A flying visit to Warsaw, where the high temperature for the day was scheduled to be -7 degrees. I say a "flying" visit, but it almost didn't happen thanks to the lack of urgency in Aer Lingus's approach to flying. Almost a 3 hour delay spent sitting in the departure lounge at Gatwick, then the danger of the crew having worked too long, or the airport in Warsaw closing for the night. Just before that latter problem became a reality, we got going, and arrived at 11pm. Luckily, I was staying in a hotel across the street from the airport, so a 2 minute bracing walk after leaving the terminal building, I was in my hotel. As I quickly remembered is customary in some parts of Eastern Europe, the heating was jacked up to the highest possible level, making it possible to sit around in a t-shirt and ignore the fact it was -10 outside.The day I was in town was no warmer - at one point whilst stood outside waiting for a taxi, a gust of wind blew and made it feel like I was wearing no clothes. Really cold. There was a load of snow on the ground which obviously never gets the chance to melt through winter, but unlike the UK chaos recently, the country still seemed to be moving OK. They just moved the snow to the sides of the road, piled it up into huge white walls of the stuff, and carried on as normal.
After a day of work (including a huge burger for lunch, in an empty backstreet American diner called the Pink Flamingo), I headed back to the airport for my (thankfully not delayed this time) flight home. Whilst waiting for checkin to open (no online checkin on Aer Lingus from Warsaw, how advanced!), I strolled into the now mostly disused old terminal building. Presumably a modern piece of post communist architecture when it was built in the early 90s, it already looks very outdated, and was very spooky when you were standing inside an empty building that should be buzzing with activity.
No comments:
Post a Comment