Life in communist Poland - personal relations

This was my experience even in the 1990s. Mind you, this is the time of unbridled Wild West capitalism.

Maybe her's were like they were because she grew up in a rural-ish suburb in out skirts of Poznan.

And they had plenty of delicious produce from nearby farms??? :):):)

80s/90s - a lot of dairy products: pierogi ruskie (lol), leniwe, milk soup, pancakes with cottage cheese, cream or vanilla budyń for dessert; apart from that a lot of gulash and chicken, rather decent soups (nothing like what we had at home but edible) and always some sort of fruit kompot. Now that I think of it, it was quite decent but back then I never really enjoyed the meals at our school canteen because my mom was a great cook and I was spoiled at home.

Not sure, but the meals were cooked by women who came from those nearby farms.

Yes, of course. We are not savages.

Everything you have posted chimes exactly with my experience of school meals. The free milk was horrible exactly as Pavian describes. The food was probably worse than Torq describes and not as balanced. Its nothing to do with communism just the bean counters undervaluing the country's potential and future.

We had that too. Even after the milk-snatcher stopped it, we still had it in South Yorkshire. It was always on the point of going off. I can't stand milk to this day. Nevertheless, it was vitamins and calcium which some kids didn't get much of elsewhere.


I think you could say that about most of the developed world and places less-developed too. And cynicism creeps into bureaucracies and is pervasive.

School meals (like hospital and prison food) have a tiny budget. It's a miracle really that they served what they did, and with Poland's kleptocracy meaning that not all the budget/food got to the kids an even bigger miracle.

Who are "We"?

Or have you let your mask slip?

Yes. It can be a matter of further discussion if it is better to have a canteen with lousy meals at school or no canteen at all which is today`s reality for most schools in Poland.

PiS, instead of wasting or stealing billions, should have spent them on reviving school canteens, nurse care and dentist surgeries in Polish schools. I had them in my primary school in 1970s.

We had those two. Not everyone went to the school dentist however the existence of one was important for kids whose parents didn't take them for dental treatment.

I'm surprised that there aren't school nurses now. They're important for head infestations which can spread in schools, for picking up on childhood obesity and for supporting girls when they reach the menarche.

School canteen are pretty important too and should always be free.