News / Petition for War Crimes Reparations for Poland [126]


A non-EU Greece without the Euro sounds like a pretty good deal considering they've been in depression for 10 years with no end in sight...

Germany knew the books were cooked so they share a lot of the responsibility for that catastrophe

News / Petition for War Crimes Reparations for Poland [126]


Those ungrateful greeks!


Is dem's widdle feewings hurt?

News / Petition for War Crimes Reparations for Poland [126]


True, you're just an impotent jerk trying to rile people up.

Law / DUAL CITIZEN (POL/AUS) WITH AUSTRALIAN PARTNER: IS IT POSSIBLE FOR HIM TO RELOCATE TO POLAND? [7]


Absent unforeseen information, if you put a ring on it then things will be much easier....

News / Petition for War Crimes Reparations for Poland [126]

say many kremlin funded trolls.... after molotov-ribbertrop, katyn and 45 years of an unwanted and unnecessary political and military alliance... Poland owes moscow nothing (which Moscow will receive.... in abundance!)

Language / Game - guess Polish idioms/sayings in direct English translation [1756]


I think it was also the translation of pestka as 'pip' that made it hard for me... there used to be different words for different kinds of seeds but for many/most modern speakers they've disappeared... I still say peach pit and maybe cherry pit but use 'seed' for everything else... even mango (where pit might also fit)

Do British speakers still use words like pip and stone for different kinds of seeds?

Language / Game - guess Polish idioms/sayings in direct English translation [1756]


It's very easy! (or something very minor) (was blanking on the Polish word until you added the 'for/to me')


Is it? the meaning is different enough (the American meaning is 'nonsense' which is not how it's used in Polish, where in addition to the literal meaning it can mean something like 'rotten jerk' or 'worthless'...

News / Polish final report on Smoleńsk aircrash [870]


if the person that allowed all the military leaders on a single plane is still alive they really need to be in prison that is absolute criminal negligence

News / Polish final report on Smoleńsk aircrash [870]


I think he was also filled with guilt, I think that whole misbegotten adventure (second Katyn memorial) was his idea in the first place and it was either blame other people or hate himself for causing his brother's death... I don't blame him for choosing the first option but I do blame those foolish enough to go along with it...

News / Polish final report on Smoleńsk aircrash [870]


I don't think he believed them for a second, he was riding that train as long and hard as he could (probably to soothe his own conscience....)

Food / What do non-Poles think about eating the following Polish foods? [1450]


Me too. Don't get me wrong I love heat, just more from chillis than horseradish, when I still lived in the US I regularly devoured mass amounts of chillis in various ways, generally red (or occasionally fresh green, but preserved green chillis... it's off to the bathroom and not a pretty process).

Food / What do non-Poles think about eating the following Polish foods? [1450]


I have to say I didn't much like sour things before moving to Poland.... the first time I heard of zupa ogórkowa I was aghast pickle soup? But now I love it, the more sour the the better.

Also, horseradish! I never liked it before living in Poland. But I think I only like Polish horseradish, a year or two ago in a Berlin hotel with soft-boiled eggs for breakfast I tried some horseradish... and it wasn't very good. I don't know why Poland does it better than other countries but it seems to be how it is.

News / Polish final report on Smoleńsk aircrash [870]


I'm not going to hold my breath....

News / Polish final report on Smoleńsk aircrash [870]


Your evidence is an article that's almost a year old? On the 10th Macierewicz said some stuff and no one, not even JK paid any attention. They've ridden that horse as far as it would run and are saddling up a new one to keep their low information base in line...

News / Poland hopes to attract hard-working, trouble-free immigarnts - Ukrainian, Belarusians and Vietnamese [139]


For those who have been coopted by the neoliberal consensus there's no such thing as culture and people are interchangeable widgets that can/should be moved around according to the economic needs of the moment.

Cultural compatibility is not a concern for them because they have no intention of spending any time around the widgets they've moved from country A to country B...

News / Poland hopes to attract hard-working, trouble-free immigarnts - Ukrainian, Belarusians and Vietnamese [139]


Of course it is! Unless you're trying to create some balkanized ghetto areas or want a bunch of welfare pets to take care of....


And willing to give up customs like child brides and face covering? Willing to accept secular education over religioius instruction?

News / Poland hopes to attract hard-working, trouble-free immigarnts - Ukrainian, Belarusians and Vietnamese [139]

It's not the basis of skin but of culture and likelihood of being able to integrate and be productive... Somalis have a very poor record everwhere they go and Nigerians are very mixed bag (some very smart some not so much and a culture of fraud and corruption).

Koreans would probably do well in Poland, Yemenis.... less so. It doesn't make them bad as people but things like cultural compatibility need to be taken into account in migration policy or you're likely to end up with horror shows like rosengraad and moelenbeek...

Language / Game - guess Polish idioms/sayings in direct English translation [1756]

Well a woman attacked by a damski bokser is not necessarily his wife...

Food / What do non-Poles think about eating the following Polish foods? [1450]


I would call golonka 'hamhock' (a southern US dish mostly, though not exclusively, associated with Blacks).

Language / Game - guess Polish idioms/sayings in direct English translation [1756]


but damski bokser is not a woman who boxes but a man who is physically violent toward women (clear in Polish but ambiguous in English thanks to the lack of endings)

History / Unforgettable quotes about Poland and Poles from Polish and world`s history and culture [99]


I'm not sure what you mean by shshshshsh.... I remember being on a LOT flight with a Croat (who had a lot of passive knowledge of Polish but had almost never spoken it) when he heard the announcements he was pleasantly surprised by how clear it sounded and he was surprised when I said it sounded normal..

My impressionistic description of the Polish of undereducated people is less shshshsh and more bwahbwahbwah... sounds like sz and ś are often under-articulated (though with devoiced vowels which might make them stand out more for you) and some pronounce w [v] as a stop which is weird... but it's the intonation that really sets it apart (and sounds a bit like an aggrieved infant). Educated usage sounds much more pleasant.


To the extent they exist.... standard Polish has steamrolled most of the old dialects which are by now mostly mild accents, there are differences but subtle and they do take time to notice.

Food / What do non-Poles think about eating the following Polish foods? [1450]


More's the pity!

I love cooked red cabbage, with some butter, salt, pepper and sugar and slow cooked for a looooong time. It goes great with duck and pyzy...

I remember red cabbage in Hungary that looked like it had been cooked for days... not pretty but the taste was amazing.

Life / What is Poland's view on obesity? How healthy, fit are Poles? [166]

Yes, this!

Traditionally Polish food is not very light (wild understatement). But there were very few obese people. I'm convinced this is because there was no real tradition of between meal snacks and not so many second helpings even.

The rise of fat kids tracks closely with ubiquitous snacking.

Food / What do non-Poles think about eating the following Polish foods? [1450]

Flaki are fine, not my favorite but okay to have once in a while (I like it slightly thickened with kasza manna).

In my partying days I always had some in jars as it was a great hangover preventer.

I often try to make a point of having tripe when I travel (not always easy...) it's old peasant food and different places have different ways of dealing with it.

My all time favorite was in a Mexican restaurant (in the US midwest) it was a bowl of menudo - deep hot as fire flavor with lots of hominy added (I do loves me some hominy).

Romanian flaki is one of the most interesting - served in a soup that's simultaneously creamy with a tart vinegar aftertaste

Hungarian flaki was kind of meh... they didn't do anything different than they do with meat and the result was underwhelming (I love hungarian food but this was a rare miss for me)

Portuguese flaki with white beans was.... okay? A little bland...

Language / Game - guess Polish idioms/sayings in direct English translation [1756]


That's not actually a term used by the general English speaking public AFIK, I've never heard it in the US (I don't know about the UK and their degraded dialects...),

Most commonly referred to as 'the possesive (form)' or 'apostrophe s'...

Food / What do non-Poles think about eating the following Polish foods? [1450]


more like pure green deliciousness (with lots of kminek or garlic or with some vinegar) I grew up watching Popeye cartoons so I eats my spinach...

Carp is pretty meh for me, it has to handled right to avoid the muddy taste... lots better fish around (though I've never been a big fish eater). I have carp on wigilia primarily for the scales (in my wallet now...)

Life / Prejudice about Poles; Poland has changed [39]


When I was a kid in a (southernish) small town in the US we left the keys in the cars overnight and went away for two months without locking the front door....

A different reality...

Food / What do non-Poles think about eating the following Polish foods? [1450]


The problem in Poland is that traditional ways of making spinach are kind of... meh,with frozen spinch I get the oil very hot and drop in kminek (so it pops in the heat) let it cool a bit before adding some flour and then add the spinch (adding the flour to the oil prevents it from clumping)

I use to like raw spinach salad (very good with the right dressing - I like pan drippings from fried meat drizzled over it).


Yeah, they pickle the whole cabbage (to mimic the flavor of grape leaves since gołąbki are in essense a northern version of dolma) I just about passed out once going past a stand selling the pickled whole cabbage in Bucharest... in Bulgaria and Romania they're also small (again like dolma)

in Hungary they don't pickle the cabbage but they do sauerkraut while baking and some of that is absorbed into the gołąbki, which are yuuuge - half again as big as in Poland...

Food / What do non-Poles think about eating the following Polish foods? [1450]


I far prefer cabbage (in lots of different forms) to fashionable garbage vegetables like..... (shudder).... kale (jarmuż)

My ultimate gołąbki would be with picked cabbage leaves (as in Romania and Bulgaria) and with a spicy paprikowy tomato sauce and plenty of sour cream on top (as in Hungary) see? I am multicultural!

History / Unforgettable quotes about Poland and Poles from Polish and world`s history and culture [99]


Many of the things he says are interesting.... but not in a good way. He was very briefly fashionable among disaffected young people (always on the look out for a protest candidate) but that's long over and he's well past his due date.