News / The chances for Warsaw to become capital of eventual Slavic confederation? [183]

Exactly. Ethno restaurants. Only everything ethno was bombed, murdered and flattened by the Serbs in the 90's with gusto.
As I remember Banja Luka was the location of a genuine massacre by Serb mercenaries on innocent Bosnian civilians ?

Work / Average monthly salary in Poland is around 1000 PLN (few hundred bucks). [387]


Good example is Dell having moved everything to Lodz. Why? Because Polish workers are so much brilliant as Irish? Not really.

Work / Average monthly salary in Poland is around 1000 PLN (few hundred bucks). [387]

I meant - Why Dell moved its production? Only because of financial reasons. Not because of the facty that Polish workers suddenly are so more experienced as Polish ones.

Another example. Philips Lighting. Once moved its production from Belgium to Poland. A few years ago the production in Poland was closed and moved to the Far East.

News / New cross war in Warsaw [530]

PIS first tried to use the Smolensk tragedy in the elections, hence the Wawel burial - against all Polish traditions (LK can hardly be called a national hero). Now the cross thing - ammunition for the parliamentary elections?

How long can a national mourning continue - for a president who was besides grossly incompetent and partial also unpopular ?

Life / What is the cheapest electronics store in Poland? [17]

Media Markt and Saturn are both part of the same company - the German Metro Group.

Language / Site I've been using to learn Polish--what do you people think? [18]

You cannot learn any language from a website or a book. Grammar is a cold and merciless aspect of any language. Not any website can teach you that. Take evening classes... get frustrated, and later gradually more satisfied as you master the basics and later the medium level of that horror called the Polish language.

In my experience the only way to do it.

News / The chances for Warsaw to become capital of eventual Slavic confederation? [183]

Ukrainians are East Slavs.

Life / Second hand English bookshop in Warsaw [7]

I know that, I live in Warsaw :)
But I would like to find another secondhand English bookshop. Redding's often had novels which are not available anymore in American Bookstore & co.

Love / All the good Polish men for dating are taken? [111]

I do not think it is a good move to look for a partner on sites likes this one. Part are weirdos, and another part are on this or for fun (just to poke controversies), or to share information about Poland.

Food / What's your favorite Polish beer? [870]

Did anybody try Lomza?

Travel / Silesian tram network [5]

I am train buff myself so I understand your fascination :)
I am not living in that area myself, here in Warsaw though public transport is in general very safe.

Food / What's your favorite Polish coffee? [73]

I am living here in Warsaw six years, coming to Poland since 1989....And I find Polish coffee genuinely horribly.
Or you get the German brands (half of them Unilever-owned) dumping (as it seems to me but I could be mistaken) their worst and third-choice products here (Tchibo, Jacobs) for a meagre price. Or you pay crazy over-inflated prices for Italian brands. Or Dutch DE pretending to be Italian and selling at the same idiot prices.

Every time I go home to Flanders - I stock up at my coffee for the next few months and I survive :)

By the way I tink the typical Polish way of making coffee of pouring boiling water on ground coffee in a glass might be a bit of the past. Nobody in my wife's family, nor in my social circle is doing that still. (They are using or a typical percolator or an expresso machine). But I remember that kind of coffee. It was or mind-boggling strong or just coloured water - depending on the host :)

Food / What's your favorite Polish coffee? [73]

I only drink coffee in the morning (percolator) with milk and sugar....So enlighten me... what is "ice coffee"? How do you prepare that?

And Nescafe/Jacobs atr work until midday.

I am never going to Starbucks - epitome of Americanism in this world - but I have friends here in Warsaw who are seduced by their free WiFi.

Food / What's your favorite Polish coffee? [73]

I guess it also depends on your way of life...
I am drinking coffee in the morning - running from the shower to the kitchen, brewing tea for my wife who is on "mummy mode" in the morning...

So it is a typical waking-up and get-to-work brew.
In the meantime taking care of our cats who do expect that :)
So the sound of the percolator processing coffee is most welcome :)

In the weekend I prefer to read my Wyborcza at home and drink coffee equally at home, sitting near my loved one...No Nowy Swiat can beat that.

Never understood people who can invest half a mortgage in an Italian espresso machine.
As I said, way of life :)

Life / HOW MANY CHINESE LIVING IN POLAND? [29]

The weird thing is that there are supposed to live a swarm of Vietnamese in Poland (especially here in Warsaw) but I never see any of them.

Except in all these Vietnamse bars and to be honest - when I am standing in a traffic jam and some big BMW/Mercedes is passing by the drivers are always Oriental.

There is also a town near Warsaw called Wola Kosowska where all the Vietnamese & Chinese are doing their cheap product business (as in Maximus in Nadarzyn)

Law / Advantages of getting Polish citizenship [24]

As I do not aspire a career in BOR or GROM, I guess security clearances do not mean a thing :)
Although isnt't there the problem with real estate - meaning when you want to buy a agricultural land or something....that foreigners cannot do that ?

Law / Advantages of getting Polish citizenship [24]

Actually as regarding traveling, as a Belgian from birth I can travel to vastly more countries as a Pole (nu superiority here, just statin the legal facts) without visa, exluding the nasty ones.

I cannot vote for presidential or national elections here (BK lost one vote here). For the rest what I can see as a hindrance is buying land. As far as I know Poland still poses restrictions on EU citizens buying land?

UK, Ireland / Con Air UK: Flights take Polish criminals home - the cost to you is £25million [30]

Yes but what can you do? Shoot them at dawn or something like that?
Better they are languishing in Polish prisons without the comfort they have in the UK prison system.

History / Polish aristocrats - would be better off if we had Polish magnate families? [69]

You mean like the aristocrates treating their serfs as dogs?
And look at all aristocratic rebellions, the "Golden Freedom"....the magnates were selling out Poland every time they could.
In Western Europe - yes we did not have a Golden Freedom - selfish magnates paid with their heads. In Poland they got estates from the partitioning powers.

USA, Canada / Are Polish women marrying for US citizenship (or green card)? [19]

Before Poland joined the EU and the economy was picking up, scores of Polish women were moving to for example the Benelux and marrying real losers - just for the passport. That is a fact.

Whole matrimonial companies were making a living like that.

History / Polish aristocrats - would be better off if we had Polish magnate families? [69]

Because in Poland the "schlachta" did not depend on your income. It depended on your often mystical adherence to a clan or a coat of arms.

You could have had for example one pig and a mud floor... but if you belonged to that particular clan, you were miles elevated from a decent hardworking middle-class citizen.

The Russians would still buy your vote and your magnate landlord would still despise you.
But you were sclachta - hence the fact almost every Pole is building his house with a pillar or two in front.

History / Polish aristocrats - would be better off if we had Polish magnate families? [69]


How it is that you "forget" to mention the Golden Freedom? That any of the Commonwealth "nobles" could and did block any progress? Because even the smallest pig-raising schlachta could and did block all possible progress? In the pay of the magnates who were all in the pay of the partitioning powers?

That every time the new King had to be elected (bought in reality). That the nobles vehemently opposed regular taxes and a standing army?

History / Polish aristocrats - would be better off if we had Polish magnate families? [69]

I think the "Kresy" were always the colonial outposts of Poland.
Lwow/Lviv/Lemberg was not exactly Polish - was it? And neither it was Ukrainian/Russian...
I think it was quintessential Habsburg. Multicultural Franz-Jozef.

History / Polish aristocrats - would be better off if we had Polish magnate families? [69]


Gdansk/Danzig and Wroclaw/Breslau are only Polish for a short time in history. Each time I am there the architecture so much reminds me of my native Antwerp.

In 1945 both cities were overwhelmingly German.

Life / What would YOU do to make life in poland better?? [72]

It could be nice if "The Great Unwashed" would be banned from Warsaw public transport.
Why is it they always have money for cheap alcohol but not for a bar of soap :(

Life / Who's Leaving Poland? [138]

When I moved to Poland in 2004, it was with the intention to stay - at least until my retirement :). But I am already coming to Poland since 1989.

I have built a fine professional career here in Logistics, our house is as good as finished...
I like to go home to my native Antwerp but I am equally glad be back here in the city-state of Warsaw.
And after all these years my social network back home has somewhat disappeared but I guess that is logical.

No as for now I do not see myself going back home.

Life / Who's Leaving Poland? [138]


The foreigners I know here in Poland overwelmingly came here for their Polish partner and that includes me :)
Not that the other reasons mentioned are not valid of course