UK, Ireland / Moving to Poland from UK [39]

@Cargo pants
Thanks useful info, yes I did thing about shipping once in my wife's name and once in mine... slightly different surnames probably helpful 😀

I'm Irish as Atch points out so no tests for me ha, I speak some polish my stumbling point is grammar mostly and laziness!

UK, Ireland / Moving to Poland from UK [39]

@Atch
Thanks Moving to Wrocław, my wife's family are based around there and we have been back and forth for the past 10yrs so know it fairly well. It's also got quite a few international schools which might help with our son learning English... I know it sounds odd but I am effort to bring him up Bi Lingual we nailed the polish side but not the English side ha.

No job in Poland probably going to commute to London, 3 days there 4 in Poland sort of thing appreciate technically I can't work 2 days out of 5 remote but that's a tbc. Probably a topic for another thread, or a bump for some of the others on the same topic.

The Geranium thing seems to have grown into a thread of its own 😀 I guess that's appropriate as they tend grow like crazy also 😂

UK, Ireland / Moving to Poland from UK [39]

@Atch
Completely fair 😂 I know a wee bit about mushrooms... flowers and plants not so much... leave that to the wife. But now I know a little more about Pelargonias so thank you all.

UK, Ireland / Moving to Poland from UK [39]

@Atch
We tried to keep to Polish in the house so he picked it up but it worked too well 😀. Yeah introducing English now... he has already picked up a few of the Anglo Saxon words from me ha... luckily his pronunciation is poor!

As for dangling him over he Blarney Stone certainly times I feel like dangling over a castle wall haha... he is a wee Divil as we say... but he does it all with a smile on his face so fair enough I reckon 😂.

UK, Ireland / Moving to Poland from UK [39]

Moving on from pot plants...

We are now at the stage of organizing a removal company. The polish company we are working with seem to want every document under the sun -although they seem to have relented on the one that says we are alive - I think they are just parroting everything that's possible to be submitted. This for vat free import of house contents.

The main stumbling block is a residence permit, we will be moving under my wife's name, she is a polish citizen with a pesel number etc.

My understanding is you simply need to prove you have made arrangements to live in the country, so a rental agreement, internet bill etc or a residence permit.

They are saying no you need to be in the country and get the residence agreement first and if it's delayed we can always store your stuff (for a price I guess 😀).

It seems like you ask three removal companies and you get three different answers! So any insight anyone has here would be welcome. I do understand the need to register after 3 months in the country but this different.

UK, Ireland / Moving to Poland from UK [39]

@jon357
Thanks I do get the idea that they basically want to make sure you are moving possessions because you are moving residence and not for commercial reasons.

It's different from the right to live and work in the country...but the polish documentation just lists a bunch of admissible documents to prove you lived outside of the EU for more than 12mths and to prove you have a residence sorted in Poland.

I suppose in good old bureaucratic fashion they leave it open to "interpretation"😀.

I try to avoid Facebook but that's a good shout will take a look.

Thanks.

UK, Ireland / Moving to Poland from UK [39]

@jon357


Thanks no it's about proving you intend to move your residence to Poland, but that can be proved in other ways like a rental contract on a flat etc. From what I can see its not compulsory to register at all, I think in the past to stay over 90 days as an EU citizen they tried to make you register but now its recommended but not enforced.

So I think its the company (or more likely) employee being awkward no doubt it would help the clearance but its not needed and I half wonder if they know it will mean a few weeks holding goods in storage which they will happily charge me for :)

UK, Ireland / Moving to Poland from UK [39]


Ha yes I have had dealings in Poland over the last 10 years and I am definitely recognising this...also the tendency to just repeat what is written somewhere without trying to help with interpreting it for a real world situation. I have not come across the Ireland part of the UK thing before but I have not had much dealings with officials. My son has asked why people in Ireland don't speak Irish!! I thought that perceptive for a 5 year old hahaha....

Life / Life in Poland - ECONOMY [39]


Indeed but yet there still seems to be a property boom, at the very least a building boom, inflation is running around 17% yoy but the central bank is keeping rates on hold, seems like a very precarious economic setup, the hope is perhaps the external environment improves but I can't see that happening.

I would love to see a chart of mortgage affordability for housing in Poland it has to have crashed over the last few years. Reminds me a little bit of Celtic Tiger Ireland circa 2006/7.

Life / Owning a house in true countryside of Poland - stories [649]


Recently experienced this while staying in Lubin, I think the "charge" was 100 zl also :)

I was surprised by it and found it a little odd I mean why do they assume your Christian. But on the other hand if you ignore the "religion" aspect its quite a nice tradition, and probably helps with the feeling of community, if nothing else older people would welcome the company I expect, maybe the hens might lay a bit better also :).

Certainly growing up in Ireland a visit from the priest was not unusual. Although I never understood why the local priest was treated as some kind of VIP, and I still don't get it...but its a lot less common now in Ireland.

Life / Owning a house in true countryside of Poland - stories [649]


That's quite something, but I can sort of believe it.


Yeah I think there was some kind of advance "warning" not sure you could opt out suppose you could just not open the door.

The UK is so anonymous now, people can and do disappear/die at home with no-one checking on them etc. I'm not sure how keen I am on the local priest checking in as they please, but at least its some kind of community.

I guess its a fine line between community looking out for each other etc and plain nosiness.

UK, Ireland / Moving to Poland from UK [39]

Ok moving on maybe this is best posted elsewhere... and I expect the answer is no but anyway...

We need to arrange some help to offload boxes from our removal van when it lands in Wroclaw. That's assuming it gets past the Polish customs!

I will ask relatives but does anyone here have experience of hiring causal labour... in the UK I'm sure there is an app for it in Poland I am sure there isn't (yet) we have a time limit for unloading so idea is get 4 lads and pay them cash in hand etc.

Was quoted a hilarious amount from the agent for this 😀

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


Bone Marrow is a fine dish, made popular for a while in the UK by Fergus Henderson and his restaurant St John...he also wrote the Nose to Tail cookbook, I think you might like it ha!

One tip with the bone marrow is to split the bone, easier to eat afterwards and all the marrow gets a bit of crisping etc, but of course one can just scoop it out of the bone, I find it needs a fair bit of seasoning to go with it, garlic rubbed on toasted bread or herbs etc also nothing like a bit of bone marrow ground into a burger!

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


Looks like a great Sunday dinner I'm not such a big fan of mizeria but marchewka i jablko/burak (grated apple and carrot/beetroot) and other surowki are v tasty the raw slightly acidic salad cuts through the fat nicely.

Study / Various education and school issues in Poland. Opinions, stories, controversies. [940]


Agree it's surprising but I don't think it would happen in Ireland any more, maybe 30 years ago?

By that I mean society is less sensitive to these things, more likely for the guy to get fired if he forgets James now wants to be called Jane. This petty morality I think started to fall away at the same time as the church's control over people started to wane...leave it up to you to decide if that's a coincidence or not.

News / There is no Poland without the Church! [178]


Gives a whole new meaning to "is that a fun size mars bar or are you just pleased to meet me"

Study / Various education and school issues in Poland. Opinions, stories, controversies. [940]

@pawian
Perhaps but even there it would be more subtle, the result might be the same but the process different to avoid an obvious unfair dismissal case.

The days of the church dictating how people live their lives is long gone in Ireland, thank God. Not to say they don't try but they are a busted flush now.

News / Polish Parliamentary Elections 2023 [933]


Shocking stuff altogether where do we go from here? Still in the meantime we can have cake I guess...

More power to your elbow Atch

News / Poland says no to flood of Immigrants [670]

@Alien
Sweden is one of the safest country's in Europe for RTA's but the numbers are not as stark as they appear....

220 deaths in Sweden on the roads in 2022 just under 2000 in Poland. Population of Sweden ~10m Poland ~38m so 22 deaths per 1m people in Sweden 52/1m Poland more than double right, so still pretty awful.

But in Poland you have 34m cars registered in Sweden about 5m, so if we normalized for population it looks more like 44 deaths/1m in Sweden vs 46.8 in Poland.

It's tenuous to normalise by population here but shows you can manipulate the data to a point where there really isn't a big difference.

Now I'm not for a moment suggesting driving in Poland is as safe as Sweden clearly it isn't, more cars on the roads means more accidents and in Poland they are more likely to be fatal.

But the fatalities are going down in Poland the murders and the rest are going up in Sweden.

Poland and many of its neighbors have always had a terrible road safety profile, they are doing something about it, I'm sure more could be done in Poland but the fact remains the numbers have almost halved in the last 10 years.

Sweden on the other hand seems to have manufactured this problem all by itself and it's hard to see how it gets better.

So long story short, Poland all day long over Sweden.