News / Germany After the EU and the Russian Scenario - future of the European Union and Poland [310]

Not quite so simple, Marsupial!

As usual, your type enjoys simplifying more complex issues of morality, justice, and ethics. While not German by birth, I view the destruction of Dresden along with numerous other once proud German treasures as an indication of the difficulties posed by recent German history! The Allies were damned if they didn't and damned if they did. Had the British and the Americans not bombed the cities in question, posterity would have recorded the turning a blind eye to the monstrousness of the Holocaust (among many other monstrous acts committed by the Germans/Nazis). That they did in fact bomb those cities was seen as just punishment for Hitler's nearly unstoppable evil and those misguided minions who lent their wholehearted support to his cause.

Regarding the future of Germany as well as the EU, the former has shown herself a worthy ally of the West. She cannot be expected to eternally stand in the shadows of her past. She has more than paid her debt to civilization. Chancellor Merkel is well aware of this!

Love / Are Polish men handsome to you? [182]

...you mean the guys in trenchcoats, resting on those skinny brollies aka umbrellas?
:-)

News / Germany After the EU and the Russian Scenario - future of the European Union and Poland [310]

Translation, please Marsupial?

@danke, weg04:-)

Ironside, for your information, Warsaw was one of my urban invasions undertaken by both the Nazis as well as the Allies during the War. Dresden's bombing was revenge, pure and simple!! I agree with weg04, look up firebombing; it ain't pretty.

News / Germany After the EU and the Russian Scenario - future of the European Union and Poland [310]

Not only spelling errors, my friend! Germany had her ass bombed so bad, it was still being rebuilt up until the mid-60's:-))
Has Poland anything to quite compare with the firebombing of Dresden??! Only in the new millennium was her once famous cathedral even refurbished. Much of her Old Town has been lost forever!!

I sense more than a little self pity in your condescension.

Love / Are Polish men handsome to you? [182]

Fashion still holds sway in Europe compared to the States. I was always impressed by how Italian youth dress while on vacation.
Poles too tend to dress nicely. The exception to the above are the Germans, Scandinavians, and the Dutch. In Holland, the Marlon Brandoesque "bad boy" sixties' look is quite common, including some shoulder length hair among guys, ripped Levis, and peace belts. Someone who recently visited Amsterdam remarked all the guys want to look like a young Rutger Hauer:-))

lol

News / Germany After the EU and the Russian Scenario - future of the European Union and Poland [310]

Meaning that Poland's economic interests have been subsumed by Germany's, is that it? You're clearly right, no disagreement about that!
Perhaps we all wish it weren't so, but Germans have shown themselves to be preturnaturally resilient, climbing out from under the rubble of '45 and essentially rebuilding their country by their own grit and determination, Marshall Plan dollars notwithstanding:-)

Language / Short Polish<->English translations [1049]

...pepek, upierd etc.. Yes, we know(:-

Was watching Wajda's classic "Popiol i Diamenty" on BRAVO channel several evenings ago. Wow, how the mighty have fallen. Their Polish seemed soooo classic, if totally natural for those times:-)

News / Germany After the EU and the Russian Scenario - future of the European Union and Poland [310]

Ahhem, posters at large. Certain above quotes attributed to me, were in fact NOT posted by me:-)

@Maf, no doubt that Germany's helped enrich Poland in more ways than one.

Language / Short Polish<->English translations [1049]

By definition, if something's old-fashioned, it's no longer in fashion, right? You can't have it both ways!

News / Germany After the EU and the Russian Scenario - future of the European Union and Poland [310]

Whilst we persist in "carpetbagging" Germany into some kind of latter-day pillager and plunderer of old, let us not neglect a hidden degree of jealousy afoot here! Germany remains the economic engine of Europe and it was this dynamo upon which much of the world continues to depend for high-quality workmanship, that is, that which hasn't yet been outsourced to cheaper-wage countries:-)

@Ironside, I'm not enamored with much of Poland's history. On the other hand, I don't about denegrating many of her noteworthy accomplishments either.

Poles are envious of Germany's economic achievments as well as her engineering, let's face it!

News / Germany After the EU and the Russian Scenario - future of the European Union and Poland [310]

Maf, the EU's a mixed bag, any intelligent person can see that, we both agree, I think! You asked me though to name you a single thing Germany's done to make peace, so to speak, with the EU. Schulz isn't perfect, heaven knows neither is Merkel. Yet, ever since the Greece debacle several years ago, Germany has once again been made to appear as the bogeyman of Europe, the perennial whipping boy for all of Europe's ills, from the "sick man of Europe" to cancer of the continent.

It's really enough already! I must reiterate, although they seem diplomatically close, Putin is far scarier and much more of a bully than either Schulz or Merkel ever were!

News / Germany After the EU and the Russian Scenario - future of the European Union and Poland [310]

Fall '17! By Fall '18, people will have doubtless already recovered from what hit 'emLOL
Typo:-)

News / Germany After the EU and the Russian Scenario - future of the European Union and Poland [310]

Appointing Martin Schulz to spearhead the deeply fractured SPD. That's for starters. For closers, will have to wait and see after Fall '18, save for the post-election blues if the wrong team should win:-) Or as the Germans often like to say: "Mal abwarten und Teechen trinken!"

News / Germany After the EU and the Russian Scenario - future of the European Union and Poland [310]

Maf, the latter is merely an outmoded stereotype, come on, I'm surprised at you falling for that one:-) Putin's nearly as much of a bully as both Hitler and Stalin combined. Merkel's a bleedin' piker next to Czar Vladimir. But oh yeah, Russia was an ally after the War who liberated Buchenwald along with Berlin, so they're not so bad, right?

lol

Language / Short Polish<->English translations [1049]

fmal867, "Psia krew!" or "Psia krew bydlo" (lit. "Dog's blood, cattle!") are now somewhat old-fashioned curses. In translation, of course, they sound ridiculous to Anglophone ears, but in Polish, once carried some weight:-)

@NoToForeigners,

I'm not misinforming, you're trolling.

Language / Short Polish<->English translations [1049]

Perhaps you heard the sentence "Jak dobrze..." (Y -A - K D - O - P - S - H - A) = "..how good or well.." Only a guess, sorry:-)

??

Language / Short Polish<->English translations [1049]

Can't quite make our which words you attempted to transcribe, fmal867. Perhaps some documents with the words written might aid in translation. I'm also not a Polish native speaker, and so maybe to someone else, what you've written is more transparent:-)

Just a quicky 'dobscha' is probably supposed to read "dobrze" (which you did write correctly in phonetics), meaning "good". Apart from that, apologies for not being able to read the rest for you.

My sympathies on your loss!

News / Germany After the EU and the Russian Scenario - future of the European Union and Poland [310]

Indeed!

Love / Are Polish men handsome to you? [182]

Many traditional Polish men, both young and old, tend to hold themselves in a proud, almost gallant, fashion, particularly where the opposite sex is concerned! They seem to walk ramrod straight, well-groomed, maybe a trifle stiff, in comparison with, say, American men:-)

I'm only speaking about when they're sober! When they're not??! All bets are offLOL

News / Germany After the EU and the Russian Scenario - future of the European Union and Poland [310]

As per usual, Crow, you took my American colloquialism at face value. It's only an expression:-)

News / New European Council's report: "Poland oasis of racism, xenophobia and homophobia" ... [343]

At best, said news story is incomplete. Then again, what news story isn't?
:-)

News / Germany After the EU and the Russian Scenario - future of the European Union and Poland [310]

If Merkel wins come mid-autumn of this year, I'd say the EU at least has a future, not necessarily bright:-) If not, then we'd all better start prayin' now, kids, AND HARD!!!

News / New European Council's report: "Poland oasis of racism, xenophobia and homophobia" ... [343]

Problem there is, that not even US vulgarity is unconditionally universally understood as such:-)

Only recently, a Hindi-native speaker cursed me out royally for nearly side swiping me as my wife and I were exiting the Interstate. He then flagged me by to let me pass, whereupon I audibly uttered an uncharacteristic F-curse, to which the fellow responded, "Too late to apologize now!"

lol

Genealogy / Displaced Persons Camp / Work camp and concentration camp difference [86]

I believe there was a DP camp near Lueneburg, in a small town whose name currently escapes me. Celle, I think!

News / New European Council's report: "Poland oasis of racism, xenophobia and homophobia" ... [343]

Spiritus, young European smart-asses frequently trade four-letter insults in English with one another, even if both have English only as a second language, merely to try to be clever!

English across the pond, on the Continent that is, is almost as important a status symbol as a driver's license here in the States. Folks'll even lie about how godd they are:-)

No,no. A highly believable news story.

Food / Poles have a more loving attitude to food than here in the UK [169]

However, Atch, Parson Woodforde or Mrs. Beaton are nevetheless a far cry from Nigella Lawson:-)

Poles share with other continental Europeans aka the Italians, the French, even the Spanish and to a degree the Germans, a deep respect for the idea of "setting a good table"!. Perhaps only until quite recently with all this multiculturalism have the English begun to think about home dining for commoners as something to be savored on an aesthetic level!

News / New European Council's report: "Poland oasis of racism, xenophobia and homophobia" ... [343]

@Atch, if so, then at best BROKEN English, if at all:-) Iranians learn, in my experience, better English than most Eastern Europeans I've encountered. Nonetheless, they doubtless couldn't make out much of what the locals were saying, only that it was said in a disrespectful manner.

@Maf, what evidence have you that they weren't? It's all a question of what one wants to believe! Ironside, for instance, automatically gives the standard knee-jerk reaction that negative news concerning Poles must therefore be "fake news"LOL Doubt he even knows what fake news is! So it's real if Jews besmerch gentile Poles, but fake if it's the opposite??!

Makes ya wonder whether some people here are playin' with a full deck.

News / New European Council's report: "Poland oasis of racism, xenophobia and homophobia" ... [343]

True. And yet the very fact that people seen as "different", although by any standards clean, circumspect in their behavior, and reasonably polite, are verbally attacked by strangers simply for being overheard speaking a foreign language, surely remains cause for concern, be it in Poland, Ferguson, Mo. or Flushing, Queens:-)

News / New European Council's report: "Poland oasis of racism, xenophobia and homophobia" ... [343]

Merged:

Muslim Girls Complain of Polish "Racism" On Holocaust School Trip

According to yahoo news, a group of young Muslim women from Germany were verbally accosted while on a Holocaust study trip to Poland today! As some where speaking Farsi, locals could be heard (in English) making abusive remarks about their wearing traditional garb and speaking in their native language. So far, this is only their side of the story:-)

Curious as to our members reactions.

Food / Poles have a more loving attitude to food than here in the UK [169]

Just another note. Continentals often take their main meal of the day for lunch, whereas, like the Americans, Brits usually will have either a small sandwich and coffee or a light snack for midday, leaving their main meal for supper aka dinner. Not sure though where this casual attitude towards eating arose.