Moving to work in Poland from Turkey - monthly gross income will be 12500 PLN

Hi everyone,

I have received an offer from a company located in Krakow as a Software Lead role. Monthly gross income will be 12500 PLN.

I have general questions.

** Is salary decent for 3 people family ?
** How is the general attitude to expats in Krakow ? Especially for Turkish and so Muslims ?

Well, my first answer is you will be fine with 12.5k. The second comment is: what lifestyle do you have now with your current job?

That's like around 9k net. Around 2/3k are gone for a decent apartment. 2/3k for food. You still may have 3/4k at the end of the month.

In Turkey myself and wife is working. If we move to Poland she will not be able to work at least 1 year until she can speak Polish or at least English fluently.

So I can say we are comfortable in Turkey.

Thanks very much for the answer.

Good grief! Who spends three thousand a month on food??? My husband eats like an elephant, hot food every three hours when he's at home, and I don't spend that much. We have meat, fish, seafood, mountains of fresh fruit and veg. 1500 is more than adequate for a family of three to eat well if you cook proper meals from fresh produce, two thousand tops.

Hi Atch,

Thanks for your answer. So if I am correct you mean 1500 is fairly enough for monthly food cost.

What about to live in Krakow as a Turkish ? Do you think can myself and wife adapt easily ?

Hi there Thursunamy. Re the food, if your wife is a good cook (and I'm sure she is!) and she knows how to shop, then 1500 - 2000 would be plenty. Also if she uses a lot of spices and rice and so on there are places that sell those things in bulk for restaurants but they are also open to the general public and it works out cheaper. Like this place:

habibi.pl

Here's a link for one of the big supermarkets. They have branches all over Poland. You can get an idea of prices and try planning a week's shopping for your family with your wife, and see how much it comes to:

auchandirect.pl/auchan-warszawa/pl

Also there are street markets where you can get fresh fruit, veggies, nice bread, meat often better quality than the supermarkets.

Don't forget to include non-food items like shampoo and toothpaste and washing detergent etc, That will push the bill up a bit.

As for adapting, I imagine you'll be ok, but it will definitely be tough for your wife if she doesn't speak any Polish and not even much English. And it will be tough on you because she won't be so independent and will need your help for very ordinary everyday things for a while anyway.

It gets cheaper as you eat home cooked meals made from available local ingredients in season exclusively at home, and gets more expensive the more you eat out in restaurants and cafes, the more prepared foods you eat, or the more meals you prepare with ingredients that are expensive in Poland, such as beef, lamb, seafood, or fruits and vegetables that are not in season, like tomatoes and peppers and just about any fruit except for apples.

Snacks and beverages away from home can add a lot to your costs. If you're very frugal and careful, a family of three can make it on 1000 PLN a month. If you're not careful, then 3000 PLN is entirely possible.

The biggest blow for you will be fresh vegetables and fruits, as well as beef and lamb. Poles eat very little beef and lamb, practically no seafood except for herring and a few very bland fish like pollock or Vietnamese catfish, and base their diet on pork and chicken, with cabbage, potatoes, onions and carrots being the primary, and often the just about the only, vegetables.

Oh, and by "food costs" I include household supplies like soap and clothes washing detergent, as well as personal hygiene products like toothpaste and toilet paper.

Attitude is very hostile, especially from men. There were many cases of Turks and Arabs being beaten in Poland. Are you swarthy and/or looking like an arab/middle easterner? What's more nationalists can mistake you for a refugee.

That's true. Lamb can be difficult to obtain and it's very expensive. Beef is easy to get, it's in all the supermarkets and meat shops but they butcher it differently, they don't let it hang, and the quality and flavour simply don't compare to the Irish beef which I'm accustomed to. I wouldn't touch pre-minced beef here. I buy a piece of decent beef and get the 'butcher' to mince it for me. I say 'butcher' because they're not proper butchers such as you find in England and Ireland but never mind!


You can get fresh prawns and crab and so on fairly regularly but you'll pay around 50zl a kilo for prawns.


That's improved. You can get salmon, trout, cod, bream, halibut, tuna. But I miss plaice and hake.


At the moment you can get lovely forest mushrooms in the street markets. There's plenty of pumpkins, aubergines, zukini, asparagus etc. and not too pricey.

You're right that cooking seasonally is the way to go.

"At the moment" is the key phrase. Out of season, they can be ridiculously expensive, if they are available at all.


It's expensive, and it's low quality (the good stuff, what little is produced in the country, is exported. I bought beef only a handful of times in Poland, and I'm an American. Pork consumption is far, far higher than beef consumption. Ten times or more.

As for fish, the only good fish I had was halibut. At a price. Was singularly unimpressed by the local trout.

Thanks for your detailed explanations. By the way unfortunately I have a MiddleEastern look :) So you say it could be a problem. I could say I am a liitle bit swarthy. But maybe this circumstance is really dependent with the location you live. Do you agree ? If I settle down to a centric location it could be better.

We agree :))

I don't want to scare you but according to this this there is at least one race based beating per week or two in Poland and people who look like arabs are targeted in particular.

"Unfortunately, massive hate speech towards Arabs translates into hate violence incidents," Bodnar said. "Basically, every two weeks, we can identify a situation when somebody is attacked, because he looks 'like an Arab'."

''This is the moment when words turn into deeds. About once a week, or every two weeks we [receive a report] of a racial beating,''

theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/29/christiano-ramos-poland-chilean-pianist-beaten-arab-concert

thenews.pl/1/9/Artykul/243728,Racial-tension-escalating-in-Poland-Human-rights-ombudsman

business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/chilea n-attacked-in-poland-after-being-mistaken-for-arab-116030100109_1.html