Love / Should a marriage proposal to a partner from Poland be done in private or public? [27]

Do you want to marry him? If so - how disturbing the stage design can be?
If not - it's not the stage design that stops you from saying "no".


It's an ultimate compliment you can get from another person / man. To spend the rest of his life with you must mean you are the most amazing person he has ever met.

Forgive me any possible vagueness/ obscurity, it's not easily to explain the reasons for marriage having 6 beers before :D

Travel / Polish Architecture [147]

Try to edit -> resize the photo and then go to "save as" and play with the quality slider to the right, it can save you a lot of disc space. Also, do not save any additional data, eg EXIF, it's a few kb less as well.

Travel / Polish Architecture [147]


On one of the photos you can see the black sculpture on the pedestal outside of the church. That's Piotr Skarga, one of many modern, ugly things which seem to be put in random places, among old buildings, without paying any attention to the way the public space is used by people. Usually the sculptures depict John Paul II, (you might see samples here:

pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomniki_papie%C5%BCa_Jana_Paw%C5%82a_II
and next one is probably going to be thrown onto Wawel hill.
That's one of the dark sides of Polish town planning.


First two show an art nouveau palace of the Associaton for the Friends of Art, the next two show the theatre. There is also great modern gallery there, called Bunkier Sztuki (Art Bunker).


Soot is not the biggest problem of Kraków buildings, more harm is being made by the acid rains.


That actually depends of the region. The north of Poland has been deeply influenced by German construction style (the typical for the North brick nogged timber wall is even called the Prussian wall):

(yes, I know it's quite similar to the British half-timbering :) Gorgious samples can be seen in Gdansk, the old city there looks like old Anntwerp. Or Brughes :) )


You got it right the second time. Robert Konieczny :)
He was also nominated for the World Architecture Festival Award worldarchitecturefestival.com/whatson_shortlist_crits_gallery.cfm?projectCategoryId=17 (the houses category featured the Irish Sleeping Giant as well, too bad none of them won).


Canaletto's (Bernardo Bellotto's) :)
Warsaw old city looked like that:
There is a nice exposition showing the old / new Warsaw called Miasto Feniksa - War*Saw Eyerything, the shots taken in 1944 during Warsaw Uprising were merged with the present views of the same streets:

kultura.wp.pl/gid,10208859,galeria.html?T

I don't even know where to start on Polish Architecture, I will need to come back to this topic in some spare moment. With the photos of medieval castles, Polish noblemen's manors (they are copied everywhere across the country and the results can be absolutely great - or truly miserable). With the old and new bridges - I totally love this one:

Warszawa, Most Świętokrzyski
... with Kraków I love, with Kazimierz nad Wisłą, with industrial £ódź and good and bad examples of rural houses...

Travel / Polish Architecture [147]

Great topic, I do not have much time at the moment but I have to bookmark it and take a closer look at all the photos here :)

BTW: have you tried a simple and free software called Irfanview? (irfanview.com)
It's a great and extremely simple tool for resizing and optimizing photos, only ImageReady which used to come with Photoshop up to CS2 version could beat it.

Food / How to cook Frozen pierogi? Boil or Fry? [90]

Boil if frozen and uncooked.

But once they are boiled they are absoultely delicious if fried with onion :)

Language / Old Polish Vs New Polish [29]


I'm not anglista myself, but I recall reading some 14th and 15th century stuff. Usually five verses of old poem are accompanied by a page-long explanation and footnotes. It's not particularly comprehensible I must say. Reading it loud is another story, as written Polish is just an approximation at best of how the language used to sound like. Some vowels and consonants are not being used any more (and you may find it quite hard to position your tongue properly). So called "yers" (jery) still affect the declension and spelling of some words but are not present in today's language.


I was taught that Maryja relates only to the mother of Good, you were not supposed to name your child like that. Maria (very rarely Marya) is just a name.


1960s-1970s? It wouldn't change much.