The BEST Guide to POLAND
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Posts by cjj  

Joined: 28 Sep 2007 / Female ♀
Last Post: 18 Aug 2016
Threads: -
Posts: Total: 281 / Live: 17 / Archived: 264
From: is chwasz was skintown
Speaks Polish?: iffy
Interests: chocolate

Displayed posts: 17
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cjj   
23 Apr 2009
Life / Popular and Practical Cars in Poland [49]

but it would still be useful for spares ...

Our neighbour's visitors had their car stolen last year and the expectation was that it would never again be seen in one piece.

cj
cjj   
16 Jan 2010
Life / Having a baby in Poland as a US citizen [9]

my experience in Gdansk, albeit nearly 7 years ago
- VBAC wasn't seriously considered by the doctor.
- my husband was originally not permitted into theatre to be with me for the section. he insisted (his argument being that I spoke very little Polish), but I believe he was successful only because it was a private healthcare birth.

- hospital facilities were a bit brutal, even going 'private'. simple things, really, like ending up after a very complicated section, lying on a bed which wouldn't even be raised up to let me lie more comfortably. After day 2 they fixed a chain with a handle on the end to the end of the bed !! and if I wanted to sit up I had to pull myself up like that.

- oh, and the food was abysmal. wouldn't have fed it to the dog. milk soup with hand-made lumps of flour-dough that were sometimes the size of a large snail. that alternated with garlic sausage ...
cjj   
13 Feb 2010
Life / Warsaw - what's there to love? Semi-livable city? [42]

I lived in Vancouver for 5 years before moving to Gdansk. Van is a strange place - probably great if you're a single 20-something who lives with a group of friends in some hip area. Ugly city in a beautiful location. Expensive. Large - so things you could do are usually over an hour's drive away. Running out of places to build houses - land is v. expensive so they build huge houses that leave no room for trees (to replace the ones cut down when the site was clearcut).

And everywhere you go to enjoy nature ... well, 200 people will be there before you.

Gdansk is ... well the expectations are less :) and so are the crowds.
cjj   
30 Aug 2010
Work / CV/Resume style standards in Poland [17]

a couple of points from my experience (I'm an ex-pat living in Poland so I've noticed some differences)

- a photo is as expected as your name. And most CVs have the applicant's age on them ... I don't want either, but it seems expected.

- security clearances ... maybe not so needed unless the job calls them out ?
- The Letter is important here - paragraphs of text in which the applicant tries to beg for the job while putting in as many supporting-evidence-clauses for his/her brilliance and suitability. I hate reading them when I'm interviewing because they need to be written well to be effective and I'm not really caring about people's ability to string sentences together.

- unless you walk on water (and they really need that skill), make sure the difficulty of calling you to interview doesn't exceed your potential usefulness ...
cjj   
2 Sep 2010
Work / CV/Resume style standards in Poland [17]

The amount of personal detail I've seen on some cvs is ridiculous. I don't want to know ages, home addresses, dates of birth ... I'd much rather have some clear idea that the skills being offered meet those called out in the job advert /sigh/

oh, and if you go for a photo, remember the Polish obsession with The Left Ear ;)

/cj
cjj   
21 Mar 2011
Genealogy / Want to find a person [762]

"Better to Look in the Polish telephone directory?"

To be fair that's quite difficult.

Our local phone directory is ordered by City/Wies.

I'm not sure how to explain what a Wies is -- if you were Irish I could say "townland", a concept which for me fits very nicely. (It's not "village" as the common translation would suggest, as it's not a clustered settlement.)

I live out in the country so, in order to find my phone number, you need to know the townland I live in. Maybe you will, maybe you won't. And forget finding all the Smiths in the general area and eye-balling it -- you have to know the names of the surrounding townlands so you can seach each of them separately.

and then you decide to give up and just drive there instead :)
cjj   
8 Apr 2011
Life / Are Polish roads really this bad? [237]

From what I can see on our local country roads, I would guess the problems start with poor quality materials and poor construction.
And I don't know a thing about road-building so of course this is all my opinion :)

The quality of the tarmac isn't great - cheap fixes done by Gmina on top of equally cheap original surfaces.
Very heavy traffic - lack of a decent 'A road' network with bypasses means that heavy trucks are pounding through villages continuously.
The edges aren't finished -- they run off into packed earth - so of course they get eroded very quickly especially during the cold, snowy winters.

This year whenever the snow melted the pot-holes were horrible. i've already had a 3-4 inch part of a rim bent out of shape because I bounced through something - and trust me, i'm a fuddy-duddy type of driver. Gmina came out and tried to 'address' a kilometre patch going into the local village -- i think they probably ran out of money to resurface so they just scraped off the top surface ... perhaps believing that a shallower hole can be achieved by more ways than filling it :P

On the way home I turn off a main road (going between two Gmina centres) immediately unto a dirt track which of course liquifies when the snow melts. That's the part of the road problem I have most issue with - finding my car up to its oxters in mud and nothing to do but swim off in search of a tractor.

today it's very windy - splendid for drying off the road home ...
cjj   
19 Aug 2011
Language / Is this true about Polish pronunciation of English (that some words sound identical?) [34]

our family favourites are

fairy/furry/ferry
and
larder/ladder

but i'm from the depths of northern ireland so cannot toss any stones around in a conversation about pronunciation.

cj
[i've had recent exposure to the 'a' / 'u' dilemma .. .turns the description of a simple software application crash on some hardware into something a lot more imaginative ... ]
cjj   
28 Nov 2011
Food / British food products in Poland? [334]

anyone for treacle bread? :)
I've managed to find treacle so make tb quite often

and of course Kerr's Pinks are The Best Potato ... with lots of butter ... ah ...

To answer the OP -- no, I haven't found any good shop in particular though a few things are coming into 'normal' supermarkets: cheddar is becoming quite easy to get - also kerrygold butter. heinz baked beans are common in Real, at least. I'm still searching (weep) for Heinz Salad Cream though HP Sauce is easy enough to find.

No sign of Mr Kipling though and sometimes i'd kill for a slice of toasted Veda with butter :P
cjj   
29 Nov 2011
Food / British food products in Poland? [334]

I really cannot believe that anyone would leave Britain and crave these utterly loathsome and revolting foodstuffs.

oops, I forgot my [sense-of-humour] and [/sense-of-humour] boxes. better luck next time.
cjj   
31 May 2013
Work / Medical tests before working in Poland [23]

and guess what -- you'll get to retake it regularly.

it's short and simple ... and its worth is open to debate. I had one while in the middle of chemotherapy ... I decided in the end to tell the doctor what was happening - she certainly hadn't noticed anything untoward ... not even the wig.
cjj   
13 Oct 2015
Travel / I'm so bored in Poland! [129]

the nearest mall might well have free wifi good enough for facetime back to the UK.
are you down south? or you could take up knitting for those Polish visits :P
cjj   
5 Nov 2015
Life / The best Psychiatric Hospital in Poland? [11]

location : try googling this
szpital psychiatryczny starogard gdaƄski

how to get there :
e-podroznik.pl/1845,38040,84762,rozklad-jazdy-pks-gdansk-starogard-gdanski.html#veryTop
cjj   
18 Aug 2016
Life / Ekogroszek/wood pellets or gas for heating in Poland? [9]

you can change the screw (delivering the material from the hopper) and the burning pot. we burned oats one year but moved to coal the next; same hopper, but the screw had to be changed and also the pot into which the material was delivered to be burned. we did the change ourselves - standard diy level work.