What are the things which cause culture shock in Poland?

I've read lots of massages about how "different" is life in Poland, and how difficuly is to adjust for a foreigner. But u never say what exactly u mean. Can someone give some examples?

As a person who never was abroad I have a shady idead how life can be different in countries u came from. I mean I understand that American who come to Poland is visiting different world (as I consider Americans to be mentally completely diffrenet than Poles). But Brits? Or other European nations? I always thought that there are minor diffrences among european countries.

good Q, ZY..

for starters English is not the prevailing language.. no fish and chips, no haggis, beautiful girls, vodka.. lol

If it's the first foray into central Europe, "dirty" seems to come up quite often. "Dysfunctional" rears its head when you try to get things done.

Most often ppl drink beer. Vodka is more when celebrating something or when doing a private party.


??? what's dysfunctional rears mean?

bureaucracy?

rears its head means pokazuje się

aaa, dzięki ;)

well, for starters, they don't use ice in Poland! :) hahaha, kidding.

convex wrote:


yep.

also, personal space, or lack there of in public.

lack of inconvenience in general hit me really hard, and still nags me.

another thing that hit me was the fact that nobody owns a house so i was never going from a house to another house. everyone i met in the begining, and even today, all live in tiny apts. it's rare to find someone in Wroclaw that says, "hey, i'm having a party at my HOUSE, you should come." in America, every adult owns a home, people under 30 have 100+ sq. meter apts., so that lack of space gave me a major feeling of being smothered when i first came. coupled with the language barrier, it's much stronger.

work ethic was and still is a culture shock to me.

good thread, i just hope it doesn't turn into the usual "us vs. them" argument.

I'd say the biggest difference and the hardest for anglophones, me included, to fully come to grips with) comes under the general heading of 'rules'.

For a Brit, according to stereotypes (mostly accurate imho at the individual level), there shouldn't be too many rules*. For Polish people (IME) there need to be a lot of rules, the more the better (which is why government efforts to trim the bureaucracy are bound to fail - despite what they say, Polish people want there to be bureacracies with lots of rules.

For British people rules need to make sense and be fair. Polish people just don't care whether or not rules make sense or are fair (the reason for this in a moment).

Brits also think everybody needs to follow the rules while Poles think other people should follow them and treat the question of whether or not to follow them themselves as one of personal discretion. If you don't like a rule and think you can get around it, more power to you!

Another area is medical care. British people think most illness will naturally work themselves out and oddly enough doctors seem to think that too. The British press is full of people dieing after 6 British doctors fail to recognize some really hard to miss disease.

That happens much less often in Poland where people tend toward hypochondria and are supported in all their most dire predictions by most doctors. Anything out of the ordinary is thought to probably be dangerous and you can go to the doctor for something minor that seems obvious and you'll wind up taking 6 tests for other things and have three new prescriptions. (post operative care is also more thorough a former British colleague had a procedure done in Britain and their Polish doctor was horrified at how little follow up there was.

*I know this is not backed up by UK governments over the last 15 years or so, but I'm pretty certain that UK governments over the last 15 years or so have been purposefully trying to destroy the British state and build something different so I'm not sure if that counts.

This is a great question.

1. cabbage on hamburgers
2. cabbage on hotdogs

AGREE! ;)


Well i think its just because Poles are too artful... so that the bureaucrats have to be artful twice! ;)

Mainly the appearance of girls.You cannot understand why you were in the wrong place for so long.

Too many ads on tv for medical stuff, waaaay too many
Not enough funny ads on the tv.

Beaurocracy
and the nasty ******* that work in govt buildings

Herrings, like, seriously who had the idea to pickle a fish, fish should be fresh :-)
Err...bigos, oh man, why?

polish beer is fantastic, so are polish sausages, actually all polish food is great with the exception of herring & bigos.

Polish people dont touch each other as much as in Ireland, prob same in britain, I mean things like clapping each other on the back or hitting someone's shoulder when they tell a joke etc. or a hug, y'know it's actually ok to hug a man.

Also Poles dont really give each other the finger, or the V, which'd be fairly common at home too.

The amount of stunning looking women you have here is unbelievable, I shoulda moved here years ago.

one thing I cannot get my head around is the formal language and not being able to swear in front of older people, for me that's like a submission by treating people differently just because they're older than me and it doesn't float my boat.

Oh and women aren't treated like sex objects here like the are in Ireland and britain, I like that.

too many people wear dark & boring clothes too, nothing wrong with a bit of colour boys and girls, also this thing of white socks with shorts that ***** just nasty looking, oh and why do I see men queueing outside a solarium, wtf is that all about :-P

very tempting


yup, pushy radio/tv drug adverts :/

it's called respect


how about the bent arm thing?


but not the socks with sandals? that's normal? lol

3. Cabbage with everything else. Mexican food for instance.

Having lived in Krakow for a year now I have found nothing that is a culture shock (from London). The food is a bit crap, even the expensive shops sell meat or fish that has gone off. As a big fish eater its difficult..

The state of the roads and pavements is disgusting, I've twisted my ankles several times just walking. Living in London I'm used to small apartments, but here they live in every room - no living and dining rooms (not for sleeping) like the UK. Apartments are pretty well made if a little drab on the outside.


And a hell of a lot of Pharmacy's. I suspect its becuase self administration is better than going to the health service.

Most other things are basically the same, just in a rather complicated language.

Naw, i dont really agree with ya there, you can respect someone and still swear around them.
If i wanna just say hi to my neighbour/local shopkeeper coz I've seen him everyday for the last year I wanna say Czesc and not Dzien Dobre and if I wanna complain about the weather to them I wanna say k*rwa pogoda y'know?

There's nothing wrong with swearing, it adds colour and flavour to the language


I've never seen that here, isn't that an Italian thing to do? But ok, I'll start using that :-P


Why would anybody do that? It's horrible isn't it? You see people at home doing that too and it makes people just look like proper dorks :-)

You can please no cabbage and they give you a dish without cabbage ;)


Personally I dont think that in Poland there is so many pretty girls. Have no idea why guys are so overwhelmed...


Norwegians?


and I guess u forgot karp ;)


but they sometimes give so called "gest kozakiewicza". Btw is she showing the thing what i think it is or its just the coincidence?


Yep. Mind that in Poland we have age chauvinism very advanced. The elders thinks that we will be never as good as they were in their youth, they think that we r less intelligent, dumb **** and have no voice until turn 18 (at least).


Shorts? Oh, i dint know that something wrong with that ;)


Its our national symbol ;D


they just want nice tan to match their new white tracksuit ;P

not off the chin but one arm crossing through the inside of an elbow while that arm is bent.. can't think of the name for it at the moment..


no, it's soooooo sexy. ;) :D :D


jooz

Gest Kozakiewicza in polish, bras d'honneur in french, gesto dell'ombrello (umbrella gesture) in italian, arm of honor in english and... banana in Brasil :|

hmm.. there used to be a different name for that.. i never heard of this one..

like?
maybe it has changed? ;)

i dunno.. fikus? figel?


definitely has.. that was not the name that i remember.

tu sie zgina dziob pingwina... ;)

ur kidding. Wow it seems u weren't in Poland since 1980.
U know who is Kazkiewicz, do u?

Kozakiewicz? pole vault jumper...
Kozakiewicz's gesture
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C5%82adys%C5%82aw_Kozakiewicz

haha, you know what i mean


sori, i didn't mean to cause offence :P


please put this guy on stage he's crackin me up! :-)


Cant wait to try this out on saturday night!

lol.. you know Lato or Dayna did that too in a world cup game or something.. i couldn't find the pic.. could be wrong of course.


that's not it either.. hmm

that's funny... :)

yeah, that's freaking hilarious. hahahaha and that was under Jaruzelski already..

I think "wał" would be the alternative name to call this gesture. One would make the gesture while saying at the same time: wała!!! (i.e., roughly: stay away from me!) I think all he meant was: "fcuk you!" The "gest Kozakiewicza" came into use during 1980 Olympics in Moscow, when the overwhelmingly Russian spectators booed Kozakiewicz and that's how he reacted to them. It was televised live: all Poland was so proud of him :-)