Impossible is a step

We are still in the so called country side 38km from the center of Warsaw. No change in that respect...Life is moving as it used to in the 18th century - I just read fathers and sons by Turgenev and could identify myself with the relaxed pace of the 18th century Russian country side :))

Anyway continuing with our explorations of the neighborhood we decided to check out the train station - last stop of the suburban train from Warsaw. Takes around 55 minutes according to what it says on the internet to get to the center. We decided that some day we might want to try out the this option. It is kind of difficult because unlike in any other place I know so far the suburban trains go only every hour or sometimes even only every two hours. So it is kind of difficult to just show up and expect the train to show up as well. Since the traffic jams are pretty bad someday we might be willing to change to the trains anyway. Now we have the schedule now. The train station is kind of abandoned. There is however something what you can call park and ride. A place in mud under this tree for two cars I would say. Next to this interesting building at the entry point to the platform - the coolest double toilets ever! As we checked they are also used :))) No danger of vandalism.


Anyway I found this interesting post on the internet- the logic somehow should make sense if applied to this train station either way. I copy & pasted it from here. Perhaps this is what I am missing in understanding how is it possible to have such a cool toilet and train station basically right next to Warsaw. Make your own conclusion :)

Sometimes, you have to take a trip through the impossible to find your way from one possible to a better one.

This is otherwise known in popular culture as the milder “things are going to get worse before they get better”. Conceptually, however, this idea can be pushed to its extreme. Not only are things going to get worse, they’re going to get unthinkably, impossibly worse, in a way that is completely unacceptable.

This is universally useful. When applied to design, this translates into considering and trying out unacceptable solutions that fly in the face of your design principles, as possible stepping stones to an acceptable result. When applied to implementation, it means being willing to try something with no apparent chance of success to probe the problem and discover something more.

When applied to thought, it means being willing to consider all variations of ideas, no matter how bizarre, unpleasant, or repugnant, to respect that they may lead to greater ideas than those we came from. When applied to discussion, it means being willing to embrace strong disagreement and confrontation as a building block of consensus.

This is a dangerous idea, and it demands a caveat. Impossible is only a useful step if you can escape from it back into the acceptable. Some steps into the dark are irreversibly harmful. The means does not justify the end.

My wish for the future

I have lately stumbled on a web site acting as an Internet Archive. It is amazing to see the first web sites and Internet based businesses which took off in the middle of the 90'ies and which I remember so vividly. I was actually the lucky one to have internet access at home already somewhere in the beginning of 1995 (I sort of landed a part time job with one of the first ISP in Warsaw). So in Poland I was one of the few lucky ones - even my high school at that time had only one computer with access to the internet. Internet fascinated me and already then captured my imagination as the land of endless opportunities...

Anyway, it is hard to believe that Amazon started only in 1996 and Yahoo just a bit earlier...check it out. At that time I had so many ideas to start business on the Internet - ideas that now exist and prosper. I guess I was too young to pull them through - anyway in Poland at that time it was probably easier to start an organized crime group in mafia style than an Internet business. So I have never transformed my ideas into reality...but I know I was right and had a chance...now we also have an idea - and nobody is even close to what we came up with. This time though we will start transforming it to reality. I wish that in ten years my idea will also be listed as a dinosaur in this Internet Archive!!! Not more than that - just being listed there

Adventures of a wegierka in Poland

For the last two weeks I have been commuting to the centre of Warsaw for my Polish language classes, which finally I started with not much optimism to adequately acquire it. This later part of the sentence stands not for my lack of enthusiasm, but for my amusement for the complexity this language makes you face. Aside the impossible consonant constellations, imagine a language where you have to operate with different forms of plural, depending on the number of items you are talking about, e.g ending with 2, 3, 4 or 5 or more, to put it simple. But it is not so simple of course. The funniest thing of all is the Russian I learned 20!!!! years ago coming back mixing the numbers into a pretty Slavic cocktail.

Anyway, what I wanted to tell about is driving in the city. First I had a navigation system to show me the way to my school from the village, which is as a matter of fact 40 km South from Warsaw, not 10 as I was informed... The only problem I encountered besides the huge jams and quite dynamic driving style (read: total disrespect for any kind of speed limit) was the outdated map in the system. Meaning Poland does develop, they made a pretty pedestrian street from Nowy Swiat, where my class takes place. Which I realized the moment I entered the nicely paved street only with ministerial cars, buses and taxis. I hoped that the 10 year old blood red Fiat Seicento will nicely smooth inot the environment without the police flagging me down. Of course I was already preparing my innocent, no cash, no idea where I am, I am so terribly sorry performance when the police did stop me right in front of the turn to the school. I should not say all this cause it sounds all too desrespectful, so please do not take me wrong, from that day on I found another, legal way, but that day I was so proud of myself making it at least that far and even more was able to get away with a stupid face without paying a 100 Euro fine!

Okay, from then on I did not use the navigation system, but a good old map. It worked. I improved my driving time from 1.45 minutes to 1 hour one way - see above mentioning the dynamism of traffic. Than I had to give a lift to Tomek to the airport, to find my way from there to the school, from the school to his parents house, from here to the school the following day and finally to pick Tomek up at the airport. And I lost my good old map. BUT I succeeded :))) On time! And when I bragged about my proficiency of cracking the roads of Warsaw I realized that I have never seen at least 3/4th of the city... Nevertheless I do have a sense of satisfaction, because I am able to make a left turn at a traffic light without a disaster. Okay, you may wonder what is the deal there, but imagine an elbow fight of cars making their turn when the opposite direction also has green, flowing cars in 3 lanes at least blocking your turn and when finally the flow stops, you have red and the cars start flowing from the other angle of the road - both directions. In second best case you are stuck in the middle of all this waiting for the next green... Well, it is not as bad though as it was in St Petersburg, where there were not even lanes, only 7 cars next to each other fighting for the same one spot when turning :) And Budapest is excused only because there are not enough lanes on the roads...

One of the many good things here is that Poland is the country where Hungarians, alias wengierka (female version) are warmly welcome. Come on girls, the best place to cultivate your feminine ego is here - free drinks, big smiles and loads of compliments from cute Polish guys :)))