Actually this Wednesday was not a good representation of a standard working day in Poland. We had a bank holiday on Thursday and many people took the opportuinity to take some vacations days this week. The busiest time in the center in around 4:00 - 5:30 pm, because most people in Poland work from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm and some from 9:00 am to 5:00 am. I live in Warsaw for 12 years and belive me - public transport can be packed and you can feel like a sardine in it ;) I live in a Śródmieście now, but for many years I commuted from Białołęka to the city centre and sometimes it was like a nightmare - buses were packed with people and traffic jams were horrible. But still in my opinion Warsaw has one of the best public transportation system I've seen and it has improved a lot in recent years.

0:49 These "Amazon lockers" are Polish, patented invention of InPost, so strange if they were not on every corner ;)

You are so right. Also, culture is very accessible in Warsaw and all over Poland. When I lived in San Francisco and my wife and I would go to the opera, tickets were $250 each, for the middle of the road seats. So right there it was $500. Parking was $50. Dinner was between two and $300. So our outing to the opera would cost us about $800. that was a few years ago. I bet you today’s prices in San Francisco are even higher. You can do the same thing in Warsaw for a quarter or 1/3 of that. And the opera is better : )

Fist of all you were in a little bit wrong spot to see rush hours in Warsaw but even if you were there it wouldn't be anything like in other cities you mentioned. Well, Warsaw was like that 20 years ago. Totally overcrowded city center with perma-traffic. There reasons were very simple: (1) other districts had nothing to offer so everybody was going tot he city center both to work and for entertainment. (2) public transportation simply sucked, (3) Warsaw used to be much worse interconnected between different parts of the city. Now is as you said trams, buses and metro do the job and are perfectly organized, people don't have need to go to the city center cause in their neighborhoods they find everything they need restaurants, parks, gyms, shopping malls, other utilities, żabkas, biedronkas etc., and the street network including highways around the Warsaw was being extremely developed last 20 years.

Warsaw is learning on mistakes made in big cities in 60's and 70's. They had an idea of separated functional areas in city: business district, residential district and so on. Idea was that with more cars people will be more productive and will rest in more pleasant residential areas. It was a mistake - communication between areas was a great pain as we all know. In Warsaw you do not have strict business and residential areas separation. Everything is mixed: office buildings are surrounded with apartament buildings. And together with great public transportation system in Warsaw, the city is great to live in. You might find a job on Plac Naruszewicza and have a plenty flats in all the prices in 20 min walk distance. Even so called Mordor (business district in Mokotów) has some residential buildings now.

You are so right. My husband’s mother came for a visit from France. We wanted to show her some of our favourite restaurants. She could not believe we didn’t have to book a table even once, we could be completely spontaneous, decide right on the spot where to go and just enjoy good food, the space, ourselves without all of this hassle of planning how and when to get there, book the table, think about everything in advance. In France, even in some less touristy cities this just isn’t the case. We don’t appreciate enough how much happier we are, free from this constant competing with others for resources. Life is nice.

0:49 - in Poland we have about ~16 thousand those Inpost big boys

1st af all, if you recorder this on wednesday 15th of june, then it's day before long weekend, thursday is work free because of holiday. Second of all, I think rush hours in Warsaw begin around 4pm and often end before 6pm. At least from my experience, center around PKiN can get really jammed, but not for very long

Maybe the answer is that there are lot of great cities in Poland and people are spread out amongst them...

Did you already saw center of Warsaw at night from right side of river Vistula? For example from National Stadium or Beach "Poniatówka"? Or just walking around left side? Now is good time to check out that view, when will be good weather.

You said few times, that Poland is a mix of east and west in culture (family oriented, but clean streets for example). I like to think similar way, but in respect to interactions with other people: we are mix of north and south. We really like other people around us, like southerners, but not to many people, and not to close around us, like northerners 😉 So we organize ourselves in a way allowing us to meet someone we want to meet, but not to many other people... I guess. Edit: the crowd is at metro centrum around 8-9 and 16:30-17:30, and metro Wierzbno. Yet still, not as NY or London, that's for sure.

I completely agree. I was in Warsaw recently for 10 days and I had only 2 instances of crowded public transport.

This is very interesting! There are some congestions in big cities here but nothing in comparison to western big cities you mentioned, and now I wonder how much the mentality influenced that. "Queues" of all sorts were a huge pain during the communist era. My parents and grandparents had to wait for hours to get basic stuff, even in 90s buses were overcrowded heavily. People who build and organize cities nowadays, they usually remember that. Maybe this overcrowding is something that western countries never found out to be a problem, and eastern, like Kiev didn't really care about, while here we tend to avoid that to not bring the "jak za komuny" ("as in communist times") stuff out.

The most "rush hour" is in center of Częstochowa every 15th of August. This particular day city is more crowded than Tokio or Singapore ;)

Always look forward to your video’s. 15-30 min of James telling me what is awesome. All good mood stuff. I see enough depressing stuff these days, need some good news so I like this. The worst thing I see here is a not so good balcony or some graffiti lol and never a complaint!

Rush hour is from 4-4:30 p.m. Whenever I leave work at that time, the trams are packed. By 6 p.m. it's not as crowded.

"amazon lockers" paczkomaty are actually Polish invention that's why they are everywhere even in small villages

You've probably recorded it on last Wednesday, which was the last day before so called "long weekend" in Poland. It's a specific day, 'cos many people went out from Warsaw couple hours ago. So the crowd were on hi-ways around the city, not in the center, where almost nobody left on long weekend :) If you want to check out Warsaw overcrowded places please go to the Trasa Toruńska on 7a.m. some Monday in September, October or metro B station Wileńska in the morning :P

Thank you! As a Polish person living near a small city going to Warsaw from time to time I wasn't really aware of the points that you say in this video.

The lack of a real city centre helps. However, if you go to the so-called Mordor in Mokotów it could be quite busy. At least it was. But after covid, many people moved to homeworking.

WWII is the reason behind that. After the city was razed to the ground by Germans it was replanned/rebuilt from the scratch. It used to be "chocolate boxy" prior to 1939 and Communist Party found that too bourgeois. They also wanted more space for public gatherings, propagandist parades, etc What you are so keen on most Varsovians would sacrifice for the feeling of a real pre-war Warsaw I reckon, with dense urban planning, lavishly ornamented tenement houses, etc

I totally agree buddy Been coming to Warsaw since 1980 watching the city improve tremendously as you can imagine

Thank you for your observation! I really love that you, person who has experienced and lived in many cities across the whole world, are willing to share your thoughts, observation and present your point of view, it also opens our minds and forces us to admit how Polish citizens lucky are! Im living in Wroclaw, and I have never paid attention i.e how wide sidewalks are, how infrastructure is well designed, how public transportation is great etc. etc I always "prefered" to focus on negatives. Thank you for this! Its always a pleasure listen wise man!

Très belle ville. Ce que j'ai le plus aimé c'est la propreté de la ville. J'habite à Paris et je bute sur des tas d'ordures à chaque tournant. J'adore Varsovie!!❤👍

Interesting observation. I am in London now and yeah, it feels so crowded and loud I am already irritated, subconsciously stressed and can’t enjoy the city too much :/ Berlin and Warsaw, or biking/walking cities like Antwerp or Krakow feel so much better.

This seems to be a very interesting place, I hope I can visit sometime in the future. Seeing and sharing places like this is why I love traveling and make videos so much! And please keep up the great job! Subscribed!!

There are some other streets that get very congested during rush hours, but you're right that it's not necessarily the very center of Warsaw. It's often more like Aleja Krakowska, Al. Jerozolimskie, Puławska, Wawelska, Czerniakowska. So like connections between the center and suburbs/neighboring towns.

Many people come to Warsaw, but at the same time many people are attracted by other cities in Poland. With Kraków for it's atmosphere, history, architecture, proximity of the mountains, Wrocław because it has unique atmosphere and architecture, Tricity because it's beautiful and by the sea, Poznań because they like the vibe and tempo of life, etc. For many Warsaw is little bit too much of hustle and bustle - there is a lot to do, but it's spread across the city so people have to rush to get wherever they need to get to :) And about your 'favourite place', it is called 'Dotleniacz' - 'Oxygenator' and was designed by Joanna Rajkowska. From the description: "The Oxygenator by Joanna Rajkowska was an attempt to create a place somewhat removed from the applicable conventions, a virtually ideal place, an enclave of clean air, beyond the existing division of the urban territory. Its temporariness, uniqueness, lack of a predetermined scenario of events create a space that can only be filled by others." In it's first form it was little bit camp for many, but with time it has transformed into what we came to enjoy very much.

Those buildings at the very beginning, in all those pastel colors, are so pretty.

you are indeed gifted presenter ! Keep doing good work ! all the best

Wednesday 15th is day before holiday. That's why there is less people than usually. A lot left for "long weekend".

Bro, I lived on Marszalkowska (in a two different apartments; including the big long building that you walked past). I can say that Place Grzybowski was also my little spot, I loved that street leading into it and the church/area. Looks so much nicer now though than it did back in 2017. Peace.

When it comes to Warsaw, metro and trains run very often and I think they take the most people, it help a lot in relieving traffic jams. In addition there are bicycles, electric scooters... so people have many options to move from point A to point B ;) Many people also live outside Warsaw, they come to the capital city for trips or work. Living there is expensive (for our realities) so Warsaw has a "bedroom" elsewhere ;) and there are more people hanging around and if they show up in the capital, it's very early. In the evenings traffic is always greater.

It was something we call a Long Weekend. It's because of the Corpus Cristi Day which was on Thursday which is a free day here. The people usually are taking a free one day on Friday so they can leave Warsaw or any other big city for all 4 DAYS and go somewhere. At the momment You recorded crowds were on the roads and highways full of big cities inhabbitants who were leaving it driving to the other places. :-)

Great vlog!

Thank you for all of the compliments you've given our country. Imo you and your wife have earned the right to consider yourselves one of us now. Much love and many blessings from Lublin.

If you were filming 15 June ...so 16 th long weekend started - Corpus Christi so everyone pushed home early. Roads to the mountains , Mazury lakes are super busy. ALso lots of people are still working from homes. I live in London, roads are still packed with cars outside peoples homes, we work from homes and resist returning to the offices ( Covid on increase ) tube, traines, buses almost empty.

The most crowded business area in Warsaw is not the city-center, but Wola and Służewiec. Służewiec has such a bad public transportation, that people call it Mordor. The city center is rather the place for shopping and entertainment after work. And here is the next challenge for you: Take a bus 189 from Służew Metro Station to Warszawa Włochy train station at 4-5 PM. ;)

To be honest, 6 pm is not a rush hour in Warsaw - usually mornigs are worse. Also, it depends widely on what bus you ride - some of them are more important than others. A few years ago, when I used to travel by bus to school, the 112 line was usually really crowded in the morning, especially in the middle of the lane. Moreover, since the second subway opened more stations, there is much more traffic there - walking around 7:30 and 8:30 between lines on "Świętokrzyska" is not easy.

Warsaw number one in whole UE. Modern Capital

Kiev was badly planed. The metro stations were very narrow. The buildings were made chaotically, nobody cared about anything out of their flats. Entrance in Kyiv metro always annoyed me, in Warsaw it's automatical.

No balconies? It's hard to believe that happens in James the video. :D

dobry odcinek, dzięki

Greetings from Poland ;)

I’m so glad you and Marina have found somewhere to plant yourselves, raise your little baby, and be happy. And, of course, that you share it with all of us. I’ve heard the saying, “Bloom where you are planted.” That’s my wish for you.

YOU pronounce polish name of street perfectly bro

most people finish work at 5 in Poland. and aeround 5:30 is most busy but still compering to nyc, London etc. it's nothing. most busy should be next to metro centrum station.

About city planning, in smaller cities such as Gorzow Wlkp (west side of poland) we have such thing that every area tries to be self sufficient, no need to go to city center as we have every types of shops near us.

I think Pandemic time that introduced home ofiice working style on big scale changed a lot. BTW Balconies counter in the video: 0.

That’s because Poland is not a centralised country. A centralised country is a country with 1 or more mega city then lots of empty in between. UK is centralised with London, France with Paris, Russia with Moscow and St Petersburg but Poland is not. It’s more like Germany which doesn’t have one mega city but lots of smaller cities. Poland has 35 million people but warsaw only has 2 million. Poland has 16 cities, 1 thousand towns and countryside. The population is thrown apart and dispersed all over, like Germany. It’s not centralised like Hong Kong.

Already I'm excited about the supermarket!

The transportation thing is not an accident. I come very frequently to Warsaw (live currently in SF but grew up here) and under communism the buses and trams were absolutely _PACKED._ And they never ran on time. And during one of my visits, around 2005, I suddenly noticed that trams were never crowded, very fast, and on time. Something obviously has happened, this sort of thing cannot just occur randomly, and then maintain this state for 15+ years (and counting).

Hi my friend, thanks for your interesting films in which your fabulous Russian gangsta accent is great added value!

Warsaw is visited yearly but almost 4 million people, tourists. Kraków by max. 13 million people.

I live in England- -everywhere people . Always people -even you go to forest still people. For the same reason what to move to Wroclaw or Warszawa with my family . Powodzenia

Thursday is a holiday and people are already on vacation. That's why it's empty. And the biggest crowd is at 4-5pm. Then everyone leaves work. But the most important thing is, we have a long weekend now. Then Warsaw is empty.

That commute to n from work in nyc is what drained me the most, and it was mostly due to the subway just bein packed wit millions of ppl goin in millions of directions.

It's a beautiful city! I was there for work but woow was I impressed

In my fruitless search to find a non-touristy place near Warsaw I did much searching, googling, looking at the PKP map, and apparently adjusted my algorithm - Now KZfaq offers me Nowy Sacz (sorry about the spelling) And my first thought was, James wouldn't like this, there aren't any people here! (It was early. On Sunday.) But when this woman walked through the park, I could hear the birds (granted I could hear birds if I just turned on my duck house camera early in the morning. The birds here are louder than my ducks. But I prefer sleep.) She walked by the river just briefly I could hear it making river noises. I don't know which river it was. There were at least two on the map. And then she climbed this hill that was in the woods. Very non city. But the view was gorgeous when she got to the top. Of course my favorite part was when she said to herself "be careful - don't break your *other* wrist." As a klutz, I can relate. I broke mine in a *parking lot.* It was very nice and peaceful though. But I also enjoyed seeing a tiny bit of the Carrefour.

Why do you never walk to the tomb of the unknown Polish soldier whichbis a pride of Poland all important ivents happen there. It is the symbol of free Poland. Whenever O go to Warsaw I attend this place.

Dude, it looks like you really like the City. If you still didn't I recommend visiting my neighborhood "Żoliborz Artystyczny" - It will blow your mind how modern and beautiful it is.

That's the effect of Warsaw being leveled by germans and colaborators from all europe. Now we have space

The key point you mention is polish big cities (Warsaw included) are designed, that you do not need to live in the center, to benefit from living in the city. We all chip in for the public transportation in taxes, but the benefits are more than we can envision. It is so easier to leave your car on the outskirts of the city and move on using its infrastructure.

Hey, man. People work very hard here. First an intense long day at work, and then - people need to relax after. You will understad when you will work in PL.

Nice walkable city. Not like Australian petrol headed cities where pedestrians don't count...

In warsaw the business district is mokotow not the center, and the rush hour is 5 pm .. try to go to wiezbno at 8 am or 5 pm

Traffic in Warsaw is a nightmare. Nice video though.

Now a lot of people work remotely from home or hybrid, so it's different than a few years ago.

I live in an outer district of Warsaw but I never felt that I had bad communication with the rest of it. It always felt relaxed. Also a big factor in Warsaw is that its really not that big. From my place I can go to the Vistula by a bike in under 1.30h unlike most of my friends I really prefer smaller town feel, and that's why I love living in my district

Try to get on to a tram 14 at Bitwy Warszawskiej anytime from 7 am to 4 pm

The evening before Boze Cialo? When half the city leaves for the long weekend? Of course, no traffic. What percentage of Warsaw's population is 'actually' Varsovian? One statistic I've heard says 3% of the city's people have a grandparent born here. Everybody else has roots elsewhere. It was the Nazis wot did it.

And when you don't have to wait for the 6th train *and it's snowing* you'll like it even more! When I was starting to work at John Hancock they had a seminar. I don't know if it was for new people or they just decided to do a thing about safety, but it was like "Don't talk to people" , If you're standing jammed against people on the subway, you stand stiffly, because if you stand relaxedly, when you are jammed up next to other people, they might think you're trying something." After all these years I can't remember exactly how they put it, But that was the intent. (Hopefully by now Boston, has figured out how to deal with random blizzards... In April... And they don't just disgorge all the office buildings at the same time, leaving people to climb into the bus through the back window. (I was small, I got in through the front door)) But yeah, this is not my memory of rush hour. And the Carrefour looks a little better than the beloved Biedronka. If you can afford it, I prefer to be in a place where the aisles are a little wider. I was always shopping by what was on sale, anyway. Right now I have an app that has all the sales circulars from all the stores, when they come out. I wonder if Poland has anything like that. Or if Warsaw does. Or if it doesn't really matter. I like to be thrifty*, but I haven't been since Covid. *I've spent my life being poor but still I've been to New York and LA and Colorado, Tucson, St Louis, DC, at least half of PA. Obviously Boston, Orlando - Not all that fond of it - Virginia Beach, Montreal, nogales, Tijuana at least long enough to make a u-turn, Chicago for a couple of hours... All of New England. I was supposed to be somewhere three minutes ago (Edited to change you to you'll, cause voice to text hates me and I don't proofread)

Everybody are at left or right bank Vistula river. Check next time the powiśle district.

i love warsaw as well. i am happy you feel good here 💪😀

I really recommend visiting Poznań, there is a delightful Poznań cathedral there and on Sunday they promise a heat of 40 ° C, so it is worth going there, for example because of the heat of up to. 40 ° C, which is something rare in Poland

COVID helped a bit by moving a lot of work and university lvl learning home tbh.

James is challenging us. Video of the buses too crowded to get onto.

Yesterday was a big holiday. Many people went away from town.

You have to consider that the situation on Wednesday is way different than the weekend. On Saturday evening, specially during hot summer days, there are many people. You mentioned Los Angeles, New York and Kyiv. Those cities have way more population and you can't do comparisons with Warsaw. Furthermore Warsaw is less visited than famous american cities. A considerarion that supports your thesis is that Warsaw was completely bombed during WW2, it was rebuilt ensuring more spaces, parks.

🇵🇱🇵🇱🇵🇱🇵🇱🏆🏆🏆🏆

I visit Warsaw about 5-8 times a year sometimes for cultural reasons, but usually these are business visits. When the fuel was cheaper and trains had worse condition I got in and out Warsaw by car. So sometimes I get in and out in rush hours, so it happenned that I stucked in a road traffic, but still this traffic wasn't as horribly jammed as in my town Olsztyn, which is a nightmare for cars (though wonderful for bikes and it has quite good public transport). Anyways, I have an impression that all transportation system, including roads for cars is well done in Warsaw. It wasn't so good in 1990's, but now I really like our capital. Though nowadays I prefer public transport even to get in and out, because it's cheaper, but still it's comfortable.

After 6 pm it is possible that rush hour is finished in Warsaw, and nowadays a lot of people including me work at home. Eg. majority of my company which is like 300 people. Imagine other corpo companies and try to count how many people work at home.

Warsaw has an extra-developed public transport system. From anywhere in the city, you can get anywhere and to for a very cheap price. However, the time you recorded was before the day off. Normally during rush hours, to get from the suburbs to the city center by car, you need to count 1.5 / 2 hours. Warsaw stands in traffic jams during peak hours, this is the complete opposite of what you showed in the video. It does not change the fact that Warsaw is a beautiful city with great development opportunities!

Where are you James, missing your posts

Residents: Paris 2 millions +, Warsaw 2 millions -, Area square kilometers: Paris-152, Warsaw 517. Visit Powiśle in sunny day.

rush hour is like 7:00 till like 8:30 14:30 till maybe 17:00 in Warsaw

Not sure ..cause we are high in European traffic lists...tho not everywhere. Center might be , bridges and streets going out.. Many people work remote Soon summer starts - city is emptish then

It's because all of the Warsaw pepole are in Sopot 😁

As a new yorker, I concur.

How do you compare living in Gdansk versus living in Warsaw?

I'm the first viewer. :)

Polish Captions! This is off topic but might be helpful: I know you were only watching Polish KZfaqrs who have captions on their videos. In Polish. Possibly also in English. And it's frustrating, the people who don't have captions. Also television! ...maybe (because they say this works in 70 languages) I don't know if you have iPhone or Android. I have Android. This is a Google thing. But if you don't have an Android thing, This starts with Android version 5.1, which is several years old. So you can buy an old Android smartphone. Maybe something after 2014. That should be cheap. (And this could be helpful for anyone here who wants to have captions or learn Polish - I can't be the only one) There is something called Live Transcribe. It was created for the deaf and hard of hearing. It will take anything your microphone can hear, And it will caption it. And they say it's very sensitive. There's a video on it. On KZfaq somewhere. It will also catch things like people knocking on the door. it'll vibrate when someone says your name. But my point here is that I installed it. It takes a primary and secondary language, which you should install on your device. And when it hears things it starts captioning. At first it didn't respond to Polish, so I went back in the settings and I switched the primary language to Polish. And then I played a KZfaq video from Dave z Ameryki, because he was the first person I saw in my list who I was pretty sure didn't have captions. My device minimize the video, but kept playing it and the audio, and started big captions in Polish. Or you could set it to English, Ukrainian, Russian. (IT DOESN'T TRANSLATE, THOUGH, JUST CAPTION WHAT IT HEARS) It will accept 2 though it will only play one as a primary - I'm sure you can just switch them out, in settings, as long as you have them downloaded on the device. As long as your device can hear it, it will caption in big font - actually you can change the size of the font, then maybe it won't minimize your video? I'm guessing if you have something that is iPhone, you can just put it next to it, and it will listen and caption. Because it was created for deaf people to use at McDonald's or other locations or just hanging out with friends. I think you should be able to check it out on KZfaq - It was a KZfaq video that played when I followed the link. So either Live Transcribe or Google Live Transcribe. It will hold a history for like 3 days. *It doesn't translate - it captions in the language it hears. KZfaq is not letting me edit inline today. So ignore the parts above which don't apply. Right now I'm watching BBC World News and it's handling the accents fairly well. (The Irish correspondent hasn't popped in yet)

we are working from home atm.

What makes a city great? Balconies!

Warsaw is size of Denver - for Americans to compare. But I'm thinking Denver has more traffic congestion.

You should check place called Mordor about five o'clock.

I like it to because my dad was born there 😸

haaa it's holidays ( end of June to September) for schools and that's why there is no huge traffic!

Hope that OUR "favourite" building will be also your "favourite" 😉😅

I lived in poland I can tell you "world underestimate Poland".