The BEST Guide to POLAND
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Posts by jon357  

Joined: 15 Mar 2012 / Male ♂
Last Post: 1 day ago
Threads: Total: 73 / Live: 22 / Archived: 51
Posts: Total: 24822 / Live: 14777 / Archived: 10045
From: In the Heart of Darkness
Speaks Polish?: Tak

Displayed posts: 14799 / page 91 of 494
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jon357   
24 Aug 2024
Life / The climate for gardening in Poland [340]

I had a palm which grew from a coconut washed off shore

I didn't know that could happen. Palms are very hard to grow.

We've planted a few acacia seeds from Africa and got seedlings from them however they aren't hardy enough to grow outdoors that far north.
jon357   
24 Aug 2024
Off-Topic / I am a polish communist. [83]

I did

You didn't and you can't, since you aren't a mod.

And since you're pretending to be, what's the location associated with the IP I'm posting from now and have mostly posted from all year?

they don't always have Moderator

And you never have.

Switch it on, and make one post or admit you're a liar.
jon357   
24 Aug 2024
Life / The climate for gardening in Poland [340]

plants from all the world.

We have an olive tree, grown from an olive from a jar of Biedronka salted olives.. It's a few years old now.

It has to come inside as soon as the frosts starts. The problem is, year on year it gets bigger and it's now getting harder to get inside. It has to go in through the window. Sooner or later we'll have to make a decision.
jon357   
24 Aug 2024
Off-Topic / I am a polish communist. [83]

Oh, how I would like to see Britain turning communist

Socialist for sure.

What Poles and others from more absolutist societies don't grasp about the U.K. is that we invented Socialism, via Owenism and the Cooperative movement. Nothing was ever imposed from outside, there were no revolutions, no Esbeks and Ubeks and any corruption there was never a fraction of what it was in Poland or is even today.

And if we had been Communist, don't think for a second that there would have been the sort of repression that existed in Central and Eastern Europe.

meh is that somebody brand new or an old poster

It's ee cummins.
jon357   
24 Aug 2024
Off-Topic / I am a polish communist. [83]

it took on a severe bent because it was.shaped.in a context of civil war and famine, and where most of the men in charge had spent a long time either in prison or in the military.

That's pretty well it.

A writer (I forget who) wrote two interesting things about Communism. One was that if it had been achieved first in Japan rather than the Soviet Union or China, it would have worked very differently and the other thing was that if it had been achieved in 1950s Britain, especially the northern industrial regions and Scotland's central belt, nobody would really have noticed much difference.

The countries that got it were an uneasy mix of rural poverty, intellectual ideological absolutism and a huge military infrastructure.

I slightly knew someone (he was called Professor Ludwik Haas) who spent 17 years in the Gulag for being a Trotskyist and 17 months in a PRL jail after the Soviet Union let him go. He was certainly a Communist however they hated him because he was a real one. And sometimes I think the far left in the U.K., the Trots and Tankies, hate people like me who are middle of the road Labourites from the trade union movement even more than they hate capitalists.
jon357   
24 Aug 2024
Off-Topic / I am a polish communist. [83]

Kamala is unfortunately not a communist.

Quite. Nobody in that party is, despite the toxic rhetoric from reactionaries.

According to Polish law this sentence is equal to "I am a Polish nazi".

It isn't. Promoting totalitarianism is I think illegal, however Communism in itself isn't totalitarian; people confuse it with the failed iteration of it in the Soviet Union and other states which weren't even ready for Social Democracy, never mind anything else.

it wasn't real communism. Not in Russia, not in China, not in Cambodia, North Korea, Latin America

This is true. These were third world countries so chaotic it was possible to create chaos.by dictatorial, usually military, regimes.
jon357   
23 Aug 2024
Food / What do non-Poles think about eating the following Polish foods? [1450]

I've not seen it in PL (Warsaw, anyway) for a long time, despite looking. If I saw any, I'd stock up on it. It lasts for ages.

There are/were two kinds, both in metal tubes. One hot, one mild. It's a good alternative to tomato purée if you don't much like tomatoes.

It's a bit like Ajvar which you can buy in jars in a lot of shops in Poland. Any decent sized "Eastern European Supermarket" in the UK should have Ajvar however it's worth mentioning that Ajvar also has (I think) garlic and sometimes aubergines and can also vary in heat. Ukrainian Ajvar is usually aubergine free and is nice.
jon357   
23 Aug 2024
Life / Is stamp collecting popular in Poland? [7]

Stamp collecting used to be very popular in the last century

I suspect it will have a revival since stamps are no longer used much in many/most countries and soon won't be used at all. This means there are a finite number, especially for 19th and early 20th century stamps.
jon357   
23 Aug 2024
Food / What do non-Poles think about eating the following Polish foods? [1450]

the kind you can drink.

Mmmmm, delicious.

If there had been green flecks of herbs and a little visible oil on the surface, I'd have said that.

My first thought was kompot however there were no berries floating in it and the colour really does suggest pigwa.
jon357   
23 Aug 2024
History / 20 years of Poland in the EU. [317]

no it wasn't like that at all - people deliberately kept

How many people? Poland has 38 million

It's a good thing to do, but no longer any need to keep bottle tops. There's plenty of other plastic items however that are available to be saved for recycling by charities or other groups.
jon357   
23 Aug 2024
History / 20 years of Poland in the EU. [317]

they weren't collecting them from the streets and sidewalks

Who said they were?

The fact that the bottle caps were hanging around and not being disposed of is the issue. Did you think that most people used such containers? I've never seen one.

Now that has been solved to the satisfaction of the majority.
jon357   
23 Aug 2024
Real Estate / Kalisz Slums [11]

One of the first things a neighbour said to me in PL all those years ago (an old lady who spoke English reasonably well) was that the flats we lived in were "slums". They weren't. The only problem is that the residents hadn't looked after the common areas well however this is (or was then) fairly normal in PL.

I've heard there are quite poor conditions in some older buildings in Silesia and of course even an adequate home can become a slum if there's overcrowding.
jon357   
23 Aug 2024
Real Estate / Kalisz Slums [11]

I think in the hallways, either one per floor or on half landings. Fortunately getting rarer now.
jon357   
23 Aug 2024
Food / Polish Potatoes [48]

You eat them American style.

Normal style.

The best bit is the skin and the flesh just below it.

With new potatoes, almost nobody peels them anyway since the skin is so scant. Some people scrub them a little however I can't see any point in that.
jon357   
23 Aug 2024
Real Estate / Kalisz Slums [11]

In fact, slums do not exist in Poland

I was surprise to learn that there are still a few flats in Warsaw (across the river) that don't have their own toilet.
jon357   
23 Aug 2024
Work / Certified TEFL Teacher jobs in Poland [6]

It could work at some / low to medium level

Generally up to B1, however there are good ones who can do B2.

With language teaching, it isn't so much your command of the languages as your ability to teach, plan lessons, follow a syllabus and prepare people for exams.

a native speaker cannot be replaced.

One issue is that there aren't always enough to go around who have the right skill set and sometimes the best candidate for the job is someone who has made the same journey as the learners.

I'm hiring now, two posts. For one of the posts, the best candidate is a Pole. He's lived in the U.K., is well qualified and has good teaching experience. Incidentally, in terms of salary (very high) and terms (rotational in Africa, direct hire, public sector) the job is probably in the top 5% or less of EFL posts worldwide. I didn't advertise it since the last time I did, there were around 600 replies of which about 550 didn't match the basic requirements mentioned in the ad and of the remaining 50, around half were known to me and had a poor reputation and the others had either the wrong type of experience or other warning bells rang. So I asked a trusted source for a recommendation.

Sadly, he's currently blowing a bit hot and cold since he doesn't quite believe it and thinks it's too good to be true!

Incidentally some universities too have Poles, Czechs and Italians lecturing in their English Departments.
jon357   
23 Aug 2024
History / 20 years of Poland in the EU. [317]

they are pretty screwed

I'm sure they'll find other activities. And of course their very existence confirms that there was an issue.

disposable plastic cups and plastic cup covers are still used

Hopefully not for long.

plastic bags

They actually require only minuscule amounts of crude oil to make, however the problem is that people weren't recycling them and they take centuries to biodegrade.

Several people here just looking to moan about change.
jon357   
23 Aug 2024
Work / Certified TEFL Teacher jobs in Poland [6]

Poles must be proficient in English then

There's still a reasonable market for language training however it isn't the hothouse it was 20 years ago.

Interestingly, there are increasing numbers of well-educated Poles who are teaching English in other countries.

Worth mentioning that most of Dominic B's posts were about discouraging non-white people from coming to work in Poland.
jon357   
23 Aug 2024
History / 20 years of Poland in the EU. [317]

If they were about ecological stuff they would ban plastic battles completely

Somehow achievable partial outcomes are more relevant than irrelevances introduced for the sake of rhetoric.

Hard to know why you're moaning about bottle tops. Do you have a phobia about them or do you just inherently fear change?
jon357   
23 Aug 2024
Food / Polish Potatoes [48]

I never peel them, even for chips or roasties and of course eat the lot.
jon357   
23 Aug 2024
Real Estate / Kalisz Slums [11]

I would like to know, from residents, where the poor district of Kalisz

Now or historically?

Personally, I only know the bits around the railway station (big and old, due to it once being almost a border town though the current main building is from the PRL era) and the Cathedral. I'd guess the poorest part of town is one of the housing estates.

Just an idea, there are buy/sell websites in Poland. Olx.pl is a well known one, assuming it's still going. That should give an idea of the prices of flats in Kalisz. The cheapest will be in the worst area.
jon357   
23 Aug 2024
History / 20 years of Poland in the EU. [317]

that probably does no good for the environment

It does. The issue of the tops littering the streets and going down drains was what prompted the move.

the connected caps seem to use more plastic

A few molecules maybe.
jon357   
23 Aug 2024
History / 20 years of Poland in the EU. [317]

and still they never amounted to much

That or changed the course of humanity.

Environmental protection is a natural point for the conservatives

Ripping money and assets off from ordinary people and common infrastructure is more normal yet for them.
jon357   
23 Aug 2024
History / 20 years of Poland in the EU. [317]

You can always twist them off. That or pour the drink into a nice glass.

They really do make a positive difference.
jon357   
23 Aug 2024
News / Is NORD STREAM dangerous for Poland's natural enviroment? [540]

live off a very high standard..

Not many countries could have coped easily with the costs and radical changes of reunification.

Give it time, plan things carefully, and don't let capitalists suck all the money away.