Places
Warsaw is the city where a new Olympic sport has been invented - catching fleeting moments. In Warsaw you can travel to work taking the same route every day, and if you simply go away for a couple of weeks, on your return you do not recognize it at all. Some city officials admit that they have this trouble too. They prepare sets of photos for Warsaw promotional catalogues and six months later they have to admit to potential investors: “You are right. There was no sky-scraper when we took the photo, but we just can’t keep up with them. They spring up so quickly!”
One day there is just a hole in the ground and the next - a modern building has taken its place. One day a district is frequented by gangsters, and then the next day it is swarming with yuppies. Go on, try it. Compete to catch a fleeting moment. Here, we can show you one of them. It is the Norblin Factory. Take a good look because it might have disappeared tomorrow...
INFO PRAGA
Info-gallery in the heart of the Bermuda Triangle?
Everything seems to be back-to-front in this city: the old town is actually new, the genuinely old part of Warsaw has the same name as the capital of the Czech Republic, and there is also the special information point you should try to find...
You have probably heard about Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, but did you know that the Poles have got their own Prague too? Praga is what we call the area on the right bank of the Vistula River in Warsaw. For years Praga seemed to be forgotten by the authorities: it was dirty, almost in ruins and dangerous. It was even called the Bermuda Triangle, as there were legends of people who “disappeared” within its dark streets. The left-bank inhabitants of the city used to avoided going to Praga (unless they needed to buy a bright dress, or exchange dollars at a good rate) while Praga’s inhabitants considered themselves as the only true Varsovians. In fact, if you want to imagine how pre-war Warsaw looked, Praga is the place you should go!
In the very heart of Praga there is the magical, cobbled Ząbkowska Street, where amongst decadent cafes, cheap meals cafeterias and an old-school hairdressers, you will find a small, cozy tourist office and art-gallery called Info Praga. It probably wouldn’t be worth mentioning if it was situated, like most tourist offices are, in the crowded city centre. But the thing is – there are no tourists around there! What’s going on, then?
Well, if there is a lack of something, create it! This office “produces” its own tourists. Anna Owsiany, the manager, and her two colleagues spend their days thinking how to change the stereotypical image of Praga, and how to attract more visitors. They organise exhibitions by local artists, excursions to hidden backyards, provide information on all cultural events and... manage an online game in which the action takes place on Warsaw’s right bank.
Perhaps, we are not the most visited tourist office in a real world,” says Anna, “but we are definitely very popular on the Internet. Our website has ten thousand visitors a day!”
This is particularly true for the online game “Old Praga, a brand new beginning. Mission: Hair-Gel”, which is a hit among Varsovians from both sides of the river.
“We wanted the local children to be proud of their district,” explains Anna. “We thought that an online game could teach them a lot about the place where they live.”
The children have started exploring their neighbourhood. They have entered the orthodox church for the first time in their lives, and this is despite the fact that they have been going past it every day of the week. They have got to know the police, who were hunting for thieves who stole laundry hung out to dry in attics. Then, in the gallery, using plasticine they have reconstructed the local streets where there are the butchers’ and other craftmen’s shops. Their own map of Praga was full of colours and trees.
Children from local schools helped the authors of the game to create the adventures of Bronek, a little boy from Praga, who is the game’s main character. Bronek wants to comb his uncle’s extremely long moustache but it’s impossible to do so without a special hair-gel which is widely used by every man in this part of the city. He goes to the famous Różyckiego bazaar where he has to overcome a local gangster... Before he sees a UFO in Hallera Square, he has to drive a tram out of the Kawęczyńska transport depot, and this is the most difficult part of the game:
“I find a knife and a torch”, one of the internet users writes, “I open a driver’s cab, I use the levers, and at this point I’m stuck again. Has anybody managed to leave this terminal?!!!”
Anna and her colleagues from Info Praga are working on an English version of the game, so soon you too will be able to experience a virtual journey around the right-bank district! Or, there is even a better idea, come to Praga to see it in reality. Don’t forget to drop into the small information point on Ząbkowska Street, right opposite the beautiful, old vodka factory. Find out where the artists live and work, which second-hand shops to visit, which milk-bars to eat in or wait for a guided-tour of the most interesting nooks and crannies of this fascinating and undiscovered district.
Unfortunately, the InfoPraga website: www.infopraga.com.pl is in Polish only, but soon this friendly website will also be available in English: www.warszawskapraga.pl.
THE NORBLIN FACTORY
Images of Decay
Clunky, outdated machinery: wheels, chains, gears. A celebration of rot, rust and grease on 12-foot by 8-foot size photographs. Each is reminiscent of the claustrophobic noise of workers’ shouts and the clanging of machinery.
The author of the exhibition entitled “The Norblin Project: Images of Decay” is Wally Gilbert, apparently the only artist in the world who is also the proud winner of a Nobel Prize for... chemistry (1980). He was invited to Warsaw by the STEP Foundation last year. “We knew Wally was an enthusiast for detail and beautiful form. We thought that he would find the 100-year-old factory very attractive,” says Klara Kopciñska, the leader of the STEP Foundation - a group of artists that want to save the Norblin Factory from the decline caused by its complicated legal situation.
Wally Gilbert had spent most of his life as a scientist, looking through microscopes, developing a method to determine the sequence of nucleotide links within DNA and RNA. He didn’t quite know why he was doing it, but he then took his camera and a laptop and took off to discover old ghosts sleeping in a factory, thousands of miles away from home.
Images of Progress
A hundred years ago, in Zelazna Street, in the district that they now call the Manhattan of Warsaw, things seemed to change almost as rapidly as they do today. Seemingly overnight, between small wooden cottages and gardens, the tall chimneys of factories seemed to shoot up overnight, with the Norblin plant among them. The lazy village atmosphere was drowned-out by the cry of industry.
The Norblin factory was one of the biggest in the area. It employed over a thousand workers, and they, along with their families, used to live in the buildings around the factory. Children screamed, dogs barked, and the wheels and machinery seen within Gilbert’s photographs clunked and clattered.
The Norblin factory produced excellent household goods. “When I was a little girl my mother took me to the Norblin shop to buy a gift,” an older Varsavian lady with a sparkle in her eye says, remembering silver-plated sugar-bowls, flower-vases and candlesticks. She fails to mention other important products manufactured on-site, like: metal sheeting, pipes, wire and ammunition. And it was because of this latter class of goods that Norblin would get no mercy from the Nazis when they bombed Warsaw during the last war.
Don't throw out grandpa's armchair!
Today the factory is home to various cultural organizations. There is the "Prezentacje" theatre, the Warsaw Museum of Printing, and the Museum of Industry, with its unique exhibition of old Polish motorcycles and cars.
“My husband Żuk Piwkowski and I discovered Norblin's fantastic interiors four years ago as we were looking for a place to make a film,” explains Klara Kopcinska. Since that time they has encouraged hundreds of other artists to get inspiration from the factory. Painters, poets and 
performers; professionals and amateurs; they have all spontaneously inherited the building from 19th-century workers. The factory's spacious halls have in turn served as... pages of an enormous book during one exhibition, whilst it became the background for a modern dance performance by a group which called itself "1000 tons" in honour of the old machinery.
Jean Pierre Norblin - the popular French painter, and the grandfather of Wincenty, the factory's founder - would probably smile upon seeing his family’s business be taken over by artists. Unfortunately, his happiness wouldn't last forever. In February of this year a company specializing in the development of luxury apartments won an auction in which the Norblin factory was put up for sale. However, difficulties still lie in the building's unclear legal status, i.e. establishing who was the rightful owner in the first place, a common problem in Warsaw.
"We don't want another glass sky-scraper," protest Warsaw’s web users. One of them writes, "Only an idiot would throw out his grandpa's armchair!"
Hurry up to get a glimpse of the old armchair! Tomorrow it might have been replaced by luxurious leather sofas.
* Text written by Gosia Piłacińska - Owner of Hostel Helvetia www.hostel-helvetia.pl
** Special thanks to Klara Kopcińska - President of STEP Association www.2b.art.pl
