could paint the floor, is now blocking the entrance! Almost as bad, our left-over skirting boards were moved off the floor and hung on the bicycle racks belonging to Penthouse and Slightly Dangerous, her husband (we think), who live above us.
Relations between us and our upstairs neighbours have been strained recently, to say the least. I’ll explain later but suffice to say that our “Hi”s have turned into “Good Morning”s but both have been met with at best a grunt. All we are getting from Slightly Dangerous these days is blank, rather psychotic stares.
There’s more to worry about too. When they pushed the Holy Toyota out, Darth Muller was here and had the keys. He has since returned to Vienna so I’m hoping he left the keys or we might be without a garage for a while. If he did leave the keys that would be uncharacteristically trusting of him believing as he does that all Poles, in fact all humans, are out to get him.
On the plus side it does look as though the whole garage floor has been painted and we have new gratings over the drain. Small mercies.
Anyway, here are the links
All support and encouragement gratefully received!
Modlin Airport & Ryanair
Modlin (low cost) Warsaw airport
We are back from a few days in the UK visiting my family and can report on two travel “firsts” for the Scattergood household; Modlin Airport and Ryanair.
The combination of these two is a dream come true for us as it opens up again the route Warsaw-East Midlands, which used to be operated by BMIbaby many years ago from Okęcie Etiuda but was stopped when the Etiuda cattle shed was closed and they had to pay more to use Terminal 1. It’s a perfect route for us now as Modlin is a very comfortable 30 minutes drive from home and East Midlands is the same from my parent’s home. Long may it continue!
Modlin worked fine. We decided not to risk the “come park in my field” cowboys and chose to leave the car in the P1 car park on the airport grounds right next to the departure/arrivals hall. For six days this cost 125 zlots, very reasonable IMO. The flow through the airport both going out and coming back worked well with the following exceptions:
- Coffee shop on way out – not enough staff, too slow service = long queue.
- Passport control in both directions – by far the longest wait of all. Inexcusable really because they clearly had enough ‘agents’ around but they just couldn’t be bothered to move their arses until the queue got to ridiculous proportions!
- Standing outside waiting to board and also walking from plane to passport control on way back. This is a silly idea and needs to stop. It’s not a huge distance but it was bloody cold and windy. After being cuddled up warm in a plane or waiting lounge, people are going to get sick. No way this is feasible in proper winter weather.
Overall experience of Modlin was better than expected and would not hesitate using it again.
Ryanair
Ryanair has come in for a great deal of stick for many reasons, I think the main one being the way they want to charge for everything. Well, you only had to watch the vast majority of passengers struggling to hammer their ‘hang luggage’ into Ryanair’s baggage measurer to see who’s doing all the complaining and why, perhaps, Ryanair think they are wrong. I have to say, based on this one return flight, I’m on Ryanair’s side. The flight was every bit as good as Wizz Air, EasyJet or any other budget airline we’ve flown with. Yes, they do charge for lots of stuff but no more than anyone else and they don’t force you to use it. We paid for two bags in the hold of the plane and carried very small hand luggage, I think we were probably the only ones who did, and the total cost for three of us return to East Midlands was around 900 zlots. That’s a good price. The planes were clean, the seats were comfortable with enough room and the flights were without incident and on time. Both flights were very busy, I’d estimate 95% capacity on way out and 85% on the way back. They operate this route on Tuesdays and Thursdays only. Hopefully it will continue to be popular and they will add more days.
Overall experience of Ryanair was also better than expected and would not hesitate using them again.
I’m sure something will come along to spoil this idyllic trip from Poland door to UK door but for now we are happy to have this available to us.
