The river Wisla (Vistula in English) was to be made fit for navigation by barges.
It is one of those slow rivers that need locks and dams to create a navigation channel that is deep enough. Thus was started a project of canalisation. Any other developer would have started near the sea and work upstream gradually, or start working on all the locks and dams at the same time.
Not so in Poland though.
Only in the upper reaches there are now five or six locks and dams - and that's it.
The rest of the project was abandoned or maybe postponed, don't know.
Now this region cannot be reached from the sea and there is no connection with other waterways.
The locks are in perfect working order, and I saw maintenance people busy today.
It seems as if a barge could arrive any moment, and it is as if the lock keeper has his hand on the swith to start the lock operation.
But nothing happens.
The lock keeper must be in there somewhere...
Poland...
See also the photo group Only in Poland/
Grotere kaart weergeven
6 comments:
Nothing like getting pleasure from the absurd...
Did they run out of money perhaps? We have a local university that started by building the outer faculty residences, working its way to the centre. And then funding was cut... Nothing like a good hike from one lecture to another in the middle of a winter snowstorm, as I learned during my undergrad days.
xx
AM
Haha Koosje. It reminds me of the highway section they started building in Cape Town and then ran out of money, so it just stops in mid air over one of the busiest parts of the city. Mind you, we have the A4 here as an example too, don't we?
What's interesting about your story is that the Poles keep working the locks when there is nothing that can use them...maybe the odd canoe perhaps?
Well, to kill part of a good story with the truth, there is a dredging company that maybe once or twice a year needs locking through to take their barges and towboats to the shipyard in Krakow, but with a frequency like that they might just as well dedicate a telephone number to the service, and do useful things the rest of the time.
Maybe they did run out of money, and now they have trouble completing this and similar projects due to environmental comnsiderations...
It's like a river flowing backwards?
Exactly!
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