Public transport in Warsaw, part 1.

Yes, you read me right. Public transport in Warsaw really does exist. And the fact that we have only one subway line makes us no worse than any other large city in the world. Why do you need more than one subway line anyway? If you want to get lost in long, dark and oddly-smelling corridors with suspicious characters looming up at every turn, Warsaw also provides that in the very city center, no need to pay for a subway ticket for the experience.

Besides, the standing of a city and the ratings of its transportation should not be based solely on the number of metro lines. Take Marseilles, the third largest city in France - it has only 2 subway lines!!

Now that Poland has won the bid for hosting the Euro 2012 Championships, the infrastructure is going to develop. Or at least, it should. We need another metro line that would cross the Vistula river and connect the left side of Warsaw to the right side, Praga. Indeed, Praga IS part of Warsaw, although some left-siders adamantly refuse to admit it. In their minds Praga is at least as far from Warsaw as the capital of the Czech Republic. Once I took one of my out-of-town classmates (who had nevertheless studied here already 2 years by that time) to sightsee Praga. Perhaps the decaying pre-war buildings are not particulary attractive, and groups of youths loitering on street corners accosting scantily-clad young maidens are not particularly inviting, but it's a historic part of town (and not only because my older brother was baptized in the cathedral there). Unlike the Old Town, which was rebuilt after the Second World War, so the buildings you see are technically not old at all, Praga is authentic. Its authenticity is somewhat frightening, at times, yet there you have it...
It seems I have strayed from the original topic of this post.
Public transport in Warsaw has been, for me, the source of many interesting encounters and sociological observation, but I'll save that for another post.