Life / Begging in Poland (new scam) [9]

It is a fact of life that people are more likely to hand over cash to the well dressed. Maybe they feel that the money is going to be better spent then giving it to an alcoholic who is going to just spend it on drink.

Life / My neighbours in Poland are stealing all my things [180]

I whole heartidly agree!

Life / Begging in Poland (new scam) [9]


You are lucky that they are clean and just wondered off. Some years ago, when I was in Poland there were a lot of Romanian Gypsies who would beg for money. They tried it on me in the main Railway Station in Warsaw. They would surround you and demand money and then, with their dirty hands, they would rub them up and down on your coat in the hope that it will be cheaper and less embarrassing to pay them off on the spot rather than hold out against them. I held out against them with a dirty coat to show for it!

Life / My neighbours in Poland are stealing all my things [180]


At least now you are learning. I too have learnt the hard way and through experience. You can be nice to a Pole and help him out but if you have something they want-beware! Poles do not believe in friendship as I think I have already said somewhere on this forum, you are either direct family or you are just an acquaintance, there is nothing in between. You are foreign and are an alien amongst their midst, these Poles are country folk they have not got an education or sophistication. I have seen how my own family behave in the Polish countryside. My wife's sister's husband even burnt down his Father-In-Law's house for the insurance money after he died! As the chimney stack was still standing and the insurance payout would be less, for some reason in Polish law, the remaining chimney stack is taken in to account in insurance payouts, he returned with a tractor and bulldozed it down-all to pay for his daughter's wedding party! Any Pole will stab any body in the back for a dollar or two.

Life / My neighbours in Poland are stealing all my things [180]


Then why are you asking us when in fact your mind has already been made. You asked for my advice and now you are disagreeing. What is the point of asking? I ask myself.

Life / My neighbours in Poland are stealing all my things [180]


Actually, sorry to say this but they are all thieves. Life in Poland has very little meaning at all and I am sorry to say that you are a little naive. Why are you in Poland and why are you going without food? I do not know all your reasons for being there and I admire your attempts to find a new life but you have to wise up. escapism rarely works out in practice. It is all right if you have family there looking after your possessions but nobody is your friend in Poland and anybody, literally anybody, will steal from you. You are seen as foreign and maybe it is the media all through the Communist era, Polish Television showed American films with big houses and large cars and the Poles see the West in these simplistic terms. In England, we are a little spoilt with houses already built and we go to the bank and the bank gives us a loan and we have a mortgage and the children go to school for free and spend time in hospital for free. In Poland where you have to go abroad to Germany and earn money to buy land and then to Holland to work to buy bricks and then to Belgium to work to buy cement then you come home and start to build the house yourself because nobody is going to give you a free 'meal ticket'-simply life is tough and it effects the mentality of people. You will never be a Pole and they will expoloit you-they even steal of each other. To be successful in Poland, you will need to start to steal yourself in time.

Work / Thinking of spending time teaching in Poland! [38]

As I say, it was only a few hour lessons and not an entire course going on for a year or more but I am not used to learning that way myself and I get a bit 'stuck in my ways'. I found it very confusing and in fact it can send out the wrong messages as you may be saying something but think it means something completely different!

Work / Thinking of spending time teaching in Poland! [38]

When I was at Guildford College in 1999/2000 we were students doing a TESOL course in the evenings and part of the course sylabus was learning a foreign target language just to see what it was like to be students ourselves. One of the teachers was Finnish so we had a couple of hours of Finnish all in the target language. Maybe I did not have enough time to get used to it, but I must say that I found it very confusing to have all the vocabulary and lesson in Finnish only with no English explanations along the way. I would think that learning this way would be slower.

Language / Pan/Pani/Panie name variation [9]

There is a term 'dobra' which is rendered as O.K., I agree, it is understood ect. Skonczyles ten list? Tak, dobra..is an example of a colloquial form used very often in day to day Polish. However, the term dzien dobra I have never heard as such and is never used in Polish as dzien is a masculine noun. Ja jestem dobra would be correct when spoken by a lady though.

Work / Thinking of spending time teaching in Poland! [38]

I would have thought so. I have never been a teacher but how can you explain grammar and vocabulary otherwise?

Work / Thinking of spending time teaching in Poland! [38]


I am sorry but I assumed that you were English and that you meant that seldom do native speakers, meaning the British in Poland, bother to learn Polish.


So what? Dlacaego to jest wazne czy on mowi po polsku czy nie, w koncu, wszystko jedno!

Work / Thinking of spending time teaching in Poland! [38]


With respect you are being a little condescending are you not? I was a student in eastern Europe during the Communist era when you were still a baby! The point I was making was that learning a second language formally is not at all important. My wife leard German at school and remembers almost nothing. To tell you the truth I too studied to G.C.S.E and passed and then with much work I managed to scrape a pass again at N.V.Q. 3 in German but to tell you the truth, I doubt if I could hardly understand a single word if I had to make a telephone call to someone or had to explain why my car has broken down and where I am. Most people in England teach themselves to speak English without spending thousands of pounds on silly TESOL and DELTA and CELTA certificates, Business English, First Certificate, Second Certificate Third Certificate-what a load of rubbish at the end of the day. The whole profession is just a money spin. At the end of the day non of you would cope with four years of Russian translation at university anyway. Is my explanation simple enough for you now?


That is your fault and nobody els's. How can you stand in a classroom teaching English if you can not explain everything from first principles in English? I simply can not understand it at all.

Work / Thinking of spending time teaching in Poland! [38]


I think that I have already said somewhere on this forum that I went to Krasnik and stayed a few nights. The lady I knew there worked as a librarian in a local state school so went along to see the school for myself. I could not see a lesson in action as it was the Summer holiday has already started but I did meet the teacher, she was a young Ukrainian woman who, as far as I know, had never been to England at all. Her English was fair but sometimes I did have to ask her again and repeat my questions a second time in Russian for her to understand me! However, in England, how often do you find an English student who speak a second language well after lessons in a secondary school? I did G.C.S.E French some years ago and I have recently completed the French certificate with the Open University. In France, earlier this year, I found my knowledge was minimal to say the least and at times I was really struggling. In small rural places in Poland why should the Polish do better than English do in state schools in the U.K.? You say that you have been in Poland for seven years yet still use your wife as an interpretor to help you get a driving license.

Life / The trials and tribulations of trying to obtain a Polish driving license [26]

Well, there you are. I know nowt!

Life / The trials and tribulations of trying to obtain a Polish driving license [26]


You might do better going to Warsaw and going to a large office where they are used to dealing with foreigners. I did hear from a teacher in Sopot some years ago that the 'pobyt na stale' too just depends on their mood of the day. There is some other temporary 'pobyt' before you can apply for a 'pobyt na stale' but sometimes you can just go in to the office first time after getting off a plane and get what you want i.e. a 'pobyt na stale' right then on the spot-no questions asked. I see that you went to the office in Pulawy. I had a girl friend of a sort who lived in Deblin many years ago and her father father died on a park bench from a heart attack in Pulawy many years ago-small World!

Life / Embarassment of the egocentric use of English language in Poland! [20]


I was in Tesco yesterday doing my shopping and I saw a lot of Polish people. I am often in Tesco as it is very near to my house. I think you will find that it was Grzegorz, the white dog, a long time ago made the comment or the joke 'why do you not just admit it, you work there'. I have never talked about working in Tescos.

Life / Embarassment of the egocentric use of English language in Poland! [20]


You should ask a Tesco trolley pusher and not me this question.


I have met people who have worked in Poland as TESOL teachers looking for a partner and there is nothing wrong with that. After all, we all 'engineer' our lives to some extent. You use the word 'love' and sometimes it may well be 'love' but often a woman looks for more than that. Love on its own will not get you very far. Calling me a 'narrow minded prat is very rude', is that why you have to be an unskilled TESOL teacher in Poland earning five peanuts per month because otherwise, you lake education?

Life / I want polish passport [86]


Health care, God, the health care in Poland is diggusting. I would rather go without!

Life / I want polish passport [86]


This whole discussion is false and just a joke anyway.

Life / I want polish passport [86]


Make it 2000 pounds sterling and it is a deal!

Life / Embarassment of the egocentric use of English language in Poland! [20]

As a P.S. I know Oplole a little and we drove there as I drove on to the Czech frontier. It looks quite a nice town from what I saw of it. Very close to the town of Czestochowa. Well, to answer the point above, why otherwise would a person study for a TESOL and move to Poland if it was not connected with sex? Come on-don't be so naive!

Life / Embarassment of the egocentric use of English language in Poland! [20]

I was in La rochelle earlier this year at the beginning of the Summer and the Germans! Well, when they speak amongst themselves you could hear them in Moscow! As for the English, I have never heard it spoken in Poland much. Are there many English in Poland? I would have though that the wage rates were too poor to attract English people, except of course for TESOL teachers who obviously go there in search of a partner. I can not think of any other reason why an Englishman would spend time in a place like Poland other than self 'fulfillment'.

Life / I want polish passport [86]


Yes but until their ascesion in to the E.U. it is not anywhere so useful.

Life / I want polish passport [86]

The laws change every so often but my son got a Polish passport and has never even been to the country at all! It was quite expensive to buy one through the Polish Embassy in London but it has expired now and we have no intention of ever renewing it. A total waste of time and money. Just something to show off with, I suppose but in Poland with dual nationality, not really a very good idea at all. And to answer your question, you should be able to buy a passport in Poland as the Poles sell anything! That is why we have so many illegal imigants in England now as they come over the border from the former Soviet union and buy a Polish passport before moving on in to the U.K.

Life / Condoms and the Catholic church in Poland [83]


I am talking about the human cost of misery and not strictly speaking about financial gain.

Life / Condoms and the Catholic church in Poland [83]


Yes, but at what price?

News / Puzzler, what are your TRUE thoughts on Poland and it's place in the EU? [29]


Where has this taken place? In the United Kingdom? Certainly here where I live there are no beatings at all of the Poles.

Life / Condoms and the Catholic church in Poland [83]


There is truth in this. In Africa they will use the condoms if offered but nothing stops them having sex. As for the catholic Church, as far as I know, it is a sin in stopping any form of procreation so maybe it is the condom itself which is a vice? It is also sad to say that wherever the people are poor the Catholic Church is at its zenith in power over the populace.

Language / I know Russian language - will it help me learn Polish? [105]

Russian and Polish are not particularly close. Czech is closer to Serbian and they are both, in turn, closer to Russian. Probably due to location (near to Germany) the Polish language is quite different in tone and everything else.

Language / I know Russian language - will it help me learn Polish? [105]

If you want to learn another language for fun and you want to use your knowledge of Russian you would find Serbo-Croatian or one of those languages much nearer to Russian than Polish is. A lot of words are similar in Polish and Russian of course as they are of the same group of languages just like English and German words are similar (sometimes).