Travel / Warsaw transport mobile phones app - iPhone/iPad/Nokia and travel apps [15]

This is quite good if you need maps and don't want to pay roaming data charges

itunes.apple.com/gb/app/poland-ukraine-offline-maps/id532061209

Language / Zjadać Wypijać - I'm confused [7]


Indeed. Proving that the third part of the cut 'n' paste trilogy is ... check!

Language / Zjadać Wypijać - I'm confused [7]

boletus - that was quite a reading list. I was already aware of Młynarczyk's thesis, and as you say, frequentative forms are outside her scope.

Bacz's paper pretty much turned everything I thought I knew on its head. It entirely escapes me how one can say, for example

"Często po obiedzie usiądziep sobie w fotelu, zapalip fajkę i porozmawiap z wnukami."

I realise this is kind of the point of the paper, but I think I'm a bit out of my depth! Thanks anyway for taking the time to answer my questions - it's much appreciated.

Language / How similar is the Italian accent to the Polish accent (when speaking English)? [34]

So what do English people speaking Polish sound like to Poles?

Language / Zjadać Wypijać - I'm confused [7]

Boletus - thanks. I was thinking that the frequentative was a kind of superimperfective, emphasising the both the repetitive and unfinished nature of the action, but it seems from what you are saying

repetition and completion can be separated so that we can have a frequentative perfective for actions that are both repeated and completed?

Travel / Has anyone used OLT Express yet? [8]

Yes - they're pretty good. I flew with them from Gdańsk to Wrocław a couple of weeks ago. You get to choose your seat at check-in (which when I flew was at the airport, but I think that was because there was something wrong with their system), pleasant staff, free food and drink and you're not bombarded with continual exhortations to "chillax"

UK, Ireland / Transfer Money from UK to Poland [36]

Are you converting pounds to zlotys? If so, and you have a bank account in Poland to which you can send the money, you will get a better exchange rate

with an specialist FX broker. Worldfirst.com is the best I've found so far - their rates were the best and there is no transfer fee. (Let me know if you find a better one).

Life / Polish dentistry cost - 230 zl for one tooth cavity filling [99]


It's nice of you to say so, but it's not true! I think I just have bad genes in the dental area and spend an awful lot of time at the dentist!

But as far as I know, if you have an abscess, i.e. infection, they do it in two appointments over the course of a week. In the first they do all the drilling and pack the root canal with

antiseptics to kill the remaining bacteria. Then in the second appointment they insert the permanent filling. If it's an elective procedure and there is no infection, I think you can have it done in

one visit, or maybe two over two days.

As far as price is concerned, I think it's very roughly 300 PLN per canal (there can be several per tooth), a bit extra for a specialist endodontist. By way of comparison an endo specialist in London charged me twice that for a five minute consultation, and wanted another 850 quid for the actual treatment.

Travel / What's good to do in Wroclaw Poland? [34]


I'm sooooo tempted ...

Life / Recommended ISPs (moving to Gdańsk) [12]

Wawa_marek: That's a great tool, thanks. It seems like I'm in the LTE zone by about 10 metres! I thinking i'll give it a try.

Life / Recommended ISPs (moving to Gdańsk) [12]

Thanks for the answers so far. I'm certainly keen to avoid a contract and Plus LTE sounds ideal. I've found the coverage map but it doesn't go down to street level detail. Is there any way of finding out if it's available at my address without buying a dongle and testing it?

Life / Recommended ISPs (moving to Gdańsk) [12]

24 hours? Last time I had a new Sky installation in London, it took 12 weeks!!! It's nice to be moving to the developed world!

Life / Recommended ISPs (moving to Gdańsk) [12]

Thanks. Their offer does look good but sadly they don't supply my street. I don't suppose there are any tools for checking who supplies which areas, are there?

Travel / Question about the Rynek and City of Wroclaw [15]

Top right - North East corner of rynek, near Starbucks.
The other three are a bit harder!

History / Which countries are Polands friends, which are Polands enemies? [75]

MarcinD -thanks for the detailed reply. I completely agree that the UK was complicit in the betrayal of Poland but I am still not convinced that the US under Roosevelt was not more responsible. Also, as far as I know, the UK was exhausted in terms of both blood and treasure in 1945 and it would have been hard to enforce anything without the cooperation of the US.

From

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalta_Conference:

Churchill alone pushed for free elections in Poland.[8] The British leader pointed out that the UK "could never be content with any solution that did not leave Poland a free and independent state". Stalin pledged to permit free elections in Poland, but forestalled ever honoring his promise.

--------

Roosevelt, however, maintained his confidence in Stalin, reasoning that Stalin's early priesthood training had "entered into his nature of the way in which a Christian gentleman should behave."

--------

I just have a hunch that Stalin is not that kind of a man. ... and I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask for nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won't try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace."

-Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1943

I'm by no means an historian - I get most of my history from Wikipedia as you can tell - but, speaking as Brit, it does seem that Churchill sometimes gets more than his far share of opprobrium.

History / Which countries are Polands friends, which are Polands enemies? [75]


Was anyone forcibly sent back? On the whole the Brits were very grateful for the Polish contribution during the war and treated well those who remained. My father was one of them.

History / Which countries are Polands friends, which are Polands enemies? [75]

It's obviously true that had Poland not fallen under Soviet domination, her living standards would have been higher, and fewer people would have emigrated to find jobs. However, I am interested in why you think the British in particular, "handed Poland to the Russians on a plate".

Both Roosevelt and Churchill failed to understand the threat that Stalin posed, but from what I have read, Roosevelt was considerably more naïve than Churchill.

News / POLAND RATED TOP 10 MOST UNDERRATED COUNTRY [13]


Oh now it's up to sixth in the survey. My joke is looking a bit stale!

News / POLAND RATED TOP 10 MOST UNDERRATED COUNTRY [13]

It's actually the sixth most underrated country :-)

Life / Polish dentistry cost - 230 zl for one tooth cavity filling [99]

The rule of thumb seems to be that you save 50% but obviously there's quite a lot a variation so you need to contact individual dentists. It sounds like you will save about 600 in total but of course you have to factor in flight, accommodation and lost earnings.

Life / Polish dentistry cost - 230 zl for one tooth cavity filling [99]

Dentists seem to limit the length of treatment sessions to about 2 hours, but you can have more than one in a day. How much work do you need doing in total? I got the impression from your first post that it was one root canal + one crown, but now you are talking about six. If you need six crowns, you want to save money and you already know Poland quite well, I think getting the work done there is a no-brainer.

If you can't/don't want to back to the dentist you used in Wrocław you can find others here

whatclinic.com

If you can read Polish, you can find some reviews here:

znanylekarz.pl

Life / Polish dentistry cost - 230 zl for one tooth cavity filling [99]

You should be able to get a white crown on the NHS if it is a front tooth - but it would still have a metal base which would mean it wouldn't be as translucent as a real tooth and may have a slight dark edge at the gum line.

The best sort - all porcelain - cost about £300 in Poland (compared to £600 in the UK) . You can certainly get the whole job done within a working week, maybe even three days. However, some dentists have a digital system which scans the tooth rather than taking an impression and then machines the crown in an hour or so.

Life / Polish music - dwa plus jeden group (help with artist names and song titles?) [7]

Have you tried Shazam?

shazam.com

Travel / Sim Cards for International calls Poland [17]

Well, Lyca is available and looks quite attractive:

lycamobile.pl/home/

Heyah:

heyah.pl/na-karte/cennik

Travel / Sim Cards for International calls Poland [17]

Lyca, Lebara, Vectone. To Poland the rates are 1p/min landline around 10p mobile.

Delight appears only to be 3p/min mobile.

Language / Do the Polish words for 'please' and 'piglet' sound very similar? [24]


Yes - that's what I meant.

Language / Do the Polish words for 'please' and 'piglet' sound very similar? [24]

The different pronunciations of ę on Google translate are unrelated to the difference between "sz' and 'si". In "proszę" the tip of the tongue should be rolled up to touch the top of the mouth - in "prosię" the tip should be pointing downwards and the middle of the tongue lifted. By "should" I mean that's what I do with apparently acceptable results!

As far as the final ę is concerned, standard pronunciation is now like "e". The sound on Google for "Proszę" is considered old-fashioned or regional.

Travel / Wroclaw airport to the city center-how? [5]

OLT JetAir.

oltjetair.com