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Need advice on my stay in Krakow [12]
Food expenses - 600 PLN(We like to cook at home most of the time
Food and routine household items will set you back at least double that, even if you cook at home. 600 a month will buy you cabbage, potatoes, onions and rice, but little besides that. Even an egg will be a luxury. You will get tired of that rather quickly.
You are leaving out some things:
First of all, you have to deduct the cost of relocating to Poland for you and your wife. That includes all travel-related expenses, including trips to the embassy for visas, shipping. and the cost of your visas and residence permits. Amortize that over 12 months and that's about 1000 PLN a month right off the top just for you and your wife to be in Poland.
You do not include entertainment and vacation expenses. These can be quite considerable if you expect to fly back to India for vacations or visits. Even without that, count on spending at least 500 PLN a month, and that's the bare minimum. Your wife is going to go stir crazy with nothing to do and no one to talk to, so keeping her mind occupied is going to be a high priority, and a considerable expense. You surely aren't expecting her to sit cooped up in an the apartment like a prisoner, are you?
There is no Indian community in Kraków to speak of. Most Indians there are single males who come for a year or two and then leave. Few bring families, and even fewer stay for longer periods, so there is no critical mass or motive for building a community. You will probably meet some other Indians, but they are not going to be organized into anything resembling a community. There is nothing even remotely resembling an Indian neighborhood, or a street with Indian shops. The Indians in Kraków live scattered willy nilly around the city.
Your wife will especially have trouble because Indian women tend not to have anything to do with other Indian women who are not of the same caste, clan, class, religious group or language group. They also refuse to speak to each other if their husbands are not on the same socio-economic level. There are maybe a hundred Indian women, predominantly students and wives, in a metropolitan area of about a million people, so it's quite possible that your wife will not meet any Indian women at all that she would feel comfortable socializing with, and vice versa. Without speaking Polish, she will have great difficulty socializing with the natives. If she is not assertive and willing to make the first move in breaking the ice in spite of repeated failures, she will be ignored, as if she didn't exist at all. Poland is not a good place for shy foreign women.
Transportation will cost you about 100 PLN for each of you minimum, and that's only if you rely on public transportation and buy monthly tickets. If you or your wife need to take taxis, and you will, it will be considerably more expensive.
On top of this, you have to add your savings goals. If you are not able to save at least 2000 PLN a month as a couple, then there is probably no point in coming to Poland to work.
In short, your estimate of 3800 PLN a month for basic living expenses for a couple is totally unreasonable. Count on at least 5500 PLN, and that is for a rather basic lifestyle without any trips back to India or to the expensive countries in Western Europe. Add 2000 PLN in savings, and your are talking about a gross income of at least 11,000 PLN a month gross just for a basic, no frills lifestyle. You'll need a lot more if you plan on traveling or if you have more ambitious savings goals.
Word of warning: Poland is the wrong country to come to if you have debts to pay off or family to support back in India. Focus on finding a job in a country with much higher wages if that is the case.
