Life / Please help me, with deciding a good Polish name for my baby boy :) [48]

In my humble opinion, probably the most lovely Polish name I have come across (and I came across it late) is ... Rafal.

I like it because it has a kind of romantic feel to it ... Raphael.

It is a strong name. And 'Raffy' or 'Raf' is very popular in successful circles in the UK at the moment.

Aleksander is always good.

Oliver should be Olivier (which I rather like).

I like Kuba and Kacper, but that is just me.

Rafal Dariusz is a sexy name, I think. Piotr Dariusz is much more well-behaved.

It depends who you want him to be ... : )

Love / If you're a Polish person.. Before you marry a foreigner... [7]


I can only imagine : D

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]

That's good : ) Thanks for saying so - otherwise it would just be my 'experience' and not a proven 'fact' ; ) ... but if it happened to you, too ... : )

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]


Well, I feel I was forced into it, by the 'convenience / choice / woman's rights over her body / career before motherhood' etc. beliefs of our country, so yes, I do feel astoundingly angry and wronged. But I have learnt to just pocket that somewhere deep inside me now, because it isn't possible to live properly and dwell on something like that.


No, I don't think we are ... I think I was just saying what I thought, as were others, but as you say, it is such a nebulous area that we can't possibly draw any conclusions other than that maybe we don't know everything.


I couldn't go so far as to say that, but I do know that in my opinion, I knew as soon as conception occurred ... it was an extraordinary feeling, and conviction. And I had a vision of her having jumped into her physical self - a bit like jumping on a ski lift. She had made the leap, landed sure-footedly and was now getting on with it.

Of course others will now laugh, mock, say that is all fantastical rubbish ... but I don't care at all, because I have no doubt about what I felt. If you are walking along and bump into a lamp post, you don't doubt that. I feel as certain about this.

But I know I have to stop giving my 'personal' experiences, because they are also dismissed - so I guess let's go to that whole huge body of work & discussion called Catholicisim, or Christianity, or Buddhism, or Islam, or whichever religion you choose ... they all talk about the soul, as far as I know. Hindusim. Reincarnation. It's all there. I am no expert at all, but my experience would suggest to me there is something in it.

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]


yes it does, and I think the soul exists before coming into the body. So I had a sense of my daughter's presence before she was even conceived. Sounds crazy and you will all just say I am stupid, etc, but I felt it, in the same way that you can feel people after they have died. But it was weird, as it was before she was conceived. She was conceived about a month after that. So you can see why I think abortion is off-limits ...

Life / Why is circumcision not practiced in Poland? [701]


Have to say that sounds quite viable as an argument ...

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]


What are you talking about?!! I barely understand this ... they would have to be fertilised eggs, wouldn't they? And sorry to say it, but yes, I would value the life of my child over that of a baby chicken, I would.

Anyhow, that would also mean that anyone who eats born chickens is also a hypocrite, because that is also killing something. But this is a bad parallel, and it trivialises the real matter.

UK, Ireland / English/British rudeness - what do Polish people think about it? [98]


What are you talking about?
The common use of thee/thou/thine/etc. went out centuries ago! Yes, there are some vestiges of it in some Northern dialects (I'll si' thi' later) - but this is dialect.

I really don't think one can say that there is a familiar or singular form of 'thee/thou' in Modern English - that is just misleading. If so we would teach 'I - thee/thou - he/she/it' ... come on : )


Hmm ... sorry, but going through your description, I can't see the rudeness. Now you know what that means? It means that in the cultural code in which those people have been brought up, they weren't being rude - so they weren't being rude. In the same way that if a Polish person is very direct with me, I can't take it as rudeness, because that is not their intention, so you shouldn't read the behaviour of these Brits as rude.

Example 1:
The old lady wasn't being patronising. If it was cold, and there were only three seats, and you were sitting in the middle, and are a man, and they are old ladies ... well, even as a younger woman I would straight away jump up and move over so they could sit down. To my mind, that you had to think about it was a tad ... rude. They were old, and cold too. Even if they hadn't been ... but usually the older female is offered respect and help.

When you did finally move, she was grateful, and thanked you - and in our language, she wasn't being effusive - that is just how we talk.

Actually she was rather polite, because she didn't ASK you to move - she just waited to see if you would. And that is another thing - we have an unspoken code of behaviour. The done thing would be to move. If you hadn't have moved, she wouldn't have asked - because it is your moral responsibility, your conscience, and she is well-brought up enough not to ask.

Example 2:

Again, two girls together on a train. You have your bag under a fold up seat, so effectively parked in that space. It is totally normal and not in any way rude for someone to say 'sorry - would you mind moving your bag?' - she was saying this because she didn't want to barge in, pull down the seat and possibly trample on your bag - and she also probably waited because she was checking that you really had just put the bag there, and not that you were in some way using the seat.

I just can't see the rudeness in either of these situations ...

And as for the language, what you might see as exaggerated politeness, etc, is just the way we speak. If you don't adopt that, you will always seem slightly rude/foreign ...

Genuine rudeness to me is, for example:

I have been standing in a queue at the post office in Poland for c. 30 minutes. We are all bundled up in layers of clothes as it is minus 20 outside, but the post office is boiling hot - only people keep opening the door, and then it is momentarily freezing cold. It is very uncomfortable in the queue. I get to the front, and just as I go to move forwards, an old woman digs me in the ribs with her elbow, and stomps on my foot as she pushes past me. She doesn't apologise, either, and she just carries on with her business.

Just tell me how that isn't rude ...

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]


Berni, I also learnt the same, and certainly anyone who wants to get pregnant also believes that. If they don't want to be pregnant, they say they aren't sure when we can say it really is a human life (as opposed to Martian, I guess) and that means that up until a certain point, if they have an abortion, they aren't killing anything. Cool idea, huh? Great way out. ; )

Life / British living in Poland - documentary [42]


Yeah, I was also totally freezing in 91-94, but you're right, couldn't blame that on the political system ... but anyhow, the Poles had their methods. Ten minutes of being specially wrapped up in scarves, under-garments, ear muffs, hats, gloves, tights, boots, overcoats, etc, before being allowed out the door. Sensible.

The bus journeys by street light at 4pm for hours on end in that dreadful slush WERE dreadful ... but aren't they now as well? I suppose more people have cars, or can avoid the journeys. Don't know. But living in Poland, it's gonna be cold in the winter, whatever the government ...

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]

Not if you don't have sex.

The point is, pregnancy should be so respected and taken seriously that if getting pregnant is such a disaster, then the woman should not have sex in the first place. Or, if she does with contraception, she should accept that it isn't 100% effective, and if she happens to get pregnant, she should honour that.

This whole thing is about respect and honour. And easy abortion encourages lack of both.

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]


If getting pregnant is that desperate a situation, she should make sure she doesn't get pregnant in the first place. Krotko na temat.

UK, Ireland / Do Polish Immigrants in Great Britain hate each other? [60]


I'm not sure that the average British person has much contact with Poles ... and those who persevere on here are not really average (she says ; ).

I kind of work with Poles, in a freelance way, and I sleep with one, and have a child with him, so I suppose I am on the inside. Do I think they are mostly good people? Hmm. Yes, but not in the British sense of good. They do things that in a British person would make them not good, but in a Polish person that doesn't make them not good. One has to judge them according to original context.

I have to say that I find the men more 'good' than the women, in general. I know Polish guys who are just the people I would have wanted with me in Colditz. The women I wouldn't have trusted - they would have slept with the Germans in a flash, and slit the throats of any other women coming close.

And that war reference isn't unintentional. I absolutely hold by it that the Poles mostly still live in a wartime mentality. And the rules are different.

As for the gangs and scroungers, that is just native Polish survivalism at its best. I have an admiration for it in some ways. Why not?


And I, as a British citizen, say ... GREAT. If we have such a silly system that it can be so obviously and openly used, then hey, why not. They are not doing anything wrong. It is all legal in the EU. If the system is so stupid, then it doesn't deserve any respect.

It is a system that also syphons millions if not billions of revenue into wars in Afghanistan, etc, which is a ludicrous abuse of money and responsibility. Why can't we be like those Scandinavian countries that always keep out of it all? They are happy, and women have two years' paid maternity leave there!

Every Thursday in Oxford, on the way to the hospital, they have a sign up. 'Delays due to Repatriation'. For a while I wondered what that meant. Repatriation? Sending immigrants back to their country? What could it mean? Why the roadblock???

And then I found out. Repatriation means bringing back soldiers who have died in Afghanistan. Bringing them back and blocking the road so their funeral cortege can make its way up to the crematorial wing of the hospital. And it happens every week, so there must be at least one local person a week who has been killed.

Now if we are so stupid as to spend millions on sending our compatriots off to die horribly for someone else's oil issues, then ... who are we to be taken seriously? And if some other EU members can legally exploit the system then ... why not. It is all bo**cks.

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]


First thing: we are not living in Ireland in the 1850s. Women are not going to be stoned to death if they have a child out of wedlock. And in the UK at least, we are so compliant that the idea of your standard Next-shopping, M&S-loving late 20-something even knowing what an 'underground abortion' is, is fairly unlikely. They go to the GP, and do what she says. So if the GP says 'Lovely! You're going to have a baby'!' the woman says 'Oh yes! Lovely'. It is like that here. Believe me.

In Poland ... there is more of a sense of self-determination, I know. So I guess women might there say 'Huj ... ok ... you don't want to sign the piece of paper ... I'll ask Magda to talk with Kamilek, who will be able to get Jacek to fix me up with some pills, and that will be that ... ' - and that, to be frank, is her choice.

If a woman is so stupid as to go for an unregularised abortion, without medical control, then on her own head be it, as far as I am concerned. Yes, I can understand it in Ireland in the 1850s. I can understand it in London in the 1960s. But not anywhere in the EU in 2012.

Life / British living in Poland - documentary [42]


I was posting facts as told to me by Polish people in Poland. Not my own facts.

The car business - ok, well in 91 I knew maybe 60 Polish people, and I knew only three who owned a car. One was a taxi driver and yes, got it from Germany. One was a journalist who told me about the list and waiting and said he had waited 8 years. And one was the brother of an extremely famous sportsman who was very rich.

The pension business - that is it as told to me by the lady, my ex-mother in law. Regardless of zeros, her point was that she had worked a long time, with the belief that on retirement, she would be comfortably off. After the change in government and opening up to the West, the value of her pension dropped. That may be because of inflation, but whatever - the net effect was that whereas she would have been well off, she, maybe not overnight but certainly over a relatively short period - perhaps a couple of years - became a relative pauper. She could not survive and could not buy the medication she needs without help from her son.

When I said I liked it better before, I meant that particular city in the early 90s, rather than now. Not in the 80s. I have no experience of that.

Life / British living in Poland - documentary [42]

Yes, that is what I hear all the time - that they would have far preferred staying as they were.

One lady, in her late 60s, was the Chief Registrar for all marriages in this large city of half a million people. She was well paid in comparison to everyone else; she had a great pension to look forward to. She worked for 35 years, and when she retired, Capitalism arrived, and overnight her pension dropped so much in value that it practically disappeared. She now has the equivalent of about £200 a month, and her outgoings are £350 before food. Her life has literally been ruined by what has happened - completely changed, and for the worse. She is not living in the country she lived in before. It has disappeared, along with her pension.

Change brought freedom, yes - for the upcoming generations. Most of the older people are too tired or ill or just set in their ways to 'make the most' of their 'freedom' - in fact they are in more of a prison than before. What does it matter that now they can get on Ryan Air to Luton if they want? They don't want to.

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]


I agree. It should be that if you get pregnant through carelessness and you say you don't want the baby, you have to give birth and then decide. If you still don't want it, the baby is adopted.

Now I bet THAT would halve the unwanted pregnancy rate overnight ...

Life / British living in Poland - documentary [42]

I lived there 1991-94, when it was only just coming out of the shroud of Communism, and have been back periodically, and have constant contact. I had a lot of interesting observations to make about it from when I was there, and how it has changed now. Happy to talk.

It was still a place where in a city of half a million, where I was, there was only one real 'bar', and a couple of restaurants. There were dance halls. There were 7 cinemas, and depending on which type of film one felt like watching, one chose the cinema accordingly. You could smoke in them, too. And it was really something if you knew someone who owned a car. They told me of how only recently the lists had finished - you had to be on a list for 5 years or more to get a car. So those who had them in 91 were people who had waited literally years, and probably had 'connections'.

There were hundreds of corner shops, and no supermarket. Only in 1994 did a supermarket appear - EuroSklep - although it didn't really have much in it. But it did have trolleys : )

Oh, I have so many stories, if you want. And now I go back and ... have to say that as a visitor, I preferred it as it was. I don't like wandering around huge hypermarkets and seeing bewildered old grandmas with barely enough to buy a loaf of bread counting out their small coins at the cash desk. I find the juxtaposition of people from a previous era and the present grating, with an awful pathos. OK, sure, fine for the younger generations ... but there are a hell of a lot of older, greyer people who have it harder now than before. Their world has literally evaporated around them.

I liked it before, how it was. I went back and searched for those fabulous cinemas, and they were all gone. There was a multiplex. I hate multiplexes. Why would I want one of those? I have one at home. They are too loud; they are impersonal; they are commercial. They lack everything that those seven cinemas had.

And ... so on.

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]


At the time, there was no internet.

And they don't teach you about serious emotional consequences in Biology ...


I like you too, 4 F : ) Thank you for getting it : ) (and for trying to make it simple for others ...)


I think I'm the only one who has brought any personal experience into this, apart from those women who have said they would never have kids. Totally not trying to score points - just to share relevant experience.


Which takes time. Years. And experience. Unless you are one of those ladies who is always extremely sure of herself, and has been from a young age ...

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]


Actually, to some degree it is. (and it's 'an' abortion)

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]

Before abortion I didn't feel like I was about to permit murder - if I had, wouldn't have done it.
Afterwards, it felt as if I had permitted murder.
If I had been properly informed beforehand, I wouldn't have done it.
Choice is all very well so long as it is a fully informed choice, and that would involve, e.g., scans and pictures and literature about the development stages of the unborn child.

Choice at the moment in the UK is boll*cks, as far as I am concerned.
I wish I'd been in Poland, where my child would have been respected and protected.

May not be 140 characters, but hope digestible.

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]


I didn't feel like that before I had the operation, because the whole system here is set up to present a 'termination' as an ok thing to do - it isn't really a life - it is just a tiny blob - you will quickly recover and everything will be fine.

The reality of the procedure, and of my reaction to it, and of my increasing experience and wisdom over the years of how precious each life actually is, and how precious each of my children - all of this is something I only had access to after having 'made' the decision.

And my one and only point about abortion is that women should be made as fully aware as possible of what they are doing, and what they are THROWING AWAY, to ensure they are in absolutely the best position to make as informed a choice as is possible, despite in the case of first-time mothers, their total lack of experience of pregnancy and having a child.

And I don't think this is done. Because people fighting for 'choice' won't allow women to hear the full facts, because they think that will ... what? Put them off? Make them feel bad about their 'choice'? Maybe it will make some women think so hard that they don't have an abortion, yes. And then later, they won't have to regret it. They will in years to come think (at least some of them) 'Phew - thank God I didn't have a abortion - what was I even thinking??'.

And to my mind, if only one single woman is spared the emotional torment I have to live with as a result of that 'decision', then it is worth it.

So all I want is full information, no air-brushing, no talk of lifeless blobs - because that is not how it works afterwards. Afterwards one starts to think things like ' hang on - I will now not ever see the face of my child'. Or 'I will never know if I had a girl or a boy' (although I am certain I had a girl, and have been right with the other two so probably right). Or 'What ... did they do with the body of my unborn child?'. And a whole host of other awful questions. And the thing is, I have my whole life to think about that. And you can bet your bottom dollar that those who did it, and took the money, don't have a second thought about it.

I am just so sorry that I trusted a flawed system, and yes, I am angry that a law designed to protect exactly people like me was just blatantly flouted. The law says that abortion can only be given to a mother if she will suffer much more physically or emotionally if she goes through with the pregnancy. I ran out of the hospital once. Surely that should have raised doubts in their mind about my suitability for this procedure? I was 21. I knew nothing. I was very naive. And they failed me. And my parents also failed me.

So no, I am not keen on 'choice' when it isn't a real choice. There is so much talk about those women who 'desperately' want an abortion, and so desperately need to be allowed their 'choice' and their 'rights' over 'their body'. But what about a woman who doesn't even yet grasp the implications of her actions, and is channelled into the preferred 'sensible' behaviour by those around her, and denied - yes, denied - access to the full facts? I can tell you that if I had had to have a scan, and see pictures of the developing child at the time when I had the abortion, and to see pictures post-abortion, then I would not have done it. And if someone had also talked to me about the long-term, lifetime implications of regret - I would not have.

But nobody did. And I think that is a failing in the system, and, frankly, in the law.

So I am not against choice. I am pro a real choice.

And yes ... I do wish I had been brought up in a country that considered abortion a terrible thing to do, and something that should only be done as an absolute last resort in the case of medical emergency. I really do.

Ok. I will shut up now. Not sure what else there is for me to say.

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]

Yes, I would certainly entertain that thought. I find it fairly astonishing that some things they do aren't even commented upon, or at least not by the general populace.

Oh, it's all a big con, it's all about money and making things go the way they want, and about power.


And it wouldn't even have been a termination, strictly speaking, because the pregnancy had already failed. A termination is deliberately intervening to end a pregnancy, which in turn of course terminates the life of the unborn child. In this situation the unborn child was already doomed, and a natural termination was already in process. To aid this process medically, to make it as safe as possible for the mother, and frankly to make it as quick as possible for the dying child, would have been the merciful and surely medically correct thing.

You would have thought that on such an issue, the Irish authorities could have made sure that every health professional in the land knew the rules. Ie, that if it was a case of an emergency such as this, and the life of the mother in danger, then the natural process should have been managed and assisted.

Love / Are Polish men handsome to you? [182]


Imagine Mr Bean's twin sister. Would you like to have sex only with her for the rest of your life?

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]

Well, yes, I do agree with that in a way, but that is a conversation for a glass of wine and no curfew ...

Love / Are Polish men handsome to you? [182]

95% of men. I have a thing for Poles. I know, not normal. But hey. Why fight it.

I don't understand this stuff about Polish guys not being sexy. What?! Think of it like this. Quite a lot of English men look like Mr Bean. No Polish men look like him.

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]


erm ... that actually means to calm troubled waters ... I think you meant the opposite ...


Thank you, Barney. Normal understanding. Like, birds fly, the sea is wet, and life starts at conception. Someone on a life support machine would be, by definition of 'life support', be dead if not on it. etc.

I really really find it hard to understand why people have this kind of obsession with arguing against facts like this. It seems ... perverse.


That is a GOOD fact, p3! I didn't know that! So ... if a woman is on her way to get an abortion, and is murdered, then it is killing a life, but if she had made it to the clinic and aborted the baby that would just have been a medical procedure and her absolute right not to carry a child if she didn't fancy it ... and there we have the whole stupid double-standards cr@p.

UK, Ireland / Domestic arguments caused by differences between Polish and English culture [109]


When I lived in Poland, I liked everyone. Loved them. Thought they were great. Though my mother in law was crazy, but have since noticed she is just true to type.

Now I have had seven years' experience of living with Poles in the UK, and in this time some totally unexpected issues have come out ... I have noticed somethings which can't be explained as one-offs ... which are deliberate behaviours, or traits, noticed in a number of people.

One, small example.

People are living in my house. I have a set of mugs my grandmother gave me. After a few months, I can't find two of them. Hmm, I think. Then one day I come in and find one of my house guests shoving something in a plastic bag - it makes broken china noises ...

Stop the tape: If I had just broken something by accident in someone's house, I would at this point have said 'God am so sorry - broke yr mug - must get you a new one' and then the other person would have said 'oh no! no problem - don't worry - it's ok' or some such, and at least would have known what happened to the mug.

What happened:

Her: nothing. Tried to stuff bag in a cupboard.
Me: Oh no ... did something get broken?
Her: No.
Me: But ... what's in that bag?
Her: Nothing.
Me: But ... what was that china noise?
Her: Nothing.

I persisted a bit, and she then went out with the bag, and I was just kind of a bit dumfounded.

I am not one to accuse. I am ridiculously understanding and ok about things. But I would have to be stupid not to see that there has been a kind of thing going on here. And this inability to fess up and just be normal ... it is very infuriating.

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]


? So is a baby not alive when it is born then? Because it can't make conscious (or even couscous ; ) logical decisions for months, if not years ... come on.

But what happened to that visitor to your country who was not given the best medical care because of the law re: abortion - of course that is wrong, appalling, dreadful. The point there is that the doctor said she was miscarrying and so the baby would die, so OF COURSE she should have been saved.

I have always said that if there is an urgent medical necessity - to save the mother's life, where the baby will anyhow not survive - then if termination is part of saving her life then that is emergency treatment and unfortunately that is what has to happen.

What I think is wrong is when you have a perfectly healthy pregnancy, baby and mother, and because it doesn't suit the mother's life plan at that moment to have a baby, the baby is dispensed with. That is not ok.


mush? An unborn child isn't some sort of blob, you know. Did you think it just existed as a 'state' during pregnancy, then only forms into limbs, etc, and a baby when each bit touches the fresh air????? At 24 weeks it looks like a small version of a newborn baby. There are loads of pics and videos on the net of premature babies born at 24 weeks, who go on to survive normally. These people have pictures of their children because they love and cherish them.

Look, abortion for medical reasons - ok. Abortion because you fxxxxd up and aren't sure you want a baby now - not ok.

UK, Ireland / Domestic arguments caused by differences between Polish and English culture [109]


'hod-dog' is different.

Look, what annoyed me wasn't 'babington' - yes, I thought it funny and charming and an interesting adoption, but what annoyed me was everyone being so vehement about how right they were, and about how I had got it wrong. That is the annoying bit.

Anyhow, it isn't any kind of big deal to me!! Was just giving another example of a nation getting the wrong end of the stick and then forever saying black is white, or whatever it is. Like the salt and pepper. No, it doesn't matter at all, but that was what this thread was about ...

But sure, cultural differences which are serious, and actually do make waves, are:

- The Polish reflex lying - they will always say 'It wasn't me'
- The refusal ever to be wrong, or say sorry, or (often) thank you
- The determination to have things their way ...