Life / Feasibility and cost of a bicycle in Krakow? [13]

Not sure about Krakow, but considering a little smaller city like Wroclaw... cyclist do not use face masks here ;)
As for basements - my bicycle was once stollen from that, so I believe that more safe are special rooms for bicycles which are in many buildings (till someone will steal from there...). Anyway, if you don't intend to worry about your bicycle then just buy something drivable and cheap, which when stollen don't make you drop any tears... For mega fun you can buy of course some expensive bicycle - but that one keep safe in flat.

Another thing: it is rather better to leave bicycles in the open when in town than hide them in some dark hall.

Work / (IT field) moving from India to Poland -Wroclaw in May '11 [46]

^^
Surely in general IT devs from India do not have much credit - to often with great marketing their companies are selling rubbish quality.
On the other hand they seem to get better. Anyway, regardless we like it or not many top IT companies outsourced to India and now we have to deal with the consequences ;) In my experience though, marriages of Indian IT companies with global IT brands created additional pressure towards better quality.

News / Grafitti plague in Warsaw [84]

Graffiti in most cases is like dog pis$ing. They pis$ in order to mark territory. Sometimes someone is talented and graffiti is not so bad. Sometimes someone is not stupid kid and actually sprays only in places where it is not forbid. As in most things in this world talent and wisdom rarely come together. So, we have man dog pis$ing all over our cities...

Travel / Driving to Poland from England - any tips? [264]

If you have a choice, better enter Poland via Goerlitz/Zgorzelec (A4 from there straight to Wroclaw). You can go back A4->A18 via Frankfurt->Berlin because A18 is ok in that direction.

Work / Any advice about moving to Katowice area (Zory) to work? [13]

As I understood, his Polish wife was mugged in Ireland...
But that can happen anywhere in the world...

Anyway, Katowice is a center of quite big conurbation, there is also Krakow not far away, in total almost 5 mln of people so sooner or later todiak should be able to find something. But in most cases language is essential.

Life / $3,000-$4,000 a month - would we have enough money to live in Poland? [273]

I'm sorry for your family loss.
Condolences.

News / "Poland is flourishing" [62]

Of course Poland is flourishing! After all it is spring time ;)

On more serious note, debt started to be a problem. I'm really grateful to the bloke who came up with this 55% threshold in constitution, but I do think that gov cuts where it is easy not where it should. Either way they have to address this issue seriously... Other than that nothing new under the sun, so economy still is growing somehow but still it is rather medium income country with many rather poor people. Ruling parties has no serious competition... I would relly like to see some fresh party on the scene, or at least some fresh leaders.

Life / $3,000-$4,000 a month - would we have enough money to live in Poland? [273]

so, what about this thread? It was quite entertaining...

Life / WHO IS CONSIDERED TO BE POOR IN POLAND? [8]

Here you have all about it (in Polish, data for 2008):

stat.gov.pl/gus/5840_7556_PLK_HTML.htm
stat.gov.pl/cps/rde/xbcr/gus/PUBL_wz_Ubostwo_w_PL_na_tle_UE_EU-SILC_2008.pdf

Definition is the same like in other EU countries:

A person is in danger of povert if lives in a houshold which income is below 60% of the median income per household in given country (I'm not sure if it is net or gross). So it is relative. Median per grownup person in household is 15720 pln yearly, so threshold is something close to 9400 pln yearly. Comparatively, threshold in Poland in PPS (Purchasing Power Standard) is 3900 PPS, in UK 11600 PPS, in Romania 1900 PPS.

There is 17% people under this threshold in Poland.

Here some EU wide statistics:

News / Could Poland be self-sustainable in energy? [56]

Here are fine statistics about wind power in Poland:
ewea.org/fileadmin/ewea_documents/documents/statistics/EWEA_Annual_Statistics_2010.pdf
It says that currently wind power stands for 1,5% of total energy consumption in Poland.
You know the thing is that many areas in Poland are relatively unsuitable for windmills. I guess that with current trends we can get to something between 5 to 10% of total consumption in next ten years and that would be it.

Real Estate / Wroclaw Housing - an apartment in Lubuska street. Feedback Requested. [5]

In general, there are no house warming parties, often people even don't greet each other when passing by...
So without general rule, you are on your own ;) Certainly it would be proper to become acquainted with the neighbours at least from your floor.

Real Estate / Wroclaw Housing - an apartment in Lubuska street. Feedback Requested. [5]

Actually I would say old tenement houses areas tends to be often inhabited by some shady fellows than commieblocks, because most of city owned social flats are in old tenement houses. Anyway I'm not familiar with Lubuska area (other than passing by it sometimes...) but maybe this will help you. It is a map of price per a metre of a flat in Wroclaw. It is not entirely reliable, because it is made by some realtor, anyway shows more or less acurate how people votes with their money (red expensive, white cheap, grey no data):

News / What does Poland Import? [18]

Here you have it all both in Polish and English: stat.gov.pl/cps/rde/xbcr/gus/PUBL_rs_rocz_stat_hanl_zagr_2010.pdf

Poland import structure: Polish Trade 2009 (source GUS)

Law / Road trip from UK to Poland. Car selling regulations in Poland? [10]


LOL, that was funny :-)

UK, Ireland / Poles top the UK's EU crime figures [78]

That kind of news is irrelevant without percentage numbers.
Though the lacking number here is an amount of Poles in UK. Quite safe number which pops here and there is about 0,7 mln. If apply to that number the amount of convictions from the article (In 2010, 6777 convictions) then we get about 1% convictions for a population of Poles.

Is it a big number? Well, for example statistics shows that amount of convictions per 100 000 population in 2000 in UK: England & Wales was 2684. Which is abuot 2,7% for a population.

Conclusion would be that Poles are relatively not violent and rarely convicted people. UK should be glad to have them because they are lowering general statistics ;)

Of course if there is less than 250000 Poles in UK then there is a different story... ;)

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

Karłowice is a nice district but I'm not very familiar with it. As far as I know part of the army base was given to the University, some of it became just private flats, some stayed with the Polish army (not sure of that though). As for PZPR building no idea where it is...

PS. I think you can appreciate site with all kinds of photos from Breslau and Wroclaw, old and new:
wroclaw.hydral.com.pl

It is probably the best site of this kind about Wroclaw. One second of googling in it and there it is:
...

Is it that building? Now there is a medical unit in it.

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

As for an open towers and other high points in Wroclaw there is actually quite a few of them:
- aforementioned tower of St Elizabeth's church is the highest
- one of the cathedral towers on Ostrow Tumski
- math tower of Wroclaw Uniwersity
- cathedral of St Marii Magdalene
- the view from car park on Renoma mall is quite entertaining and for free :-)
- the view from car park on Dominikanska the same
- restaurant on the roof of Monopol hotel

That is for a city center. There are a few others off a beaten tracks places but those are for a hardcore city explorers :-) Like for example the highest floor of Faculty of Civil Engineering of Wroclaw University of Technology.

PS. It is quite probable that there will be an open restaurant on the last floor of Sky Tower. It should be a nice view from a 200 metres, except a sea of a commieblocks maybe ;) But we must wait for that a few years to judge.

Work / (IT field) moving from India to Poland -Wroclaw in May '11 [46]

As a Pole living in Poland and IT guy: bnrrv0, welcome in Poland :-)

If by any chance you are familiar with Oracle Flexcube then feel free to PM me.

Probably the easiest way to find a job for you would be in your husband company. But it would be safer to find a job in different place.

About salaries in Wroclaw it varies greatly depending on your skills and luck. If you have some general experience then probably you can count on some job with salaries between 5000 to 7000 PLN gross. If you happen to have some specialist knowledge in some field which is needed then if you are lucky you can count on more (hard to put a ceiling here because it is very individual thing).

One word of advice: as you can see in my post full of errors, Polish English is far from perfection ;) From my experience Hindu English is not perfect either and can be very hard to Polish ear. You should make sure that your accent is not a barrier for your interlocutor. I saw it couple of times when Poles were avoiding after a while cooperation with Hindu guys at work just because they didn't understand much of the Hindu English and were afraid to raise that issue. Secondly, some habits are different in Poland than in India, I'm not sure how to elaborate it to not offend you, because maybe I had just a bad luck ;) But having worked with some Hindu guys in the past they seemed to be let say too open with their physiological needs ;)



You guys don't know much about IT industry do you?
1. There is really hard for a good (not spectacular but good...) IT specialist to not find employment in Poland.
2. Those from relatively poor EU countries if they consider migration they are rather go for green fields in west EU where they can earn about twice or three times as much as in Poland

3. IT job is usually highly specialized thing and it is not easy to find right person for a job, add to that those two points above and maybe you will understand why sometimes it is neccessary to hire a foreigner.

I can understand to some extent fear of mass immigration to Poland, because clearly it didn't work out well for West Europe. But in the same time that fear shouldn't prevent Poland from attracting intelligent and trained people to come here. Such immigration is not mass imigration but selective imigration which in general is a good thing in many ways.

News / "Shale Gas Revolution" will make Poland a Leading Country in Europe! [202]

Hm... I have no idea if fracturing carries a risk of polluting environment or not. But what I do know is that if drilling companies will cause damage they will pay. Take as an example Bełchatów and one of the biggest brown coal mining site in Europe. There is a very big hole there which causes water problems in the area. They pay for this damage quite a lot. Kleszczów, the nearest and most affected site is one of the richest municipalities in Poland thanks to that... I'm quite reassured that combination of Polish and EU restriction will be huge pain in the ass for anybody who thinks that it will be drilling here with no supervision...

Off-Topic / How would Poles react to a visit from Queen Elizabeth? [72]

Hm... That looks like Quantitative Easing v.2.0.. We wouldn't like that, do we? ;)

Life / Are Poles bankrupt? [35]

Reading through this two interesting docs:

epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_PUBLIC/3-23022011-BP/EN/3-23022011-BP-EN.PDF

epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_OFFPUB/KS-SF-11-004/EN/KS-SF-11-004-EN.PDF

it reminded me this thread. Here is some excerpt which explains clearly why global debt crash in last years wasn't so devastating for Poland and why it is not good to make false analogies between "old" and "new" Europe economies:


As you can see, mortgages are still relatively small chunk of housing market in Poland.

Another one should explain to many how Poles are make ends meet:


This one somehow proves that Poland is rather safe country:


And last but not least, this one is about Polish poverty:

Off-Topic / How would Poles react to a visit from Queen Elizabeth? [72]

Hm.. maybe some would come to hear if she stutters ;) Or maybe some would come to see British eccentricity..
But for most Poles the idea of having a King is kind of medieval (some would like to proclaim Christ as King of Poland though). The same goes with a Queen (but we do have Saint Marry as our Queen already, unfortunately official meeting could be problematic).

Anyway, I expect that Queen Elizabeth retinue would involve some heavy knights, miladies and a clown. That could be fun ;)

History / Poland during the Renaissance [146]

Well, you shouldn't ask what Poland did for Renaissance, you should rather ask what Renaissance did for Poland ;)
And it did a lot really, starting with the most important thing: Polish language was brought into the mainstream of Kingdom elites and started to be treated as equal to Latin... It is a shame that wars with Sweden destroyed a lot of gains of this era (for example Swedes destroyed most of printing-houses, something which in our times can be only compared with destroying most of libraries and IT infrastructure at the same time...).

As for global influences except Copernicus there wasn't much of it. After all, Renaissance came to Poland about 100 years after it showed up in Italy, so not much space for improvement left.

PS. Maybe now we can add Zamość to the global stars, after all it is on UNESCO heritage list ;)

Study / Which university (erazmusem)? Poznań, Lublin, Krosno and Białsko-Biała. [17]

If you would like to treat the place as a travel base, then go for Poznan or Bielsko-Biala.
Krosno is a really small town and it is rather not known for their Uni. They have rather branches of Universities from bigger cities. But I don't know what is your taste, maybe calm little town is something you are looking for...

From "party" point of view probably Poznan and maybe to smaller degree Lublin.

Travel / PKP (Polish National Railway) is a turn off [47]

Hm.. actually as far as I know one of the few things that actually works in Ukraine quite well is Ukrainian Railway but that could be just a rumour ;-) Which is totally irrelevant for a person living in Szczecin anyway :-)

Aphrodisiac, you will not change reality writing on pf. TLK belongs to PKP IC. They have some formal rules of lodging a complaint: Try it and tell as how it went (that could be fun...)

Life / Are Poles bankrupt? [35]

Well, it is true that opinions on this forums are mostly not made by Poles but regarding this question:
"Are Poles bancrupt?"

As Pole living in Poland: in general No... But what is really your question about? Because we can look at this from many angles....

Let start with that it is really hard for a Pole to actually bancrupt from the law point of view. The concept of individual bankruptcy was implemented in Polish law a few years ago but with very strict rules. So, no, you will not bancrupt as an individual in Poland. You will sooner sell your house (or rewrite it onto your spouse ;-)) than bancrupt.

From statistical perspective Poles are behind most of western levels of debt but we are catching up unfortunately. Anyway, look for statistits at WB or IMF, judge yourself. But be warned: it is recurrencing error made by people from the west, especially by people from hugely indebted societies to make false analogies. I saw it many times in recent years, the main star was a level of FX mortgages in Poland. During the peak of the crisis I've read many times when some (want to be) economists ruled that Poland is f..ked because of huge % of FX mortgages... But rarely someone was decent enough to check that mortgage market in Poland was relatively small in comparision to GDP. They just assumed that it is similar to USA or UK..

Life / $3,000-$4,000 a month - would we have enough money to live in Poland? [273]

For example:

dom.gratka.pl/mieszkania-do-wynajecia/lista/pomorskie,gdynia.html
autogielda.pl/nieruchomosci_do_wynajecia_mieszkania.html?sposob=rosnaco&wedlug=miejscowosc&strona=8
gazetadom.pl/dom/0,0.html

All in Polish... make your son help you ;)

News / 10 km of a road in Poland costed... 2,3 bilions of PLN! [13]

^^
In regard of asphalt case it is not like road is failing, yet... I'm not a specialist here, what I've read about this specific norm the contractor broke in some parts is that there suppose be <A, A+0,2% * A> asphalt. In some parts there supposedly is <A - A*0,2%, A>. So the norm is very strict. There seems to be some deeper layers here though in that story.

Some say that GDDIK wants by hitting contractor force this company to extend guaranty which is very short (two years, it is short in road contracts).

We will see how it ends. They opened that road so it is rather not total failure ;)

News / 10 km of a road in Poland costed... 2,3 bilions of PLN! [13]

I have no intention of defending road builders here, but... this lack asphalt thing... The journalists blow this thing out of proportions. AFAIK in 3 proofs out of at least a few dozens amount of asphalt was 0,2% below the norm... There are some other minor things to repair but contractor has to do that on guaranty terms (which is two years).

As for the cost, try at least to compare apples with apples. It is not some road near some village but a road inside of a 3 mln aglomeration with about twenty different kind of bridges and myriads of infrastructure which had to be taken care of during the process (gas pipes, water pipes, electrcity, etc...), not to mention the price of land in such densely urbanized area...

Travel / PKP (Polish National Railway) is a turn off [47]



Well, it seems that logical outcome from this discussion would be that trains around Szczecin area sucks, but are quite ok in Warsaw, Poznan or Wroclaw (my area ;-) ). As I said before, Szczecin has no it's own regional operator yet, so maybe lack of competition has something to do here. Anyway there is one rule regarding public transport especially trains (excluding those with seat reservation): never ever plan to use it at the begining or the end of main holidays...


Actually PKP Intercity was making quite big profits in the past. Their recent inability to that was directly connected with PR ("przewozy regionalne") policy of subsidized long run trains on the most profitable routes. The end of it is that PKP IC had a loss and PR almost bancrupted. It was example of dishonest competition. Anyway, in my opinion there is really nothing wrong with privatizing rail companies as long as routes operator (PLK) is independent state owned controller (what will enable to not repeat UK mistake).