News / 100% TRUE! RAT MEAT PREPARED IN 3 BIGGEST CHINESE RESTAURANTS IN KRAKOW CLOSED DOWN ! [96]


It is a huge joke, especially since you've appeared from nowhere, are posting on an unregistered account, posting inconsistencies, and claiming something is "1000% true" even though it isn't in the Krakow newspapers or any Polish language online news site!

Stop trolling!

News / 100% TRUE! RAT MEAT PREPARED IN 3 BIGGEST CHINESE RESTAURANTS IN KRAKOW CLOSED DOWN ! [96]

Is it just me, or is a post starting with "1000%" true automatically suspect?

News / 100% TRUE! RAT MEAT PREPARED IN 3 BIGGEST CHINESE RESTAURANTS IN KRAKOW CLOSED DOWN ! [96]

There was an incident near Piaseczno, very well reported and shown on the TV news involving cats and dogs from the animal sanctuary (who alerted the straz miejska) being made into sajgonki. But the rats thing doesn't seem quite right. Rat meat is apparently very good - but too much hassle to actually use.

News / 100% TRUE! RAT MEAT PREPARED IN 3 BIGGEST CHINESE RESTAURANTS IN KRAKOW CLOSED DOWN ! [96]


A link please.

Seems a bit of a hassle for them to go round grabbing rats with a big net and a bag, doesn't it? Especially in a country where low quality meat from wholesalers is so cheap.

News / Polish prostitute fined $820,000 for unpaid tax [18]


A friend often charges up to 1200 plus expenses for a whole night (to rich foreigners, usually Americans - Poles always try to haggle the price down) - but he's absolutely in the top 1% - as are the ones in your dodgy link. Maybe ten of them (including male) in the whole country. Most Polish prostitutes get less than a hundred zloty a time.

News / Polish prostitute fined $820,000 for unpaid tax [18]

If they're anything like the UK ones, the girls/boys will get between 30 and 70% depending on various factors.

Food / Borscht - Zurek / Bialy barszcz recipe [153]

One of those adjectives is true.

News / Polish prostitute fined $820,000 for unpaid tax [18]


Not many of those in Poland. Friends tell me the going rate is 200 - 400zl for a decent one in a Warsaw brothel, and 30zl for a tirówka (or 50zl without a riubber). The ones on Poznańska are 10zl to 20zl. That tax bill suggests she is either a brothel owner of has been working very hard indeed for years.

USA, Canada / Moved back from Canada to Poland:). Here are the reasons why. [868]

Pierogarnia (30+ types of pierogi) has branches in Kraków and Wrocław, and Kraków unfortunately has a Zapiecek which advertises heavily.

Avoid Zapiecek like the plague - the main Warsaw branch has the worst service I've ever seen. Anywhere. After waiting 40 minutes we found our waitress had gone off shift without giving our order to the kitchen - this was only one of the problems. Mediocre food too and expensive.. The other two cities are doubtful, but certainly plenty of restaurants there will do a couple of types of pierogi. There's a cheap place near the station in Zielona Góra that does them, and the posher place almost next door might.

Pierogarnia (again, I know the Warsaw one) is OK.

Pierogarnia: virtualtourist.com/travel/Europe/Poland/Wojewodztwo_Malopolskie/Krakow-490219/Restaurants-Krakow-Pierogarnia-BR-1.html

Chlopskie Jadło isn't a pierogi place, but they have a few types and are (at least the Warsaw one) very good.
chlopskiejadlo.pl/main.php

Travel / Pics of Warsaw by the Guardian's David Levene [107]


That would surprise a lot of people - I suspect most "blue collar workers" have rarely, if ever, read The Guardian. Check out their jobs section to get a clue about their readership. But I suspect you know that and are just trolling a bit.


What reality? The reality of a publicity brochure or the reality the photographer saw?

Travel / Pics of Warsaw by the Guardian's David Levene [107]


They look good in arty photos - not just Polish ones.


No doubt.

Travel / Pics of Warsaw by the Guardian's David Levene [107]


It looks rather like you are - I'm really happy to see those photos - they are great! What views would you have chosen?

Travel / Pics of Warsaw by the Guardian's David Levene [107]

You sound just like those old communist era tourist organisations - Intourist comes to mind. People wanted to see churches, bars, markets, and they bussed people to hydroelectric dams, tyre factories, universities etc. They still do it in North Korea.


This sort of thing exactly.


And this is just untrue - the centre of Warsaw has thousands of communist-era buildings, some of them very large indeed.

Love / Polish girls' attitude towards different kinds of sex [88]

Maybe he was drunk and they were actually guys ;-)

Life / EXPATS in POLAND: 10 things you miss / don't miss about home . . . [138]


Try Marks and Spencer - or Kuchnie Świata, if there's a branch in Kraków.

Travel / Pics of Warsaw by the Guardian's David Levene [107]


Millions have - most big cities have plenty of them. Would you prefer he took a photo of Maccy D's?


I don't think many are. Tourists however do want to visit things that are real and atmospheric - I can't imagine many tourists wanting to see gated estates and supermarkets!


Unlikely since they're nothing out of the ordinary - but don't make the mistake of ripping it out - they are an original feature and look great. And exist in richer countries than Poland - they're very traditional in Germany too...

Travel / Pics of Warsaw by the Guardian's David Levene [107]


Wow! A Pole has almost admitted they're wrong - I should crack open some champagne ;-) Then again, I was partly wrong too - it's Siekierkowska, since the hotel ZNP is on the right.

Seriously, that picture really does capture something of the reality of Warsaw. Anyone can find very well taken pictures of the Starówka or postcards of the Pałac Kultury etc - but this is an expert photographic artist recording his impression of a city and its suburbs.WB sums him up well - I see something of Annie Leibowitz in his style.

When I'm sitting in my cabin in the middle of the Atlantic during a force 9 gale these are the pictures I will look at to remind me of home - not a postcard of the peacocks in £azienki Park.

Travel / Pics of Warsaw by the Guardian's David Levene [107]


It isn't actually a power station, it's Elektrociepłownia Żerań


Exactly - like much of Warsaw.


You mean prettier?


I don't have friends in America (well, one person I know emigrated there) and in any case, those pictures, which you evidently havent looked at, aren't from a travel guide or a tourist brochure - they aren't meant to encourage anybody to visit. They're meant to capture something of how things really are. Not show some chocolate box image that Poles would like to present to others.

Travel / Pics of Warsaw by the Guardian's David Levene [107]


I know the one you mean - atmospheric, moody and unmistakably Poland. What would you have published a picture of? Złoty Taras? Marie Curie's birthplace? Marina Mokotów?

Travel / Pics of Warsaw by the Guardian's David Levene [107]


The Economist's 'Intelligent Life' magazine published some beautiful pictures of Kraków last year - I showed it to some Poles and they were horrified. Why? Because it showed buildings with faded elegance, street traders, cobbled streets old kiosks - the real day to day Poland - and not shopping malls, stadiums, and 'reprezentacyjny' things.

As for pictures of milk bars, there are thousands of them and they are special to Poland (and popular, given the queues). A picture of a new motorway or power station is boring and could be anywhere.

Life / Getting ripped off in Poland! Is it normal? or should it be tolerated? [97]


Easily. He/She is the manager and responsible for maintaining stock.


A phone call away.


Perhaps that's because no British supermarket would ever run out of such a staple product as washing up liquid for three days, never mind three weeks. And if they did, the manager would no longer be the manager.

I remember my local Asda in the UK having a power cut. A supervisor stood at each check out, did a quick count of the items and asked for an estimated amount, rather lower than the actual bill would be. When it happened at a supermarket in Warsaw, they just threw the customers out. That was last year.


In one simple sentence, you've summed up the problem with Eastern European public life - nobody will make a decision. Why? Fear of getting it wrong? Apathy? Idleness? Given that the Polish language has no cognate for the phrase 'community-minded', could it be something deeper?


No. Just a victim of your culture.

Life / Getting ripped off in Poland! Is it normal? or should it be tolerated? [97]


For three weeks my local supermarket had no washing up liquid of any type but 15 idifferent but identical brands of window spray. This was eleven years after communism ended. It just didn't occur to them to pop to the cash and carry or even buy some from a rival and sell with a penny mark-up. Now it's French owned and efficient.

A Polish friend says that if there was socialism in the desert there would be a shortage of sand in six weeks - an old Polish saying. It's evidently and clearly untrue - they do "nie ma" whatever the economic system.

News / "Poland: a country getting to grips with being normal at last" [23]


Now why do you think that is? The essential timelessness of a country where nothing eventful happens, which wasn't communist, where change has been gradual? Hardly! A tourist guide about how pretty the starówka is? Come off it!

What should he have written about as part of that newspaper's series on four European countries? Have you seen any of the other articles about Poland in the series? Really worth looking at, especially the one about the Baniak family. I know so many people like that.

guardian.co.uk/world/series/new-europe-poland

News / "Poland: a country getting to grips with being normal at last" [23]

Why?

Remember he's writing for a very general audience on a topic they don't hear much about.

Language / Correct form of months when writing date? [22]

Which is fine from the 13th of the month onwards, but not great before!

Law / Why do I have to show passport/ID for payroll in Poland? [3]


So they know you're you.

News / John Godson, born in Nigeria, might become Poland Sejm's first black deputy! [313]


No. Based on prejudice. Since most of your posts are about Polish women being "stolen" by foreign men.

Travel / Easter in Poznan. Will everything be closed? [14]


Everything closed. A few (and only a few) restaurants will open.

History / Jan Potocki On Ancient Slavic History. [6]

Check out Hoene-Wroński's notes on it - worth reading and makes more sense than the original which after all is an interesting but fairly unexceptional travel story, albeit one which reflect's Potocki's religious/mystical weltanschauung. If I remember, Von Hundt also refers to it a couple of times but only in footnotes.