Life / Walking on other people's property in Poland - cultural difference? [51]

I got picked up one by the police in suburban Chicago - decided to walk from my hotel to a restaurant because I had already drunk a few beers - the sight of someone walking was so unusual to them that they thought I was a drifter.

The Polish fences are vile - ugly, unnecessary and a waste of cash - hopefully they will go out of fashion soon (probably to be replaced by leylandii !)

USA, Canada / Polack/American Polonia/Plastic Pole "culture" [568]

But by your logic then Scotland is not a country, so you can not be Scottish. Scotland at the moment is a part of the United Kingdom, with some powers to raise taxes on internal issues - just like Galicia was a part of the Austrian Empire.

You underestimate the importance of American Polonia in the fall of communism - in the 80s there were still many more native born Poles and they were a key electorate in close fought states like Michigan, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania which coincidentally had a high number of electoral college votes. Reagan's threats to the Soviets certainly was a factor in them not going for a full scale red army invasion. In addition there was plenty of food parcels for the strikers, Polish language broadcasts organized by US Polonia, financial support for the unions - since entry visas were difficult at the time what else could they do ?

Work / CPAs in Poland? [8]

The Polish accounting equivalent of CPA is called a Biegly Rewident.

Its a strange organization - after the end of Communism there were only a few thousand of whom hardly any spoke English. They admitted about 10 members over a 6-7 year period (literally) so their prices went sky high and each Biegly was signing off thousands of audits.

Eventually EU integration forced change on them and they are now a pretty good organization with a difficult set of exams. A newly qualified Biegly would get paid 10-15k PLN per month, more in Warsaw. Technically they are as strong as British or US accountants but they lack the commercia/business angle, even if they have come from the Big 4.

What is sad here is that there is no intermediate qualification like Accounting Technicians. So for book-keepers you never really know what you are getting.

Real Estate / Apartments too expensive for Poles living in Poland [54]


I can assure you the 1.000 from the government for having a baby will buy about one set of clothes and two months of baby milk. Its hardly an outrageously high level of benefit and its aimed, quite rightly at the poorer sections of the population.

How many charities are there that could support you indefinitely ? And there are never ending zwolnienie lekarskie but after 3 years your benefits are cut sharply, certainly to the extent that it would be no easy life.