The BEST Guide to POLAND
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Posts by teflcat  

Joined: 29 May 2011 / Male ♂ 		Last Post: 21 Sep 2012
Threads: Total: 5 / Live: 1 / Archived: 4
Posts: Total: 1024 / Live: 213 / Archived: 811

Displayed posts: 214 / page 1 of 8
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teflcat   
11 Jun 2011
Language / Mixed English Grammar Thread [183]

Amn't I? is perfectly acceptable, I'd say.

Seanus, my dear old Irish mother was from the County Longford and I never heard her say amn't I. She was a bit of a snob, it's true, but you must surely agree that it's a dialect feature of mainly rural Ireland. I've never heard anyone in mainland Britain say it.
teflcat   
13 Jun 2011
Language / Mixed English Grammar Thread [183]

Little Johnny made a mistake in his English homework. The exercise was on the past perfect. See if you can punctuate this:

Where Johnny had had had had had had been the right answer.
teflcat   
13 Jun 2011
Language / Mixed English Grammar Thread [183]

When I was at school we were told to avoid ending sentences with a preposition. How about this one. Dad goes downstairs to get a book for his daughter's bedtime story. Unfortunately, his choice was met with disapproval:

Daddy, why did you bring that book I don't want to be read to out of up for?

Makes sense to me.
teflcat   
13 Jun 2011
Language / Mixed English Grammar Thread [183]

Where Johny had had "had", "had had" had been the right answer.

Sorry Maaarysia. There are two Ns in Johnny.
teflcat   
13 Jun 2011
Language / Mixed English Grammar Thread [183]

I think italic looks more elegant.

Excellent, Maaarysia! Italics are fine, of course, but how do you write them in longhand?
teflcat   
24 Jun 2011
Love / Must go to confession before the wedding in Poland? [20]

Is it true the Best man MUST go to confession?

I suggest you be a bit jesuitical about it. If the priest says the best man has to go to confession, make it clear that he has his own confessor. The priest cannot insist on hearing anybody's confession. If the subject is not raised by the priest, don't bring it up. I know it's a bit different but when I stood godfather to some friends' baby there were no questions asked.
teflcat   
8 Jul 2011
Travel / Poland wildlife and similar wild life where you live. [243]

Not only forest areas. We regularly find ticks on our cat. Gardens have them too. As you say, denatura or something like that does the trick. It gets the tick drunk so it loosens its grip (as we all know). When we come back from mushrooming in the forest we check each other carefully. A friend of mine is a biologist who works in Białowieża, and he got a tick bite which made him ill for weeks. He had to have a series of injections in his belly. Not at all pleasant. Tourists beware.
teflcat   
8 Jul 2011
Language / Why is the Polish language so difficult? [309]

Anyway, I am driving myself crazy with this Polish language. It is going to be the death of me.

Polish drove me crazy years ago. Why do you think they did so well at Bletchly Park? Seriously though, try not to fight it. I'm a long way from being fluent or accurate in Polish but when I made the decision to stop banging my head against the wall about it I seemed to feel an inner peace radiating through me. Polish + zen is how to approach it.
teflcat   
9 Jul 2011
Real Estate / Building a house in Poland need advice from anyone that has built [100]

Can anyone update me with costs on building houses

We built a couple of years ago. 105m2, block, concrete ceiling. We had internet-bought house plans modified by an architect so we got what we wanted. We spent about 200k on the house.
teflcat   
9 Jul 2011
Real Estate / Building a house in Poland need advice from anyone that has built [100]

Depends a lot on where you want to build, of course. The cost of land can be extremely high. You should always agree on a total price for building the basic structure and roof. We were lucky to find a good builder who built our little place for 33k.
teflcat   
11 Jul 2011
Real Estate / Building a house in Poland need advice from anyone that has built [100]

I'd like to hear what the average seems to be, and just how rip-off the rip-off merchants around me are

My favourite p1ss-take when building was when the internal plasterers wanted the electricians to cut grooves in the walls for the cables to sit in.They told us the cables would show proud after plastering if that wasn't done. Our electician laughed his head off and said it was the oldest one in the book. He claimed the plasterers just wanted to put less plaster on the walls and "disappear" the bags of unused plaster when we weren't looking. We looked and measured all the time to make sure we got the right coverage.
teflcat   
15 Jul 2011
Food / Are there any Polish wines worth purchasing? [65]

There is some half decent Polish wine

Can you give us any information on that Harry. I'd love to try good Polish wine. The only stuff I see is the chateaux park bench @ 4zł/l.
teflcat   
15 Jul 2011
Food / Are there any Polish wines worth purchasing? [65]

Spoken like a man who has never tried any Japanese whisky!

True. Just joking. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find they can do it. Why not? Making booze is simple enough.
I once had a student from Kazakhstan who recommended Kazakh brandy, advising me to buy only the 5-star. I thought he was kidding but I tried it and found it to be as good as any French stuff I'd ever had, except for Martell Cordon Blue. As an afterthought I said to this guy, "Hang on, you're muslim. You shouldn't drink alcohol." He replied, "Yes, but in Kazakhstan we only drink at night, when Allah can't see us."
teflcat   
16 Jul 2011
Travel / How welcoming is Poland for an American visitor? And great places to visit. [43]

Absolutely right. It's one of the things I like about Poland. People generally mind their own business and let you get on with yours (I'm not talking about gossipy neighbours, who can be a pain). If you are interested in nature, I recommend Białowieża forest, the last pristine (some of it) lowland forest in Europe.
teflcat   
16 Jul 2011
UK, Ireland / Polish and Irish people are related? [137]

Who do you mean by 'us'?

I think he means Polish people. Mr Mocz has a close affinty to Poland and Poles loosely based on his insane white supremacist delusions and the fact that his great grandmother was half Polish. I hear he's thinking of even coming here if he can get off his fat arse and tear himself away from neo-nazi websites.
teflcat   
16 Jul 2011
UK, Ireland / Polish and Irish people are related? [137]

"Could he not find in his heart the generosity to acknowledge that there is a small nation that stood alone not for one year or two, but for several hundred years against aggression; that endured spoliations, famines, massacres in endless succession; that was clubbed many times into insensibility, but that each time on returning [to] consciousness took up the fight anew; a small nation that could never be got to accept defeat and has never surrendered her soul?”

- Eamon De Valera, on Victory Day in Europe, May 8, 1945, responding in a radio speech to criticism by Winston Churchill of Ireland’s neutrality in World War II, a speech in which De Valera also thanked Churchill for not invading Ireland.
teflcat   
16 Jul 2011
UK, Ireland / Polish and Irish people are related? [137]

These guys crack me up. I was born in a part of London where a lot of Irish people lived. My mother was Irish and our family life was heavily influenced by Irish culture. Having said that, I would never in a hundred years presume to talk about Ireland by using the pronoun We. I do not feel entitled to pontificate on Irish affairs and I would never look down my nose at non-Irish people living in and paying tax in Ireland.