Mall Hell

Anyone who visits Warsaw is bound to make a trip to one of the malls. There is a choice ... Zlote Tarasy, Kliff, Arkadia, Galeria Mokotow ... these places are all within 30 minutes of each other (provided traffic is cooperative).

The problem for me is that I absolutely hate malls. They are a rabid disease on the landscape. I cannot find the proper word to define how disgusting I find them.

Yet, I find myself in one of these monstrosities at least one per week. It was a very clever decision to put supermarkets in malls. A simple trip to a market turns into entering hell. The parking lots require a very high IQ to navigate. If you go to one of these malls, park your car, don't pay exact attention to where you are parked, then try to find your car sixty minutes later. Additionally, I challenge anyone to exit the parking lot without using obscenities. It is not possible. There are strange turns into strange lanes that go down in order for you to go up and out. No kidding. The parking lots are an afterthought of design.

The king of weirdness has to be the mall named Blue City. Without a doubt, this mall wins the prize for most inefficient design (not to mention most unattractive). There is one obvious elevator that is a workhorse. This elevator stops on every floor whether it goes up or down. It is always filled with people with shopping baskets or baby carriages or both. Also, it is notoriously slow. I cannot possibly explain the lunacy of the escalators. There is no way of figuring out which ones go up or which ones go down until to walk to it. And, they are in a circle. I can't explain. You have to see to believe. And finally, there are entire sections of the mall that are pretty much hidden. There are rows of shops that one cannot see unless one wanders down a strange hallway. You have to make the trek down these halls to see what stores are there.

A word about Blue City's parking lot ... simple stay out of it if you can ... and this is very possible since it requires know-how to even find the entrance. Once you are in the lot (which goes from underground to several stories above ground), good luck with which direction you are facing. There is a system that gives animal names to the different sections of the lot, but I think this is so you can tell security the section your car is in when you cannot find it.