Falling Apart

Some photos from a walk around the neighbourhood.

A huge piece of facade fell off this building. A film about it is on the Tenants' Defence Committee webpage. This building is a famous Praga landmark which was reprivatized and wound up in the hands of shady property speculators. They are trying to sell it. 

I used to live here and that was my view out the window. The brick was not exposed before the Second World War. Around Praga there are still plenty of traces of Nazi bullets.

 

The price of being in the EU. According to regulations, new mailboxes had to be installed everywhere so that postal services other than the Post Office could have access. These are the so-called "Euroboxes". They are great for leafletters lke myself who can now put anything I want in people's mailbox. Of course mostly they are jammed up with junk mail and people hate it. The boxes are also generally of really crappy quality and in many houses the majority are already destroyed as local hooligans try to steal people's mail. I still have the old kind of mailbox, which I could get a fine for having.

There are lots of windows missing in Praga. This only makes things more miserable in the winter.

The water keeps leaking in at my friends' house.

The stairwell at my old place keeps getting worse and worse.

One of many dozens of buildings boarded up. When these flats got bricked up, they were still liveable by local standards. The longer they stand like this, the worse they get and eventually the houses will become disaster areas and be destroyed. This is what the city wants. In the meanwhile, in some cases people who are denied housing squat such places which help not only to house them, but to maintain the buildings.

In a lot of photos you can notice stray wires. These are common all around Praga and often are quite dangerous. There are often wires quite close to the ground, which makes them an attractive object for kids to try to grab on to.

Another common site. Mysterious holes everywhere and some "repairs" to keep kids from falling into them.

Bullet holes again.

At a friend's building. Rain went through this hole and it has grown since this picture was taken.

This building will be repaired and will house a museum.