News / Poland Parliamentary elections 2015 [1060]


It's about 20 years too late to get that upset at the post communists (especially since they weren't especially worse at governing thatn their opponents).

News / Poland Parliamentary elections 2015 [1060]



What can I say? I was wrong.

News / Poland Parliamentary elections 2015 [1060]


Deal!

(I fixed your typo because I'm sure you're far too mature to use second grader insults, you're welcome).

Travel / Getting from Wrocław to Lubin [17]


IME a lot of younger (and a fair amount of older) Polish people travel that way with no real planning ahead (especially between places they know well). It drives me craaaazy.

News / Poland Parliamentary elections 2015 [1060]


Well you still had Rokita then, he wasn't pushed out till later. I would hope that PO wouldn't have tried to form a coalition with Lepper and Giertych in the first place. But I'm not a positive supporter of PO (just a passive negative one, they're very slightly better than PiS partly because they're more interested in the future than in trying to recreate a fantasy skansen Poland that has never existed.

The problem is that in general Polish people are terrible at working in partnerships (this goes beyond politics though it's very apparent in the political scene). The natural Polish way of working is in a hierarchy with roles that are clearly defined and the current election system doesn't really provide that.

News / Poland Parliamentary elections 2015 [1060]


A lot depends on the weather that weekend. One of the reasons PiS won the first time was that the elections were on an unseasonably warm weekend and those who could get out of the cities were in no hurry to get back and vote. If it's a relative warm weekend those with more options won't necessarily vote.

PiS have proven themselves to be unreliable partners (Kaczynski loves negotiating backroom deals but doesn't really want to follow through on any of them).

No other party will have any particular motivation to join in temporary coalitions with them without anything in return.

Travel / Getting from Wrocław to Lubin [17]

Presumably your boyfriend is from Lubin (why would anyone go there otherwise?) and either takes a catch as catch can approach to getting to Wrocław and back (that's not that unusual here) or is just not very keen to get there (understandable*).

Anyhoo, get a list of stops for Wrocław and Lubin here and make him choose one for each town:

polbus.pl/rozklad-jazdy

And search away. (nb there's a notice that the buses from the main station are now stopping in a different place, see here for details)

wroclaw.pl/tymczasowy-dworzec-pks-wroclaw-od-8-kwietnia-mapa

*I once spent the Christmas holidays there at the family of a friend, it was very clean for a Polish town at that time but that was about all it had going for it

News / Polish people's criticism of European Union [104]


Bavaria's already tried and been told to stuff it. The German Federal Government clearly doesn't care about anything other than its own mandates and the likelihood of it agreeing to Poland telling it to control its own border is.... very small.

News / Polish people's criticism of European Union [104]


Then how will PiS keep the refugees in Poland? What if Germany decides to punish countries that can't keep the refugees in the countries they're assigned to?

Don't say that can't happen, before the summer it seemed that Germany making unilateral decisions about border enforcement could never happen. It's clearly time that Poland took a worst case scenario attitude towards German intentions because that's what they've been getting.

News / Polish people's criticism of European Union [104]


Germany created the crisis with no consultation with any other country.


Whis is why it opened its labor markets to Poles.... oh wait! IT CLOSED THEM FOR SEVEN YEARS! And it firmly rejected any possibility of opening up sooner than it was forced to. That's worth remembering.

Again, assume 10,000 "refugees" are sent to Poland. How many will be left after a month? How do you propose to keep them in Poland? How do you propose to stop them from going to Germany and pretending to be a new arrival by respelling their name a little?

News / Polish people's criticism of European Union [104]


Well again (for the nth time) If they're sent to Poland, how are they going to be _kept_ in Poland? Short of barbed wire and border patrols I don't see that happening. Or maybe Merkel's just looking for face saving publicity? Why should any Polish government help her out of her mistakes (especially given Germany's hostile policy towards Poles after 2004?)

News / Polish people's criticism of European Union [104]


Merkel's Folly stumps even the sharpest minds.

Why the rest of Europe should rush in with support for a decision that was make with no input whatsoever from them is also not clear.

Latest crazy idea.... Surely none of the 'refugees' want to come to Poland but that might make Poland more attractive for .... Germans

I could totally see Germans who are fed up with the Multidiversity agenda thinking that countries further east with a more traditional European lifestyle (like the Visegrad countries including Poland) to be a viable alternative.

I'm not talking big numbers, but Germans who actually spend time in Poland (instead seem to mostly find it pretty comfortable.

News / Polish people's criticism of European Union [104]


No. There's no reason Poland should accept thousands of people who are prone to regard most Polish traditions as immoral. How do you assimilate (or integrate) people who despise your food and social practices and deepest ideals? Crazy people think that can be done, but sane people don't.

News / Polish people's criticism of European Union [104]


Once family reunification kicks in it'll be more like 5 million at a minimum. This is not sustainable by any possible human calculation. And yet Western European leaders, Merkel in the forefront are doubling down on the "we don't care who you are, just come!" policy.

This is going to create a huuuuuuge amount of instability in a country next to Poland and should concern people a lot more than it does. In a few years Poland will be faced with a unique(?) situation. A relatively calm eastern border and a wildly unstable western one. Is anyone preparing for the possiblity of needing to close the western border to keep the unrest from spilling over?

News / Poland Parliamentary elections 2015 [1060]


Your inability to recognize the basic humanity of your political opponents is really worrying. I don't agree with much of anything Kaczyński and most other PiS politicans have ever said and I think a second PiS government would be awful for the people actually living in Poland. But I don't feel the need to use childish names to ridicule them.

Poland will never progress until political disagreements can rise above the name calling stage. US politics have largely degenerated into primitive name calling but there's no reason for Poland to follow in that unfortunate path.

Life / Why are Polish people such hypocrites about immigration? [36]


Many misconceptions. The most important

Most of the ongoing migrant tide to Europe are not fleeing war. They're fleeing massive social dysfunction and/or looking for a life funded by German taxpayers.

None of the migrants arriving want to go to Poland. Find "a few thousand" of these who want to come to Poland and I'll buy you a car. Poland has a very minimal social safety net and finding employment is very difficult for anyone without very high levels of fluency in the local language. The migrants want to go to Germany and Sweden (though Finnland is apparently becoming popular now with Iraqis as it doesn't have so many.... Iraqis (go figure).

NB a few Christian Syrian families were settled in Poland recently (at no small expense) and the majority left within a few weeks for Germany.

Genealogy / Is Spojanka a Serbian or Croatian first or last name? [5]


Yes, Serbo-Croatian was a major European language while Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin are small unimportant languages.

Work / Companies and pay for a Native English Teacher in Warsaw? [46]


And if she can manage to learn Polish to a reasonable degree (not needing everything translated for her) and has an open mind in learning how the system works she'll do fine.

Law / PESEL and Zameldowanie czasowe (temporary residence card) are no longer necessary in Poland? [8]


I've always found Polish bureaucracy to be pretty simple and very easy to deal with. Not problem free of course (it is bureacracy after all) but overall easier than American bureaucracy.

Always be polite. Don't smile too much but remember to always say hello to people before you tell them what you need and always thank them afterward even if it hasn't gone as you wanted. Apologize for anything you've done wrong and ask for help. Whenever possible use inclusive language "How can we solve this problem?" and be a little self-effacing (but don't grovel).

It sounds simple when you see it in black and white but you'd be surprised at how many people don't do these things (which in sum can make a big difference).

Work / Companies and pay for a Native English Teacher in Warsaw? [46]


Somebody's been reading Captain Capitalism..... (I do too sometimes).

Work / Companies and pay for a Native English Teacher in Warsaw? [46]


Negative information does not have to be delivered with a punch to the gut and a bunch of sidewalk psychoanalysis.

Work / Companies and pay for a Native English Teacher in Warsaw? [46]


Similarly there's no need to pour black doom and despair over everything. He must be a ton of laughs in real life.

History / Stalin's Holocaust Against Jews And Poles As "Self Defense" [36]


That's just crazy talk!

Anyway, there's lots of evidence that most Russians say they're Christians they're talking about .... I don't know what they're talking about but they're not talking about following the many and complex rules of the Russian Orthodox Church at any rate.

Everybody, stick to the topic please

History / Stalin's Holocaust Against Jews And Poles As "Self Defense" [36]


What else is there to believe in?

History / Stalin's Holocaust Against Jews And Poles As "Self Defense" [36]


Computer says no.....

pewforum.org/2014/02/10/russians-return-to-religion-but-not-to-church/

The skinny: There's been a rise of self-proclaimed believers but less than 20% attend church services at least once a month....

In other words, most Russians claiming to be devout are paying lip service to an organization they don't actually support (in terms of getting their butts into church for services).

Food / Where can i find turnips (rzepa) in Poznan? [8]


I'd heard of the bad WWIII poverty conotations but not the concentration camp ones. To further banish the vegetable they created a myth that it's hard to digest (this, from people who combine vodka and boiled potatoes).

The mother of a very good friend won't eat rabbit for the same reason, it reminds her too much of WWII or post WWII poverty when it was almost the only meat available....

History / Stalin's Holocaust Against Jews And Poles As "Self Defense" [36]


A lot of Russian behavior can be explained by the perennial lack of property rights (in the western sense).

"Money quote in the link above: "The Russians' failure to accept the Roman concept of private property has compelled them to suffer the coercive powers of the state so that at the very least a civil order, if not a civil society, might be established and sustained.

The hackneyed idea that Russians have some special longing for tyranny is a pernicious myth. Rather, they share the common human need for predictable event undergirded by civil and state institutions and their difficult history is the result of their struggle to achieve both in the absence of private property."

History / Stalin's Holocaust Against Jews And Poles As "Self Defense" [36]


It certainly was. But Soviet behavior before and afterwards cannot help but color how non-Russians perceive them (and Russians cannot or will not accept that).


Cannot vouch for the accuracy of all of it (naturally) but this is really fascinating.... (by the person that predicted the 1998 collapse of the Russian bond market a year in advance)

thebirdman.org/Index/Others/Others-Doc-Economics&Finance/+Doc-Economics&Finance-GovernmentInfluence&Meddling/BankstersInRussiaAndGlobalEconomy.htm

History / Stalin's Holocaust Against Jews And Poles As "Self Defense" [36]


Well the Soviet propaganda never stopped. Generations of Russians have imbibed the idea that defeating Germany in WWII was the single greatest accomplishment of any country in the 20th century and the rest of the world (at least Europe) needs to worship Russia in perpetuity. If anyone doesn't worship Russia it's because they're neo-nazis (or just plain nazis).

And Stalin is being rehabilitated in Putin's Russia (as is the USSR in general - again, most Russians didn't mind anything bad that happened in the USSR* and prefer it to what came afterward).

*Russians are oddly passive about domestic leaders imprisoning and killing other Russians

News / Poland Parliamentary elections 2015 [1060]

well PiS support seems to wax and wane based on how much he's the public face of the party. And his charisma is all negative - people like him because he hates the same people they do. There's not much positive or optimistic there....