Life / Babcia klozetowa alive & well? [35]

I can understand that, but that dubbing is made for Poles. What I'm trying to explain is that it is not like some foreigners try to explain to themselfs that it is just dire communists legacy and Poles just don't know better. Well, they know, but better rarely is better :-)

You say it sounds ugly for you because you hear two different languages at the same time. Thing is, that to some extent if "lektor" is native for you, you actually don't hear him, you just understand him :-)

I suppose it would be a nightmare for me to watch ie french movie dubbed with one voice in english because I would have to engage most of my brains limited powers to first hear the guy then cut his message then attribute it to a proper actor and finally translate it, indeed it is a nightmare. In case when dubbing voice is in polish all this is automatic and I can focus just on emotions hidden in foreign language and of course on the pictures...

At least that is the way it works for me.

please keep to the original topic. thank you.

Life / Babcia klozetowa alive & well? [35]


Ok, moderator, you are right, I'm sorry. But what if I find a movie with babcia klozetowa with dubbing ? Anyway, to expiate my sin:

Where is my water pipe

And last but not least, quite old though:

Big Cyc - Wielka miłość do babci klozetowej (Great Love for Babcia Klozetowa)! ;-)
...

News / Russia, Poland ready agreement on visa-free travel [71]

Królewiec region is so small (about half milion of people) that it is worth a try. The only thing I'm affraid of are medical issues, because they had really bad statistics over there with AIDS and so on.

Genealogy / Information on Dr. Tytus Chalubinski [6]

Well, if googling will not help you, then my advise is: try to make contact with some institution in Radom. The guy was born there and was living there and they are quite proud of him.

For example he is a patron of one of the high schools there:
chalubinski.pl
szkola@chalubinski.pl

Secondly those guys are quite fond of him:
ptt.org.pl

They announced 2009 as a year of Tytus Chalubinski, so I suppose if there is some living ancestor they know him and made him to cut some ribbon somewhere...

* of course I meaned living descendant not ancestor :-)

News / Russia, Poland ready agreement on visa-free travel [71]

There is no need to make from this small issue Polish-Russian war again...
The reality is that it is not about some milions of hungry ruskis but about simple guy who wants to buy a couple of beers in a nearby polish village near the border without a hassle with visa. It is also about one milion people there and about 1,5 milion on the polish side + about milion in tricity area. All this people want is to trade and expand tourist industry in the region to which Kaliningrad area would be a nice supplement. I bet it would be a lot easier to deal with problems with Pilawska Strait when this agreement take place. There is no need to bring big politics here. There are only "technical" issues here like:

- illegal workers -> but considering small population of Kaliningrad it will not be rather a big issue, especially when wages in Moscow are quite atractive...

- security issues
- bad medical statistics in Kaliningrad a few years ago, I wonder if it changed

I think it is worth a try, we can always bring visas back...

History / Give back Lwow to Poland and Kaliningrad to Germany - is it possible? [198]

Hm.. so, you say that after we finish brand new stadium in Wroclaw and brand new highway around it, you want us to give it back for some city 600 km away?

(because you know, you can't forget about Wroclaw in such exchange...)

No chance in hell! If you like Lwów so much, then you can emigrate there. There is no need for geopolitical earthshaking just for you ;-)

History / Give back Lwow to Poland and Kaliningrad to Germany - is it possible? [198]

Then go and write a book about it!

UK, Ireland / Moving from Ireland to Poland [29]


Well, as a Pole I will not start to judging you decision. It looks strange because you know in Polish eyes Ireland is still rich island :-) well what do I know? I've never been there...

So if you are clear about this, then just a thought, you've said that you are a Paramedic. It is not best payed job in Poland but, Poland is quite competetive in terms of private healthcare to western countries. As far as I know it is growing bussiness and many foreigners came here for some private procedures, some private hospitals are being build etc. So maybe just maybe you should try find something in that part of the market, because your language skill could be an advantage?

Good luck!

Language / Is czarnoskóry acceptable? [21]


"Czarnoskóry" or "Ciemnoskóry" is not offensive.
Why it is mentioned in media? Well, wasn't it considered globally and especially in USA that it was big political breakthrough? First Afroamerican as a president.

You know, you must put yourself in Polish "Kowalski" mind. To do that, imagine that in tv in USA they are talking about some x president of some y country. Who the x is anyway? Obama skin colour is distinctive and Kowalski in a second remember who the hell Obama is... Of course Obama is not x and his fame is wider than some x from y, but still even if news about USA in polish media are not so rare as news about Poland in USA media, then still they are rare... For most of Poles Obama even if he is not x he is no more than X, because he is not our president but president from far away country :-) So, when media says "black president of USA" then we instantly get context: "oh, yes I've heard few years ago, that it was important to the USA that they choose black president"...

Quick test for all of you: what is the name of president of China, probably second world power ? ;-)

It was a trap, China has no president, they have chairman of communist party as a leader :-) Wouldn't it be easier to remember his name if he was a black men? :-) :-)

News / 20 YEARS ON A BETTER POLAND -- ALSO BETTER POLES? [21]

I'm not better, I'm just older... From that point of view I'm rather worse ;-)
On the other hand, abundance of opportunites that I have now is uncomparable with misery of communist times... But it is environment not me...
On the other hand generation born in free Poland just don't know what they have... They don't feel the difference even they do now it exists.

Your question as a philosophical one is probably unanswerable...
But on the other hand GB Shaw supposedly said:
"Now when we learnt how to fly like a bird, how to swim like a fish, we must learn how to live as a human being"...

Which could mean many different things :-) But it can mean that by choosing more human friendly political system we got better already ;-)

On the other hand... it can mean also that regardless of technological and social development humans are just animals with thin layer of social mask, so maybe we merely changed mask not ourselfes ;-)

News / 20 YEARS ON A BETTER POLAND -- ALSO BETTER POLES? [21]


Of course not, but your question is just to general :-)
How one can measure kindess of a nation? Personal experiences that some X was kind to the Y are quite meaningless in that regard. For a starter we can begin with crime statistics ;-) :

epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Urban_rankings

From around 2002 we are going in the right direction -> down.

Another partially useful statistics would be HDI:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index

There Poland is going up, wich is good in that case.

But in the meantime foreigners whining about rudeness of polish clerks and salesmans seems to be never ending story...

PS. Hm... the best statistics you can get will be from God :-) I mean if we could get number of Poles going to heaven every year vs those going to hell... that would definitely mean something ;-) Hm.. I wonder if it would fit with the result of presidential elections in Sunday ;-)

News / 20 YEARS ON A BETTER POLAND -- ALSO BETTER POLES? [21]

Interesting idea! My thinking was in slightly other direction: according to some church circles Komorowski equals pure evil and Kaczynski (as he once said) is pure good. So, as the priests should now such things, theoretically those who will vote for Kaczynski are those who will go to heaven and those who will vote for Komorowski are those who will go to hell. I think it will be the closest heaven vs hell statistics aproximation we could get in this year ;-)

[there could be noice in such data, because not surprisingly priests are supporting single man without kids with cat vs man with five children, I fell some corporation thinking here ;-) ]...

Err... sory Polonius3, I didn't want to ruin your thread, so to get back to more serious staff:


In my opinion it could be a problem, because what Poland did in recent years was unemployment export which softened social tensions in Poland but as world is looking for equilibrium it worsened statistics of others... Frankly much of Polish robbers chose greener lands... I would like to appologize to everyone affected...

News / 20 YEARS ON A BETTER POLAND -- ALSO BETTER POLES? [21]


I needed two exciting games today and a couple of beers to understand and appreciate brilliance of your way of thinking :-) With that in mind I will open my cards: I would rather want Poles to be bad people ;-) We will see after tomorow finals ;-)

Real Estate / Relocating in Poland - what's the best area? [56]

For money? Warsaw
Quality of life? Anywhere where your friends are :-)
Hm... so why you called yourself Wroclaw Boy if you relocating now?
Anyway, summer in the TriCity is really nice experience (even if it is raining)...

Travel / Train routes and timetables in Poland - planning and info [19]

Here you are: rozklad-pkp.pl/?q=en/node/143

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

The short answer is: they are low, and you cann't expect a decent live on it.
The longer version is: if you are not a professor or some academic superstar on some private university, then even with PhD you will struggle. Most PhD (in technical field) I know got their title and left uni for better salaries, or stayed doing next to nothing on uni and taking additional jobs outside.

If we are talking about salaries for jobs as ie. language teacher those are lower than PhD of course, and usually such persons are taking some additional jobs.

Law / Banking tax Procedure in Poland [14]

1. Most of the banks (except Polbank maybe) are under polish guarantor called BFG, which means your savings are 100% protected up to 50000 EUR in case of default, more than that there are different rules.

2. Yes there is plentiful of savings accounts to choose.
Here you have some ranking, unforunately in polish, but there are some clear tables for deposits:

e-lokaty.pl

and for save accounts:

konto.lokat.pl

There is 19% tax on interests, but there are products like "lokata jednodniowa" thanks to wich you don't pay this tax as long as a daily interest is less than 50gr, so with 4% interest you can make about 24000 zł deposit. But there is no problem in some banks to have a few deposits. I know it is a bit tricky but it is common and as far as I know it is legal.

As for banks, in my experience internet banks are the best, both cheap and usually with better products. The biggest internet bank is probably mbank (they belong to BRE bank), but because they are big, their offer recently started to look weak. I must say that recently I've started to like Toyota bank offer and Getin bank but I have no experience with them yet.

PS. besides banks there are para-banks named SKOKs, they have their own rules and different guaranties.

PS2. One word of warning: in polish "lokata" means deposit. But there are many products called "lokata strukturyzowana" which in fact is not deposit and is usually not guaranted. What is more it is usually financial product which is a combination of a deposit and some risky investment.

USA, Canada / To move back to Poland from the USA or not to move back....that is the question [119]

1500 USD for you and your mother with cash from the house probably would be fine. But long term you will always risk currency floats. Now it is closer to 5000 zł but not so long ago it was closer to 3000 zł.

The biggest risk I see in your move is health care. I understand you want bring your mother with you. I don't know exactly but I suppose neither of you is entitled to free polish healthcare after retirement. I suppose you will have to pay for it from those 1500 USD. My advice to you is check exactly what will be the cost of that.

As for other, not money concerned things. Either you will get lucky and make friends or not. Country of your choice has nothing to do with that...

USA, Canada / To move back to Poland from the USA or not to move back....that is the question [119]

So I must assume you are one of those not lucky ones... Because I don't believe you have any valid statistical data about that ;-)


With that I can agree :-)

USA, Canada / To move back to Poland from the USA or not to move back....that is the question [119]


It were already said in other threads that most of users of that forums are:
- non Poles interested in Poland
- non Poles not interested in Poland
- people with Polish roots living abroad

Natives are small minority here. If you take into account that some of regular users are really weird... Well, assuming anything from this forum about Poland is not very good idea. It not makes your general judgments wrong, it just make them lucky if they are right :-)

Frankly speaking most of threads in that forums are pure disgrace and moderation here is next to none. The thing is that they have good domain and many foreigners drop by here thinking that it is "Polish" forum when in fact it isn't...

USA, Canada / To move back to Poland from the USA or not to move back....that is the question [119]

Ok, now I feel personally offended ;-)
To end this off top (I think I've already crossed the line with mods...)...
The single most rudest and least accepting bunch in society I know would be the youth, everywhere ;-) It happens that this group in Poland knows English the best... Usually they are also the best trolls of all ;-)

Law / Banking tax Procedure in Poland [14]

In Poland it works differently. It is a bank job to count and pay tax from client interests.

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


Well, I don't want to interrupt your insightful discussion here ;-) but Dell is not good example of anything because they mostly assembly computers from pieces made in Asia...


Sorry man but you doesn't sound like a big fish in that field ;-)
I was under impression that your "operational area" is close to Wroclaw, so you should be aware that there is couple of quite interesting IT ventures here, including Nokia-Siemens R&D with more than 1000 engineers or Opera R&D in Wroclaw, this is their latest success:

youtube.com/watch?v=OpTCS3g-cBY&feature=player_embedded

There is plentiful of other IT companies here. Thing is, that you will not find almost any meaningful operation regarding electronic in Poland, because those kind of investment are usually enormously costly, and are in the most part located in Asia...

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


Yet you sounded previously like it was all doom and gloom :-)


I cann't agree that new and complicated mobile application for relatively new electronic device is basic. It is not like making NP problem solvable but definitely it is not basic :-)

Well, in general I agree that Poland is relatively weak in terms of patents and it lacks both big industry and govermental support in scientific research. But on the other hand I can't agree that there is low human resources pool here. The main problem though is that many of the best go west in search for better salaries and better opportunites...

As for advanced certification, well it cost a lot of money and is rarely needed in tenders. So basic policy of most of companies is to pay for a training and exam of a few choosen ones in case of tender requirement.

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


And yet polish company Assecco was fifth biggest European Software Vendor in 2008... and is probably the biggest IT company in CEE... Unfortunate true is that country such as Poland cann't count on foreign investors. It is rather such companies as Assecco who should grow their own R&D.

I don't know about HU but CZ was a productive powerhouse in this part of Europe for a long time, so I'm not surprised that they gradually regain what they've lost because of communism, I bet that aproximity to Bavaria helps a lot...

Language / Do Poles prefer US American or UK English language? [147]

Well, for me it is not question what do I prefer... It is rather question how many movies I saw in US English vs UK English... Definitely I saw much more US English so it is a lot easier to me understand US English than UK English. So even if I like sound of UK English, US English beats it because of quantity.

In the end it is quantity not quality issue (even if most of my polish teachers were trained in UK English). Wasn't it Copernicus who discover the rule that bad money tend to displace good ones ;-)

Classifieds / Teaching Arabic school in Warsaw? [22]

@convex, you are going to learn Arabic? why?
Well, try them...

e-korepetycje.net/dolnoslaskie/wroclaw/jezyk-arabski

favore.pl/7395_native-speaker-wroclaw-jezyk-arabski-dolnoslaskie.html

PS. It used to be a bunch of Palestinians studing on Technological University and living in Wittiga dormitories area. Maybe some of them are still there ;-)

Life / What are the poorest regions of Poland? [15]

It is a nice map:
epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/mapToolClosed.do;jsessionid=9ea7974b30ddcb577b72057a4716a43efec8fb927df4.e34SbxiPb3uSb40Lb34LaxqRb30Ne0?tab=map&init=1&plugin=1&language=en&pcode=tgs00005&toolbox=types#

it is interactive, just move cursor over choosen region and you will see PPS value.
According to this map Podkarpackie is even poorer than Lubelskie. But as for statistics always some disbilief is needed. For example recently were others stats where some additional things were measured and it showed that some western regions were slightly worse..

As for you question "why east of Poland is poorer" it is a combination of factors like:
- it is quite rural (what wouldn't be bad thing alone if size of farms weren't so small there)
- it is far from let name it European core of wealth :-)
- it has worse infrastructure
- it has quite poor neighbourhood -> Ukraine and Belarus.

Well, on the bright side, those region in medieval and renaissance times was supposedly relatively rich given European standard of that time... so there is a hope :-)

Travel / My first visit to Poland - I will be returning maybe later this year for a more! [10]

Well, you really like trains... PKP with those temperatures outside?
You are my hero :-)

History / The Grunwald Battle: Today is 600th anniversary of the greatest medieval battle. [66]


Well, I was taught the same thing in school :-) but I've listen recently interesting broadcast about this battle with some historian, and supposedly not exactly true. According to this historian:

1. United forces under Jagiello wanted badly to capture Malbork castle, but at those times it was almost imposible to capture such well maintained castle by force. It was some time before powder were invented for such purpose in Europe.

2. It is not true that it wasn't used politically. This notion is very resistant in polish historiography mostly due to Jan Dlugosz (most known polish chronicler in XV century). This guy just didn't like Jagiello and he deliberately reduced Jagiello successes in his writings. In fact after this battle (and entire campaign) Teutonic Order was no longer a threat from political, economic and military point of view. The fact that in XVIII almighty Prussia was born there is just different story.

Well, but history is not math there are countless interpretations there...


This guy said that latest estimates are more or less like this:
30000 on Jagiello said
15000 on Teutonic Order side
so in line with lower boundary of your numbers.
Anyway, the fact that historians are using round numbers tells us, that they are far from knowing the actual size of this battle :-) But for sure it was very big battle considering medieval Europe standards :-)

PS. I've heard that this year there will be about 2200 people taking part in reconstruction
and camp should be about 6000. Well it should be quite cool event :-)
Last year:
youtube.com/watch?v=M9F6Le950bg&feature=related

This is quite cool to: 32 people embroiders "The Battle of Grunwald" by Jan Matejko :-) :

bialystok.gazeta.pl/bialystok/1,35233,8123236,Krzyzacy_z_krzyzykow_na_finiszu.html