UK, Ireland / City management - differences between Poland and UK [20]


AFAIK, then the management of the block (housing association or cooperative) makes this declaration and the whole block either segregates the garbage or not. But I live in a detached house, so I am not sure about it.


There is much difference here between the small towns and big cities. In the cities it's a bit like the central politics of the country. The authorities are often "remote" and out of the reach for a dweller. In small towns it's very different. The contact between the dwellers and the mayor as well as the town council is much better. It's also seen in the elections, when in big cities virtually all the candidates for the city council and for the mayor are party members, while in small towns many of them are not party members, and even if so, they are just people, you may often even know personally. In big cities the local elections are like the elections for the parliament. You vote, in fact, for a party. In small towns, you vote for a person.

Yet another thing are rular areas. The villages are grouped in municipalities (called in Polish gmina). Sometimes they create a single municipality with a local town, sometimes the town is a separate municipality from the surrounding villages. And it works more or less like in small towns, although the area which is govenred by a single mayor and council is much bigger. Each village has also its representative called sołtys who is supposed to intermediate between the dwellers and the municipality authorities.

Life / British sky satellite TV in Poland [87]

Look at the post just before you. For Sky, a 1 m dish should be enough. Much a bigger one is needed if you want to receive the free-to-air channels from the UK.

UK, Ireland / City management - differences between Poland and UK [20]


From July 2013, each municipality is obliged to provide the waste collection to everyone. There is a special tax, of two different values depending on whether the household declare to segregate the waste or not, whose value depends on the municipality, but it's generally about 20 PLN (in big cities it's higher, but the waste is collected more frequently, in rural areas it's often for example once a month, in cities - once a week).

In my town it's done so that the tax is 8 PLN for a month for a person if the waste is segregated (into two fractions - waste which can be recycled and those which cannot) and 13 PLN if it's not segregated. The waste which can be recycled is collected every month, the waste which cannot (or all the waste if someone doesn't want to segregate it and pays the higher tax) - every two weeks. Apart from multi-family houses, from which the recyclable waste is taken every two weeks and non-recyclable every week, but then it's the problem of those who manage the house, not the dwellers.

In the past it was so that everybody had to organize the trash collection on their own. It was possible to sign a contract either with a private company, or with the city to receive the waste with a constant frequency, but it was also possible to have no contract and call them when you have full bins. The problem was that many people either burned the waste in stoves for heating in winter, which resulted in air pollution (this is probably the main reason of Cracow's smog), or threw it out into forests, roadside ditches etc. Unfortunately, there are still some stubborn and stupid people who still do it...

Another issue is collection of sewage from places where there is no sewage system. In this case nothing was changed and it's still like it was with the waste previously. Still many houses have these vessels for sewage with leakages so that there is no need to collect the content so often or they are pumping the sewage to roadside pitches, rivers, or even to unused wells.

Language / Trying to Figure Out a Polish Logo (STO...?) [15]

It's weird to find in Poland a shirt with Polish words on it, English words are normal :)

Travel / Warsaw to Prague Trains [21]

Another problem is that on the IC webpage it's impossible to buy one ticket for a connection with changing trains (which should be possible from a half a year according to their promises). Or if you want to take a bike with you. Not to mention the problems when you want to return such an online ticket or change its date.

Interestingly, in the online shop of another Polish train operator, running mostly local trains - Przewozy Regionalne - this is no problem from a few years, although initially, buying a ticket with train changes was also impossible.

Welcome to Poland, the land of absurds :) These are public companies, so they exist and will exist irrespective of whether they bring money or not.

Language / Przypadki (Polish language cases) [59]

Not exactly. I don't have much knowledge considering the grammar terminology, especially the grammar of Polish in English, but I assume that you mean for example jeść as an imperfective form and zjeść as a perfective form (in Polish - aspekt niedokonany and aspekt dokonany).

If so, then I would say that they rather correspond with the English continuous tenses.

For example you wouldn't rather translate:

Zjadłem obiad o 15:00.

as:

I have had dinner at 15:00.

but rather as:

I ate dinner at 15:00.

Jadłem obiad o 15:00.

would translate as:

I was having dinner at 15:00.

But:

Zjadłem już obiad.

is in English (I think so):

I have already had dinner.

From what I was taught while learning English, you use Present Perfect in English when you want to say that something has happened and not when it happened. When you want to say when something happened, you use Present Simple. Unless you want to say that something has been happening since some moment and it is still happening. Then you use Present Perfect Continuous or Present Perfect (especially in case of the verbs that aren't generally used in the continuous form, like love, have meaning possess, feel meaning have a feeling etc.).

In Polish all this isn't distinguished at all.

But let's look at German. They don't have anything resembling the continuous tense at all (unlike Polish), maybe except the passive form, in case of which they use the "werden" verb very often (the so called Vorgangspassiv - "process passive").

For:

The door is being painted.

they say:

Die Tür wird gemalt.

which literally means:

The door becomes painted.

And they theoretically have their equivalents of Past Simple (Imperfekt/Präteritum) and Present Perfect (called just Perfekt), but... they use them interchangeably (their Past Simple is used more in writing and their Present Perfect more in speaking) and mean exactly the same. I have once watched the news on the website of the German TV with subtitles, and the Perfekt in speaking was replaced with Imperfect in the subtitles :)

UK, Ireland / Pronunciation help (Pawel) for sensitive social work issue [12]


Definitely as Danoota and not as Danoot. The "a" should be clearly heard and it shouldn't sound like "a" in English (being for Poles in fact something between "a" and "e"), but rather like "a" in most other European languages. Like "ah!" or like "o" in "mother".The first "a" in the word (the second letter, after "D") too.

Language / Przypadki (Polish language cases) [59]


Maybe it's possible to classify it in different ways, but from what I have learnt on the Polish classes in the primary school (I am a native Polish speaker) - in both situations it's genitive (biernik).

We used, of course, the Polish cases without any problems not knowing that they exist, as we had learnt them naturally, but in primary school we had to learn them, just like different other grammar topics. And we had to learn by heard a table of cases with typical questions they answer to and with single examples of typical verbs they go with. So:

1. Mianownik - kto? co? jest
2. Dopełniacz - kogo? czego? nie ma
3. Celownik - komu? czemu? przyglądam się
4. Biernik - kogo? co? widzę
5. Narzędnik - (z) kim? (z) czym? idę
6. Miejscownik - o kim? o czym? mówię
7. Wołacz - O! (there is no typical verb and has no typical question, so here goes an exclamation instead of a question)
From my grandmother I know also, that in the past the numeration of the cases was different - the wołacz was after biernik. I don't know why they moved it to the end. Maybe because it's currently really rarely used (it's usually replaced with mianownik) and it's quite different from the other cases.

For "living" objects biernik has a different question than from "static" ones. Of course, these questions don't reflect the situation very accurately, it's a simplification. Let's look even at the error from this thread, with the dog. The question words like kto?, kogo?, komu? refer only to people. If you ask about animals, you usually use co?, czego?, czemu? (although it's still rather awkward and I would try to rephrase the whole sentence rather than use these words with respect to animals, it sounds like you were referring to an animal as to a thing). But for animals biernik looks exaclty like dopełniacz, not like mianownik.

This is still not so difficult if you realize that for some nouns biernik look like mianownik or like dopełniacz depending on the situation :)

In an e-mail to a friend you may write: "Tydzień temu wysłałem do ciebie maila...". But in an official one, you would rather write "Tydzień temu wysłałem do Pana mail...". Both of them mean: "A week ago, I sent to you an e-mail...".

By the way, we observe here an interesting phenomenon concerning borrowing words from other languages. In English, as all we know, the word "mail" refers to the traditional post. The one that goes through the Internet is "e-mail", from "electronic mail". After e-mail as a means of communication came to Poland, the Polish term for an electronic letter, after borrowing it from English, quickly got shortened from "e-mail" to "mail". Even without a change of spelling. In Polish the word "mail" hadn't existed before, so now it refers only to the electronic mail. Such changes of meaning often happen while borrowing words, but we can see here how this process looks like :)

And again by the way, anything like Past Perfect tense doesn't exist in Polish. There exist reminders of such a construction that existed in Polish in the past (200-300 years ago and before) - the "normal" past form of the "defective" verb "powinien", whose present form behaves like the past forms of "normal" verbs, and it's why its past form is "powinien był". But this is not Past Perfect, it's just a construction, used now probably only with this one single verb. Nobody, absolutely nobody, uses this construction as the Past Perfect case, replacing the word "powinien" with "szedł", "robił", "widział" etc., as it was done in the past. Let's take a sentence form my previous paragraph:

In Polish the word "mail" hadn't existed before...

Its translation to Polish is:

W języku polskim słowo "mail" nie istniało wcześniej...

which could be translated to English equally well as:

In Polish the word "mail" haven't existed before...

maybe even as:

In Polish the word "mail" didn't exist before...

although I am not sure if the last one would be considered as correct English. Maybe in the US yes, but in the UK not? I have no idea. But if we cut off this "before"/"wcześniej" and leave the beginning of the sentence up to the word "existed"/"istniało", then all three will be for sure a correct translation of the Polish phrase.

A Polish beginner in English has here the same dillema, as you learning Polish cases. One Polish expression, which can be replaced by three different ones in English. But afer some time of learning English, I am comfortable with using them. As I have already said before, I think that this comes mostly with reading texts in the foreign language.

I have also written somewhere that I am currently learning German and I have problems with German cases. Even though they are much simpler than the Polish ones. Simpler, but they work in a bit different way, and the cases that go with different words and prepositions are often different than in Polish. Not to mention that you have to remember all these endings of two types of articles and after adjectives before which goes each type of article or no article.

And I am still wondering if all these what I am writing in English is a proper English :) For example the last sentence from the pervious paragraph:

Not to mention that you have to remember all these endings of two types of articles and after adjectives before which goes each type of article or no article.

Is this "goes" on a proper position? Maybe it should be at the end? Isn't the construction of this sentence, generally, "too Polish"?

Language / Przypadki (Polish language cases) [59]


The same is in most Slavic languages.

I think it's a matter of practice. If you often read often in a foreign language, then you "catch" the connections between words, you see that after A should go B and not anything else, because anything else would look very strange. This applies also to the grammar.

Life / Looking for my old car in Poland (is it registered?) [16]

Actually, there exists such a service://historiapojazdu.gov.pl/ but apart from the VIN, to access it you need to know the current registraton number and the date of the first registration (in Poland).

The exception is when your car is a bus, then you can get some data with the registration number only, using this webpage://bezpiecznyautobus.gov.pl/

But you don't know the registration number, so it's still not enough.

And, as I've said, it CANNOT have been registered in Poland if it's an RHD. Unless the owner modified it and moved the steering wheel to the left.

I am not sure, though, if it's also impossible with vintage cars.

And this services still doesn't show the car owner. It's too "sensitive" data to make it accessible on the Internet.

Study / Quality issues in Politechnika Wroclawska. Planning for Politechnika Warszawska. Suggestions. [48]

The same way as you...

News / PKP buys Alstrom Pendolino trains for € 665 million [60]


Polish people are crazy about cars, like the western Europeans and the Americans where in the second half of the previous century. A car is in Poland still somethig that determines the social status. It's because cars became avaliable for almost everyone in Poland not earlier than in the 90's, so this "car boom" still lasts here.

Giving more money for the railway and less money for the roads would be, therefore, not popular. So the politicians don't see an reason why they should invest much in the railway.

Fortunately it's starting to change, and one of examples is this purchase of Pendolino trains, and now this purchase of modern (even though slower) trains from Pesa and Stadler. Or the renovation of tracks from Warsaw to Gdańsk as a continuation of the CMK (which was built in the 70's, when Edward Gierek was the head of the country - it was the time when it was invested at most during the communist times). Also it's just now, when the main long-distance train operator really started to advertise itself in the media, pointing out that trains are often better than cars.

Study / Quality issues in Politechnika Wroclawska. Planning for Politechnika Warszawska. Suggestions. [48]


I would be happy. For me it's much easier to remember the lecture when the teacher explains everything on the blackboard/whiteboard than when he quickly goes through slides.

I study Telecommunications and Computer Science in Politechnika £ódzka. Of course, in English. We have many common classes with Computer Science. And, as for me, the quality of education is quite low (and the problem is often a wrong order of courses, for example we had a course in a more advanced branch of electronics before we had a course in basics of electronics, so the first one was difficult to understand), but definitely not so low as you describe Wrocław. This is a BSc programme though, but I think that the quality of the MSc one doesn't differ much.

You may consider £ódź - the quality of education isn't high here, but it's also not that low. For example - most of the teachers don't have problems with speaking in English, even though the level of English of some teachers is very high, in case of some other teachers - your ears hurt when you listen to their English. We had also one teacher, a young women conducting tutorials in Physics for a half of a semester, who couldn't even differentiate the singular and the plural form, but she was an exception. And all the courses in English are assigned to a special university unit, which has its own building and you may meet many foreign students there.

But if you are able to move to the US or to any other western-European country - I think it would be a better choice. I also think that the quality in Warsaw might be higher than in Wrocław and in £ódź, but I have no experience in it and I know nobody studying in the Politechnika Warszawska. I know a person who moved to the Computer Science programme in Polish in Uniwersytet Warszawski, and he said that the quality is there much higher. But I know nothing about the programmes in English and about Politechnika Warszawska. The universities called "politechnika" are generally more recognized in Poland than those called "uniwersytet", but it may have nothing in common with the quality, and this rule rather doesn't work abroad. No Polish university is recognized much there.

Life / Canadian Moving to Poznan, Poland - what to bring over, areas to avoid, school for a child. [54]


PAL? PAL is no longer used in Poland, since 2013 (except for the analog packets of cable TV and a few small local TV stations, the last of which switched to DVB-T this year). A TV set must support DVB-T with MPEG-4 compression and HDTV signal to receive TV in Poland.

Travel / How to travel to Rzeszow - flight is expensive, is it worth to fly to Warsaw first and then get there by road? [9]

Intercity? Did you mean EIC (Express Intercity)? Intercity is currently the same as TLK, but with modern carriages nad, as far as I remember, guaranteed restaurant car. Even the prices are the same as in TLK.

In the company called PKP Intercity you have the following categories:
- EIP (Express Intercity Premium) - the most modern "Pendolino" trains, quite expensive (although for the budget of a foreigner it might be cheap) unless you buy the ticket a lot in advance

- EIC (Express Intercity) - the best ordinary trains (with a locomotive and carriages), in terms of comfort probably even better than EIP, the price comparable with EIP

- IC (Intercity) - ordinary trains of a level lower than EIC, but still based on modern vehicles, price the same as in case of TLK

- TLK (Twoje Linie Kolejowe - Your Railway Lines, initially the name was Tanie Linie Kolejowe - Cheap Railway Lines) - the cheapest trains of this company, usually with old-fashioned carriages, but still providing quite a lot of comfort

Each of them is divided into 2 classes. 1st class is more expensive, but also more comfortable. It has 3 seats in a row, while the 2nd class has 4 seats in a row, except for some modern carriages with compartments, where it has also 3 seats in a row. And there is usually much less passengers in the 1st class.

While buying a ticket you have a seat in the train automatically booked. If there is no more free seats, you are informed that you will probably have to stand.

The other train operator is Przewozy Regionalne. Their trains are:
- RE (RegioExpress) - standard similar to TLK
- IR (InterRegio) - either standard similar to TLK, or old-fashioned commuter train vehicles, sometimes even with plastic seats (it depends on the specific train), although these are long-distance trains

- Regio - local trains, often based on old-fashioned commuter train vehicles, although in some regions of the country many of them is renovated, or they use also modern commuter train vehicles, which belong to the local authorities

The local trains are sometimes also operated by other companies - like Koleje Mazowieckie, Arriva, Koleje Śląskie, Koleje Dolnośląskie, Koleje Wielkopolskie, £ódzka Kolej Aglomeracyjna or Koleje Małopolskie. I think I've mentioned all of them. They usually have much more modern vehicles than Przewozy Regionalne.

In Warsaw and the Tricity (Gdańsk, Sopot, Gdynia) there are also companies called SKM - they operate the inner-city trains and some of the local ones. Additionaly, in Warsaw, there is a line operated by a company called WKD. A part of their trains is modern, a part is old-fashioned. Especially, the SKM in the Tricity has many old-fashioned trains, while SKM in Warsaw has, as far as I know, only modern ones.

In case of Przewozy Regionalne and all these companies, there is usually the 2nd class only and you don't get a booked seat. If I remember it well, in RE you can book a seat if you want.

So the best would be to choose an EIP, EIC or (especially if you want to save money) an IC train, but if there is only a TLK that fits you, it won't be bad.

Life / TV commercial breaks in Poland - are 10-12 minutes normal? [4]

Well, the lobby of the TV stations on the government is quite strong. There are some regulations, AFAIK there is a limitation on the total time of commercials per hour. For some time there are also some limits on the advertisments of programs (like an advertisments of the evening film in the break of the film displayed in the morning) - from then the TV stations put some of these advertisments in short, let's say 2-minute, "programs", which aren't even mentioned in TV guides, but they are officially treated as programs, so on paper everything is OK.

Beer commercials are allowed to be displayed, AFAIK, after 8 p.m.

And Polsat is known for exceptionally long commercial breaks - although TVN (the main competitor) isn't better. It isn't so bad in the public TV (TVP), although it's still bad if you take into account that they get extra financing from a TV/radio tax (in the country known as "TV/radio subscription", but it's, at least in theory, obligatory if you have a TV or radio set).

Life / Looking for my old car in Poland (is it registered?) [16]

AFAIK, it's impossible to register an RHD car in Poland, so it seems that it's still registered in Germany. I think you should try to find the person you have sold the car to.

Travel / Lublin to Warsaw by bus question [4]

As far as I can see, this bus at 1:50 comes from Kołomyja in Ukraine, so it may be considerably delayed depending on the queue at the border crossing and the humour of the custom officers.

But if it comes on time, I recommend it rather than these mini-buses, whose drivers usually break any possible traffic regulations.

News / Presidential elections and debates 2015 Poland [472]

It isn't so low, as for Polish conditions.

Here are some statistics from the previous elections, of different type:
pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frekwencja_wyborcza

Presidential elections are, as you might guess, "wybory prezydenckie" :)

News / Presidential elections and debates 2015 Poland [472]


From what they have said on Polish TV in the elections programme, the error of the survey result is 2 p.p. The result is (53 ± 2)% for Duda. The exit polls must have been made at so many voting points that it is true.

In the recent local elections, a few months ago, the vote counting took much more than one night - because they were trying to do it using a computer system which was full of bugs and errors. At the end they did it manually, but it took definitely a few days.

Life / How to carry your groceries if you travel by tram in Poland? [12]

Do shopping more often in smaller quantities.

Study / Studying in University of Lodz as an Indian student? What's the city like - is it safe here? [56]

I know at least one example of a tenement house, where the "city landmark preserver" (a person responsible for preservation landmarks and other old builldings from the municipal office) disagreed to change the 19th-century windows. Unfortunately the owner doesn't have money for their renovation, so they are in poor condition. In winter they have to fill the hole between the window sash and window frame with cotton wool to protect the interior from cold.

Another example - a school, where there was a permission to change the front windows into wooden ones only (the back ones got a permission to be changed into plastic ones). Probably they weren't so valuable as the ones in the previous case.


There was one such case in £ódź not a long time ago. Although not in the centre, but in Radogoszcz. A villa in Zgierska street.

dzienniklodzki.pl/artykul/3659424,zburzenie-willi-langego-przy-zgierskiej-michal-l-zaczal-odbudowe-zniszczonego-zabytku-wideo,id,t.html

Up to now only one case, but I hope that it will change.

See that it's always possible to dismantle a satellite dish. This is not a problem. With demolishing an old building (or with "mysterious fires" after which a building has to be demolished to prevent it from collapsing) is much worse. Although such building can be rebuilt from scratch, it's no longer an old building.

An interesting and known example in £ódź is a tenement house which was bought some time ago by an electrical energy company, for offices. 58, Piotrkowska street. It was in a very poor condition, so while buying they promised to demolish it and build it again from scratch. They managed to demolish it, but then they got taken over by another energy company, which no longer needed this building. For a few years in front of the demolished house there were boards with pictures of how it is going to like after the rebuilding, but when the people began to see that nothing happens for such a long time, they replaced these boards with gray waves :)

A group of dwellers collected even money and bought a place on a bilboard next to the premises of this company in £ódź (not far away from this demolished building) to publically ask this company what happened with their promise.

Here you can see a picture how it looked originally:
piotrkowska58.pl

Here is how it looks now:
goo.gl/maps/G8GN4

The blue building behind is the current premises of the company.

Another problem which is more severe than satellite dishes is isolating such houses from heat with styrofoam, often hiding some architectural details.

Study / Studying in University of Lodz as an Indian student? What's the city like - is it safe here? [56]


This is not the worst issue. Satellite dishes on the old houses are problem, I think, in every Polish city.

The worst is that:
- the city centre is dwelled mostly by poor people, there is many social problems there - so who has money wants to live as far from the city centre as it's possible (fortunately the city authorities has recently started seeing this problem)

- the legal issues connected with the property of many tenement houses in the centre are unclear, this is why many of them is neglected and the authorities aren't able to do anything with this

- there are also such house owners, who only wait for the house to collapse and for themselves to be happy not to have to spend money on its maintenance; then they create a car park in the place of the collapsed house, which turns out to be quite a lucrative business

- most of the city dwellers don't like it

Study / Studying in University of Lodz as an Indian student? What's the city like - is it safe here? [56]

I didn't mean air quality (in £ódź it's quite well thanks to its grid of straight streets, which enables good ventilation of the downtown), but rather what the streets look like.

£ódź was neglegted for a very long time much more than other big cities in Poland. Look for example at the houses in the city centre. In "normal" cities, in their centres at both sides of the street there are continuous lines of houses. And only in £ódź there is so many holes, lacking houses in a street. And there is more and more of them, while more and more of the houses which are neglected are set on fire or collapse.

In terms of transport infrastrucutre - unfortunately the city authorities are still thinking like in the XX century, trying to do as much as it's possible for car drivers (like the recent idea of building an overpass in one of the major street intersection - which would only bring more cars into city centre - fortunately blocked by the dwellers) and neglecting the public transport (from year to year the frequency of trams and buses is getting lower and lower, so they are more and more crowed, although many people resign from them and choose cars, there is no heating in trams in winter and so on). On the other hand - they are going to build this train tunnel under the city centre, they are building this new main railway station, there is more and more facilities for cyclists (although they seem to be made rather in the way so that the cyclists will not interrupt drivers on the streets, not only on the main ones, but also in the centre, where the car traffic should be limited, like Narutowicza). For sure, £ódź is a city of contrasts. And, I'm afraid, it will yet long be.

Travel / New rule if you board a train without a ticket in Poland [24]

So it seems they are violating they own rules :)

In which train have you had such a situation?

Life / Little-known facts about Poland [45]


If you are having a bath, or shower, you would rather not want anybody watch you :)


If you mean the American one, they have written that the 3rd May constitution was the first in Europe, the second in the world (after just the American one). If you know an older one - tell us about it :)

Something that isn't known even by most of Poles is that between 1974 and 1991 Poland had the tallest object in the world - a longwave radio broadcasting antenna. And nothing tallest had been built anywhere before 2010.


And what does it have in common with his nationality? Poland didn't exist on the world map for 123 years, but it survived as a nation, although the occupying countries were doing their best to destroy Polish culture. I wouldn't say it's anything unique, but still the lack of Poland on the maps doesn't mean he couldn't be a Pole.

According to Wikipedia he was Jewish. But there were many Jews that considered themselves Poles at the same time. To be sure about his nationality, one would have to find sources relating what he was saying about it.

Considering the fact about dog names - personally, I don't know anybody having a dog called Burek. It's known as an example of a name for a dog (another, maybe even a more popular one, is Azor), but I don't believe that there are such statistics at all. There is, however, a proverb "Nie jednemu psu Burek" - literally "Not only one dog is called Burek". Meaning is rather obvious.

About secondary education - currently the final exams (Matura) are deliberately made simple to make Poland look well in statistics.

About Kevin Home Alone and Christmas - I wouldn't call it a tradition, but actually there were some protests of viewers when a TV station that had been showing this movie every Chritmas for a long time (Polsat) once decided not to do it :)

About the film dubbing - it refers only to TV, not to cinemas, and this way of translating movies isn't called dubbing :) It's better than dubbing in that you can still hear the original actors. Dubbing in Poland also exists, but on TV it's used only for movies for children, or for some "for the whole family". In cinemas the films are usually displayed in two versions - with dubbing and with subtitles. Subtitles aren't used on Polish TV almost at all. If so, then rather as an addition to a Polish soundtrack, for the deaf people (they aren't normally displayed on the screen, they are sent via teletext on the 777 page, or now, in the era of digital TV, via the "DVB subtitles").

Travel / New rule if you board a train without a ticket in Poland [24]

Yes, I agree. Buying tickets on the train is almost never a good choice. But if you don't have another choice, it's possible in each train except for EIP.

Study / Studying in University of Lodz as an Indian student? What's the city like - is it safe here? [56]

In £ódź there is many foreign students, but I wouldn't call it multicultural. Just like each big city in Poland. It's easy to meet a foreigner in Piotrkowska (the main, central street with many restaurants, night clubs etc.) or in the areas of the two major universities (University of £ódź and £ódź University of Technology).

£ódź is slowly changing, but it's still the dirtiest and the most neglected of the Polish big cities.

And, to be honest, I also wouldn't recommend you studying in Poland. The quality of education isn't too high here. Better would be the whole western Europe.

Travel / New rule if you board a train without a ticket in Poland [24]

But still for EICP only.

International long-distance trains are another kettle of fish (in Polish: inna para kaloszy). If you don't buy a ticket in advance, you pay according to the international prices, which are, firstly, terribly high, secondly, something like a secret. Even a lady at the ticket counter must first print the ticket to get to know what its price is :) If you do, then you usually one of the special offers.

Travel / New rule if you board a train without a ticket in Poland [24]

I've written that EICP is an exception, it's of the order of a few hundred PLN there.

In TLK, IC and EIC you pay only 10 PLN extra. In EIC you don't even have to go to the conductor for the ticket.