Law / What requirements are needed to set up a street trading business in Poland [5]

It depends what you're selling and what else you do (farmers can sell fruit and veg on the street relatively easily, even if they get it from the wholesaler as most do) and also whether the street (in Warsaw anyway) is on a bus route or not (different agencies are responsible for different sorts of street). You also need to register the business in a normal way.

I did all the paperwork once and it was just like setting up any other business except you also have to submit (professional) map drawings of the place you want to trade from.

History / Why HMG (Her Majesty's Government) abandoned Poland to the Soviets [30]

By that time it was an entirely American issue - nothing to do with Britain, a country in ruins whose soldiers were by the way still fighting on the Asian front). The US had the money and the manpower (Britain had neither) and our anti-British OP also pretends to forget that there was only one nuclear power in the world - the United States.

Anyway, what could Britain have realistically done against the Soviet Union who would not have given up one inch of their gains without the mother of all struggles?

UK, Ireland / Do people in Poland live "better" than here in the UK? [150]


Spot on. Even restaurants in PL tend to serve frozen chips and often frozen veg too - assuming they've got veg and not some sort of surówka which is not always much good - a lot gets wasted by people who just don't want it all if they go out for a meal. Also the variety - a menu in Poland rarely contains many surprises and how many times in their life does anyone need schabowy, karkówka or pierogi, especially if they see it daily.

Off-Topic / Thanks a lot for all of your kindness [27]


I don't think so. His writing rings true and he seems to have genuine questions about Warsaw.

Travel / Do taxi drivers in Poland overcharge foreigners? [8]

Agreed, taxis everywhere do that however Warsaw isn't as bad as most capital cities. In Warsaw it's important to never, ever, use ones that just say 'taxi' on if you don't speak Polish well - and even then be careful. Only use the ones that also have a (sometimes 4 or 5 digit) phone number. ELE is one of the biggest taxi companies and is generally trustworthy - so is Volfra which I use (and they're cheaper than most).

Travel / Haunted places in Warsaw? [5]

Pałac Przebendowskich, on ul. Solidarności (corner with ul. Bielanska) is thought by some to be haunted, as is the Cytadela. Also the Chopin Museum on ul. Tamka might be worth a look. If you like parapsychology, also go to the Nowy Miasto and visit the very old red brick church just off the Rynek Nowego Miasto. No ghosts but one of those places where people sometimes feel special - ul. Freta that leads to the Rynek is a bit like that too.

Travel / A winter holiday in Poland- where do I begin? [6]

It's a nice enough place but only really worth a look if it doesn't involve a detour. Torun is good though and Poznań has good architecture. Everybody hates £ódź but that has charm and a visitor from the U.S. might find it interesting.

Travel / Haunted places in Warsaw? [5]

Yes, but haunted in what sense and do you mean officially open to visit?

Travel / A winter holiday in Poland- where do I begin? [6]

Warsaw the capital is a must, Gdansk is amazing and Kraków is intersting if very very touristy and in my opinion overrated, especially compared to Warsaw and Gdansk. Torun is worth a visit. Gniezno is nice but nothing special - just a small town with an old cathedral. You might like Bialowieza forest and Hajnowka with lovely wooden houses and onion domed churches. Małbork castle (conveniently between Gdansk and Torun/Warsaw) is spectacular.

Sylvio is right, trains are best and use the intercity ones which are more comfortable though still relatively cheap.

Life / Are there any launderettes in Katowice? [5]

I've used 5 á sec and found them expensive and less effective than traditional Polish ones. Some of the old ones look old-fashioned but generally give a better service.

UK, Ireland / Modern day slavery in the UK [36]


Sometimes there's a choice of doing the right thing or standing by and passively ignoring suffering.


It's an anonymous service so makes no difference who calls or emails. I'd be happy to.

UK, Ireland / Modern day slavery in the UK [36]

There are the people who can help. It's actually about tax however they work with all relevant agencies and are very experienced with agricultural workers who are being exploited. It is an anonymous service: gov.uk/pay-and-work-rights-helpline

UK, Ireland / Modern day slavery in the UK [36]


There's a hotline (I think run by the department of employment) to report employers paying below the minimum wage - and this is well below the minimum wage. They're quite good at making sure people get the money that wasn't paid to them.

UK, Ireland / Curious about differences Polish people see with the British? [95]

It's too much of a generalisation to say that Poles are this or Brits are that - not everybody's the same. I do think though that if you smile at a stranger in either country, in one of them you're more likely to get a smile back than in the other.

Real Estate / Poland's apartment prices continue to fall [1844]


That rings true. So many people have told me they have an empty flat to sell but don't seem to really try to sell it.

UK, Ireland / Curious about differences Polish people see with the British? [95]


It is however something a group can have a greater or lesser output of. Notice the word output in the sentence you tried to understand.


Not a historian either, are you...

UK, Ireland / Curious about differences Polish people see with the British? [95]


I think they would. And don't forget that there are plenty of Poles of whatever age who couldn't find Manchester or Edinburgh on a map.

[quote=L777]They have done all that from the generosity of their spirit, kindness and to uphold values of tolerance, equality and a fair play, so close to the heart of the British nation. [quote]

More, guest poster, because it was becoming a distraction and a burden, though yes, there were altruistic reasons and a sense of fair play - some of the late Nineteenth Century campaigners for home rule in the colonies certainly had that at the front of their minds, and when Gandhi toured the northern cities back in the 30s, more than a million people came out to cheer him on. But I doubt that fits your way of thinking. As for equality, tell us when Poland abolished serfdom...

How this relates to what newly arrived Polish migrants to the UK make of their new home I don't know. Now you wouldn't just be trolling, would you?

UK, Ireland / Curious about differences Polish people see with the British? [95]


Most know far more about it than you think, despite the relative paucity of cultural output compared to it's neighbours. Poles coming to the UK generally know something of what to expect through film, TV, literature and music, so some of the differences they see are familiar already.


Anything else would be unusual.


Not a historian, are you guest poster? You probably don't realise that the UK got rid of the colonies over several decades as part of a deliberate process. Poles don't always see this, having a different attitude perhaps due in part to their own country having been dominated by more able neighbours and their attempts to dominate others being largely unsuccessful. A friend recently visited the UK for the first time - she was disappointed by London. The reason? Simple. She'd been to Moscow, Paris, Berlin, Washington and expected London to be some grandiose capital reflecting national prestige rather than a delicious chaos.

UK, Ireland / Curious about differences Polish people see with the British? [95]

I found this map - dunno how reliable it is, but quite interesting

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UK, Ireland / Curious about differences Polish people see with the British? [95]


Often. I think a few miles south in Boston would work better as an example.


Same here - I do think we can only change the problems by playing a bigger part rather than vacillating about leaving, something which would be a disaster.


This is the key. If those few people who actually vote UKIP think that Farage could do anything at all to make their lives better then they are truly deluded. The ravages of the 1980s in the industrial North, the deliberate destruction of the economy there and the resulting lack of cohesion have a lot to answer for.


It's more multicultural than you'd think there - there were certainly Asian and West Indian people when I was a kid there in the early 1970 plus thousands of people from Poland and especially Ukraine who came in the late 1940s. There was also a much stronger sense of community and of course almost full employment. The coal mining communities around Donny too.

UK, Ireland / Curious about differences Polish people see with the British? [95]


On Google Maps maybe.


A political peculiarity since they jailed most of the local council a few years ago. When push comes to shove, only 9% voted for them and that was a protest vote. Given that 15% of the UK population are freign born it's a miracle we don't have even more people voting for those sort of numpties, as in France at the moment.



This bit is very true - the myth that nobody helped them was deliberately propagated by the PZRR and by nationalists today - some say that nobody helped, despite all the downed planes from the uprising - some even blame Churchill, which is being absolutely bling to the fact that America and Russia called the shots by that stage of the war and neither, unlike the UK, wanted to help them. People there also forget that the war didn't end in May 1945 - they think the war still raging in Asia was somehow less important (and to them of course it was)


This is often the first thing people notice, and also in Czech. Communism and the difference between your 'public' and 'private' faces has a lot to do with it, though I do wonder if it was so radically different before. Georg Mikes who last visited Poland in the spring 1939 remarked on the miserable faces on public transport in PL, and the casual bonhomie and informality that you get in the UK is rare in PL, as is the politeness in shops that you get in France. Where I come from, nobody would dream of getting off a bus without thanking the driver - this would be eccentric in PL. It's also an arguing culture - speaking much to a checkout assistant would put them on their guard because they think you might be trying something on.

Life / UK British TV in Poland for free [7]


Sort of. I subscribe and am not sure if it's really HD or not - it doesn't seem to make much difference and I think there are various subscription types. In any case, we only watch TV news from another European country that my other half is from plus the Great British Bake Off. The European Package or whatever it's called is quite cheap, maybe a fiver or so a month (and you can do it on a month by month basis) but the real benefit of that is that it gets rid of those annoying adverts. BTW, FilmOn works 100 times better on an ipad.


If you google the name of the football match and 'stream' you can usually find something. TheMyP2P forum is good for streams, but you do need the forum (which moved addresses) not the website.

UK, Ireland / Curious about differences Polish people see with the British? [95]


Maybe a little more than that, however too much isn't always good. Real hospitality can't be judged on whether someone slices up a kielbasa for their guests or serves some Bakewell tarts or even crashes the Emva Cream - perceptions (and treatment) of newcomers is much deeper than (often affected) manners.


Poland. Yorkshire once upon a time long long ago..


A better way to express that is to say they got almost a third of the few votes in the lowest turnout in history - no parliamentary seats in Yorks are under thread from them


Glad to see that you think coming originally from Poland for generations doesn't give "higher status" whatever that means than a recent arrival.

UK, Ireland / Curious about differences Polish people see with the British? [95]


Same here, and a Yorkshireman too. Lot's of Poles have happily settled in Scotland, Wales, Northern England - countries which are traditionally welcoming and generous. About the South, maybe it's significant that anti-EU migration parties seem to do better down there.

Work / Is it a good sign if a school seems desperate to hire me? Small town Kęty [15]

Agreed 100%. There's a reason these places are somewhere people come from rather than go to.

UK, Ireland / Curious about differences Polish people see with the British? [95]


The south of England isn't really typical of the UK as a whole and it's very hard to make a blanket judgement about a whole island of almost 60 million people and very diverse traditions based on just that one region - ironically the most cosmopolitan and least traditional.


Yes. Poles, remember, have been getting British TV shows and films for years and often have an idea before they go. Most are happy, if appalled sometimes by prices of some items.

Real Estate / Poland's apartment prices continue to fall [1844]


The guy is looking to buy one rather than to sell plenty, and seems quite frustrated (as do many) with the unusual real estate market in PL.

Travel / Warsaw airport to Bus Station Wilanowska stand number 14 [22]


One problem with that one is that it isn't a very nice website after all. In fact it's worse than useless. Look at the lady earlier in the thread who wanted to go to the same place and it recommended a railway train, then a tram, then 2 separate buses!

UK, Ireland / London Strip Clubs? What's it like for women working there? [74]

How does that make a difference for you?

Travel / Warsaw airport to Bus Station Wilanowska stand number 14 [22]


Get a taxi - it shouldn't be expensive. The other option is the 148 bus to Metro Imielin, then the metro to Metro Wilanowska.

Get a 90 minute ticket from the machine at the airport bus stop (you'll see it from the door of Arrivals) and make sure you cancel it in the yellow machine on the bus. Keep you ticket - it will work on the metro too. The journey should take less than 30 minutes. But a taxi is cheap and much quicker.