Poland after one year of living here

...>>>>>don't listen to all this nonsense about Krakow - the "Royal City." It's OK for a visit, but to live there must be purgatory.

Yes, but people still live there. Maybe they think that when they die they will go to heaven (as now they are living in hell) and are just marking their time in 'purgatory'.

"if you don't speak Polish get out please "

After the war my parents were exiled in the UK none of them spoke English and for sure it took more than one year for them to learn English,

They were treated very well by the British people, my father was given work on a building site although he did not speak a word of English .

The Poles in Britain were very much treated as allies and friends who had served in the British forces to fight the Nazis, My father was in the British eight army for eight years without speaking English, many of the Polish Pilots in the Battle of Britain barely spoke a few words.

Lukes story reminds me very much of my own families beginnings in a foreign land. Luke is trying to integrate and make friends which is the best way forward for him to understand our culture and language. I myself started school unable to speak a word of English it can be very tough to make friends.

After my return to Poland I find that most Poles understand and appreciate the close ties and friendship that Britain an Poland have.

Of course there is a minority of uneducated people in Britain and Poland who do not understand their own history, and have a bloody foreigners attitude.

Good luck Like I wish you well.

Absolutely awesome forum! Wonderfully wide opinion spectrum with 50%Polka and swawek.. Lukes experience is a standard reaction to Polish culture of someone who is not very assertive by nature and tends to assimilate socially by emmulation and value judgements. This personality type will succeed moving to Poland but has to do at least one or two yo-yo moves back and forth in order to make up their mind and learn a few uncomfortable truths about their own character disposition. I am born in poland moved to uk at age 20 returned at 50. Also US and Canada. There is no denial that polish people are all those vile things you describe. But for me for all the warts i prefer to live in a country with strong christian identity and where most people are still of sound mind in terms of right or wrong.

Absolutely awesome forum! , I agree In the last week I Have seen so many more Polish members posting with some great input.

+1


You took the words right out of my mouth dolno.
A true breath of fresh air to start hearing from the native Polish and THEIR cultural views.
Isn't that what most of us came here for.
Good job mods as things are finally starting to track in the right direction.

Dump the Skype daddy stuff.... and mąkę the Best of where you are mate

To be honest I'm in a similar position to you but slightly worse.

The mither of my girl only let's me see her for an hr or 2 each month twice a month and it's very hard.

Since I only see her for such a short time ...living in Poland full time don't make sense.
I fly to Poland each fortnight since 4 me Skype is absolutely no substitute for holding your own child's hands and seeing them in person....

If you don't speak Polish .... then learn it !
I'm English and when I first started going to Poland a few years back.... I felt like a duck out of water - totally cut off from everyone and slightly depressed

(Sone times still am )

If your wife is determined to stay in poland .... then learn Polish - make it a priority.

It's help me ... and talking in Polish with other people in poland you realise what polite nice people they can be .... there r some exceptions ((my ex for example )) ...but from what you say ...your still with your partner and can get to see your kid as much as you want....

Do yourself a favour ... accept where u r at and make the best of it... going back to England will just mean that eventually you'll lose your kid.

A good few people have mentioned that Luke should learn Polish, but according to his profile he speaks Polish, so........


How VERY dare you! Seriously though, shop bought cakes are inferior the world over, a home made cake is a different thing entirely but not everyone is good at baking. Home made English cakes made someone with the right touch are a 'rewelacja' and home made Polish cakes, whilst they don't compare, can be very good.


It's natural to prefer the cakes you grew up with. I'd definitely prefer an apple tart made with flaky pastry and Granny Smith apples than a Szarlotka - the variety of apple used is too sweet and bland for my tastes. And to me a Mazowieckie doesn't make a very exciting Christmas cake!

That is no doubt that we like food we were brought up on :-).

I don't know where you live but there is one (family run) cake coffee-shop in Krakow which I would recommend.

Apple pie- it is English but Apple tart- I would say more French ....

There are cakes like makowiec, serowiec....kremowka, w-zetka, napoleonka which you don't have so......

.....sernik, jabłeczna......SMACZNE!!!

Yes, those kinds of bakeries/patisseries are a different matter. I would never say 'no' to a cake from Blikle :) But Blikle cakes are not the average Polish cake, they are an art form! In fact many of their cakes are based on French, Italian or even German recipes, not Polish. They're the sort of thing that would have been favoured at the Polish court in bybone days and in those beautiful palaces along Ulica Miodowa in Warsaw..........


In Ireland an apple pie is always called a tart. It's made on plate, not in a pie dish, so it's quite shallow. We probably got the word tart from the Normans (whom we called The Old English) . Bear in mind that all our cakes are basically Irish adaptations of English classics. No doubt the Normans introduced the 'tarte' so by the time the English planters came along with their pie, the word 'tart' was so firmly established that the 'pie' never caught on.

I'm partial to Sowa myself, especially the truflowe cakes (more torts, but who's coutning?)

There must be something in it. Notice that he said exactly the same in his other thread created a year ago, only one month after his arrival to Poland. He also says he cannot write in Polish (so can he read it?). Personally, I would think his knowledge of Polish may be poor and restricted to some few useful phrases.


It is best not to eat any cakes, be it British or Polish, unless you are a slim person.

Yes, that struck me as odd. My darling husband started me off on the right road very shortly after we met. In typical, brusque, brisk, blunt and ruthlessly efficient Polish style he told me that he didn't have the patience to keep telling me how such-and-such a word was pronounced but that as Polish was a phonetic language, he would teach me the alphabet. Then I could read any word and pronounce it properly. He also told me that the stress was usually on the second last syllable so what more did I need to know. The grammar? Don't worry he told me, you'll never learn that!

Anyway it was the best thing he could have done. The phonetics of the Polish alphabet are really easy though I think maybe the fact that I was already used to teaching English phonics to children was a help. I think it only took a weekend to learn the alphabet and then I was independent in terms of teaching myself words.


A little bit of everything in moderation is ok I think.

Poles share a lot in common with Icelanders and Hungarians I've encountered over the years; they know their language(s) are damned hard for the average foreigner to pronounce correctly, let along with idiomatic naturalness, and yet they seem annoyed to the point of distraction, when foreigners mispronounce words:-)

lol

"bo zmarzniesz..." - those words are the bane of a Polish child's life.

I never got cold (or colds), and I still don't - and I'm nearly 50!