You know you have been living in poland too long when....

You put ketchup on scrambled eggs, mushed potatoes, pork chops, sandwiches, pizza, pasta and pretty much everything else you eat. As a matter of fact, you have a collection of gourmet flavored ketchup bottles in your pantry and you're proud of it!

Bollocks

lol..i have never liked that even tho it's very popular... beer is beer, let's leave it this way :)


no way...yuck...

You think it is weird that people are so friendly when you back home and having the postal employee or the cashier be chatty is really strange,

You think security guards walking the streets are normal, though you never see them do anything,
you forget that people don't necessarily like the question, "What do you do for a living?" and may actually think it is none of your business when you are just trying to be friendly,

you realize you hardly know your neighbors, but you don't think it is strange anymore,
you think a normal size pickup truck is a "really big" vehicle,
you get discombulated by a visit back home (USA) and a trip to the cereal aisle...takes 10 min. just to make up your mind what kind of cereal you want,

you miss "chleb" when visiting back home,
you miss (when visiting back home) being able to let your kids walk to and from school,
you think making 5 trips to an office to get one task done is normal,
you are used to only partially understanding what's going on around you,
you get most of your news from the internet,
you are used to talking by phone with a serious "lag" due to the slow internet connection you are calling through,
you get used to the smell of the szambo truck getting someone's sewage,
you are used to hearing late night parties and the thump, thump thump at midnight across the street.
carrying a wicker basket to the grocery store doesn't seem strange,
buying eggs in 10's is normal,
figuring liters per hundred km is more normal than miles per gallon
when you think it strange that some people's children go to school at 8 am and get out at 3:30 pm every day (USA) cuz your kids go a different time each day and each child in your family goes different times

you think mayonnaise and peanut butter should be spread thinly and not 1/4" thick but you are the only one around you who thinks like that

i dont use ketchup alot and only in england i use it on fish finger butties
brown sauce on fried eggs

You know, Polish "chleb" is just like Polish beer: it tastes really awesome if you have it once a while, but it you eat it every day it must be way too boring.


...your car is about 1/2 the size of an average golf cart.

When the racists and bigots on PF don't even make you flinch!

You start to notice that there are several ways of wearing a beretka moherowa.

You trip over on a misaligned paving stone for the third time in the same day, and hardly notice.

The sour-grape faces of the Poles don't annoy you any more, cos you see them everywhere in the UK anyways.

You hardly notice that three car drivers with suicidal tendencies cut you up on your way to work - which is just 3 km away.

You learn which brands of beer are undrinkable sugar-water (Krolewska for example).

On returning to Poland your notice that your suitcase is full of cheddar cheese, Marmite, Green curry paste and cheap Tesco Aspirins (for Polish hangovers).

On going to the UK you can hardly lift your suitcase cos its full of cheap Polish beer, kabanosy and poledwica (which you actullay never eat in Poland anyway).

Out walking in town you don't expect unknown Polish women to make eye-contact with you for more than 0.5 seconds. Even though in Germany, Scandinavia, France (in fact anywhere in the West) flirting and extended eyecontact with unknown attractive females is one of the great life-affirming pleasures.

You don't expect a shopkeeper to smile when you breeze into the shop and cheerfully say 'dziendobry' in accent-free Polish.

Whenever you phone Polish telecom (TPSA) about your late bill payment you expect to be grilled for 5 minutes about your inside-leg measurements and grandmother's name before they will even talk to you.

You have tried other alternatives to TPSA internet, but reluctantly have been forced back, cos nothing else actually works...

Jesus, I could carry on for hours....

- you do not notice anymore every second driver is a maniac
- do not smell anymore the collection of unwashed bodies on the buses
- do not notice anymore that basically every building in Warsaw (except the churches) is covered with graffiti
- think it is normal that Warsaw Central Railway station is a horrible concrete bunker with a labyrinthian underground passageway full of drunks
- think it is normal you can only buy fresh seafood on Thursday and Friday

By the way, I have a 3-month public transport pass, pay each month ZUS and love to live in here in Warsaw :)

the dirty puddle of yellow p1ss at the bottom the urinal no longer disgusts you.

The roads seem normal to you and when back in the UK they seem amazing.
You can cook chicken in breadcrumbs
you sometimes say Kurwa when something goes wrong instead of the English equivalent.
You start to accept the terrible food as normal.
You can drink 4 pints of beer and still feel normal
You can tell the difference between different brands of vodka
You drink bottled water instead of tap water and robinsons cordial
You think nothing about drinking alcohol at a lunch meeting
The blue collar workers swigging alcohol on trams at 6 am no longer alarms you.
You start waiting for the green light before crossing the road for fear of a fine.

You mean those Polish sandwiches with just the one slice of bread? I think that also applies to having a Polish girlfriend for too long!!

Are you kidding? Polish food is the best!

maybe he has been here too long and does not realise it?

It's an expat thing...99% of expats will agree with him. I know most Poles will simply say I am a racist and not face it but Polish food does lack flavour and variety compared to many places. Calm down as this is not a personal insult to any Polish person and I am aware the farmer who grew or raised this food has one of the hightest IQs in Europe and I don't think the food is bad because he is stupid or catholic...better?

Someone is coughing and You're the first one to say 'na zdrowie' :D

Or when people coughing and sneezing on the tram or bus without covering their mouth/nose doesn't seem out of place....carry a handkerchief to wipe off the spray ;)

food is a matter of taste....
you like it, you don't like it or you tolerate it... i don't like some cuisines and i miss Polish food because i was raised on it... and there are some non-Polish dishes i'd kill for...

;)


aha!! i even made a thread about that...
;)

When your hands are starting to shake beyond "normal limits" and that single morning shot of Sobieski before work isn't enough anymore . When you dont even pay attention on your way home to the overwhelming smell of body odour on the bus and all you can think of is Sobieski .When you stopped paying attention to that ugly ,rude ,fat ***** at the store when you ask for help to pack your grocery , when you are so tired of fighting ZUS for your money which you will never get because some pencil pusher f..up your claim ,that you dont give a **** anymore how you going to survive until next month, and all that worries you how you going to get Sobieski with no money .That's when I knew ...

When you wake up in the morning and the first words that come to mind are ohh Kurwa

lol...

oh Kurwa !!! Where is my bottle ????

Polish food is great its my favourite thing about Poland, not so much the typical dishes such as Bigos or Pierogi but the availability of good fresh food, uncontaminated fresh meat and vegetables.. as a budding chef i can create all kinds of wonderful meals so the cheap, wide varirty of great fresh food becomes a chefs dream really.

When you end up watching teleexpress (news) Just to see all the car crashes made by the headcases driving on these roads here..
When you stop checking the exchange rate every day because your english pounds are running out..
What is wrong with the money here? Its rubbish compare to england. and everything in the shops are the same price as england :/ How does it work?

When you shopping at tescos trying to spot something wrote in the english language.
Awww i miss england so much.. :(

....when you wonder what things would taste like with Ketchup (tomato sauce).

I am not Polish and I disagree. I have had some lovely, flavoursome meals over here in Poland.

But yes, most expats will agree with you that Polish food is bland and no good. I love it though.

^^^^
This.

Go into a hypermarket in the UK, and you're sometimes lucky if there's one large fridge full of fresh cheese or cold cooked meats etc, for example. Go into a Carrefour/Tesco in PL or CZ and there are several entire fridges full of JUST meats/cheeses, including many regional specialities, with extra fridges for everything you'd find crammed into one fridge here in the uk.

Whereas a UK hypermarket has a few boxes of bloody Peperami and a few packs of processed cheese slices, and miles of shelves full of crisps and junk food instead.

You begin to overly imitate the natives

You think many foreign foods are actually Polish. Like goulash (gulasz), bogracz and other goodies. I've just eaten Hungarian goulash soup from Hungary as my fiancee has just returned from there. Super!

"ryba po grecku", lol :)


Super with a hard "r", on the end, I expect ;) haha

All my u's haven't become like oo yet :)