UK, Ireland / Foreigners: Please don't buy the English Land! [83]


Yes, but what is not fair is that the Poles want it both ways. They want all the rights here in England i.e. to work and have free education and health care as well as a right to buy property but in Poland a British passport holder has no rights at all to anything and that is not a fair playing field.

UK, Ireland / Foreigners: Please don't buy the English Land! [83]

We have 600,000 which tends to say the opposite.

Travel / The Wieliczka Salt Mine in Poland [14]

I was there in 1985 and it was an interesting experience though I can not remember so much about it now. I think that we visited Auswitz Berkenhau-Oswiecin (if my spelling is correct) at the same time as they are not very far apart.

Language / To sa truskawki , To jest chleb. Difference between the two? [22]

The concept is exactly the same in Danish.

History / Memories of the Polish communist era [115]

Yes, they are feudal and that is why Poland can never join the civilized West, they are simply years and years behind us. The Poles do fight over inheritance just like other races do.

UK, Ireland / Foreigners: Please don't buy the English Land! [83]

you do get your pound back after use. Anyway, there was another class of Polish people who came to this country fifteen years ago who had a good level of education and got sponsors to work here and have stayed on. The new class of army dodgers is a new class that has only sprung up in the last few years. I do not have to listen in to their conversations anyway just turn on Polonia. In fact I came home the other day after work and the television was on in the kitchen so I began to listen to what was going on and it was an interesting programme about lost people and the public were asked to help find these people. I never listen to Polish much these days and it took my ears a few minutes to acclimatize before I could understand every word being said but I thought to myself 'God what an awful language' a simplified Russian with latin script. I for one could never return to Poland.

Life / Army National Service in Poland [95]


I am sorry but considering that I was in Poland possibly even before you were born, are you not a little bit condescending?

Life / Army National Service in Poland [95]

It would depend on the class of Pole. Those without money live on Tesco's own products.


Probably because they can not afford house prices in the South East.


Mind you, in Cumbria they would'nt even know the difference!

News / How does Poland imagine other countries see her? [84]


They do not have to be. Nobody else does it. The old Poland does not exist as massive sways of the old country now lie in former Soviet territiories. Every day when I put on the television to watch M jak Milosc there is always old archive film about the war and interviews with old soldiers about sixty years ago. It is not very healthy to keep on about the past, especially when Poland's contribution was minimal. The Soviet union, maybe, but Poland? I thought that America won the war?

News / How does Poland imagine other countries see her? [84]

I remember Novije Cheremushki as it was the end of a line then. I can still remember the announcement. Ostororzno, dvjeri zakrivajutsa, sledujishaja stacija Novije Cheremushki. And then it would be "stacija Cheremushki, stacjija koniechnaja, pojezd dalshe nie idiot. Prozba, osvoboditje wagony". To think about it, I should have stayed in Moscow and got myself a job on the underground. I love ice cream and that I used to buy in GUM in Moscow was always the best.

History / Memories of the Polish communist era [115]


Everybody used to stand outside the PEWEX and hoped to buy people's foreign currency in order to buy better quality items. I could never understand how communism could allow privilege and it was privilege to allow American Dollars to buy the better things in life when everybody else queued up outside butchers shops with ration coupons. I could never understand it.

UK, Ireland / Foreigners: Please don't buy the English Land! [83]

I would have thought that it is quite difficult for Polish people to buy houses now in England as prices have gone through the roof. Had the Polish come ten years ago it would have been a different strory, of course.

News / How does Poland imagine other countries see her? [84]

I have heard that Moscow has become very expensive, but yes, it would be a nice experience to see the 'old place' once again. I was a student of Russian at the Pushkin Institute in Moscow in September 1984 and I stayed for five months. In those days Byelyajivo was the end of the metro line. It was quite a privilidge in those days to have such a long stay in Moscow when coming from the United Kingdom.

Life / Army National Service in Poland [95]

I do my shopping in Tesco and I see a lot of Polish workers who do their shopping in the same store. They work picking strawberries and apples on the farms. They are clearly those who failed their matura and those who would not survive two years national service and that is why they come to Guildord to do their shopping and to work. They look stupid and stand outside smoking. Clearly no modern army would want to take them as it would cost too much to 'put them straight'.

News / How does Poland imagine other countries see her? [84]

The trouble is that my knowledge of Russian now is so rusty.

News / How Poles truly feel about their situation in Poland and being in EU? [76]

Yes, that is right. Strangely his son died some years ago of a heart attack so Ian Smith has outlived him. Yes, he lives in Cap town or Kapstad as it is known in Afrikans. He did go back to Rhodesia for a visit and was threatened with arrest but nobody attempted to resist him on his arrival at Salisbury Airport. After all, he must be in his mid 80's now. I do not know why because everybody called him a 'sod' but I must admit that I always felt sympathy for him. He was a legend, liking him or hating him. He was an essential part modern post war African history.

News / How does Poland imagine other countries see her? [84]


You must remember that Poland is a new post war country. The boarders are new and so too is most of the population. Post war Poland looks completely different from that before the war. Farm people have been enforced to live in disgusting communist concrete blocks and that is why the whole country is disgusting and why the life expectancy in the country has been falling so dramatically since World War 2. If you ever read Doctor Zhivago, and it is a very good example of anti communist literature as Doctor Zhivago-Doctor Life as it is in translation dies of heart failure from living the artificial Soviet life style and the book was banned for so many years. I was a student of Russian Language and Literature in Moscow during the Communist era and I spent time in Krakow also during the same period.

News / How Poles truly feel about their situation in Poland and being in EU? [76]

I am not allowed to go there now. I have not been there for some years. Sometimes my wife buys tickets to go to Poland and I usually say "a, dobry pomysl, ja tez chce jechac z wami" to which she replies "z toba, zartujesz! Za cztery dni i znowu tak marudzisz, ja wiem co bedzie i potem ja tylko slysze "ja po prostu nudze sie" and to be honest, she is right, so I normally book a ticket in a hotel in Ross-On-Wye or somewhere else on my own and she invades Poland on her own. Anyway, the World is a big place and there are plenty of other things to see, Prague, Buda Pest ect.


I studied Polish in Krakow for a while in the 1980's. I have been as far West as Gorzow Wielkopolski and as far East as Augustow and Bilaystok. I have been to Gdansk, Sopot, and Gdynia and as far south as the Czech Republic so, yes I have seen a lot of the country.

News / How Poles truly feel about their situation in Poland and being in EU? [76]

What has any of this got anything to do with Poland being in the E.U.?


I am not really anti Polish, I am just pleased that I do not live there and that is not necessarily the same thing.

Language / free polish -english dictionary online [52]

There are quite a lot of good dictionaries on the market though I am not sure if there are many soft back-if that is an important thing. I have got a Slownik Angielsko-Polski Polko-Angielski printed by Buchman printed in Warszawa in 2005. I have many but I mention this one as it is not too complicated to use and I picked up this copy for £3 in a charity shop in Leatherhead. Sometims, even at car boots you may pick something up.

News / How Poles truly feel about their situation in Poland and being in EU? [76]


You would be surprised what an army of Tescos trolleys can do!


Ian Smith was a spitfire or a Hurricane fighter pilot (I can not remember which) in England during World War 2 and got badly burnt during his actions yet nobody ever seems to thank them for their contribution and it was considerable too.


I never intended to be one track minded. I simply wanted to point out that many people from all over the World made contributions during World War 2 not only the Polish. It was not in anyway even anti Polish. I just want to remember members of own my family, sadly no longer with us, who came from South Africa and flew from bases in the U.K. Nobody ever remembers them at all.


There was nothing anti Polish ever intended and it seems strange that you so think about Poland that you prefer live in the United States of America!

Language / To sa truskawki , To jest chleb. Difference between the two? [22]


It might be of interest but there is a connection between the English word loaf and the slavonic word chleb. Jest is the singular and the use of sa is the plural from the verb byc, to be. In Danish similar examples would be Han hjaelper sin mor and Hun hjaelper sine venner.

History / Memories of the Polish communist era [115]

There were also a lot of Russian films shown in the cinemas. In fact, I remember a strange propaganda film in the cinema where I was in Gdansk. I wonder if the cinema still exists?

News / How Poles truly feel about their situation in Poland and being in EU? [76]

One thing that has to be remembered here is that Poland as it was then, a different Poland with different boarders was one of the first countries to be overthrown in 1939. When I was in Moscow in the 1980's the Poles would say the same thing and yes, it is true, that Poles came to England and engaged the enemy overseas. However, there were many other unsung heros who contributed in proportion to their size of population even more. I am thinking of the many Rhodesians, South Africans, New Zealanders and, by the way, many of these airman in England were in fact Czech! The answer from the Poles I knew in Moscow was always the same, total silence! The Rhodesians were very few on the ground even in their own country yet sacrificed so much of themselves in the name of the U.K. during the last war. These countries had very little in common with the European land mass and could have easily stayed away all together due to their geographic isolation. We thanked them, either by handing the lands in to the hands of Stalin, or, as in the case of Rhodesia, by stabbing them in the back on HMS Tiger with our wonderful British prime Minister, Harold Wilson in the mid 1960's. The Australian and New Zealand contribution we thanked by turning our backs on them we turned instead to Europe. That is why we no longer can buy New Zealand butter, only Dutch, French or Polish rubbish. As an English girl, I would suggest that you read up on your own dreadful history before you shout ban, ban, ban!

News / How Poles truly feel about their situation in Poland and being in EU? [76]


I think that it is fair to say that it was not Poland that brought down Communism even though the Poles want you to think that. Russia and the entire Communist system was already bankrupt and was falling apart. Lech Walesa and Solidarnosc were simply a by-product of the rot which was already flowing out from the crumbling empire. The Polish are good farmers but they are not fighters. I am sure that any Pole would like to disagree with me and obviously Poles have their talents but fighting, historically, has never been their strong point, Hungarians, Russians and Romanians maybe but the poor Poles were always a little out of their depths as to which way to hold the gun!

Life / Will Poland become like the UK ? [93]

I think as boarders open up you are bound to get open migration and you are going to get a mix of good and bad that is why Australia has a strict points system because they do not want to be flooded by low life and people who are going to cost the state loads and loads of money. I do not go to Poland now and have not been there for many years however, I do remember being in a town called Koszalin and I parked my car for a while near a church,. My car was surrounded by Romanian gypsies trying to get money from me almost by force. It was a very unpleasant experience. They also hung around in Warsaw in the main building where people would queue up to buy tickets rubbing their dirty hands over people's coats to force them to hand over money to simply get rid of them. Poland deals in a lot of illegal passports and counterfeit documents so a lot of former Eastern Europeans are flocking there in force to get the documentation in order to enter the United Kingdom. I was always against the E.U., always against Polish membership and I for one could see the negative long term results of the collapse of the Berlin Wall. The Poles see freedom as an end product as they are not used to freedom but freedom is a malleable thing which grows and changes shape over a life time in so many ways. Poland like so many other new countries want to milk the cow but nobody wants to feed it. I can only say that I thank God that we never returned to Poland to live.

News / How Poles truly feel about their situation in Poland and being in EU? [76]


Oh no, they did not!

News / How Poles truly feel about their situation in Poland and being in EU? [76]


Why what are you going to crush me with? Your useless recently gained Polish degree which in Sweden qualifies you to sweep the streets?


No, even more so

News / How Poles truly feel about their situation in Poland and being in EU? [76]


It seems so strange coming from someone who has never even been to Poland or at least there is no evidence of any actual personal past experience. You seem quite insecure, someone who probably even quite late in life would lean on you mother with very few real friends and someone who would find it difficult to stay in a long term relationship. I am not a psychologist but through your writings there are some interesting trends. I have a friend, of Spanish origin, who lives in London and actually married one of my Polish friends from Czestochowa. He has completed a phd in this very area. I should try and get his advice after showing some of your posts.

News / How Poles truly feel about their situation in Poland and being in EU? [76]


Through the Thatcher years everybody had to have a visa to visit Poland and if I remember rightly, Poland was very slow indeed in allowing the English in to their country. Mind you, I always found the Poles an odd lot. I would be in Warsaw and they would fly all the nice red flags trying to be Moscow's top dog and then American dollars could be exchanged in the PEWEX to buy good quality tea, coffee, alcohol and chocolate whilst old polish people had to wait outside in the hope that I would agree to sell my dollars on the black market-very strange! I could never understand it as the Poles could never decide on which side of the fence they wanted to sit.