Real Estate / Can foreigner buy apartment in Warsaw, Poland? [39]

A sort of stamp duty. The OP should be aware about tax liabilities when selling before a certain period has elapsed or at any time if the flat is above 250sqm or has a residents'-only swimming pool.

News / Predictions about Poland for 2013 [85]


I think there's a good chance this will happen. It certainly should happen.

Re. the currency. I'm not sure it's overvalued and as a major agricultural and light industrial exporter it's in everyone's interest that it doesn't happen. Should global food prices substantially increase though, they will have to try very hard to stop the zloty rising and I doubt in that circumstance that they'll try too hard.

I suspect that the number of foreclosures will increase this year. There will also be chaos after the meldunek system ends.

The gap between rich and poor will increase slightly and there will be an increase in people below the poverty line. Nevertheless, due to food exports and shale gas, there will be a slight increase in GDP per capita.

News / Achievements of the Tusk's Polish government [538]


In that case you would be disingenuously inaccurate since Gazeta Wyborcza is a mass circulation newspaper belonging to a huge publicly traded media group who maintain a register of shareholders and submit detailed accounts whereas GP is a cheaply printed low circulation newspaper whose editor has persistently refused to reveal either its ownership or the source of his funding.

News / Achievements of the Tusk's Polish government [538]


A lovely picture!


Very true. There are a number of well-publicised cases where that has happened. GP sells very few copies so there's a limit to any damage they do. It only keeps operating because of shady backers who they refuse to disclose.

Real Estate / Can foreigner buy apartment in Warsaw, Poland? [39]

Yes. The only restrictions relate to farmland and those restrictions are temporary.

The procedure for buying a flat is the same wherever you are from. You can rent a flat to whoever you like, however you may find that real estate here is more expensive that you would expect due to a population spike of people around a certain age and a poor supply of new build apartments.

Life / Advocating euthanasia routinely causes scandals in Poland... [63]


You're confusing the mass murder of hospital patients for political reasons with people who make a conscious decision that they want the last stage of their life to be dignified and brief.

UK, Ireland / Polish cities and their UK twins [34]

Plymouth and Gdynia. An excellent match.
Doncaster and Gliwice, Wakefield and Konin. Because of local industries. A bit of a mismatch since Wakefield is part of a conurbation and Konin isn't.

Life / Advocating euthanasia routinely causes scandals in Poland... [63]

Owsiak deserves praise for raising the topic. If someone chooses that their passing should be eased either by direct request, or if dementia is involved, in a living will, that wish should be respected.

History / POLAND: EASTERN or CENTRAL European country? [1090]


Pleased to hear it, not that it makes the slightest different either way.


Indeed it is, for many reasons - culture, cuisine, economics, etc.

History / POLAND: EASTERN or CENTRAL European country? [1090]

Who said there were such pictures?

Strange. You might find it more interesting to read rather than 'scroll' the thread.


Most of them, Paulina. That doesn't make a masterpiece typical,though, does it?

History / POLAND: EASTERN or CENTRAL European country? [1090]


Perhaps because there's no challenge to decline. Instead, you may find it useful to read the whole of the thread that you're posting on. You may find plenty of interest, though I suspect you will disagree with much of it.

History / POLAND: EASTERN or CENTRAL European country? [1090]

Invisible? I suppose everything on the net is in a way invisible. To take the edge of your customary bile though, I'd refer you to some of the earlier pages in this very long thread where all necessary points were made and it was established that we are indeed in Eastern Europe.


So you're posting in a thread that you haven't bothered to read and are accusing others of being lazy! That does rather cast doubt on anything else you've tried to say. By the way, you'll find plenty about Polish vernacular architecture here.

History / POLAND: EASTERN or CENTRAL European country? [1090]


Actually the village has one of each, RC and Polish Orthodox. Both have onion domes.


Perhaps that's because I (and various other posters who've made the same points) am right. However much you wish it was otherwise. 'Serching' the Internet isn't the be all and end all, you know.

History / POLAND: EASTERN or CENTRAL European country? [1090]


Got it in one.


I doubt you could do that if you tried with all the skill you can muster, however you may like to scan through some earlier posts in this thread by myself and others in which the matters you are interested in have been discussed fully.

History / POLAND: EASTERN or CENTRAL European country? [1090]

Oh dear, you're floundering now. This 'prevalent style of architecture' that you're on about sounds interesting. Check out some of the vernacular architecture here. It has more in common with places further East than places further west.

History / POLAND: EASTERN or CENTRAL European country? [1090]


I refer you to the post you quoted. Rather than a Wikipedia page in English about landscape in general. Unless you really do need to ask that:


Perhaps you think that agriculture is the same everywhere.


No, I mean church. 'Cerkiew' is a Polish word.


Or even better, perhaps you could explain why you think/pretend it isn't.

History / POLAND: EASTERN or CENTRAL European country? [1090]

A strange question. Presumably you don't really think that the appearance, heritage and history of Warsaw and Wrocław are the same. One would hope not, anyway, or next time you'll be confusing Białystok and Lublin.

Mind you, most Wroclaw people are no more than a generation or so away from somewhere further east.

History / POLAND: EASTERN or CENTRAL European country? [1090]

Another voice from afar, trying to tell us something misleading about where we live.

History / POLAND: EASTERN or CENTRAL European country? [1090]

Well yes, thanks for cutting through all the baggage and realising the plain truth for a change.

History / POLAND: EASTERN or CENTRAL European country? [1090]


Actually I'm being very objective and absolutely unbiased. You however seem to have an axe to grind, probably a mix of cultural cringe and misplaced nationalism.

I spend quite a lot of time in Central Europe, however here, where I live in Warsaw, is uncompromisingly Eastern Europe.


I'm not sure what the textspeak is about - perhaps you should attend a better language school, however yes, the landscape round here is much more Eastern than you'd like to admit. Check out the 'Europe of Squirrels' and the 'Europe of Rabbits' for a nice comparison.

Anyway, I'm just off to my friend's house out of town (single storey, wooden, opposite an onion-domed church) for some pierogi and vodka. Maybe some kasza and cabbage soup too.

History / POLAND: EASTERN or CENTRAL European country? [1090]


Odd that you seem to be seeing things that simply aren't there. What I see is a lot of special pleading by people who earnestly want for whatever reason that Poland isn't in Eastern Europe, despite culture, cuisine, tradition, language, history, architecture, landscape, economic output and geography. Basically a desire to separate Poland from centuries of tradition and from its largest and most dominant neighbour.

History / POLAND: EASTERN or CENTRAL European country? [1090]

At last, a sensible post. The situation is a complicated one, and those posters who whine on about wanting Poland to be in Central rather than Eastern Europe would do far better to examine their motives for that wish.

History / The restoration of Polish cities from WW2 destruction [123]

That depends. Not everyone lived in a Secessionist kamienica or an Eighteenth century Dwór and I have something of an aversion to single story cottages with outside toilets or crowded tenements with the loo on the landing and damp rising up the walls.

The Socialist Realist style of architecture has a lot of charm. The MDM development in the last picture you showed was based as much on Paris as Moscow and prices of apartments there are consistently high.

History / The restoration of Polish cities from WW2 destruction [123]

Obviously they weren't going to build everything as it was: nor would it have been desirable to do so. In almost every case, what came after was better than what existed before, and a thousand times better than some of the rural homes that people came to the cities from.

History / POLAND: EASTERN or CENTRAL European country? [1090]


Often a relative newcomer has far less political and cultural baggage and cares little about the various inter-Eastern European debates and arguments. In short, objectivity.


Google it. You'll certainly find plenty in this thread.


We also share some with Italians, e.g. Pizza. Nobody. I hope nobody is suggesting that makes Poland part of Southern Europe. The overwhelming bulk of the Polish culinary tradition is Eastern European, part of a continuum stretching from the Polish western border right to Vladivostok.

History / POLAND: EASTERN or CENTRAL European country? [1090]


Thus ignoring a long heritage whether political, cultural, linguistic or culinary.

History / POLAND: EASTERN or CENTRAL European country? [1090]

Now that's a good question. It certainly depends a lot on how you'd define either. I'd say though that Germany (East and West Germany, not including Austria or the former Eastern territories) is a bit too big to pigeonhole, as is Poland. In Germany's case there's the relationship with Austria and the concept of MittelEuropa which isn't all that it seems. Is Westphalia or the Saarland the same as Schwabia or East Prussia?

I suspect the desire of some posters here to pretend that Poland isn't Eastern European at all is made up of 25% Russophobia, 25% Cultural Cringe, 25% ignorance and/or lack of perspective on Eastern and Central Europe and 25% cluelessness.

History / POLAND: EASTERN or CENTRAL European country? [1090]


Amazing really that those on this thread who are so keen to move a bit of Eastern Europe into Central Europe generally don't actually live here. Some don"t even have any genuine connection with the place, just relatives who left.

Those of us who do live here are more grounded in the reality of an Eastern European culture, traditions, cuisine etc.

News / Black Haitians considering themselves as Poles [31]


Spot on. Kissing arse to a tyrant after making a mess of it themselves.

The Haitian thing isn't about immigration or even much money. I doubt they really expect much, however given the huge difference in wealth between the two countries and the grinding poverty in Haiti, if the government here fund a research scholarship or even a cultural centre, one can't blame them for trying.

History / The restoration of Polish cities from WW2 destruction [123]

Interesting how the same old whine about communism comes back like a bad penny from people seemingly oblivious to the fact that the international movement in architecture and post-war housing needs were much the same regardless of the politics of the country.

People can get sniffy about high rise buildings, but unlike the pre-war homes they replaced, they were warm, dry, and clean.