News / John Paul II's Beatification [134]


you seriously overestimate JP2 or RCC influence on the lives of Africans (or for that matter Poles for example - ask how many Polish couples never use condoms) - Africans simply do not like it with condoms (see Simon Mol case) - some even believe(d) that having sex with a healthy person will cure their diseases (including STD) and that a condom is an obstacle in the process - this is not RCC or Christian legacy - other peoples though often equally exposed to RCC 'teaching' on condoms were not that affected because they had no such specific preferences or believes

News / John Paul II's Beatification [134]


a purely political/PR stunt to keep Poles attached to the RCC - and an attempt at creating personality cult (on the side of Polish media)- it will backfire sooner or later (it already does actually - young people are unmoved and even fed up with feeding them pope JP2 on every corner - I am fed up too)

Life / Understanding Poland's Birthday Tradition [66]


I have heard of this thing (actually read about it on the internet) - but boy I don't know where it comes from - I never personally known a person who would do or suffer from this - it was unheard of when I was younger - stupid is not a word enough to describe it - and now they say this is a tradition - God forbid

News / Polish President Lech Kaczynski and gov officials die in a plane crash in Russia [686]


maybe you are right about what you write - I haven't read the transcripts - my excuse is some dialogues were supposedly made up by Gazeta Wyborcza ('tak lądują debeściaki') - (why don't they release the whole recording keeping it secret instead) - so it is important to know what version of the transcripts you actually mean

still you conveniently leave out what does not suit your theory and what actually became a consensus among Polish aviation experts who run the investigation

News / Polish President Lech Kaczynski and gov officials die in a plane crash in Russia [686]


it's difficult to disscuss with someone's prejudices so I spare myself the effort

News / Polish President Lech Kaczynski and gov officials die in a plane crash in Russia [686]

not for certain - there is some serious suspicion something was wrong with an important flight automatic procedure - there were plenty of made-up alleged 'facts' in the media who were never friendly (to say the least) to Kaczyńskis (mostly Gazeta Wyborcza) (not to mention blatant lies by some members of the current government regarding the investigation that have been revealed)- quite recently there were tests performed to check how the twin plane of the crashed Tu-154M would behave in similar conditions - their outcome was partly revealed to the public

News / Polish President Lech Kaczynski and gov officials die in a plane crash in Russia [686]


sorry where did you get that rule from? one of Euclidean mathematics axioms? the consequence of general theory of relativity?


not that obvious - their is a serious version the plane did not work properly (and Russian ground flight control in Smolensk also made a couple of mistakes) - this is not to cast suspicion on Rusians - most probably the alleged malfunction of the plane (in a critical moment) was no consequence of any deliberate human action

History / PRUSSIA - Former Vassal of Poland later occupant | Nowadays Germany? [33]

and it's probably the most despised subject because it is compulsory :)

News / Polish President Lech Kaczynski and gov officials die in a plane crash in Russia [686]


you should read more Rafał Ziemkiewicz (available on Rzeczpospolita daily website - rp.pl or his column on interia.pl
[fakty.interia.pl/felietony/ziemkiewicz]) - there is some covering up on the Russian side and so there is also on the side of the Polish goverment (Ziemkiewicz lists some of the major lies in one of his articles) but there is very little (if anything) to support the notion that the plane was somehow downed

News / CO2 emissions in Poland. Should Poland go nuclear or stick with clean coal technologies? [59]


only a fraction of the heap is slag - most is the soil that needed to be removed to get to the coal seem - now the soil removed (a layer of up to 100 m is used to refill the exploited part of the mine

Life / Are Polish roads really this bad? [237]


yeah Warsaw definitely needs two new similarily big stadiums - the national one and the Legia one - both at the same time - if you wish for some lowly conspiracy theory TVN- the current owner of Legia - was and is very much in support of PO (which Mrs HGW (really nasty names in Polish) represents)

USA, Canada / What do Poles think about drinking raw milk? In America, unpasteurized milk is PROHIBITED. [49]


you might be still alive, but you are going to be a mad cow sooner or later.. :)[/quote]
I am not sure but AFAIK UHT treatment does not kill prions which are responsible for mad cow disease (prions are not even organisms if i recall correctly)

Food / What do non-Poles think about eating the following Polish foods? [1400]

I haven't actually seen those creamy mushrooms in my life (now that I see what their down side looks like)

perhaps I have seen these dark things but don't know them and never picked them

Food / What do non-Poles think about eating the following Polish foods? [1400]

the creamy ones look like wild champignons to me (aka pieczarki)

don't know these brownish shrooms

edit: no the creamy stuff are not champignons - some kind of borowik?

Food / What do non-Poles think about eating the following Polish foods? [1400]


and I know why - because it is some kind of gołąbek - but careful some gołąbki are not tasty at all

Food / What do non-Poles think about eating the following Polish foods? [1400]


maślak? czerwony kozak? to szare to nie wiem wogóle

w sumie to coś mi na czerwonego kozaka jednak nie wygląda

Food / What do non-Poles think about eating the following Polish foods? [1400]


I would read them a bit before going out picking mushrooms - I think it is better to learn from people who are in the know eventually - I am not a mushroom expert - I only pick those that I know to be palatable

Life / Do you think that Polish people are rude? [951]

you should never use public transportation in Poland then, Daisy - it would be too traumatic for you - and I mean what I say - methinks some people can't abandon their habits in a new country ( I have always been a good queuer if you ask unless in Poland ;)

Life / Polish authors, books & literature. [95]

Andrzej Sapkowski - a fantasy writer (mostly) - The Last Wish - translated into English by a Polish translator - I heaven't read it in English though - just read it in Polish quite some time ago but I did like it - still I have read many favorable English reviews on the Amazom

Travel / Places open in Poland on national holidays [23]

you can definitely do some shopping on Saturday - hours can differ I guess - Saturday and Monday is a lost cause

Life / How is red hair viewed in Poland [37]


it does unfortunately - a saying goes for example: rudy znaczy fałszywy - red hair- must be a fake guy

i was personally prejudiced against red-haired people when I was younger - I am not now consciously but you know such things tend to cling to your subconsciousness

Polonia / What about the Poles living in Germany? [65]

well, in Russian (and in Polish) rozbić/rozbit' means to smash/to break like to break a glass - actually in Polish we wouldn't say rozbić czołg like Russians would say but rather zniszczyć czołg (to destroy a tank) or more colloquially rozwalić czołg - just imagine a guy smashing tanks with a hand grenade ;) - then again I thought it can be funny for an English speaker imagining a guy 'knocking' out tanks with blows of a hand armed with a HG (actually knocking at them) ;) - the funny idea for Poles is that Russians could really try doing this and actually succeed in it hehehe :)

Polonia / What about the Poles living in Germany? [65]

you wanted a WWII joke?? ;)

WWII - Russian bunker - there is some heavy knocking on the steel door -

Kto wy? (Who are you??) Swoi! (Friends (as in friend or foe) A skolko was?? (And how many of you are there?) Ein-und-zwanzig :)

the dialogue of the joke is normally said in Russian and German - it is much more funny then for Poles

or another one hehe

WWII - Russians sitting in a buker on a frontline playing cards drinking 'spirt' (say a strong booze ;)) - at one moment a growing low buzz of motors is heard - Starszyna ( a sergeant) says: Sasza, słyszy, tanki jedut. (Sasha can you hear the tanks coming?) - Da, słyszu (Yes, I can hear them) - Sasza wozmi granat iz połki idi rozbij tanki (Sasha take the grenade from the shelf and go knock them out) - Sasha takes the grenade and leaves - After a while several cracks and blasts are heard - After next couple of whiles Sasha returns

Starszyna (The sergeant) asks - Sasha, tanki rozbity??? (Sasha, are the tanks knocked out?) - Da (Yes) - To położy granat na połku (Then put the grenade back on the shelf)

Language / A software which converts Polish text to audio? [8]

you can use the ivona.com - a text-to-speech website - explore it - i think you should find it useful

Travel / Storks - the Symbol of Poland [59]


cranes are usually back a couple of weeks before storks

Language / Future conditional (converting some sentences into conditional form with "gdyby") [5]

this exercise I think is to show that if in English conditionals translates two different words in Polish conditionals

jeśli is used only if the outcome/result is still a matter of future

Jeśli się nauczę (będę się uczył) na egzamin to go zdam. or Jeśli się (na)uczyłeś na egzamin to powinieneś zdać.

if actions already led to some result and you speculate what if you had taken different actions then you use gdybym

Gdybym się uczył na egzamine to (pewnie) bym go zdał.

Travel / Do Poles like to hunt? Hunting in Poland. [205]

there is Hunters Association in Poland- and millions are members
you cannot hunt here unless a member or paying for "hunting party' marketed to foreign hunters (Polish hunters organize and have pretty close supervision over the whole thing.

there may be no great variety of game and there are periods set up to protect animals in certain times of the year

appart from shooting animals Hunters' Association feeds them in winter, cultivates some plots of land for winter food for animals (mostly within forests where I live) in certain areas it also provides fences for protecting farmland from animal intrusion and devastation or organizes shooting 'patrols' during most vulnerable times for crops shooting once a quarter of an hour so scare of

animals

actually Polski Związek £owiecki had little above 100 000 members - I took the previous fiugrefrom the top of my head

Life / Weird names Polish parents give to their kids [43]


there are plenty of parents who would rather keep to traditional names instead of Nikolas, Paulas, Kewins and the like

News / Donald Tusk's Government of Poland Continues to Oppress Poles [161]

and my mum just told me she's seen petrol a couple of groszy above 5 PLN - if it wasn't BP ultimate then it's not quite cheap

Life / Weird names Polish parents give to their kids [43]


I haven't mentioned those little Lenins and Stalins to suggest anything involving the fate of that poor Adolph Hitler kid - I would be very much for giving the parents a lecture on how they have adversely affected the lives of their children calling them such names - I don't know if it be somehow legally regulated