What are your 10 fave things about Poland? And 10 least favourite?

There's lots in Poland to hate, but quite a lot to like. I'm still trying to figure out if my glass is half full or half empty.

Here's a quick list, conjured up in a few minutes:

On the plus side there's:
(1) Polish girls, surely among the world's most attractive.
(2) Wild Polish countryside & beaches, very little explored and often empty out of season.
(3) Cheap quality beer - boy the beer here is good!
(4) Cheap accommodation and housing.
(5) Cheap local travel. Local trams/buses come in at about 50p/$1 a ride.
(6) The Polish "welcome". My house is your house, all I have is yours... Poles can really be very generous & friendly hosts.

On the minus side there's:
(1) Polish housing estates, endless rows of soul-destroying Stalinist blocks. My god after travelling through Ursynow in Warsaw I want to hang myself, and Ursynow is considered a 'good area'. And they're still building more of these hideous social disaster areas!

(2) The lumpen proletariat - or great unwashed. You thought the UK had social inequalities? Just come to Poland.
(3) The Polish countryside - full of cretinous, toothless peasants who've never been more than 20km from their village; Polska "Wies" or Poland "B" is completely uninhabitable except on vacation.

(4) Polish drunks. Need I clarify?
(5) Polish bureaucracy; I think needs no explanation for anyone who's been here more than a month.
(6) Old Polish grannys - a few are sweet, especially if they are your relatives, but most are hardened bitches who will kick you in the balls before you can smile at them. And in winter they all wear identical fake-mohair berets. Nice...

(7) Polish TV - completely unwatchable, because of the idiot dubbing by a 'lektor', or swarthy male who voices over even the most intimate conversations. And very little original quality Polish programming, mostly it's just glossy American imports, variety & games shows and puke-inducing, humourless adverts.

(8) The Polish church, which dominates far too much here. Even tells everyone how to vote! Just my personal belief, but then I attended a church-run boarding school, so I'm perhaps slighlty biased.

(9) Urban planning here is utterly non-existent. The peripheries of big towns like Warsaw are among the most ugly places on Earth. I've only been to a few places that are worse - in Cambodia and the Philippines. OK, I'll rephrase that, "among the ugliest towns in Europe".

(10) Polish girls - once you get to know them they're all the same, all clones! (well 95% percent of them). Very few Polish women are 'characters' or people with creativity or originality. And lets not get me talking about Polish men, who are even worse...

(11) Polish roads.
(12) Polish drivers.

Urrmm. OK, so my cons outnumber my pros, 2 to 1. I've really laid the gauntlet down. Can anyone give me some more positive things about Polska? I'd really like to be more optimistic about this place!

Over to you.....

And don't forget the paid toilets...
And oh, the toilet sand-paper!!!

Some other good sides:
- a lot of cheap entertainment, good nightclubs, good rock music bands
- cheap food :) (comparing to other countries)
- great historical heritage!
- a lot of forests, very often just outside city
- polish countryside is beautiful!!!

hehe and personally I like to collect mushrooms, but I guess it might seem strange to some of you :P

YES!!! Mushrooms!!! I love mushrooms!!!
Here in the US they hardly ever pick mushrooms, and the ones that do pick them, had a grandmother who picked them. Otherwise people here are mushroom-illeterate.

Really i got mushroom picking every year in Canada...

I picked some shrooms once then I started seeing colors and trails and began laughing
and woke up naked under a picnic table.:)

HAhahahahaha.........Halucinating mushrooms.
That explains everything.

Krysia, the big mushrooms we have are way up north, we used to go lookin for them
but I dont get to go anywhere much nowadays.

if there is a muchroom growing in my neighborhood, ten times out of ten, its unedible!
that is when you break out the bb gun and try to anialate it so it dont return on your
lawn! lol

Polish girls - once you get to know them they're all the same, all clones! (well 95% percent of them). Very few Polish women are 'characters' or people with creativity or originality. And lets not get me talking about Polish men, who are even worse...

I completely don't agree - most british girls i met talk about clothes, money , men and drinking, drinking.....going out..... get p...up sooo boring and shallow . You struggle to have decent conversation with them. Where is this creativity?????

Now where to start, hmmm...


Sorry for this inconvenience, but I hope you understand that we had a war going on here some time ago, in result of which 80% of Warsaw disappeared from the face of the earth. If we knew that 62 years after the Warsaw Uprising you will be planning to accommodate here I'm sure we would have postponed are even changed our plans, so that Warsaw would seem more pleasant for your eye, but since we can not change the history I advise you to send your complaint’s to Hitler’s descendent. I've heard recently, that there's one still living in...you won't believe it...ISRAEL. :)


We could put these three points in one position, now could we Mr. Arghhhh? :) I'm sure that what you actually was trying to say was that you don't like drunkards, are am I wrong? :)


Actually, for most of inhabitants of Poland, it' being watchable only because of that idiotic "lektor". Not everybody had this advantage to grow up in the UK like you did Mr. Arghhhh, thus the basic lack of knowledge of the English language. But if it is such a big deal for you, you can always complain to the Russians, why didn't they let people from my country learn the language of the “rotten west”. Unfortunately, I doubt that you will achieve anything in that matter. Russia didn't change that much, but I suppose you can always try. :)


Finally, I can agree with you. You are being biased. :)


Instead of going to a Club and picking up half naked promiscuous dancing girls I advise you to go to a students pub. You should find intelligent women there. If that doesn't help, then maybe library would be the right place for your “hunt”? :)

Haven’t thought much about the urban planning of Warsaw’s peripheries lately, so I guess I can't rise my voice on this subject.

I do agree that polish bureaucracy and roads can make people furious. As for the drivers, they are mostly ok, but yeah, there are far more loonies here than in England.

As for the babcias, there is some truth in what you are saying. I especially love the ones called "seat predators" that occur on a large scale on the boards of buses and trams. :) But hey, you just have to admire their stamina and stubbornness in their fight for free seats. :)


Take a careful look what i_love_detroit wrote, maybe you will pick something interesting for yourself.(although I think that his last two points could be one, but maybe I'm just being picky :) )

Over to you... :)

I didn't say English girls were any better. Especially not 'common-or-garden' English girls. But if you date the sort that are educated, then they're not too bad. Having said that I prefer French, or German, Scandinavian, Italian, Dutch, etc...


No. Three completely separate points.

The lumpen proletariat = blokersi, inhabitants of the Stalinist blocks which you seem to love so much. They are a monkey-like underclass of semi-morons, drones, the 'Epsilons' of Huxley's novel Brave New World. I do realize there was a war, but that was over 60 years ago. And they are still building these hideous estates... perhaps the lumpen don't know there is any other way to live, and the town-planners who are largely lumpen themselves, don't know any better either.

Polska wies - The countryside itself is fine, it's where the people live - a devastated landscape of half-built, unpainted concrete-block houses, tasteless architecture, advertising hoardings and ignorant peasants. The worst examples are in a band 100 km all around Warsaw. (To some extent this ties in with my point on the lack of suburban planning). There's a general lack of 'culture' in the Polish countryside, no perspectives for people. Just not the sort of place any one would want to live, quite the opposite of the English countryside, for example, where nearly all English people would prefer to live.

Polish drinking is a separate issue entirely.


Yes, three good new points.
(Forests & countryside I'd say are one, and I've got that already.)

Mushrooms may be number 4. But there's no shortage of mushrooms in England, so that's not something unique to Poland. But then beautiful countryside also exists in England,... so maybe we should count Polish mushrooms.

So, OK, that's four new points.

Most countries have nice countrysides, poland is nice, us is nice, ireland is nice, nz is nice, oz is nice...take your pick..... Please remember the polish country side is being polluted by overseas industries, local people who dump there rubbish etc...

No dude. It's because a lot of Poles can't read or can't afford glasses. More civilized countries use subtitles. They are much less obtrusive. If you had subtitles here everyone would speak English better, because they hear it all the time - just look at Scandinavia!

Even so, the hated Polish Lektor is perhaps not so bad as the dubbing common in say Germany. Can you imagine Star Trek with Spock dubbed into German - Jawohl Herr Kapitan! At least the Lektor allows you to hear the rhythm of the original language. But to me it's still unbearable, so I don't have a TV in Poland.

Arrrgghhh!!!! How could I forget.

Polish pavements! What a complete disaster. For some reason Poles just do not know how to make pavements. Even the new ones fall apart in a few years because they are so badly made. Is it really so difficult to lay a pavement? What is it with this country, 16 years after the fall of communism and you still haven't figure it out....

Pavement = Sidewalk, for our American friends.

when i have a free hour, i will write my list. but its kinda already splattered all over this forum in bits.

what are you talking about op...?

the polish women i have met and had the pleasure of dating have been some of the most creative, imaginative and original women from all the countries i have lived in

it was not me it were Arrghh words.

Arrgghh!!

you make me smile what about UK....
little points like ....
-carpets in the bathrooms?????? awful but in genreal carpets everywhere

English drunk? they don exist AT ALL

If you are so unimpressed by Polish country or lumploretariat maybe you should visit few council estates in UK or some towns in Wales where coalmines are closed where you can buy house for 30K ( but no bank gives you mortgage credit) but who would like to live there?

mushrooms ? Where can you pick them wild in UK? nowhere. Maybe like fish you catch and put back in the water.:) evdrything sterile, artifical...dead for me.

Polish TV - completely unwatchable it is for you but as you said it is "polish tv"

You can definately pick mushrooms in the UK, especially in Wiltshire.....:)

wild?

Yes Iwona without the wrapping on..

You claim to have completed higher education, traveled to over 50 countries all over the world but still you know so little about the history of the country you are currently living in. Let me enlighten you on this subject then.

First of all, how can you even compare UK to Poland? Both of this countries received huge damage during the WWII ( I don't want to go into details and comparing), but the difference between their situation was that Poland landed on the wrong side of the iron curtain, and while GB, France and even bloody West Germany were receiving money from US of A in order to rebuild their economy Poland didn’t received any of it. Russians were focusing on draining my country rather than helping it to stand on it’s feet. All those commie block’s and the “unpainted concrete-block houses” that you really seem to despise weren’t created to be pleasant for the eye, but their one and most important function was to be a living space. A shelter that protects from rain and cold for hundred thousand of people than were coming home from the war, from concentration camps, form Germanys labor factories, from the parts of Poland that after WWII weren’t Poland any more. So excuse the builders of those ugly commie blocks that they weren’t thinking about the looks of those buildings. Forgive them that Ursynów doesn’t look anything like Versailles, and that Poland’s villages don’t resemble those in the UK. :)

hi,hi......:)

You know what I mean, not planted ones when you pick some of them and pay farmer for it but just competely wild.

So excuse the builders of those ugly commie blocks that they weren’t thinking about the looks of those buildings. Forgive them that Ursynów doesn’t look anything like Versailles, and that Poland’s villages don’t resemble those in the UK.

Matyjasz English people don't like flats in general just houses with little gardens.

But I think that in Poland everything is changing - In Krakow there are more and more smart flats no different to these in UK.

Again in Uk houses are nice in nice areas in dodgy ones they are awful.

British architecture and design in the 60's was hideous, awful apartment blocks. Doesn't really matter what country in the world you go to no matter how affluent, it will have run down areas and guetto's. It's just a fact of life..

So in your opinion I should stop appreciating Polish countryside because people in other country have also beautiful ones? :)

Highrise flats.....hmmmmm lovely....the aroma of piss in the lifts!!!!


damn good point....eeeeewwwww...nasty...but I must addmit many are turning to tiles..about time too

Also if Arrrrhhh took his time to visit the countryside in the deepest darkest points of wales he would see plenty of strange country folkes....

Yes but the UK stopped building those architectural monstrosities in the 1970s. In Poland they don't seem to even realize that these blocks are monstrosities and are still building soul-destroying 15-story blocks all over the place...

In Poland the run-down areas and ghettos extend over 90% of all the urban area. True, it's mostly the result of WWII, followed by 60 years of neglect under communism, but that doesn't make living here any more pleasant for a foreigner. (All you blockersi are used to it, you were born into it, you hardly even notice that you're all living in a barren wasteland of concrete. Good luck to you all if you want to live in those blocks, you're welcome to them).

Let's just face it, over 90% most of Poland's towns and especially the villages are drop-dead ugly. Plain and simple fact.


My point exactly. You can sample the fragrant delights of this in "beautiful" concrete housing estates in almost every single Polish town. At least the new 15 story blocks don't stink so much.

Pissing in Poland. Hahahahaha!!!
If they didn't charge for using the tiolets, maybe they wouldn't piss so much all over!
I've seen guys in Poland go in the bushes or behind a building. I don't know what they do there....?
In the US, when you travel, there are rest stops, gas stations, restaurants, stores with free toilets.
In Poland there are the woods!!!!! Often you see pieces of sand-paper toilet paper floating around in the woods and when you go mushroom picking, you have to watch what you're stepping on!!!

Good one Krysia.. :D I know people who still piss in the halls of buildings (since they cannot find a toilet).

I would add this to the least favourite: When you come from abroad to Poland people think you MUST be rich and have a lot of money to spend :).

Yeah, and when they go to the US, they are surprised they have to work for a living. They thought dollars grow on trees. They soon find out the truth and many don't like it and go back.

OK guys. Enough of these negative vibes.

Let's fire up them brains cells and think of some good things about Poland!

:)I've been caught standing on some brown smelly matter, I can relate to seeing used toilet paper scattered around the forests (thats probally why mushrooms taste so nice in poland) and the sight of naked bums poping up and down as you aproach.


Lets start the ball rolling..

!.. The faith of the polish people and role of the Catholic Church.. Poland has a long proud history, its people over long generations have been faithful to the church and have maintained Christian values...(the old generation pole is second to none)

As poles move away from catholic values the poorer the country is becoming.

2. Polish folk law and music....excellent

3. Taste of fruit, vegetable, milk products, berries, and mushrooms..