Ulica Chłodna/Elektoralna

Ulica Chłodna/Elektoralna (yes it changes name halfway down the street) was renovated last year, the road surface and street design all changed along with many small things that one may not notice at first sight. It was the street that originally separated the ghettos big and small so has a fair amount of foot traffic in tourist form. So, we went to see what it looked like.

Old light holder

This is one of my new favourite photos, the markings you see are not parking bay designations, it is the outline of where the houses reached prior to their WWII destruction.

Continuing the grounding, this is how they defined where the house numbers of the houses pre-war were.

Church of Saint Andrzeja Apostoła

The Arcades along the road side corner of Ulica Chłodna/Elektoralna and Ulica Biała

After Church the Grannies come to sun

The building is called the "house of the clock" it has a clock in the facade and originally had an extra story before the war.

The sun was a shining and the street ripe for a stroll

To cut down on through traffic they added a small park

The plane the plane

A great "what is it" photo, but it is of course.......

A little viewing camera with pictures of the street pre-war and when the ghetto was established. I would love Warsaw to have more of these sorts of things.

Just turn the lever and you will see it all.

One of the prettiest things that you wouldn't really notice are these lovely high street lights, delicate and perfectly spaced.

Warsaw Streets ahead

So, after pillaging South Australia for photographs, I thought I would skip Singapore for now, and come back to Warsaw. Yes, it is bloody freezing today outside. In fact we have had our first "snow" fall. I say "snow" as mostly it was ice, and if it hasn't melted totally has turned into some kind of slippery horrid mess. As many of the first snows do. Still, it was overnight snow and we haven't had a decent day snow, unless you count yesterday when I was walking to the tram in horizontal wet snow, resulting in being drenched on only one side of my body. Not the nicest of feelings in about 0C, but such is life.

The photos you are about to see are actually from August last year. I still have about 4 months of photos to go through, so it will never be a dull moment that is for sure. Going to Australia for a month really put me behind with keeping up to date. For two reasons, one it ensured I wasn't able to process and put up blog posts as I was always busy and two, because it meant I took about 38GB of photos and another 9GB in Singapore. So, yeah. There has to be plenty to get through still. Hope I can do it, and do it quickly to keep you entertained.

I think building details are really lost on modern architects, luckily we still have remnants

I can't even tell you why I like this, I just do.

This is really freaky if you scroll up and down over this picture.

Slodki slony means sweet and salty. Not sure I want a salty pavlova though.

I could make a "reflections" pun here, but it is actually a building in Atlantis.

Locked in.

Hey pretty lady, why the sad face?

What an odd shadow, no?

Around Warsaw you see so many old metal objects peeking out of walls, the uses of which have been lost. I always wonder what they were for.

But is it just me going nuts or is there a face of one of Statler or Waldorf aka grumpy men from the muppets here?

Lion about.

If this is Lion's House, does this mean that the lion sleeps today?

Building Pasties or tassels??

Flags with meaning.

More flags with meaning.

I really love Ivy, not sure why everyone else hates it apart from the leaf mess, the damage to buildings and maintenance

Papierowka in the window. Simply yet lovely display.

Half a litre of beer is about 1.4AUD, .94GBP, or 1.44USD, and a sausage is double the price always makes me giggle.

And we finish at the ponderosa of Nowy Swiat.

Barn Storming.

Sometimes in life we miss out because we are in a rush. When in Warsaw, I am always seeing people whirl around me, running for buses, trams, trains when chances are they would only need to wait a maximum of ten minutes for the next one. When we rush, we miss the little things. I remember when I would catch the train to work and walk down Rundle Mall in Adelaide. At first I would always rush to get to work early, then one day a woman smiled at me, it made me smile. I then continued to smile at people as I walked down the mall those morning following, some people smiled back, some thought I was a serial killer but it was this that slowed me down. Then I started to look around me, it was so early in the morning there wasn't many people to be smiling at like a chuckle headed loon, so I started to look past the shop window displays and the horribly ugly signage associated with sales, new shipments, or whatever else they would try to rope the customers in with. I looked up, I saw the old building facades the beautiful bricks that you would never see in the "glitz" of the shop fronts. From then on I have tried to look at all the little things around me. From sewer covers, to building finishes. So this post is about the little bits of a 100 year old barn in Sokolka.

The devil is in the detail.

hinge

More hinge

A different Hinge

hook and chain

knot of wood

Knot and gap with straw

Banging on

The door

Nail and Grain

Knocked out knot

Nailed wood end

Wire in the sky

Roll on Holl-and sights - Delft

So we decided one day to drive in to Delft. Which is the town I actually know the most about in Holland. So that was a good thing. Marty had always wanted to visit Delft as she likes Vermeer and he was born and lived in Delft and is also of course now buried there. I have to admit to being a fan of the Dutch Baroque and the "Golden Age", so I was happy to drive over and see what we could find.
After parking and strolling through a nice maze of streets, we went past the fish market and popped out into the belly of the main square.
We got to see what Delft is, to me anyway, a nice modern shop where all is perfect,
Then next to it is a nice little antique shop there with things that appear used, ice skates, clogs and lots of faux Delft 18th century pottery.
Something else I noticed about Delft is that there are great little details hidden, and if you don't look up, you won't see them. This must be a moon market.
The clouds in the window, the slightly changing bricks and the dog looking down Oudekerkstraat.
To me, if I couldn't translate the word Bijbel, I would think it is a Harry Potter theme store. Makes you think about fictional books.....
Of course there are the more obvious of wall adornments as well.
Sometimes you just have to remember what Den Nederlands is all about..... cows, but I'm not saying Marty is a cow..... or am I?
The different types of old glass are also all over inner Delft. You can tell the age apparently by the difference in thickness top to bottom as glass is actually still liquid and will run down with gravity. Fact.
The spires try to get higher.
Het Noorden the mining engineer pub I spent a bit of time in last time I was in Delft. You can only come being a mining engineer or invited by a member. It is the only faculty in Delft that have their own pub. Gluck Auf!

As we prepared to leave Delft, Marty wanted to see the location where the Vermeer's famous painting "View of Delft". So the first picture is the day we were there
The second is the painting by Vermeer. Well at least the clouds stayed the same!
So that is Delft, quite a pretty little city and now certainly becoming "trendy" with the students and ex-students staying or returning to live. I recommend it especially if you want to see the spiritual home of the Dutch Golden Age.