Real Estate / Looking for a room or flat to rent in Poland - discrimination against age [17]

Shmuel,

Please calm yourself and maintain a modicum of decorum! Clearly, be it in New York, Poznan, Berlin, what have you, folks'll stand behind their rights as private citizens in order to weed out whom they wish, often based solely on personal prejudice...which, I'm sad to report, they are perfectly within their rights to do, regardless of how unfair and disgusting it truly is.

If it's not a public company, housing or funded by the state, as I already said, you're plain out of luck.

Real Estate / Looking for a room or flat to rent in Poland - discrimination against age [17]

In fact, you probably would have no case, dovla's right about that!

There might have been other issues, not merely age. This is frequently quite difficult to prove, particularly without a reliable witness, willing to swear in court. I notice for instance from your handle (shmuel) that this could have been the name under which you decided to rent your room, am I correct? There is definitely a certain degree of latent (sometimes not so latent) anti-Jewish bias in Poland, most especially among older or much older people, and so you may have run into one of those, I fear.

Apart from the obvious, afraid you're just plain out of luck. Things are hardly uniform throughout much of the world, and so best here to simply bite the bullet and try to look for another flat.

I have experience with this sort of problem, not only abroad, but right here in New York as well. Invariably, the "plaintiff", you in this case, hasn't got a leg to stand on, as private transactions are not subject to others' rules, but remain the whim of the lessor. The lessee doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell. Particularly if you're not even a citizen. Perhaps the Brazilian Consulate will intervene, but don't bet on it.

USA, Canada / Small taste of my U.S. prison experience [6]

Has the makings of successful true crime story.

Genealogy / Chmielewski - INFO ON MY POLISH SURNAME [11]

"Hops" as in "I'm mad as hops!"? Oh, I see. "Hops" as in "malt", "yeast" or that sort of stuff:-)
Got ya!

Genealogy / Chmielewski - INFO ON MY POLISH SURNAME [11]

"Chmiel" is a kind of grain, I think, used in among things, beer.

Work / Close Protection (Bodyguard) - popular line of work in Poland? [19]

As I'm almost sure there are in Norway, I'd imagine if you'd like to work as a "bouncer" in Poland, you'll require much the same

qualifications, e.g. size, experience, temperament along with the requisite training in order to become a bouncer.

Is there a certificate program for bouncing in Oslo? We'd be interested:-)

News / EU confirms it will take action against Poland over court reforms [554]

I as well! Most enlightening, I must say...although not really at all surprising, if you think of it:-)

Language / First sentence of the novel Solaris [12]

@Maf,

Always a super tough call when translating, isn't it. Omitting original text in translation can of course sometimes substantially alter the intended meaning.
Being a translator, I'm faced with these issues on a regular basis. Providing a viable alternative is critical. Perhaps "szyb" IS the dictionary version of "shaft", yet the author apparently wrote "studni" ( if transcribed accurately by zzjing) and so one would have to be creative rather than stuck in the limbo of the translator's eternal enemy, dictionary translation:-)

News / EU confirms it will take action against Poland over court reforms [554]

There were many other such examples, I'm sure. But nobody talks about them:-)

Nice one, Atch!

Language / First sentence of the novel Solaris [12]

Aha, I see what I was missing the other day with "studni". As it's translated often as "a well", for instance an "artesian well", "shaft" makes perfect sense, since a well in the ground is nothing other than a shaft upward from which (as well as downward, of course) water is transported:-) My oversight. Skimmed the sentence too fast.

"Zeszedlem" is correct according to my PIW. For example, in spoken slang, I've sometimes heard spoken "poszlem" instead of "poszEDlem" however as far as I learned, the latter is the grammatically correct form. "Poszlem" would not be acceptable in written language.

History / Poland obliged to make war reparations to Austria and Germany after WWI. Why? [119]

Sure, no skin off your nose!

Language / First sentence of the novel Solaris [12]

The last sentence looks to me closest in meaning with the Polish original (not having read the book). Only question would be concerning how to translate "studni".

History / Poland obliged to make war reparations to Austria and Germany after WWI. Why? [119]

POLAND obliged to make war reparations...???!

Ahemm, the shoe's on the other foot here.

News / EU confirms it will take action against Poland over court reforms [554]

To each his own! One man's meat's another one's poison:-)

News / EU confirms it will take action against Poland over court reforms [554]

@Bratwurst Boy, what you doubt then is the effectiveness of such re-education programs, I take it. In other words, "You can the man out of the SS-uniform, but not the uniform out of the man", is that sort of it?

For any dyed in the wool ideologue of whatever stripe, I'd have to agree with you there.

History / Give Poland back it's lost land ! [132]

By the same token most of Hungary at the time of WWI lost at least half to more of her present territory to Romania as part of the conditions of the Trianon Treaty.

Lots of Hungarians are still grousing over it as we speak!

News / EU confirms it will take action against Poland over court reforms [554]

Rather than purge, how about re-education? It's a lot less expensive, the state can afford it after all, and it will also re-integrate those purged

back into society where they can function as useful citizens.
It worked after WWII in Germany with former Nazis.

News / EU confirms it will take action against Poland over court reforms [554]

The more salient question/issue should be, is there ever a statute of limitations on guilt? Furthermore, as Santayana said, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Case in point!

News / EU confirms it will take action against Poland over court reforms [554]

I fail to grasp your point.

News / EU confirms it will take action against Poland over court reforms [554]

This sort of purge in a way reminds me of the attempts by the new leaders in Germany during the early '70's to rid the parliament of former Nazis, many installed by Adenauer, the "friend of the West", one should recall:-)

History / Give Poland back it's lost land ! [132]

Practically every nation-state, country or region has undergone at least some form of territorial loss in addition to gain.
Why bother decrying a phenomenon which is as old, not to mention as natural, as human history itself?

News / EU confirms it will take action against Poland over court reforms [554]

I know a German acquaintance who actually mistook once "Pommis" for "people from Pommerania:-)
Sounds like "Denglisch".

News / Polish Independence Day March in Warsaw. Is it going to be the biggest march yet? [1530]

Think ya just answered yer own question there, Bratwurst Boy.

News / EU confirms it will take action against Poland over court reforms [554]

Which ones though? Those from the former 'Vorpommern' or those from the current 'Meck-Pomm'?

News / Polish Independence Day March in Warsaw. Is it going to be the biggest march yet? [1530]

Notice who said that phrase, :There are no native Germans. We are a nation of immigrants!"; Frank-Walter Steinmeier a native German, NO immigrant himself, bowing to political correctness.Makes the rank-and-file conservative want to vomit, well-intentioned or not. It's precisely this sort of knee-jerk ultra leftism which enrages the less educated classes and leaves the rest of the country cold.

When are we going to learn that the US-style "melting-pot" culture DOES NOT WORK in smaller, traditionally and historically, homogeneous societies like Germany or Austria, nations composed of different nationalities (Huegenot French, Italian, Polish), but NOT races (Asian, Hispanic, Arab, Black African) and who therefore are often justifiably cynical of white-bread majority Caucasian politicians, with big crocodile tears, singing the praises of "otherness" to their own mainstream constituents?!

News / Polish Independence Day March in Warsaw. Is it going to be the biggest march yet? [1530]

The German Right, much as with Trump and the Mexican border "wall", is merely pandering and fear mongering, just like business as usual.
Germany is about as ready to "go Muslim" as the state of Texas is going to "turn" Mexican and Mexico's somehow going to convert a huge territory

still consisting mostly of white Anglos, uncounted generations in the state, to Spanish speakers whereby Texas will lose her identity etc...

A big bunch of bull, if you ask me.

News / Polish Independence Day March in Warsaw. Is it going to be the biggest march yet? [1530]

Quite, B. B.!

It's a nail biter, this one:-)

UK, Ireland / Mixed feelings after moving from Poland to England [36]

Yep, and then that (in-)famous "liquid-l" of Standard Polish, except, I've heard from Polish native speakers,
in the Zakopane region of Tatry, as well as older stage diction:-) This is quite distinct from the Russian "l-sound"
before the tricky soft sign.

Please back on topic everyone

News / Polish Independence Day March in Warsaw. Is it going to be the biggest march yet? [1530]

Well, the EU just gave her ok to BREXIT. Now it's up to Parliament!
:-)

UK, Ireland / Mixed feelings after moving from Poland to England [36]

Polish too has all those half-sound "s"-consonants, as in "swiat", "sily" etc., plus nasals, non-existent in Russian, Bulgarian, Czech and probably any other Slavic tongue I can think of:-)