Life in communist Poland - personal relations

Sth occured to me - in communist times certain foods bore nobler names than they deserved. E.g., any sparkling wine was called champagne. Any fish roe was called caviar. As a child, I accepted that at face value, and it took me several years to understand the difference.

Was is communist new speech which imposed such embellishment language or Poles themselves tried to pretend they lived on a higher level than they really did?

Also true in the US at least until sometime in the 1980s... (and in everyday usage probably still) so that's not necessarily a communist thing.

On the other hand, I never understood why chicken Kiev is called 'de volaille' in Poland (or the dish known everywhere else as Russian (or Olivier) salad 'jarzynowa'...

Wow, now you have been successful in giving me a big surprise!


de vollaile is of French origin so it sounds much nobler to most Poles. :):):)


Knowing that most Poles sucked antiRussianism with their mothers` milk, it is quite easy to guess why. :):):)

Some Poles were happy and smiling when they were "gifted" with nice apartments, front row seat in the trams, possibility of going to the theater during ww2 at the cost of almost everyone.

Then you got the same people doing the same thing for the Soviets, while people are being hunted like animals in the forests, imprisoned en masse while being starving to death, forcing them to lie to have anything close to a normal life to show as a proof as being loyal to Moscow.

Then you got of course clueless idiots who think they know best and are like a wall towards any information coming their way, cause it doesn't suit their current narrative their trying to push.

I wish for better relations with the Russians, but lying is not the way. Russians being unable to admit the truth about state policies performed by either Tsarist Russia or the Soviet Union is horrible

As it doesn't lead anywhere else then to hellish relations. They are unable to grasp single incidents as they are used to only having the state having the authority to perform anything and everything. So the action of a few individuals are automatically blamed as the result of the entire society.

They don't have individual responsibility, but rather group responsibility. Performed mostly by the state.

Funny. I fell down with a serious cold and my wife offered me Thiocodin, dry cough tablets. I remember it from 1970s. It even appeared in one issue of my fav comic book.

Nice to see that certain things are eternal. :):)

BTW, Thiocodin contains codeine but it is still available without prescription.

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@pawian
Please be careful. Codeine is only for dry cough good. For wet cough it will be a medical malpractice. I don't want to have a Pawian a.d.

I am. I didn`t take it. :):)

That is not an explanation. If you don't know - keep your ignorant gob shut. Anti - what?


Well, because in Russian and Ukrainian cuisines it is ( or it was ) known as côtelette de volaille.
Sometimes they add - a la Kiev.

Not so much so. It's not a big thing there.

Not true. Nobody in my family was ever forced or even pressured to belong to PZPR, sign any pro-Soviet declarations, or participate in May 1 parades. I didn't belong to ZSP or any other organization. I was able to buy American newspapers and listen to Voice of America. They were jamming only Radio Free Europe.

And now that you are in America you listen to Voice of Russia and read russian newspapers (RT). Wise up loser!

Of course not. Didn`t you notice :):):) at the end???? That was just a simple halucidation.


Relax. Don`t let the forum exert so much stress on you. :):):)


Ant-Chianti. Anti-Panti. etc :):):)

Decades ago, while in kindergarten, we made figures with conkers or acorns that we found in the nearby park. A few days ago I saw kids looking for conkers and shouting out loud the names of figures they were going to make.

Chestnut trees are very popular in Polish cities co finding conkers has always been easy here. What about other countries - I admit I didn`t pay attention to such things on my foreign trips.

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lol ive never heard of that word conkers or ever heard it in us when i lived in the US of A or the land of the so called brave and free.

As far as I know it is an exclusively Brirish word for.chestnuts.

The kind of chestnut you can't eat. Kids play a game with them.

When you and I were kids we did, but I doubt if kids play conkers now :-)

Talking about shortages in communist shops
In another thread I mentioned a kindergarten-leaving farewell party where I was supposed to take part in folk dancing, wearing a traditional costume. But I felt strange coz my parents weren`t able to get me black boots as the tradition required. Why not? Coz they were unavailable in shops. Instead, I had to wear red boots. Everybody laughed at me. First, I was miserable to become such a laughingstock. Later, I thought it was quite funny, indeed. We can say my career of a clown started on that day. :):):)

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Trains in communist era were always so fekking crowded. When going on long school trips in 1970s or to sports camps in 1980s, some of my mates climbed onto that rack shelf where you keep your luggage over your head. And they even slept there. Amazing. I didn`t coz I was afraid of falling down. :):):)

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There were so any strange things..

Being non Polish, I remember taking my first railway trip in Poland with my Polish wife in 1987 from Warsaw to Krakow. At some point, the train stopped for long minutes in the middle of nowhere. I asked my wife what was going on; she said something that I still remember, we were waiting for a goods train to pass, they had priority over passengers trains. This added for me to strangeness of communism, it was the first time I heard this; in the western world, passenger trains always have priority. Maybe this is an allegory of communism, priority given to production over people!

An expression I heard a time or two was 'the train's not full unil the glass breaks'... it seems to have been PKP's motto back then...

The Słoneczny Pociąg, the extra cheap one at weekends in the summer from Warsaw to Gdańsk can be like that. The first one of the season is T just standing room only, it's tiptoes for 4 hours...

In mid 1980s we travelled by train back home after picking up some US visitors from the Warsaw airport. The train was so packed people were even sitting and lying on the floor in the aisle. My mum offered the train inspector a bribe and he opened his private compartment for us so the journey was quite comfortable. It was then that I first saw how black people brush their hair - with a special currycomb. I was shocked. :):)

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In the mid-eighties I was going with an English friend from Katowice to Warsaw by train. There was only one vacancy in the compartment which I offered him. I myself stood in the corridor and started talking to a boy I didn't know about my age. After about half an hour my Englishman walked out of the compartment and said that he preferred to talk to us because he was bored in the compartment. As we was in Warsaw he asked me if it was normal in Poland to make friends so easily.

I was born, so don't remember much of it.

You did not lose anything.

No, you weren`t. :):) You were already a young man. You left Poland in early 1990s. Come on. :):)

Where I'm from they called it a 'pick'.... (don't know how widespread that term was....)

What are talking about? you know what - whatever, but it is your fantasy, I have nothing to do with it.

That still happens, especially on TLK trains around public holidays.


I've only heard curry comb, however where I'm from most people using them would be from ot have roots in the Caribbean.


Thinking thinking about the trains, I prefer the PRL-era ones, especially the proper WARS cars. The newer types aren't the same and I hope the old ones stay forever.