Mitzilinka: The Great Parking Ballet at Galeria Mokotów

It was supposed to be simple: park the car, buy the socks, leave the car. Yet somehow, Westfield Mokotów has transformed this three-step dance into a full-scale theatrical production, complete with new choreography, ticketless technology, and an unsuspecting audience of motorists pressed into leading roles.

They call it “improved circulation.” I call it The Great Parking Ballet.

On ul. Rodziny Hiszpańskich — a name that once sounded like a street, now more like a riddle — one gate is now only for entry, the other only for exit. Choose wrong, and you pirouette straight out of the performance before Act I begins. Local drivers tell tales of searching for the –1 level like Odysseus seeking Ithaca, only to find themselves spat back onto Warsaw’s streets, baffled and ticketless, humming “Where did I go wrong?”

The mall promises a sleek ticketless system, cameras that recognise your license plate like paparazzi lying in wait at a red carpet. But in practice, some shoppers report a less glamorous welcome: machines sulking, cards refusing to swipe, and readers misbehaving as though allergic to Polish number plates. Nothing screams “modern convenience” quite like arguing with a metal box while an impatient line of honking cars builds behind you.

And of course, the beloved shortcuts through the mall’s grounds have disappeared. Transit to Al. Wilanowska is now a privilege reserved for those escaping the mall’s gravitational pull. For everyone else, it’s detour time, with drivers circling like bewildered actors who have missed their cue.

Meanwhile, the mall’s PR beams about two hours free, three if you’re a Westfield Club member, and a cap of seventy złoty a day. It’s lovely math, unless you’re the poor soul circling round and round, never actually making it into the car park in the first place. Free hours don’t mean much when you’re rehearsing U-turns outside.

Still, there is an odd solidarity in confusion. On social media, strangers bond over stories of missing entrances, bungled exits, and near-mythical –1 ramps. It is the sort of collective bewilderment that makes you laugh, because the alternative is crying into your shopping bags.

So if you are heading to Westfield Mokotów, take a deep breath, accept that you are now part of the Ballet, and remember that sometimes in Warsaw parking is no longer a mundane errand — it is an art form.

Author: Mitzilinka (Turning grim reality into comic relief—without losing the truth)