So in Summer, on a stinking hot day we decided to go to Filtry. It is the water filtration site for the South and West and a small part of the Northern suburbs of Warsaw. When you look at the link above it just looks like a big park. Whereas the fact is that it is actually a really huge facility, the trick is that it is mostly underground.
In Summer, they run tours of the site ever weekend and every hour on the weekends. Basically you have to book in really early to get a ticket, or be like us and turn up on the day and hope that someone else doesn't show up. The security guards were actually really excited to have an Australian visit too, so it was kind of a nice thing for us all. Alas the tour was entirely in Polish and so Marty had to translate lots to me, she was a bit bored after 10 minutes and so I guess I missed out on lots of the crazy statistics that they quoted, but on the positive side I also missed out on the Engineer's life story and his love of going through every single item in the entire location. A win-win in the end.
So let's open the door and hit the floor.
Outside the main section history presentation centre there was a nice terrace, problem being that it was actually too hot for most Poles on the tour to stand on it, as they would melt. Most Poles are 100% icecream apparently. It is something I noticed this past summer when we had some awesome hot weather. The people who pay a fortune to go to Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia et al to lay on a beach for at least a week non-stop are actually afraid to stand near or in the sun in their own country. The only exception is the old men and women, and I do mean OLD, who get their gear off in the parks to end up looking like a dog's chew toy after a few weeks.
I would love to claim that I took this photo with a tilt-shift lens. But when I suggest to Marta we should buy one and go without eating for a few months, she thinks it not so logical. So instead these are actually photos of models in the history/museum centre. This is the museum itself.
The pump house.
The watertower, being the most prominent building on the site it stands 80m high.
It looks like this in real life.
But the inside is actually more interesting.
It is a devil in the detail. The design of the entire Filtry is somehow very attractive whilst remaining functional. I think that this is the epitomy of class.
After the tower, we drift out to see some old pumps and the like, as it was built in the late 19th Century some of the details needed to be imported from afar.
Then some were made just before the German invasion to start WWII.
It was getting warm, but the pressure was low..... according to this gauge.
As there are about 30 photos in this visit I will have to break them up into at least 2 posts. One down....
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