Life / The Polish people have a strange attitude to cats and dogs? [84]


Not come across that before. Normally drowning or just abandoning.


isn't there some thing about dog fat as well?

UK, Ireland / Why Manchester rules over Warsaw :) [65]


But do you reckon 100+ teenage kids would be?

History / Poland - Scotland, the untold story... [75]

Like a haunting air?

History / Poland - Scotland, the untold story... [75]


Isn't this a superior tune played on the pipes?

Life / The Polish people have a strange attitude to cats and dogs? [84]


You're not wrong. My neighbours are farmers and have loads of farmyard cats... who spend most of their time in our garden because they know my wife and I will feed them.

News / Why is Poland developing so slowly or in the wrong direction? Who is responsible ? [317]


The number of new houses being built and new cars on the new roads suggest you are right.

Love / Are there Polish women who date black guys? [281]


silly me, how ethnocentric of me to forget.

News / Why is Poland developing so slowly or in the wrong direction? Who is responsible ? [317]


This is a valid point. I mean, how was EU supposed to have confidence in Poland when the former government was rabidly anti-EU and formed a coalition with other rabidly anti-EU groups. Poland was seen as a trouble-maker within EU when the twins were at the top.

The problem of remaning dregs of post-socialist administration were also a problem. Just a few years ago it took over a month for a company to be able to register and start up trading, compared to a 15 minute phone call in Scotland. I remember being refused credit by GE MOneybank because i didn't have a PESEL on my id card, despite having my own firm and having paid taxes in Poland for a couple of years (and I did have a PESEL, it just wasn't on my card). Such beaureacracy scared away quite a few foreign investors for a number of years.

Love / Are there Polish women who date black guys? [281]

Thanks, although it begs the question of why he and his racist filth are allowed on these forums?
And the mods wonder why they sometimes get stick?

Travel / Is the atmosphere thinner over the Tatras? [7]

I think if I was the atmosphere and I had to climb over all those mountains, I'd be thinner too.

Love / Are there Polish women who date black guys? [281]

Maybe he could offer her something else.

What I'd like to know is how you would feel if you heard someone say something like, "Achtung, there is a German girl who only dates dirty Slavs!" or 'Bloody foreigners, coming over here and stealing our women!"

Love / Are there Polish women who date black guys? [281]


Maybe in your case she's right.

I have a Polish friend in Poland who has a Black, African husband and a lovely Black kid.

News / Why is Poland developing so slowly or in the wrong direction? Who is responsible ? [317]


Well, the problem is that if you grow before you have reached a certain stage of development it causes problems. I mean, look at all the deprived villages in some areas of Poland which still don't have running water, sewage systems etc and then ask if the country really needs to grow more before it sorts out these problems.

Part of the problem may be the use of neo-classical economics after 1989 who decided on using a trickle-down effect, which never got part of the way, and the scrapping of much govt support to many industries (such as compulsory purchase of produce). The change was too quick and industries like agriculture were not developed enough to take the change.

I mean, when you have a whole industry, both individual farmers and communal farms suddenly going from a compulsory purchase system to darwinian survival economics, how are they supposed to flourish? A long term re-education of farmers would have been a more productive idea, better financial aid to help development etc.

Poland could be at the forefront of organic farming and supply rather than having thousands of crumbling farms, falling rural populations and land being sold off to urban property developers.

Guess where a lot of those economists came from...

UK, Ireland / Why Manchester rules over Warsaw :) [65]

The Course director was from Manchester and he had to explain to the team leaders that manchester wasn't really the place for a cultural bus-ride unless you were rabidly obsessed with late 19th C industrial architecture.

UK, Ireland / The more subtle differences: Ireland/Britain v Poland [310]


I didn't suggest there never was. It's just in Poland i'd never dream of going up to a phone booth and expect it to take coins (I think there were still coupons when I first came here) whereas in Britain I've been known to walk miles to find a box and have a screaming fit to find out it didn't take coins.


WHAT? You mean there's something connected with saints and religion which isn't 100% true?
Bloody Heretic! I bet you support the dark forces!

UK, Ireland / The more subtle differences: Ireland/Britain v Poland [310]


Funny, I thought it was the white cross of St Andrew which appeared in the sky to some travellers (Greeks have a white cross too)


Really? The amount of smiling buttock cleavage on display, I didn't think they even wore thongs!

Life / The Polish people have a strange attitude to cats and dogs? [84]


It's to guard the premises. Also, you wouldn't want a big dog like that running around a neighbour's livestock or on a road with made drivers.

Remember, not all the dogs are pets in the way an urbanite might see them.

UK, Ireland / The more subtle differences: Ireland/Britain v Poland [310]

There's no coin pay phones in Poland.

UK, Ireland / The more subtle differences: Ireland/Britain v Poland [310]


Well, there's a whole tourist route based on the Teutonic castles in "Prussia". Just off the top of my head I can think of Olsztyn, Olsztynek, Ryn, Węgorzewo, Nidzica, Kętrzyn and those are just the ones I drove past recently.

Then there's all the churches and religious sites up here too.

I get your point about the age and amount, but it's not as if there isn't anything.


Arrrgh! It was a joke, OK? It's like a joke about the English thinking they are so superior... and if they think they are 'self-made' then nobody can blame god for them. (Sound of Trevek banging his head against the wall repeatedly whilst muttering, "it was a joke... it was a joke!!!!!")

To all,The topic seems to have expanded beyond 'subtle differences'. Please get back on track. Thank you.

UK, Ireland / The more subtle differences: Ireland/Britain v Poland [310]


Living in warmia and mazury, I can vouch for a load of Teutonic castles. Malbork is nearby and is the biggest castle in Europe (or biggest brick one, I can't remember).

UK, Ireland / The more subtle differences: Ireland/Britain v Poland [310]


I think you missed the irony.

perhaps it shoul;d have read "The English consider themselves a self-made race"

I'd suggest the thing about the English is they were just better at doing it than a lot of others, who would have done it if they had had the chance. name any major power that hasn't done it?


Like the British army flags captured by American forces during the war of independence.

UK, Ireland / The more subtle differences: Ireland/Britain v Poland [310]


The English are a self-made race... which relieves god of the respnosibility.

Another subtle thing which might be worth noting is the lack of queueing for buses etc, the practice of saying "thank you" when leaving the table, saying goodbye when leaving a train carriage.

Also, those little paper serviette things on the table in bars and restaurants which only Poles can take out individually... foreigners take one and pull the whole lot out.

Drinking hot tea or coffee from glasses with no handles.

UK, Ireland / The more subtle differences: Ireland/Britain v Poland [310]


... and how crap Britain is...

Scottish people and Welsh will tell you how crap England is.

English will tell you Poland could be better if it was more like Ibiza and sold fish and chips everywhere.

UK, Ireland / The more subtle differences: Ireland/Britain v Poland [310]


If memory serves me, carrefour are better than tesco. tesco have a hole under the checkout but it means it is so far up the line, past the racks and such, that when there is a queue, nobody can reach them. Upshot is, in Olsztyn anyway, that you come into tesco and find no baskets.


Saw a guy in Lidl last week buying a big 'family sized' pack of condoms and a big bottle of red bull. I couldn't stop giggling (must have felt jealous!)

UK, Ireland / The more subtle differences: Ireland/Britain v Poland [310]

The way Poles all seem to say "Of course" in answer to something which isn't so obvious.

The way some shop assistants finish what they're doing, albeit taking some time, before serving a customer.

That Polish supermarkets, like Tesco etc still try the old trick of stacking sweet racks and ice-cream fridges by the side of the tills (something most British big stores have stopped) and then there is nowhere to put your basket other than next to the till, where they can't be retrieved when there is a queue.

Life / Why so many soldiers walking on Polish streets? [17]

Maybe because Dresden is still part of Germany (at least for the present).

I've seen them in Wroclaw before now.

Life / Why so many soldiers walking on Polish streets? [17]


Oh that's beautiful! :-D

Life / Why so many soldiers walking on Polish streets? [17]


good idea. "And we shall turn their swords into coffee shops!" has a nice ring to it.

UK, Ireland / The more subtle differences: Ireland/Britain v Poland [310]


But it's when someone says "Kowalski Jan called for you!" or the studes write it on the top of their homework.

Not judging it, just saying it's different.

Life / Why so many soldiers walking on Polish streets? [17]

Aren't those military police? used to see a lot of them when the national service guys were getting demobbed and going on drinking sprees. You don't see those big gangs of guys wearing flags and doing press-ups in the railway stations so much now, do you.