Looking Through Holiday Snaps. When We Had A Break From The Smallholding And Visited Warsaw.

Bullet marked Bank Of Poland ruin.

I have been going through my photographs from my holidays last year.  When we were lucky enough to visit Portugal and Poland.

The picture above really disturbed us.  It's the ruins of the Bank of Poland in Warsaw.  The building is in one of the most expensive prime estate areas of Warsaw.  There are plans a foot to restore the building to its former glory.  The bullet holes display the full horrors of war.  The building changed hands several times during the second world war..  It was attacked by German bombs and shot at by the German artillery.  The brave Polish resistance were often trapped in the building.  They either fought or they died.

Modern Warsaw is a massive city with superb and cheap public transport infrastructure.  I think public transport systems are the veins of civilization.  Rural Ireland (and England) often depresses me with its lack of public transport.  Why do rural dwellers have no public transport?  I often ask what's good about living in the countryside?  It's peaceful and beautiful.  But there are very few job opportunities or any kind of social life.  Rural Isolation is no good for you mentally or socially.  Thank God we have the Internet.

Watched some old trains DVD's when we had no satellite television.  The planned electrification of the railways was because the government planned to use the national coal for ship building, steel making and electricity to run the railways.  It seems like the governments of the last forty years or so have had a policy of running down the coal mining, steel and ship building industries.  Why do we import so much instead of making things?  Wonder how many kids today would have heard of Ford in Dagenham?  Or that Ford tractors were also made in Cork?