The last gasp of winter?

Hopefully. What I beheld today morning resembled the last snowfall in late March 2009. This time the layer of snow was even higher – over ten centimeters of wet and heavy substance has swathed everything around.

This time it must have been really heavy as a branch of one of pines my in garden cracked under the load of snow. All other trees were bending under kilograms of snow, soon they shook it down and straightened, as the temperature went up.

At 6:30 a.m., having helped my father clear the drive I left for school. I spent the time was strolling towards the bus stop in Mysiadło contemplating the beauty of the sunny, winter morning. Right and below – the snapped on my street today morning.

To my surprise, ul. Puławska wasn’t more clogged than usually. The road was covered by a thin layer of slush, but vehicles moved smoothly forward. The worst thing was that much too many people were waiting for a bus as I arrived at the bus stop and I was standing there with the rest of growing crowd for around a quarter. I didn’t even try to board a first bus that pulled up, I got into the second the one, after a wait of over twenty minutes.

The upside of today’s journey was that it lasted only 31 minutes (distance from Mysiadło to Metro Wilanowska). The downsides unfortunately prevailed: the bus was packed to the limits, passengers pickled inside, since the heating was relentlessly boiling the interior of the vehicle, one woman passed out inside, another one had to get out not to end up the same way. To boot, I was pickpocketed. Funnily enough, it wasn’t my wallet, mobile phone nor camera that was stolen but a pair of old gloves. I took them off after boarding a bus and checked if they didn’t lie on the floor at the last stop…

From what I’ve heard I inferred many commuters decided not to waste time clearing or digging out their cars and they chose to go by bus. Most of them will surely draw certain conclusion from that lesson. The traffic on ul. Puławska wasn’t that snarled up and journey by bus was a veritable hell. It wouldn’t have been, if buses had run according to their timetable. If this is the policy of city authorities to convince car users to change their comfortable vehicles to less comfortable buses then good luck. For the fare I pay (98 PLN per 3 months) I shouldn’t expect much comfort, but reliability has been recently below any acceptable standard. The same happened to trams – right the next crowd of people waiting outside my school for trams that later came in bulk.

The way home wasn’t much better. I waited for a bus for twenty minus for any service and finally, after next twenty minutes spent thoughtlessly, I jumped onto a 319 bus that pulled out from the terminus as quickly and abruptly as it had pulled up. After mere 18 minutes I found myself at the corner of ul. Puławska and ul. Karczunkowska and decided to waddle through the snow along ul. Puławska. Quite a nice walk it was, a pity that not voluntary. How the Warsaw public transport functions is disgraceful – a 709 full of passengers reached Mysiadło the same minute I did. The glimmer of hope is that in two weeks it might be warm and dry enough to try out a new method of communing – cycling to P&R Metro Ursynów, leaving a bike there a taking an underground train to school.