Thursday 14 January 2010

Views from footbridges

Ul. Książeca, running up the Vistula escarpment from Powiśle to Plac Trzech Krzyży, earlier today...

And how it looked in May last year. And how it will look in May this year - in just four months' time. Photos taken from footbridge crossing ul. Książęca. Note absence of parked cars, caused by last July's extension out to Powiśle of paid parking, plus snow on roadside.

Below: Taken from the footbridge crossing ul. Piękna, looking down ul. Górnośląska.

The building further down Górnośląska (centre, in distance) prompts some family history. Before the war, this was a girls' lycée (high school). My aunt, Ciocia Dziunia, had won a place to study here. She was at home in Horodziec (eastern Poland), packing her things, ready to set off to the station on her way to Warsaw, when her father (my grandfather) said that she would not be going. He'd received a tip-off from the German owner of the nearby distillery, named Knipfelberg, that war was imminent, and that she should not go. It seems Knipfelberg was a 'resident', in short-wave radio contact with the Abwehr, and had passed on the information as a matter of personal loyalty to a friend. She would have started school on 1 September 1939.

2 comments:

oppollo said...

how did you manage to take exactly the same picture?

Michael Dembinski said...

Lens set to 18mm in both cases, then take four or five pics to ensure similar viewpoint, then overlay new (winter) pic over the one from May, then crop to ensure fit. I took the winter pics with this juxtaposition in mind.