Law / On-line Shopping - Opinions on On-Line Shops In Poland. [3]

Merlin.pl is a great online store and it accepts Paypal payments too :-)

UK, Ireland / No Welfare in UK unless You are Polish [31]


Not if you are not highly skilled and live in a small town with rather bleak job prospects. Apart from the welfare bit, signing on means you are assisted in finding a job (much like at the Jobcentre). So people in Poland do tend to sign on as early as possible.


As long as the foreigner comes from a country far, far away. If you get my drift.


I have seen rejection letters, yes. Quite a lot of them. But in my line of work I can't really provide any details on a public forum. The only thing I can say is that the rejections were not really justified from a strictly formal point of view.

UK, Ireland / No Welfare in UK unless You are Polish [31]


But actually, they do - almost. Not the next day, but around the next week... My son lost his job last Friday and he's already signed on again. The longer you leave it, the greater the chance you'll be denied benefit because the contribution periods or whatever won't add up any more.


However you read the article, it makes it abundantly clear that anyone, Polish or EU citizen, in that position would have been denied benefits. He must have waited until the eligibility period (around 6 months if I did my homework) was over.


You think so? I have heard numerous stories of temporarily unemployed Poles NOT getting JSA, even with all the correct paperwork presented and all that. No sh*tstorm ever ensued, somehow.

To sum up, I think that if you live in a country for 20 years and are obviously doing a white-collar job, you should be able to master the subtleties of the ancient art of applying for benefits, if even the humblest labourer is able to do that. And if you don't, it's nobody's fault but yours.

UK, Ireland / No Welfare in UK unless You are Polish [31]

"Rejestracja w celu nabycia zasiłku dla bezrobotnych musi zostać dokonana w takim czasie by w ciągu 18 miesięcy przed dniem rejestracji mieć co najmniej 365 dni okresów uprawniających do nabycia zasiłku dla bezrobotnych."

If you want to receive unemployment benefits, you need to have at least 365 days of employment in the 18 months preceding your registration date. So if you leave it for too long, you lose your entitlement.

So OK, it's not "immediately". My bad. That was the impression I got from the article. On the other hand, this means the guy left it for longer than I could have imagined.

UK, Ireland / No Welfare in UK unless You are Polish [31]


No, if the rules say you must sign on immediately, that's what you do. My son just lost his first job and he's signing back on before starting to look for new work.

UK, Ireland / No Welfare in UK unless You are Polish [31]

Did you read the article? He applied too late. If he had applied sooner, he'd have gotten his benefit.

Love / Are Polish girls better cooks? [45]


Sounds great :-) If it were me, under such circs I might even cook every day ;-)


Plus you'd have to do the shopping first, remember. And shopping for food was never terrible fun in those days.

I work from home, so I try to spend as much time outside every day as possible. Cooking just seems like a boring chore most of the time, esp. that after 20+ years of coming up with interesting dinner ideas, I feel ready to throw in the towel ;-)

Love / Are Polish girls better cooks? [45]


Hell no way. I live right at the seaside and after work it's beach time for me, come rain or shine, winter and summer :-)

Love / Are Polish girls better cooks? [45]


Almost bang on target, my experience is based on the London and Essex area ;-)


And are a right pain to make, too - you have to get the oil to be just hot enough, peel a bunch of spuds, drain the excess oil off of them... Usually sooner or later you either spill the oil, burn yourself, or burn a batch of chips. Or all of the above. That's the reason most people, including myself, usually stick to frozen, esp. that chips are not part of "traditional" polish cuisine anyway. They're seen as a fast food type of meal, and if it takes so much trouble to make, it ain't a fast food anymore, am I right?


Again, lots of people know how to cook, but can't be bothered to cook on a daily basis because they're tired and / or don't have the time. Heck, I can cook quite well but I actually cook about once a week, otherwise I just throw some stuff together and use convenience foods. Life is too short to spend it in the kitchen.

Love / Are Polish girls better cooks? [45]


But I was pretty much saying the opposite, as cooking skills have probably improved - people could easily afford canteens then, but can't afford restaurants on a daily basis now. Hence, they have to cook.


I became self-employed sometime around 1994 and it was very easy to set up and enjoyable to run :-)


I should have stuck an emoticon in there. I was just teasing you, sorry it didn't come out right ;-(


I wouldn't say it's any different than in the UK. There are mound of different types of frozen chips in the shops, and I've never seen fresh potatoes being used in fish and chip shops either. They just open a plastic bag of the stuff and throw it in the fryer. Of course, some people in Poland, when they have the time and inclination, make their own chips from scratch; but I wouldn't say this was proof of any special culinary skills, as homemade chips and crepes were the first things I learnt to cook as a child. It's much more a question of being willing to sacrifice an hour or so of your time and fool around with boiling oil ;-)


This probably happened in some canteens, but I wouldn't say that canteens "fell out of favour" at all. Canteens were heavily subsidised by the State; you can probably guess what the happened after 1989. Some of the bigger companies, like FSO, kept their canteens for a bit longer, but AFAIK they just disappeared due to lack of funding. Schools and unis still tend to have them though. Some of the tastiest meals I have eaten were canteen meals. Unfortunately, so were some of the vilest. ;-)

Love / Are Polish girls better cooks? [45]


I can't even begin to express my deepest sympathy... Nevertheless, it seems your rant on chips has nothing whatsoever to do with what I wrote?

Love / Are Polish girls better cooks? [45]

You do realise that in the past, like 20-30 years ago and earlier, Polish people used to cook a lot less at home because almost every workplace and school had a cafeteria and people were only too happy to use them? Even in the nineties, when I was a young self-employed housewife, both my husband and my two children would "eat out" at work / school and I was the only person who didn't have the choice. I could either cook for one or go to a restaurant, so I usually went to the restaurant, which - incidentally - offered low-price meals every day if you bought a monthly coupon. Those were the days! ;-)

Language / Dla Anii or Ani? [17]

Definitely, 100% dla Ani.

News / Interesting article about mess in Polish offices. [22]


Filing is being done online, AFAIK the system is in place in Poland now? But even if you file stuff online, actual humans have to check the paperwork, answer phone calls, investigate complicated cases, file stuff for Higher Up, etc. etc. And especially - if you have fewer offices - man the call centres. Oh, how I love call centres! Not.

News / Interesting article about mess in Polish offices. [22]


I have only ever worked as self-employed, so you don't need to lecture me on taxes. Also, where I live now (England) it is virtually impossible to access a physically existing tax office - you can either write or call. If you write, you never know whether they will actually receive your letter and answer it. If you call, you have approx. a 50% chance that you will not get through to an "advisor", but even if you do, they usually know nothing about your case and aren't able to help you in any meaningful way. I might be wrong, but I think that keeping several smaller tax offices or a large one for a larger percentage for the population doesn't really change anything much cost-wise. What you might save on building maintenance or rent you then spend on call centres and such.

News / Interesting article about mess in Polish offices. [22]


For me as the end user that would be great. Why should I have to travel across the city to hand in a form, for example, when I could just pop in literally next door? I see nothing wrong or ridiculous about that.

News / Interesting article about mess in Polish offices. [22]

How's that for a complicated procedure: my father is Polish, I had lived in Poland since early childhood, had a karta stałego pobytu, attended Polish schools and a Polish uni, married a Polish national and had two Polish children, and it still took over a year for me to get Polish citizenship when I finally applied for it.

News / Interesting article about mess in Polish offices. [22]


That still doesn't mean they're a "mess". I'm only objecting to the term, not to the fact that you might need to jump through a hoop or two. I used to be a "foreigner" in Poland till I was over 30 (I had a karta stałego pobytu and a Czech passport) so I kinda know what that entails.

News / Interesting article about mess in Polish offices. [22]


I would bet my money that that's the case.


I wouldn't call it a "mess". There are certain procedures in place, and as soon as he completed them, he received all his documents. Am I right? Whether or not these procedures are complicated and/or time-consuming is quite another matter. A "mess" would mean that anything goes and no procedures exist. Actually, the article made me quite happy, as 1) I am not a man, so don't have to faff around with military records, 2) I was married in Poland, and 3) my expired driving licence is Polish as well. This means that when I come back, I'll have next to no problems getting stuff sorted :-)

News / Interesting article about mess in Polish offices. [22]

As a translator, I just heaved a huge sigh of relief. Electronic translation is still nowhere near my humble efforts ;-)

News / Demolish Poland's Palace of Culture? [55]


I lived in Warsaw for donkey's years (from the early seventies onwards) and I have never, ever heard anyone refer to it that way. The only "nickname" I can recall is Pekin - from PKiN (Pałac Kultury i Nauki). Everyone used to call it that, then sometime in the nineties the name became less popular for some reason.

Language / Polish keyboard 214 is best [34]


Wake up Polonius. Nobody has feelings about keyboards. I am typing these words on a "yank" keyboard. However great your super-keyboard is, anyone who has already learnt to touch type will not willingly transfer from the keyboard they currently use, because it would mean at least a month of groping your way around the keyboard (I don't think you understand that in touch typing you don't actually look at the keys at all, it's your fingers doing all the work). Just sayin'.

Love / Polish Farm Women [34]

I am absolutely sure that you would have to try hard to find fresh, wholesome, untainted and innocent girls in their twenties, especially in the countryside, in any century; they might look fresh and wholesome, but most of them would have had some sort of sexual experience by that age. Historically, a girl in her twenties was not seen as a potential bride, but a withered old maid! They were either married by that age and probably already mothers, or left on the shelf. Ladies of the night excepted of course, these probably lost their innocence a lot earlier even than today (very early teens if we are to believe contemporary accounts).

Travel / Just visited Poland - here is my random rant [154]


So it would be hard to say whether he had become a sworn translator via the old system or the new one then.


Well, I guess I would be too ;-)

Love / Polish Farm Women [34]

Yay! First I thought, "there's no such thing" and then I realized they existed! What you need is a nun! :-)

Travel / Just visited Poland - here is my random rant [154]


Just out of idle curiosity - was he old or young?

Travel / Just visited Poland - here is my random rant [154]


You're talking about people who have had hefty ZUS contributions taken off their pay every month, right? "Consider" helping them?


To use my father's example - he did not buy the flat for peanuts. It still cost him all his savings plus a loan. So he spent all this money on a flat he needs to sell just when he could start enjoying his well-earned retirement, and move to somewhere cheap where he could not possibly earn the extra money he does need to earn to get by on his pension (and - in your opinion - he shouldn't even have this pension in the first place). I think euthanasia for everyone over 70 would be cheaper :-/


I am beginning to suspect that you have no social conscience at all.


They're not being employed anyway as things stand now.


Really? I thought people complained because there used to be a choice between various garbage collectors and you could choose one who fit your requirements and financial means. Now there is no choice at all and everyone has to pay through the nose for a service that was sorted already.


Really? Why do you think that the one chosen garbage disposal business won't dump trash in the neighbouring gmina for example to cut costs?


You're one step away from a special someone who thought the Poles should only be taught the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic.


I belong to that generation and I don't feel there was any year zero.


Even if they study pedagogy and then cannot find employment in their field of study, they can always move away / change their career path, but whatever they learnt will stay with them. Studying is primarily an intellectual hunger, only afterwards should it serve any demands of the job market. I specialised in Middle English literature, which did not in any way prevent me from working as a translator, with my first experiences being in agriculture and farm accounting. People are not pre-programmed robots for Chrissakes.

History / How come Poles like Russians but not Germans? [216]

I don't think it's a question of forgiveness. The Poles do remember what Russia used to be. But Poles and Russians share Slavic roots and culture. If you fight with a stranger and with your brother, it's easier to make up with your brother than with the stranger, even though both might have used the same level of aggression.

Travel / Just visited Poland - here is my random rant [154]


Hold your horses! It was easier than now, but not as easy as you make it out to be. You had to have the right education, be over 25, be a Polish citizen, have a clean record, and be able to supply several letters of reference from trustworthy clients, i.e., prove that you are already working as a translator and that you are not rubbish.


A lot of sworn translators frankly are rubbish, but IMO not because it was so easy to become one, but because the majority of sworn translators only ever did this job on the side (while working as teachers, editors, university lecturers etc). You cannot become a professional in something if you only dabble in it several times a week / month. The underlying reasons were the fixed, state-imposed translation rates (never very high), and the fact that Polish people did not have that many foreign documents to translate while businesses with robust international connections were also few and far between. The rates are not fixed any longer and Poland enjoys a very vigorous exchange with other countries, so I would have thought that most sworn translators today were thriving. But if you spent your whole life doing next to nothing in this area, you don't feel like changing things in your middle age, do you? ;-)

Travel / Just visited Poland - here is my random rant [154]


I doubt it, as those pensioners who would need it usually also have poor relatives who would be unable to help.


So what? How does low-rent housing translate to food, clothing, medicine? My father worked extremely hard all his life, the only property he has is a flat in Warsaw, and he still has to work today because otherwise he would pretty much starve. Thankfully, he is a specialist in a very obscure, frivolous area of research and so his expertise is still sought by some.


That's exactly why I said you would need to rewrite the Labour Code. It's a typically communist piece of legislation which aims to protect everyone but the employer (as the employer used to be the State back then).


IMHO, they don't really. The overwhelming taxation and restrictions being put in place have nothing whatsoever to do with what people can remember of PRL. There was no visible taxation back then, for example. AFAIK, people are well miffed about stuff like the new garbage removal legislation, the expanding powers of the revenue offices, the growing bureaucracy...


You don't need universities for most vocational education. On the other hand, the economy does not "need" teachers, artists, linguists, historians, geographers, anthropologists, biologists... I could go on. But society does. Personally, I am against tuition fees in state universities. They are funded by my grandparents', parents', and my own taxes (yes, I did pay a fair bit of tax in Poland).


And why not? Somebody found it fascinating and specialised in it, and others must have found it equally interesting. The human mind is a wondrous thing. Education is about much more than finding a good job.


What is there to explain? There are specific requirements in place to become a sworn translator. I hear tell that these requirements are to be reduced soon - with higher education becoming unnecessary. Then you need to pass an exam. That's all. If linguists are not interested, this means that being a sworn translator is probably not worth the effort. I can't really say, as I left PL a few years ago. But the facts seem to point to this conclusion. I've been one now for ages, so it seems normal to me, but obviously if I were entering the profession today I might see things differently.