Law / Do EU members need RESIDENCE CARD IN POLAND [29]

technically yes. Other EU citizens can carry their ID cards but of course we don't have those (yet...)

Language / Polish Acronyms & Initialisms [15]

yeah - my wife talked about an "ufo". Took me a minute to realise she meant a U.F.O

Life / Smoking in bars or restaraunts in Poland. This nasty habit continues... [27]

Theres a link here that shows the status of smoking bans in Europe but I am not convinced it's totally up to date: epha.org/a/1941

Regarding Poland they mention a ban in the news every now and then but I don't think anything concrete has been decided yet...

Language / I know "się" is the only reflexive personal pronoun..but "jak się masz?" [34]

Great post Switezianka. BTW "catch up" means something totally different to "catch".

Life / Applying for EU passport... [51]


Yes, this is true.


No, this is not true.

It is simply that if you are (for example) American and Polish and have both citizenships and both passports, the Polish authorities will treat you as fully Polish.

Life / Applying for EU passport... [51]

whoops! yes sorry Foreigner4 you're right. My bad!

If anyone's interested in the full detail here is what wikipedia has to say on it:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_nationality_law#Dual_citizenship

Law / Money transfer companies to/from Poland [11]

Today I needed to move £2000 from the UK to Poland. The GBP PLN rate on yahoo is 4.1006 right now (when I checked) which I used as my reference.

no1currency.co.uk website rate says 3.813
PostOffice.co.uk website says 3.7482
My bank (Cater Allen Private Bank) quoted me 3.9974
CurrencySolutions.co.uk quoted me 4.0736

The range between the worst (post office) and best (currency solutions) relates to a saving of 600 zloty. So thanks to ct11 and inkrakow for recommending CurrencySolutions.co.uk.

Law / I'm an ex-pats in Poland and I made profit from my new business [13]


Well done! Now the 2nd challenge it to not let the urząd skarbowy get their hands on it...

Life / Ex-pat experiences Polish medical system. [4]

Same for me. Nurses and doctors were great, everything seemed efficient and no money changed hands. Rates better than when I had my appendix out in the UK a few years ago.

Life / The Polish Flag Is White, with red tape! [32]


You can't get a UK MOT in Poland. You can get an Polish inspection done but it's only valid on Polish territory. Without a UK MOT your UK insurance is invalid, plus you won't be able to get your tax disc either.

The only solution is to take the vehicle back to the UK once a year and get it done back there, unless you happen to know a dodgy UK mechanic who will issue you a cert without seeing the vehicle...

UK, Ireland / Free sms's to O2 in Scotland?? [3]

I spent a lot of time looking this stuff up because I needed it for a website I worked on that had to send out text messages - basically you are after an "SMS gateway service".

Unfortunately in the UK the mobile companies don't offer this service. I am sure they did 10 years ago but it seems that they don't now. There are services and websites that you can use but you have to pay to send messages. Have a google for SMS gateway and you will find a few of them I am sure.

Love / Getting Engaged to Polish girl, asking permission from her dad? [19]

Brilliant move. I am sure they will really appreciate it. Good to have your future out-laws on side from the start too.

Travel / Other than Krakow or Warsaw, which cities should I visit? [18]

I really liked Gdansk.

Life / The Polish Flag Is White, with red tape! [32]

look at the bright side of all this bureaucracy - they problably don't have "identity theft" like we do back in the UK... :-)

UK, Ireland / Sending from Poland to UK - quick cheap and secure? [8]

There are some smaller couriers you could try. I paid about £50 for some large and heavy boxes to be sent to me from London. Took a about 7 working days.

The cheapest (if this equipment isn't too valuable) would probably just be to bubble-wrap it really well and send it via Royal Mail. Recorded delivery is of course safest but slower than regular post (at least on the Polish side).

Dunno if that helps you or not though...

Language / Swojego vs swego, and friends [6]

you also see these short forms in religious text too...

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

Just out of curiosity ukpolska, why did you want a Polish licence? Given that there is no requirement to exchange them I will keep my British one and enjoy the bonus of not picking up Polish penalty points....

Language / Verb forms and conjugation [28]

One of my text books says there are 11 patterns if you want to get technical about it, but effectively 4 with the odd variation. Not at home right now so can't quote which book it was. Off the top of my head though:

The "a" pattern:
Czytać - czytam, czytasz, czyta

The "i" pattern:
myśleć - myślę, myślisz, myśli

The "e" pattern:
Iść - idę, idziesz, idzie

The "y" pattern:
Słyszeć, słyszę, słyszysz, słyszy

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

OK that makes sense in your scenario then, fair enough. Yes I can get banned by the Polish police but I don't pick up penalty points. For example I got stopped for speeding a couple of months ago and the penalty was 2 points and 100 zloty (if I recall correctly). I paid the fine and didn't get the points. So I think that for most of us it's better to keep a foreign licence.

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

I don't think they are that organised. They can't confiscate your licence because they didn't issue it, the DVLA did. They can only ban you from driving in their country. Given that I don't drink drive or do anything too stupid I hope that will never occur. It's just the odd speeding ticket here and there that would worry me if I was able to accrue points here....

At that time I didn't have my karta pobytu and I don't think I was even carrying my passport (I don't normally). He just took UK address (which is old - sold up and move out a year ago) from my driving licence and seemed happy with that.

Language / Help with Sentence Structure! [16]

I think someone like Krzystof posted about this exact topic a while ago. I remember reading it but I can't find it using the search tool...

My understanding is that it's Adj-No like in English a lot of the time, but No-Adj when the adjective limits the noun. E.g.:

letnia skoła - here the adjective says something to describe the school - it is "summery". So a "summery school" (which doesn't make sense, I am just using this as an example).

skoła letnia - here the adjective quantifies/restricts the school. It says something about the type of school - i.e. it is a school only open in the summers, a summer type of school. Thus "summer school".

Language / Help with Sentence Structure! [16]

just realised I can't even spell - should be szkoła of course...

Language / Verb patterns 'BYC' [29]

No it is a little bit irregular. You will often notice that words used the most often tend to be the most irregular (and not just in Polish)

Language / Polish Language Exams [4]

Details of the European framework thingy: british-in-poland.blogspot/2008/03/polish-exams-for-foreigners.html

Law / American wishing to obtain dual citizenship [16]

Yes you can have dual citizenship, there is nothing to forbid it (but for some reason I hear this mistake all the time from Polish people that it's not allowed). However Poland does not RECOGNISE dual citizenship. Therefore in Poland you are purely Polish in the eyes of the Polish authorities. Abroad you take the nationality of whichever passport you are travelling on.

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

What I should have said was "revoke" rather than "confiscate". Interesting what you say above - I trust that is how it works but I can't find any information about it whatsoever.

But (slightly alarmingly) I did find this:


driveandstayalive.com/info%20section/news/individual%20news%20articles/x_040501_driving-on-european-continent.htm

UK, Ireland / Taking a UK-registered car to Poland [35]

you would only need to change it over to LHD if you wanted to register the car in Poland. As you are only bringing the car over temporarily then I don't see why you would need to do anything like that. Keep your Irish plates, Irish vehicle inspection and Irish insurance. That is probably the simplest route. Just make sure your documents don't expire whilst you are abroad, as you will need to be in Ireland to get your vehicle inspection done.

Life / Present for Polish friends ~ is anything hard to get any more? [57]

There are tescos here in Poland but they are not like the UK tescos. They don't stock the same things either. They are still quite new here so probably not in every town, but most town will have at least one of the main supermarkets here such as Lidl, Carrefour, Tesco, Biedronka and so on...

Language / Cases, Genders, Nominative, Instrumental...WHY? [40]


You could say polish distinguishes between 5 so that beats the Abos - masculine (subdividing between virile and non-virile, in turn non-virile can be animate or non-animate), fem, neuter.

Language / Cases, Genders, Nominative, Instrumental...WHY? [40]

I always say that it could be worse - at least they use the same alphabet as us!