Classifieds / Korean looking for a job in Poland [18]

English is the language of communication in international corporations in Poland, not Polish.


LG in Wrocław are always looking for Korean workers, and they may well take you on as a management trainee.

News / Years of Poland in the EU - assessment of pros and cons [1158]

Can I ask - where do the FDP stand on the issue of Russia?

News / Poland's post-election political scene [4080]


There's a lot of insane ideas coming out of PiS right now, including one to bring back the PRL-era 49 voivodships, which would be a nice cover for destroying the powiats and significantly reducing the power/influence of the voivodships.

News / Years of Poland in the EU - assessment of pros and cons [1158]

The murmurings I've read online suggest that the plan is to remove national goverments from allocating funding, with it being given to local/provincial governments and NGOs instead.

Poland actually isn't really the issue (abuse of EU funds isn't widespread here), but rather Hungary, where they've been massively misused to put money into the pockets of Orban-linked construction companies.

History / Poland must get back Lwow, Wilno and Brest back [318]


Aha! I was quite surprised, because I thought you'd use the Polish name for sure :)

Yeah, the Ukrainian names are awkward in pronounciaton for me - Kharkiv is a good example.


He doesn't speak Polish and lives in the US, so I think it's safe to ignore his opinions on the matter. There might be a few fringe lunatics out there who want it back, but I doubt they want to pay for it.

History / Poland must get back Lwow, Wilno and Brest back [318]

No need to split hairs ;)

As an aside, I've been to Brest, and it's very surprising to me how the Soviet Union kept the character of the city intact. The city itself feels more like how a Polish city would have developed if it wasn't for WW2, and it's a very clean, peaceful place. I've got some pictures that show how clean everything is there, and then the shocking comparison with the Polish town of Łuków which was full of garbage everywhere, including a huge amount of trash by the side of the road.

Food / Origin of the pierogi [118]


I bought some chili con carne pierogi from somewhere in Kraków a while ago, they were excellent!

Notice how this chap immediately resorted to posting links from dubious far-right websites - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Hedge

History / Poland must get back Lwow, Wilno and Brest back [318]


Gummi, why are you using Lvov rather than Lwów/Lviv? Lvov is the Russian name, so I'm surprised to see you use it!

Law / Termination of permament or contract work contract in Poland [35]


The same can happen here. You can contact PIP and ask them to investigate if you feel that there was something wrong.

However, if it's a large company, then it's very possible that they followed objective criteria, such as your work performance.

News / Poles march against Mandatory poisoning by vaccines [202]


Potentially both, particularly if a vaccine is mandatory. Warsaw requiring vaccinations to attend public kindergartens is a move in the right direction.

News / Poland's post-election political scene [4080]


It's a time-tested tactic. While he's busy rallying against the Convention, his eyes are closed to the way that PiS just changed the rules so that members of the Sejm don't have to declare outside work.

News / Poland's post-election political scene [4080]

If it doesn't work, try this as a overview that debunks the claim that it can be used to force same sex marriage on signatory countries.

evnreport.com/politics/the-istanbul-convention-digested

I looked through the convention, and there's actually nothing about homosexual relationships in it. Marriage is discussed solely in terms of preventing forced marriages, which I'm sure you agree with, right?

News / Poland's post-election political scene [4080]


Jesus, you really have swallowed PiS propaganda. Here's the full text of the convention: coe.int/en/web/conventions/full-list/-/conventions/rms/090000168008482e

Where, exactly, does it state anything about homosexual relationships?

As we see from Gummi's post, it's very easy to make people believe that it's a good thing. They won't read the convention for themselves, they'll just believe that it's being used for 'evil' purposes against the will of the 'nation'.

News / Poland's post-election political scene [4080]


From her personal biography, I don't think she's going to let anyone push her around. She's not intimidated in the slightest by PiS, nor is she reliant on keeping faceless bureaucrats in Washington happy. The only person that could remove her is Trump, but even then, you have to question whether someone with her connections is reliant on him.

Trump was incredibly astute by picking her to go to Warsaw, and it's a huge pity that he didn't surround himself with such similarly talented people in his administration.

Language / Polish opinions on foreign languages? [54]


I think so, based on my travels around the ex-DDR. It's usually most noticeable in smaller towns/villages - in West Germany, people are genuinely interested and curious in outsiders. I was there last summer for two weeks in a nice Rhineland village, and not only would locals always, always greet me, some of them would happily approach and ask questions, especially when they saw the Polish number plates on the car. I remember having a wonderful discussion with one older woman who spoke English with a beautiful American accent, as she'd been working for many years on a US base there. She wanted to know everything about life in Poland, she invited us for coffee, and she had very interesting stories about her life. Same story with the village pub - my German is hopelessly non-existent, yet I went for a beer there. I was treated very well and with a smile.

Ex-DDR? It just doesn't happen. They don't greet people (in fact, they rarely even walk around), they keep themselves to themselves, and the attitude is much more pessimistic. I know Frankfurt (Oder) very well, and there's a very clear divide between the ordinary people and those who work at Viadrina or in the public administration. If you go for a beer, there's clear resentment towards you (assumption being that you're Polish) if you don't speak German fluently.

My friend works in the German-Polish bilingual school there, and she says that it's a never ending battle with people from Frankfurt as they have such a huge chip on their shoulder. She's leading a campaign to make Polish a mandatory 2nd foreign language in FFO schools, but it's being met with hostility from many people.

News / Poland's post-election political scene [4080]


That PiS reflect society, for better or for worse.

Study / Various education and school issues in Poland. Opinions, stories, controversies. [940]


I think there's also a lot more awareness of these topics in general since the botched reform. I routinely review the psychological opinions of kids as part of my job, and it's clear that parents are much more willing to admit (privately) to their kids needing help than they were 10 years ago.

I have a simple rule where I work - if I know a kid is in distress, then I immediately send an e-mail to the parents and the school psychologist, asking for a quick intervention. If the kid confides in me and doesn't want others to know, then I write a confidential report to the school headteacher, which outlines what I've been told and how I intend to deal with it. For me, trust is everything, hence I pass on the details to the headteacher who makes the decision as to how to proceed.

Unfortunately, from my perspective, many teachers are still badly prepared to deal with psychological issues of students.

History / Poland must get back Lwow, Wilno and Brest back [318]


Nah. Make them another Kaliningrad Oblast, they'll be much happier in the Russian Federation than in Ukraine.

Seriously speaking though, I know one guy from Podkarpackie, and he says that among his friends in the village, there's an overwhelming sense that only PiS actually bother with them. He gave the example of how the village hall was renovated, and PiS sent some minor bureaucrat from Warsaw to attend. The guy was a total nobody, but the point was that this guy came all the way from Warsaw to open their hall next to the wójt and the sołtys. End result? People think "good PiS".

Language / Polish opinions on foreign languages? [54]


I have a kind-of similar problem in Catalan: I'm dropping articles constantly and I can't seem to get my brain to accept that a foreign language does have articles. It's logical in some phrases like "jo vaig a l'ajuntament" (I'm going to the town hall), but then something like "la meva terra és el mar" (my land is the sea) - I just can't accept the need for two articles in there when it seems perfectly fine to say "meva terra és mar".

As for what it's done to the small amount of Spanish I know: it's a total disaster. Telling an Andalusian waiter "moltes gràcies" was not my finest hour.

News / Presidential elections 2020 - your opinions about campaign, candidates [2222]

Insane news from Split in Croatia: 5-6 hour queue to vote as of 22:00. Polls officially closed at 21:00, but you can vote as long as you were in the queue before 21:00.

twitter.com/TyszkiewiczElk/status/1282405455785005057

News / Presidential elections 2020 - your opinions about campaign, candidates [2222]


It's really a pity that you lie so often on here, Spike.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2019_Polish_parliamentary_election

IPSOS got it almost perfect in the 2019 Sejm election.

And just to show how Spike and all the others claiming how Bosak voters would always go for Duda, it proved to be wishful thinking, just as we said all along.

twitter.com/notesfrompoland/status/1282401505069477893

Turns out that they split almost evenly and that there was no mass Konfederacja vote for Duda. Why people tried to claim it would be otherwise is entirely beyond me.

News / Presidential elections 2020 - your opinions about campaign, candidates [2222]

Not including overseas votes. Duda will lose there, which means that it could be decided by less than 100,000 votes.

News / Presidential elections 2020 - your opinions about campaign, candidates [2222]

Simple choice: vote for Duda and get Ironside and drunk Dolno, or vote Trzaskowski and get hard working, well educated Pawian.

I'm voting for Trzaskowski.

News / Presidential elections 2020 - your opinions about campaign, candidates [2222]


Kind of, but look how the Communists now prop up the Babis government there.

For me, there should have been a very hard break, but... well, worth remembering that such a solution would have gone down badly among almost all politicians of that time. There's an interesting article here about Porozumienia Centrum and decommunization - wiadomosci.dziennik.pl/historia/aktualnosci/artykuly/530041,andrzej-kostarczyk-dekomunizacja-za-rzadu-olszewskiego.html - and how they simply couldn't do it. Even today, it's the same story - can you think of any political party where full and complete decommunisation would go down well with the members?


Let's not pretend that anyone actually cares about who was doing what in the PRL. It's all posturing while turning a blind eye to one's own communists.

News / Presidential elections 2020 - your opinions about campaign, candidates [2222]


Just goes to show that there's really no such thing as being anti-Communist in this country ;)

Don't get me wrong, I would like to see full and complete bans on anyone entering public life if they've been in the PZPR, or if their parents/grandparents were in the PZPR/affiliated organisations.

News / Presidential elections 2020 - your opinions about campaign, candidates [2222]


Ah yes, I wondered how long it would be before you'd give us a chance to remind you how Duda swore a Communist prosecutor into the Constitutional Tribunal.

As for General Rozanski, even Lech Kaczyński decorated him.

Study / Various education and school issues in Poland. Opinions, stories, controversies. [940]

So, end of the school year tomorrow. A total non-event for us, as kids haven't appeared in the school since March and we don't want to take any risks now. Kids will get their certificates in September if schools reopen, while those in the final year can turn up at any time until the end of August to collect them.

We won't hold any event, teachers won't meet kids/parents, and for the 6 kids who need to do something to get 'promoted' to the next class, they've all been assigned a project to be completed by the end of July. Kids in the final class won't fail, as it's been agreed by all the teachers that the situation is so exceptional that it would be horrible not to let them finish the final class.

For me, the only thing I have to do tomorrow is to go to the school to prepare my classroom for next year. Everything else is done, I don't have any kids that failed, all I need to do is tie up a few loose ends on the electronic journal and make sure that the documentation is all complete. There'll be some meeting of the Rada Pedagogiczna next week online, and I'll check to make sure that the other language teachers don't have any issues, but there's really not much to think about now.

News / Presidential elections 2020 - your opinions about campaign, candidates [2222]


Nope. Trzaskowski or Hołownia. Won't decide until Sunday for sure, but I'm leaning towards Trzaskowski based on how Hołownia lost his nerve. I like Hołownia's campaign more though, but he needs to do something tomorrow to convince me to switch.

Though it is tempting to vote for Witkowski on the grounds of being honourable and unafraid of tackling questions with straight answers.

News / Presidential elections 2020 - your opinions about campaign, candidates [2222]


Biedroń made a terrible, terrible mistake by attacking Hołownia at the beginning. There was no need for it, and he never really recovered from it. I think that made him pretty much unelectable, even in Lewica's eyes. His attack on Hołownia pretty much ruled him out of any consideration.

Hołownia has impressed me with his energy and commitment to grass roots campaigning, but you could see that he lost his nerve once Trzaskowski appeared. He stumbled, and never really recovered from it, though his "24 hours of Hołownia" was a fantastic piece of political PR. I hope that after this, he doesn't enter politics, but rather concentrates on social issues from outside. He'll be very good at it, I think. Had Hołownia kept his nerve and left Trzaskowski alone, I would have probably voted for him in the 1st round.

Kosiniak-Kamysz has totally lost his way. I think he simply didn't know what to do once Trzaskowski arrived, and he hasn't really put much effort into this campaign. I wouldn't vote for him, but his campaign has been bland and lifeless.