Food / What Polish foods do foreigners generally not take to? [139]


Oddly, it has a kind of sweet chocolatish taste (an American co-worker said her Polish father called it chocolate soup and she loved it..... until she found out the secret ingredient after which she couldn't touch it....)

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


dont' be ridiculous, he's no more a Christian than I am....

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


Won't or not smart enough?
I love the Polish language but it's not something that can be picked up casually or without committed systematic effort (unless you're a child acquiring the language naturally).

Not learning a local language despite living there for years is always attributable to some combination of dumb and lazy...

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


Why are you so hostile toward your native language?

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


The unfortunates don't realize that JK has no real incentive to make things better for them... He has every incentive to keep preaching to them that their problems are due to the commies (or flying purple dolphins or whatever). If they begin to think of themselves as non-victims then they might decide to vote for another party, as long as they have imaginary bogeymen to blame their problems on then they'll stick with PiS no matter what.

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


Parties don't have presidents in English..... In America they have Chairs (Chairman or Chairwoman) and in the UK they have Leaders which doesn't seem to have an honorific

Chairman Kaczyński is the best translation for Americans.


He is that, as long as he doesn't get sidetracked with one of his jihads against one of his (very many) personal enemies.... but he has no self control in that area so if Tusk is smart he'll periodically and strategically taunt Kaczyński....


In words like czekanie yes, it coule be hispanicized as checañe but a word like cachiñsqui is impossible in Spanish... And most Polish speakers pronounce it like a nasalized j before s, so that Gdańsk sounds like Gdajnsk (where the n just nasalizes the j in front of it)

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


This guy agrees

youtube.com/watch?v=bbV6O2VIpzg

translation wystarczy cztery ziobra by Polska była dobra (singing translation: we need Ziobro times four, so Poland won't be poor)

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


The point is my friend had/did none of that, and gets very angry with PıSS mouthpieces who suggest that only ex-commies have been successful. It plays well with the resentful base of the PıSS party but it doesn't play well with those who've succeeded on their own merits.

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


You really missed your calling, you should have been an author of communist propaganda back when there was a (captive) audience for stuff like that....

The years of suppression also coincided with escaping the effects of a worldwide financial crisis and huge improvements to infrastructure and living standards, but don't let that bother you...

I have a friend from a small village (family of farmers) in the countryside who has been very successful though hard work and diligence and they become enraged when they hear PıSS supporters claim that only those with commie connections have been successful.

Why is PıSS so eager to alienate successful educated people? What does that say about their supporters?

Law / Lost without my daughter - father rights in Poland [32]


Or she doesn't want the school associating her "father" with a specific face that might change? This is sounding more and more like she's conning you (and maybe others).

Law / Lost without my daughter - father rights in Poland [32]


Now my interpretation of this is that she knows you may not the father (and you may well not be the only one she's squeezing for goodies).

Proceed on the assumption that she's lying to you (since she has a track record in that department) if she's not woman enough to prove you're the father she doesn't deserive one red cent.

Food / What Polish foods do foreigners generally not take to? [139]


Especially for Americans, many of whom don't really distinguish between ogórki kwaszone (brined) and konserwowe (pickled) cucumbers...

One of the weirdest comments I remember about Polish food was an Irish colleague who one day at lunch said his (ogórkowy) soup had "that Polish taste" it turned out he was talking about dill.

I sometimes think one of the unremarked boundaries in Europe is the dill belt (countries where fresh dill is added to many different kinds of dishes) and those where it isn't. In Romania I once had moussaka that had dill in it. It was delicious.

Food / What Polish foods do foreigners generally not take to? [139]


I'll stop saying pierogies when Polish people stop saying Ekismosi, hipisi and Beatelsi

In (American) English the most common forms are

one pierogi, twp pierogies

Food / What Polish foods do foreigners generally not take to? [139]


I've only had it once and it wasn't lumpy, but just thick and more or less like sour cream so it probably wasn't authentic.

Food / What Polish foods do foreigners generally not take to? [139]

I visited Poland for the first time in my 20s.

Of foods that were different from what I was used to, I took immediately to were pierogies, chłodnik, tatar, żurek and bigos. Flaczki were a tougher sell (though I like them occasionally). Pickle soup took a little longer, and kaszanka an even harder sell (I don't mind it cold but only like it cooked if it's not plain - in Hungary they make wonderful liver kaszanka). I'm still unimpressed by fish in jello (who thinks up something like that?) and herring in general (I only like it done a few ways). I almost threw up the first time I had ozorki (biting into a tongue.... but then I chopped it up into tiny pieces and it tasted okay).

I like Polish horseradish though I hated it before coming to Poland.

Pickled pigs feet and head cheese / souce were already well known to me from the south

One weird thing is I don't like peas and carrots (I like both but the way Poles prepare them drains the taste from both) spinach also

Americans mostly don't understand the difference between soured and spoiled milk (pasteurized milk doesn't sour it goes straight from drinkable to spoiled) and tend to use the word sour for both which makes zsiadłe mleko a tough sell.

News / President Duda rules out homo marriage in Poland as banned by the constitution [172]


Wouldn't it be a kick in the head of longterm resident foreigners were told to get citizenship or get out?

News / President Duda rules out homo marriage in Poland as banned by the constitution [172]


It must be a bitter disappointment that he wasn't burnt alive for the sin of having a non-Polish parent....

News / President Duda rules out homo marriage in Poland as banned by the constitution [172]

not enough to change the constitution legally, but then when has PiS ever cared about the law? it's all about using the frustration of losers to build a base to rob them blind while blaming on other people

News / Poland has accepted over a million Ukrainian refugees. Why does the EU keep telling propaganda about Poland? [304]


I think the classic term is "benefits immigration" ('welfare immigration' for Americans). Most Sub-Saharan Africans are "fleeing" countries that are at peace and no more corrupt or violent or oppressive than the (admittedly high) Sub-Saharan norm.

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

"his office's crimkinal neglect of Smolensk presidential flight preparations"

Since when is the prime minister's office responsible for presidential flight preparations? Is the PM also supposed to follow the president into the toilet to make sure he wipes?

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

"What crimes do you think Tusk has committed?"

Don't go askjing awkward questions... his handlers haven't told him yet.

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

"Admit it, your ulterior and sole motive is PiS-bashing -- giving it some semblance of thoughful debate is mere window-dressing."

I'm in favor of what works. Any attempt to settle accounts in 1992 would inevitably have ended up as a nightmare and result in massive investment flight and set economic development back (at a time when Poland could not afford that).

I have no problem with a dispassionate examination of who did what and punishing the guilty, but again this requires careful, dispassionate examination (and being ready to deal with lots of shade of grey) and not wild cat releasing of documents and trying to turn a normal political process (an incompetent and failing government losing a no-confidence vote) into some dark conspiracy.

The problem is that there is no one really qualified to lead such a process (least of all Kaczyński and his unstable posse).

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

"One thought that you pooh-poohed conspiracy theories"

One does, does one?

I don't believe in conspiracies per se, I believe that different groups have different agendas that they are not entirely.... open about.

"what does a "competent" government do when it needs to sack a member privy to a huge amount of the most sensitive classified information on national defence and security?"

Depends on why they need to remove him and how stable he is. If the member in question gives signs of being dangerously unstable the traditional solution has been to arrange for him to stop breating. If he's more or less stable then a reclusive retirement is probably enough.

nb this is meant to be descriptive (what I think happens) and not a prescriptive (what I think would be moral).

But then a competent government doesn't normally go around appointing mentally unstable kooks to positions that give them asscess to sensitive classified information on national defense (much less put them in charge of it). But we're talking about PiS and so 'competent' is not the first word that comes to mind anyway.

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

"Sacking someone might seem so easy and starightforward to a dilletante or wannabe observing things from afar, but such a move might hypothetically pose a security or other threat to the country"

So you _do_ believe that Macierewicz would try to mount a coup if JK tried to dismiss him?

Getting to the point where firing an incompetent is a threat to national security is nothing something that happens with governments who are even remotely competent.

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

"Free" speech need not automatically mean hate or purposely offensive speech! "

Of course it does. If free speech doesn't extend to dangerous and offensive speech then it does not exist.

"people such as Ms.Coulter, the Bell curve author, Murray etc. is that the latter are merely freeing up the airwaves in order to polute OUR space with their pestilent garbage!!"

So? Don't listen or counter them with better arguments (including better data).

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

"there's a very good chance for President Duda's vision to come true"

The only vision he has is of Jarosław Kaczyński's anvs as he keeps his head close by for kissing purposes...

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

Yes, almost all political parties in Poland are primarily power vehicles for a single, charismatic leader. Anyone who develops their own power base will be kicked out (Rokita from PO, Marcinkiewicz and Ziobro from PiS) and they don't survive the departure of the leaders very well.

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


(yes, I'm actively mocking the new quote limit)

What? Years of enforced religion classes have alienated many young people from the faith (and there is a small but growing group of evangelicals, god help Poland). It's still nowhere near as bad as western europe but that's definitely the direction (and trying to promote religion won't work).

Putting religion in schools was the biggest mistake the church made after 1989, if you want to kill young people's enthusiasm for something make it part of the established order and make them take classes in it.

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


Pope JP II said there was no conflict between the bible and the theory of evolution.... (I hope they're not going US bible crazy)

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


I don't like them but I don't think they're going to go anywhere very soon. I will look for efforts to fire up the base somehow (since they've lost most of the rest of the country, at least temporarily).

A side issue that is probably hurting them is the school reform - not wanted by much of anyone, and by almost no one actually involved in education that they are doggedly pursuing in their goal of recreating the PRL in a Catholic-nationalist mode (a very weird goal but it seems to be the end game).