Genealogy / Meaning of surname Wlodarski [26]

They are quite popular. Maybe not ones of the most popular in Poland, but usually you know someone who has a such or similar surname.

Law / Study in Poland, wanting to travel around Europe; Having Visa concerns [12]

Why not? University student ID has no meaning for crossing the border. It just may be useful if you want to visit some museums and other objects, then it's possible that you could get a discount on the entrance fee with a student ID. Also if you want to travel by trains in Poland (but not in Czech Republic), you get a 51% discount with a Polish student ID - although if you buy an international train ticket, the discount doesn't apply.

You just need the document confirming your legal stay in the EU. I am not sure if it's your passport with the visa, or maybe also the residence permit - but it's enough.

Law / Study in Poland, wanting to travel around Europe; Having Visa concerns [12]

Read the topic in which you have written...

And there is a whole long page on Wikipedia about it.

First google, then ask.

From what I know, you can. With a visa of any Schengen country you can legally travel to any Schengen country and probably even stay there however long you want (within the validity period of your visa). But, again, check it, because I am not 100% sure about this. And remember that not all the EU countries are in the Schengen zone, so if you want to go for example to the UK, then even if it stays in the EU after today's referendum, the regulations might be different.

And anyway noone checks the documents on the Polish-Czech border. Although there might be random controls, with police/border guard stopping random cars and checking the documents, in the area around the border - but they are not so frequent.

The city is called Brno, not Bruno, and you cannot get there by the metro (it's over 500 km!) - probably it will be easiest (although rather not cheapest) to get there by train.

Feedback / Stupid limitation on the quotation length [20]

Exactly. This strange policy makes quotations unusable on this forum. It sometimes really matters what you includes in the quotation, and cutting it off by moderators is really a bad idea.

I understand when someone quotes just a whole previous post. Or makes long quotation ladders. But, for example, quotating a whole post from somewhere before may have actual reasons and it's definitely not because the users doesn't take care of the others reading the topic.

Life / In Poland, are women and girls obligated to wear head scarves in church? [36]


It's not like someone is checking how people are dressed up at the church entrance, and I don't believe it was so in the past. It's rather a kind of savoir vivre. Noone will throw you away from a church for, for example, having a hat on your hat (as a men) in a church. But they will consider you as having no respect to the church and to traditions.

The same is that in the past people usually dressed up their best and rather elegant clothes to the church, now it isn't so strict. I don't go to church every Sunday, but I don't think that seeing there people in shorts and T-shirts in summer is anything weird.

Life / A rumour about the need to give passport copy when you buy a prepaid sim number in Poland? [23]

It's more likely that the dying Grandma will not be able to call her grandson, because while the grandson is probably oriented in technology and knows that he needs to register his SIM card to be able to continue using it, the grandma, for whom sending SMS is like black magic, will probably not know and not understand that she needs to register her card...

Anyway, it's creepy.

Will it not be possible to register the SIM card on the Internet, like it is possible in Germany?

Life / In Poland, are women and girls obligated to wear head scarves in church? [36]

The rule is that men should have uncovered hair. Women can have it covered but they don't have to, it's their choice. I have even a feeling that the general rule is to have uncovered hair, and there is an exception for women - as they are (or rather used to be in the past) considered somehow weaker, I don't know, easier to catch a cold, so the rule to have uncovered hair doesn't apply to them.

News / Poland PiS' unpopular welfare policies lead to spike in TV purchases and alcohol problems [31]

A new TV set bought for the money from the 500+ is nothing bad - the child will use it as well, and it's a single expense for a longer time, so the 500+ money will be still used also for other needs.

Consumption of alcohol is worse - but as someone mentioned, it may be connected with the Euro 2016. People buy more beer just for watching the football games. The increased sell of new TVs, by the way, too.

These data would tell more if it was stated, the sales of what sort of booze has actually increased. If it's beer, or vodka.


It has more in common with the job market. When it's difficult to find a job, and easy to lose it when you get pregnant (with a prospect of not finding any after getting the child), it's understandable that people don't want to get children.

The problem is that giving money - in any case - usually doesn't solve the problem. Sometimes even makes the problem worse. Giving money makes real sense only when the problem is unsolvable, for example if someone is disabled and just not able to take up any job.

Life / Consumer Rights & Returns in Poland [22]


I think that in a shop like Media Markt they will probably agree. Just go and ask them. I think they shouldn't even mind if you connect both of them to your own computer and compare.

Life / Consumer Rights & Returns in Poland [22]


Exactly. The law says that they have to make conditions to try out the product in a store, so if they are not able to do it, they usually let try it out at home and let return it after a number of days.


Exactly. You can always ask the store staff to let you try the mouse out in the store. In big consumer electronics stores it's usually not a problem. In Media Markt and Saturn they have even recently started to put the remotes next to the TVs on the store exhibition, for customers to be able to try them out easily. Or when I was buying a vacuum cleaner, it wasn't any problem to connect each one in the shop to the power outlet and check how well it sucks (when most of the things suck, it's not good, but when a vacuum cleaner sucks, it's good, isn't it?).

Language / "TO" or "ONO" / "i je je"? [20]

"To jest ważne, żeby być czujnym" in Polish also sounds a bit awkward.

Work / Electrician seeking work in Warsaw. Is it in demand in Poland? [16]

My experience shows that when you need an electrician in Poland - both in case of a failure as well as when you want to change something in the home wiring, or you just need to exchange it totally - it's difficult to find one and they often have long queues of waiting clients. So there definitely is work for electricians in Poland, as well as for building/renovation specialists of any kind.

Feedback / Stupid limitation on the quotation length [20]

There is still something wrong with this, the limitation is still active.

Here: polishforums.com/life/poland-consumer-rights-returns-78276/#msg1555415 - this is a thread from yesterday, and I had to divide my quotation into two ones, because the forum didn't accept it otherwise (and it was essential to quote everything).

Life / Consumer Rights & Returns in Poland [22]

The consumer laws in Poland aren't bad, in many cases they give more rights than in the USA, for example a 2-year guarantee is a standard here (even if it's not granted by the manufacturer, the law entitles you to write a complaint and get the product repaired or exchanged to a new one). The problem is sometimes with their execution. Especially in case of shoes the shops like to argue, that they were used in a wrong way and it's the consumer's fault that they got broken. There are also cases with consumer electronics, where the service decides that the product had a contact with water even if it's nothing close to the truth.



The consumer law states they have to give such a choice. Maybe in case of new shoes it doesn't make much sense, but for some other products yes. They did it correctly.

And that's true that the shop doesn't have to accept a return of a product which works and you return it because you have bought a wrong thing. Only online (and other mail order) shops have to accept such returns.

Language / "TO" or "ONO" / "i je je"? [20]

"Ten" is the one you are currently talking about, "tamten" is the other one. Maybe this is a beter explanation.


Actually, after rethinking and checking some things in Google, it seems that:
"Ważne jest, żeby być czujnym"
is also correct. Instrumental in this place more archaic and formal.

"Ważny" is an adjective usually used in a formal context. Especially in this subjectless construction with "jest". That's why "ważnym jest" seemed to me more correct than "ważne jest".

In normal speech (not official) you usually say just "Ważne, żeby...".

Another example:
"To jest oczywiste, że ona tam była"
"To oczywiste, że ona tam była"
"Oczywiste jest, że ona tam była"
"Oczywistym jest, że ona tam była"
"Oczywiste, że ona tam była"
"Oczywiście ona tam była"
I wouldn't say anything of this is incorrect and all these sentences are used in practice. They mean exactly the same, the difference in only in the emphasis. Some of them sound better with some filler words like "przecież", "ale" etc, some are used more in a formal context.

In English you can say:
"This is obvious that she has been there"
"It is obvious that she has been there"
"It's obvious that she has been there"
+ these three sentences with "that" neglected
"She has obviously been there"
"Of course she has been there"
And probably some more. You cannot assign these English sentences directly to specific Polish equivalents, but the difference between them is also more in the usage dependent on the context than in the meaning.

Language / "TO" or "ONO" / "i je je"? [20]


Both are correct and mean the same. Although the first one isn't much used in practice.


Theoreticaly yes... If you treat "to" as a replacement for "ono". But "to" is so special that it doesn't behave like this.

"To jest prezent dla kolegi" - this is a present for my/your co-worker/co-student/friend (not a very close one)
It's how I would say this.


"milczeć", apart from that it's correct, but actually we say:
"Mowa jest srebrem, a milczenie złotem"
This is a proverb, so it's fixed and you shouldn't change it to other theoretically grammatically correct versions.


"To jest ważne, żeby być czujnym" (if you want to emphasise that "THIS is important" and not anything else), even better extending it to:

"Właśnie to jest ważne, żeby być czujnym" (which makes more sense - "exactly THIS is important, to be vigilant" - I think, in English you would have to put a comma here)

"Ważnym jest, żeby być czujnym"
"Ważne, żeby być czujnym"
The last one is most commonly used. Although it's not even considered a sentence in Polish grammar, it's a so called "sentence equivalent" because it has no predicate (main verb, as "jest" in both two).

Why "czujnym" in all the sentences and "ważnym" in the second one? I am not sure if this is the exact rule, I am not a linguist and noone teaches such things at school - but from what I understand:

1) normally when you put an adjective without a noun after "to be", it appears in nominative (in a gender equivalent to the subject it describes - "to" is neuter, so we have ważne) - this is something which you definitely know learning Polish, even if you started only a few lessons ago, hence you say: "jestem czujny", "jest czujna"

2) when you put there a noun described by an adjective, it appears in instrumental: "jestem czujnym człowiekiem", "jest czujną kobietą"

3) the weird thing: when we have a "subjectless" construction, not such one where the subject is default ("jestem czujny" = "ja jestem czujny", "jest czujna" = "ona jest czujna"), but such one where you cannot determine a subject (for example if "to be" is used in infinitive - but not only), this adjective, connected to the "to be" verb, not only appears in masculine (which is the "default" form of any adjective), but, last but not least, it appears not in nominative, but in instrumental, as if there was actually a noun which this adjective described!

So in "Jest ważnym, żeby być czujnym" (you can exchange the order), "być czujnym" is, of course, an infinitive phrase, but also "jest ważnym" is a "there is"-ish phrase. In English you say "It is important" because you basically don't use "There is" for adjectives, only for nouns, but this "it" plays here exactly the same role as "there" in "there is". It doesn't mean anything, it's just a "dummy subject" as you said. The thing is, in Polish you don't need a dummy subject and "to" doesn't actually play this role. It does mean "this". That's why I did put a comma in the English translation of a sentence somewhere above.

Why "to" is translated to English not only as "this", but also as "ono"? Because "it" can mean the same as "this".

"This is a book"
"It is a book"
Is there any meaning difference between these two sentences? I am not an expert, but I have a feeling these are just two ways of saying exactly the same. Although for some reason on lower levels of my education in English usually the version with "it" was only used, while when I was doing my CAE and CPE, it was often required to use "this", especially when a new sentence reffered to the previous one...

Yet the last one...
"Ważne, żeby być czujnym"
You replace the main clause with a single adjective, and then it appears in nominative neuter singular. Why so? Don't ask me. Probably because you can extend it to:

"To jest ważne, żeby być czujnym"
You will ask: "Cannot I extend it to: <<Jest ważnym, żeby być czujnym.>>"?
Yes, you can.
You will ask: "Cannot I extend <<Jest ważnym, żeby być czujnym.>> to: <<To jest ważne, żeby być czujnym.>>"? If I can, why does "ważne" change to "ważnym"?

I am afraid you must just accept it without asking. Or ask the linguists, maybe they will find an explanation for that.


Basically "this" = "ten"/"ta"/"to" (depending on the gender), "that" = "tamten"/"tamta"/"tamto", the difference depends on the distance. The difference is that both languages set the border between "close" and "far" at different points.

This is an example from a videoblog for Poles learning English: youtu.be/1Jtt6cjrFrE?t=183
In English: "this is Chandler" but "that's Phoebe". In Polish "to jest Chandler" and also "to jest Phoebe". The distance difference is enough to distinguish between "this" and "that" in English, but not in Polish.

You just don't use "tamto" instead of "to" as frequently as "that" instead of "this".

I don't think it has anything in common with the existance of the articles.

Travel / Poland Travel Help, first time visitor from Singapore - ways to cash withdrawal, cost of meal in McDonald ... [58]

I was in Katowice a few years ago, and the coach terminal was, basically, an ugly and not pleasant place. It looked more or less like that:





Luckily, it seems, it has been renovated and now it's much better.

Life / Electronic stores in Krakow to buy an adapter to the power socket [2]

It would be nice to mention, which country your MacBook is from, what kind of plug it has.

Because it will be definitely cheaper to buy just a plug converter than to buy a new power adapter. Just be careful with such an adapter, most popular versions are quite dangerous used uncarefully (for example trying to plug a plug into it without looking, having it already plugged into a wall outlet, you may get electrocuted).

You need something like that:



If your laptop is from a country where the mains voltage is not 230 V or anything like that, but something similar to 110 V, ensure if your power adapter accepts also 230 V voltage (they usually do, accepting a range of voltages from 110 to 240 V, but verify it, I am not 100% sure how it looks like in case of MacBook).

In shops like Saturn they usually have such plug converters, you may check just in another one. Another popular shop similar to Saturn and Media Markt, often present in shopping malls, is RTV Euro AGD - it's a Polish chain.

You may have a look in these stores:
google.de/search?q=sklep+elektroniczny+krak%C3%B3w&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-ab&gfe_rd=cr&ei=I-NdV4m4L-rI8gegk6sg#q=sklep%20elektroniczny%20krak%C3%B3w&rflfq=1&rlha=0&rllag=50070880,19964190,2921&tbm=lcl&tbs=lf:1,lf_ui:2&rlfi=hd:;si

- those are stores selling mostly electronic components, like resistors, capacitors, integrated circuits etc., but they are likely to have also things like plug adapters.

Or, maybe even better, in these: google.de/search?q=sklep+elektroniczny+krak%C3%B3w

- these are stores selling electrical stuff, like wiring, sockets, fuses, fuse boxes, light bulbs of different sorts - so they should also have plug adapters.

By the way...


Do you mean, you have an adapter to which you can plug your laptop, but it fits only to those Polish sockets which don't have this earth pin?

Not to such sockets:

Socket with an earth pin

but only to such sockets:



?

Then you can just buy an extension cord which has sockets without the earth pin on it.

Travel / Poland Travel Help, first time visitor from Singapore - ways to cash withdrawal, cost of meal in McDonald ... [58]

The coach terminal is at Skargi street.

Travel / Poland Travel Help, first time visitor from Singapore - ways to cash withdrawal, cost of meal in McDonald ... [58]


The website doesn't confirm this.

News / Poland's Sejm passes anti-terrorist act; opposition negate [86]


The thing is it has always been so in Poland since 1989. Politics in Poland equaled hate on the competing party.

During the times when PO was governing it got more or less stable. I wouldn't say that the reign (I am not sure if it's a good word to describe the way of governing in a democratic republic, but I cannot find any better in English) of PO was really good. But it also wasn't bad, and comparing now Poland with other post-communist EU countries (not counting the former DDR, it's a totally different story) - it seems to be the most developed one. Really many things changed to better. Some people compare their reign to Edward Gierek's reign from the 1970's, with a lot of investment and modernisation, which, however, ended with bankrupcy of the country and a crysis. But I don't feel we have a crysis now, just on the contrary - our economical situation seems to be very good.

There was also many evil things in PO, but they are not unpresent in PiS. That's why PO failed. Some scandals came to light, Nowoczesna appeared, the electorate got divided, also some people saw hope in PiS, which advertised themselves as a modern party, changed from what it was 8 years before (which turned out to be nothing of the truth).

Anyway, during the PO reign - maybe because it lasted two terms - this hate between the parties wasn't felt so much. But after the victory of PiS, this wild hate returned. On both sides. Both PO and PiS.

News / Poland's Sejm passes anti-terrorist act; opposition negate [86]


I am not telling about politics, but about spying normal people telling them bullsh*ts about fighting with terrorism.


Supposedly, this EU law is going to have some limitations (maybe about time), making it impossible using SIM cards from abroad permanently for these low prices.

Actually what would rather happen in such a situation would be people from counties like Germany, where mobile phone services are damn expensive (even now there are cases, where it's cheaper to use a German SIM card in roaming, outside Germany, than locally within Germany - due to these EU roaming regulations) massively buying Polish SIM cards.


Well to know. Do you mean Kaczyński or Tusk? One is "duck", the other is Donald, so it's not so easy to guess... Anyway, in the early 2000's neither Kaczyński nor Tusk were at the top.


It's not totally true, in Germany you also don't have to show your ID to buy a SIM card... Although you have to register it to start using it. You can though just use false data for the registration.


Yes, it's much worse than these registration of pre-paid SIM cards... Just Internet censorship, like in China.... And, supposedly, it's also included in the project.

PO also wanted to introduce such a law - but they gave up after people's protests.

Travel / Rail Travel in Poland - getting to Zakopane from Krakow Airport [14]

From Kraków to Zakopane it's better to take a bus - they are much faster, and they go really a few times in an hour.

Travel / Can I travel to Vienna on a single entry polish national visa D type? [3]

I think you can, since there is no border controls on the way from Poland to Vienna anyway - but check it. There is a whole page on Wikipedia about the visa regulations of the Schengen zone, not to mention the websites of the embassies of all the countries, and probably also the website of the foreign affairs ministry of your country.

News / Poland's Sejm passes anti-terrorist act; opposition negate [86]


Basically yes. Although the whole Europe tends to do that now.

Let's look at one of the elements of the plan, law obliging the pre-paid telephone SIM cards to register them. What will it give? A possibility to trace the phone calls (or, at least, so called meta-data, which may be even worse - they know where you were, whom you were calling, they don't know the topic of the call) and connect them with specific persons, which was impossible up to now. Exactly what the communists were doing to fight with the opposition...

Will it help in any way to fight with terrorists? No. They will use either SIM cards registered for false data, or SIM cards from other countries, where it's not obligatory to register them. Or SIM cards from stolen mobile phones.

But when a normal citizen, who wants to be fully legal and registers his SIM card, does something that the government doesn't like (although it's not truly illegal - for example opens a Facebook profile criticizing the government) - then it will be not a problem to find a way to punish him.


But the other European governments do exactly the same... Not to mention the USA government, doing it already for a long time..

Travel / Poland Travel Help, first time visitor from Singapore - ways to cash withdrawal, cost of meal in McDonald ... [58]

Just different bus companies with different tickets. I don't know EKS, there is PKS, or rather many companies having PKS in their names, because it's the former state bus company which has been divided. For them you usually buy a ticket on a bus from the driver, although sometimes you can find discounted online tickets through the e-podroznik.pl website. They are usually on longer routes through Poland, so it might be better to take Uni-Bus or Inter since they are less susceptible to delay.

The Uni-Bus website says that their ticket from Kraków to Katowice are sold only in the ticket counters at the bus station, from Katowice to Kraków maybe it's possible to get them from the driver (I don't get that really), for sure it's possible at the ticket counter at the bus station next to the gate 6 (not in any other one).

There is also another big company with many connections on this route, Inter, and it seems that they work in a very similar way to Uni-Bus. Whichever of them you will take, it will be good - you just have to have a ticket for the specific bus you want to take and not for any other one.

Travel / Poland Travel Help, first time visitor from Singapore - ways to cash withdrawal, cost of meal in McDonald ... [58]


It works internationally. As far as I know, it's actually French, so it's weird it's not available entirely in English... Maybe the thing is that the French don't really like the English language?

A bigger problem might be finding there an English speaking driver on a route within Poland - but it shouldn't be impossible. As far as I remember, the drivers announce also what languages they speak.


I am not in Poland now so I cannot tell whether it's warm or cold. The forecast says it's up to 20 degrees (from 10 at night), so it's not really cold (although maybe colder than you are used to), but also not too warm, definitely too cold to have a bath in a lake.

USA, Canada / Will a Bachelor's degree from Poland be recognized by an American university? [5]

Yes, but the question was not whether and what you should study, the question was whether a Polish bachelor degree will be recognized by an American university...

USA, Canada / Will a Bachelor's degree from Poland be recognized by an American university? [5]

From what I have heard, with doing master after a bachelor in Poland the problem is that the master courses in Poland are shorter than in the US, and many American universities make problems to recognize them because of that. Doing American master after Polish master or American PhD after Polish master usually works, but American master after Polish bachelor is problematic.

The best would be to ask the American university you want to make master at, how they look at it, and on what conditions could you start their master after Polish bachelor.