Polish vs British vs American - Clash of cultures

I am a British landlord.
Please explain this, because as far as i'm aware, i'm under no obligation to supply a tenant with toilet paper at all.
Or is this just an excuse for you to snipe about the English?

I have never rented a room in the UK. I have picked up such impressions over the years from those Poles who had spent some time in Britain in the post-war period. It fits nicely into the Polish view of British hospitality: Nalał po kieliszku wódki, resztę schował do lodówki!

That's because there is none. Much as there is apparently no legal obligation for Polish hospitals to supply their patents with toilet paper or hand-washing facilities.


You just hit the nail on the head there.


Yet more of those mysterious sources which you tell us about but can't show to any of us. Oh well. And isn't it interesting that you tell us those sources were allegedly not impressed by hi-tech things, things which they couldn't have actually seen, what with those things not existing at the time? Oops, another lie you're caught in.

As for the years of the post-war period, wasn't that the time when large parts of your own country, i.e. the USA, still had segregated schools, laws against inter-racial marriage, bans on black people using white toilets, etc etc etc?

In the 1950s a gas ring might have seemed hi-tech to a DP Pole compared to the war-torn country and gruelling Anders battle trail he had travelled.

As a child, I read a book Małżeństwo Niedoskonałe about a poor family in pre-war times who, when short of cash, picked coins from energy ring in their house. Sad story with a lot of funny moments. I recommend it.

pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma%C5%82%C5%BCe%C5%84stwo_niedoskona%C5%82e

Fermented milk products are very popular here: sour milk, buttermilk, kefir. I try to drink 1 litre of butter milk every day (I have just had it). Milk as such is bad for adults and it should be drunk fermented.

I'm sure you are very well aware that rationing in Britain didn't just finish when the war ended, and that food and goods were still in short supply during the post-war period.

So perhaps it wasn't in fact the


, but rather that there just wasn't enough of everything to go round. Nice try Polo.

.


And where did you get this Polish view of British hospitality? From inside your head?

That`s about Scots, right??

Actually it was told about the English

By who?

^ By our American friend Polo; Poles say it about Scots.

By a Polish DP who had spent time in England before moving to the States.

So actually it isn't the view of all Poles, as your phrase would have us believe, but of those who remained in Britain, unable to go home for one reason or another, at a time of great shortage.

Many would have returned despite the shoratges and pitched in to help rebuild the country. It was the
Stalinist enslavement of their beloved Poland that turned them away.

I am talking about shortages of resources in BRITAIN.
Your phrase implies that Poles think the English are misers.
I was pointing out that your friend was here at a time when goods were scarce.

How interesting that you wish to call Stanislaw Mikolajczyk 'Stalin's puppet'. And how surprising that you don't miss a chance to insult the British; do you actually know the meaning of 'self-seeking'? It most certainly appears you do not.

BTW, if the London-Based Polish Government in Exile was the government of Poland, why did you deal with and work for the Polish government in Warsaw? Is such hypocrisy normal for American culture? I very much think (based on the Americans I have met) that it is most certainly not.

Mikołajczyk had to flee for his life after it turned out Stalin's puppet regime could not be negotiaited with.


London and Washington both brown-nosed Stalin and sold Poland down the river at Yalta and Potsdam. When it was too late, Churchill shed some crocodile tears and came up with his snivelling 'iron curtain' speech.

In reality, Mikolajczyk was a member of the government that first the USA and then the UK recognised.


As is traditional, I will now ask what the price Britain received for Poland was and what Britain could have done to prevent a Soviet occupation of Poland. You will completely ignore those questions.

BTW, if the London-Based Polish Government in Exile was the government of Poland, why did you deal with and work for the Polish government in Warsaw? Is such hypocrisy normal for American culture? I very much think (based on the Americans I have met) that it is most certainly not.

They and America could have faced up to Uncle Joe at Teheran, Yalta nad Postdam. The Red Army was way overstretched and weak at that time. Had they listened to Gen. Patton, the good ol' US Army would have moved east and rolled the red vermin back across the Elbe, Odra and Vistula all the way to Poland's pre-war boundary with the USSR and Stalin couldn't have done a damn thing about it except puff his pipe and break wind.

The promise of free and fair elections in post-war Poland was secured; you can't blame the British for Poles not bothering to have those elections.


So you wish to claim that if the British had listened to an American general, the American army would have done something. Why didn't the US Army just listen to its own general?


Yes, because it's not as if the Russians had millions of men in that area, is it?

I see that you are utterly unaware of Operation Unthinkable, how surprising.

Only an idiot would believe any of Stalin's promises.


Millions of ragtag, battle-weary, underfed and underequipped soldiers who under the onslaught of the advancing US Army well might have mutinied against their Soviet commanders and gone over the Ameircan side.

Yesterday we went to the beach at the lake near Krakow, most people look OK, some young women even skinny, some middle aged women plump.

While in US.......

palmbeachpost.com/news/lifestyles/health/survey-says-1-in-4-floridians-now-obese/nL8yP
One in 4 Floridians now qualifies as obese, based on height and weight reported in a national phone survey by the CDC.
But what may be even more disconcerting: Florida's self-reported obesity rate of 25.2 percent is actually lower than the national average.
Nine states in survey results released on Tuesday reported obesity rates of more than 30 percent. That was triple the number in a 2007 survey.

lowdensitylifestyle.com/the-most-obese-cities-in-the-u-s

How nice of you to call the brave Polish heroes such as Mikolajczyk who risked their lives for Poland 'idiots'.


So we can blame your country for Poland being under the heel of the commies for decades. OK.


Perhaps there is a culture in the USA of over-eating?

Mikołajczyk took a gamble and failed. But that was becuase Churchill and FDR, later Truman believed or pretended to believe Stalin's promises in the first place. They should have listened to Patton. The 'iron curtain' speech was truly anti-climactic. FRD was an ailing man and probably not fully alert and competent at the time. Bad series of coincidences and unlucky breaks. Happens in international relations all the time. Stalin simply outbluffed his American and British coutnerparts.

Mikolajczyk was a hero who risked his life for Poland. Here in Poland it is considered very bad form to insult men who risked their lives in order to help Poland for doing that; perhaps American culture considers it to be acceptable but in Poland it is not.


He didn't have to bluff: the chances were very much that he could have swept the remaining allied forces back to the UK had he really wanted to.

No argument there.

But Brits are runner up....

thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/21/britain-s-weight-crisis-almost-hits-u-s-proportions.html

A shocking report landed on my desk this week, concerning the obesity epidemic gripping Britain. The Brits, it argues, are the fattest people in Europe: a race afflicted by gluttony, corpulence, and the attendant miseries of ill-health, early death, and national embarrassment. "It has been conjectured by some that for every one fat person in France or Spain, there are an hundred [sic] in England," reads the report. It makes for rather glum reading-not least because it was printed in 1816.This week-on February 18, 2013-a similar conclusion was reached in another report about obesity in Britain. The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, which represents most of the medical doctors in the U.K., described Britain as the "fat man" of Europe.

Not sure if there's some connection, but it might appear that countries with undistinguished Anglo-Saxon eating habits (US, Canada, Britain) tend to produce more junk-food addicts and fat slobs that those known for their distinctive cuisine (France, Italy). Sad to say, TV reports recently indicated that Poland leads Europe in the child obesity department.

Interesting idea for further discussion


Are you talking about the regime TV???????


Probably not in obesity, but overweight department. There is slight difference:

But, again, don`t believe everything what TV says, especially the regime one. :):):)

Don't rightly recall if it was TVP INFO or TVN24. Just something that whizzed by me. I think the term used was otyłość (obesity) rather than nadwaga (overweight), but I'm not 100% certain.

Well, to be fair, Britain's empire gave way to the U.S. which just happens to speak the same language. And the U.S. appears to weakening at the moment, at least somewhat. China is a huge now, and many corporations and savvy business people are looking in that direction.

It's always good to know other languages; after all, you don't know how long the status quo will last. China has the world's largest population and a steadily growing middle and upper class.