Triangles and Circles
Public transport in Britain was never really my world. I cycled locally, or used a motorcycle or car for most of my adult life. Occasionally, I caught the bus into Chester, which did little to improve my opinion of buses. Trains, though, I liked. There was something civilised about them. A seat by the window, the quiet promise of movement, the sense that someone else was handling the difficult parts.
So it still amuses me that my real education in public transport happened not in Britain, but in Poland.
There, buses, trams and trains were not occasional conveniences. They were woven into daily life. In Silesia, they formed a kind of circulatory system, carrying people steadily from town to town, district to district, through weather that would have caused a national incident back home.
I could have driven. I was offered the use of a car, and I drove occasionally. But I found myself drawn instead to stations, timetables, ticket windows, and the peculiar freedom of letting the railway decide the route.
In time, I became confident enough to travel from Kraków Airport into the city, then onwards to Gliwice. First class, naturally. Why crawl into competence when you can arrive with style? The trains were often slow, but I never minded. I could sit by the window and watch Silesia pass in long grey-green paragraphs.
But before all that came the visitor years: 2007-2009.
Back then, I understood very little, at least not in the way I thought I did.
I travelled with Polish friends who bought the tickets, found the platforms, translated announcements and quietly ensured I did not board something heading for the far side of Europe. I was still a tourist then, wrapped in other people’s competence.
And yet, even in those early days, something unexpected happened — something that didn’t rely on anyone else’s competence at all, but on a fragment of history I had carried with me since childhood.
I’d like to share a short story first, it seems remarkable despite all the tourist guides I’d bought, I didn’t know about two small signs.
My first full day in Poland had already been extraordinary — a visit to Radiostacja and an unexpected, but fascinating, guided tour of the control room there, and not even my two friends had imagined that might occur. A wander around the Rynek and stop for refreshments in the kawiarnia located inside the Ratusz in Gliwice, and the slight panic of being unable to decipher the signs for the male and female toilets located there. No one had ever mentioned it. Not once. And despite carrying three phrase books like a diligent Boy Scout, not one of them thought to warn me that Polish toilets sometimes used geometric symbols instead of words. I had been very proud of myself to ask in Polish where the toilets were, and had merely followed a pointed finger to the stairs that descended below.
So there I was, increasingly desperate, staring at two doors, neither with symbols which appeared to have any obvious relationship to human anatomy.
A simple circle on one door and an inverted triangle on the second.
Rather than walk back and ask my friends — which would have required admitting I couldn’t even find the correct door — I took a punt on the circle. I knocked and eased it open slowly, ready to retreat if anything inside hinted I’d made a terrible mistake. It was very modern, spotlessly clean, industrial‑style stainless-steel and black fixtures — just cubicles — and it didn’t look or feel right.
A quick retreat felt wise.
I knocked on the triangle door, slowly pushed it open, and there it was — the familiar, reassuring outline of male‑oriented fixtures. I let out a quiet, grateful sigh of relief — and with it, the sense of stepping into a place that was both foreign and strangely familiar.
I returned to my friends and told them the whole story. They laughed — loudly, joyfully — the kind of laughter that comes not from mockery but from recognising a classic “first time in Poland” moment. They said they were surprised the Kawiarnia had kept the old geometric symbols at all. It had recently undergone extensive modernisation, and everything else inside was sleek and contemporary. You’d think, they said, that someone would have replaced the triangle and circle with something a little more obvious. I thought it was remarkable, unique and very creative. My two friends seemed unable to offer an explanation as to what the symbols were supposed to represent. “Just learn it, Gary — you’ll probably not see it used again” was the best answer they could offer.
I made a note in the back of my go-to phrase book, right next to the page where I’d written down the words for “Pracuję w policji północnej Walii” and “opóźniony,” and underlined it twice. In the four years I lived there, I rarely saw those symbols again—but from that day on, I was prepared. At some point, one of my friends had placed a small paper note into the phrase book and written, “wypadki się zdarzają“. I only recently rediscovered this note. In English, it means ‘accidents will happen’. Very appropriate. I still keep it tucked into the phrase book.
The day ended with us tucked into a small Polish pizza‑chain restaurant, the kind of place I’d grew to adore far more than I expected. The warmth of the room wrapped around us as we shared incredible pizza, the kind that somehow tastes better when you’re laughing with two remarkable friends. At that moment — between the laughter, the clatter of plates, and the soft hum of conversations around us — I felt something shift inside me. I wondered what other adventures were waiting just beyond tomorrow, what pieces of myself I might discover next.
My friends had already decided that the second day of my visit would be a trip to Katowice, but it was the third day—the one they teased with knowing smiles—that would end up sealing something deep within me, something I hadn’t yet found the words for.
First Visit to Katowice
Photo: Gliwice, Dworzec – panoramio by Roton Piotr, licensed under CC BY‑SA 3.0. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
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