UK, Ireland / Advice on child support (Irish with my Polish husband) [106]


If your husband is making minimum wage in Ireland, that 6,460.96 PLN a month. 1000 PLN a month doesn't seen unreasonable. He could always work a second job.

UK, Ireland / Advice on child support (Irish with my Polish husband) [106]


...knowingly brought all of her problems on herself all by herself. She has no one else to blame. Then she went and compounded the problem by having yet another child with him. I'm a sucker for hard luck stories, but this isn't one of those. If someone accidently falls into a vat of doodoo, I'd jump in and save them. If someone intentially jumps into a vat of doodoo, against all advice (and you can bet your bottom dollar that she recieved lots of advice not to marry this man in the first place), I'll just stand there and watch the flail around until they go under.


Stupidity is the most expensive hobby in the world. My advice is that she find a cheaper hobby.

My advice to her husband would be A LOT more caustic, and would certainly include castration.

Polonia / I'm going to study in Germany (speaking English / money transfers) [24]


In the West, most people under 50 can at least carry on a basic conversation in English, and practically everybody under 30 can. By far most people in the academic community speak English well, many very well. They might be a bit behind in the East, but you won't have major problems communicating.

I visited Drezno a few years ago with a Polish student who didn't speak German. He had no problems communicating even on his own. Actually, I was a bit surprised how many people could speak English.

For orientation, I studied in West Germany thirty years ago, and now live in Poland. As far as knowledge of English is concerned, Germany thirty years ago was far ahead of where Poland is now.

UK, Ireland / Advice on child support (Irish with my Polish husband) [106]


We have a bingo! And I bet it was her smart*ss idea and that she had to talk him into it because he had a good idea that it would backfire as it did.


You lost that bet.

UK, Ireland / Advice on child support (Irish with my Polish husband) [106]


If you think I am being hard on this broad for a) being a woman or 2) not being Polish, you are sorely mistaken.


Nothing is stopping him from taking on a second job. Just laziness. And stupidity.

In any case, the court is going to see right through these pathetic shenannigans, and probably up the payments. I wouldn't be surprised if they up it to the full 1000 PLN. Serves them right.

UK, Ireland / Advice on child support (Irish with my Polish husband) [106]


Nor do I, and, most importantly, neither will the judge.

UK, Ireland / Advice on child support (Irish with my Polish husband) [106]


Lifelong Democrat. And a pretty far left-wing one at that.

UK, Ireland / Advice on child support (Irish with my Polish husband) [106]


I do a considerable amount of volunteer work with the underclass here in Poland, thank you. It takes up the bulk of my time.

Life / Hookah (shisha ) equipment and products in Poland [21]

Here's a seven page list of tobacconists in Poznań. Guaranteed, some of them have the products you are looking for. There are plenty of places to buy it in Wrocław, and I don't expect Poznań to be that much different:

yelp.com/search?cflt=tobaccoshops&find_loc=Poznan%2C+Poland

Life / Help me find this Polish band and song.... [117]


Probably "lustro ekstazyjne". Sorry, but a Google search turned up nothing.

UK, Ireland / Advice on child support (Irish with my Polish husband) [106]


She's not going for blood. 1000 PLN is entirely reasonable, considering that she has to do all the work of parenting by herself.

UK, Ireland / Advice on child support (Irish with my Polish husband) [106]


Well. he got her attention. And the judge's as well. Do you seriously think that the court is going to buy his BS story? He really shot himself in the foot reneging on such a favorable deal. Now he'll have to pay the piper for his smart*ass shenannigans.

UK, Ireland / Advice on child support (Irish with my Polish husband) [106]


And moldy bread is a luxury for children for Biafra. Your point?

Work / Could life in Poland be good if you are running a successful business (restaurant/bar)? [3]

You have a lot of serious research to do before you would be able to justify such a move. Opening a restaurant or bar anywhere is risky even under the best of circumstances, especially for individuals with no prior experience. The failure rate is about 80% within five years, and about half within two years. In order to succeed, you would need to conduct extensive market research, learn all you can about the competition, bone up on your management, financial and organizational skills, and build up a pretty comfortable nest egg to tide your over for the years that will elapse before you finally turn a profit. Learning the native language would also be a big plus, rather than relying totally on your wife.

The life of a restaurant or bar owner is never good for the first five or so years they are in business. Unless you and your wife have a huge amount of capital to invest, both of you wife will be spending every waking moment working to make a go of it. If things work out, in the long run, yes, life in Poland can be rather pleasant. But you have to go in with the mindset that the good life is a very long-term goal and will require years of harrowing work and sacrifice to achieve.

For orientation's sake, you have about three to five years of study, research, planning and establishing contacts to do before you can even think of opening a restaurant or bar. The market is not very forgiving to those who are naive, and you will not have time to learn once the ball is in motion. It's a tough market even for knowledgeable and experienced entrepreneurs. The more knowledge you possess going in to such a venture, the more money you will end up making in the end.

You might want to contact Barbara and John Alaszewski, Brits who opened up a small hotel in Poland, to find out more about eventual pitfalls to avoid. Read about them here: discoverpl.polacy.co.uk/art,life_in_poland_8211_the_blue_beetroot ,3677.html

This is their e-mail: johnandbarbara@o2.pl

USA, Canada / Pol-Am citizen wanting to move to Poland - documentations of my Polish ancestors? [14]


You are aware that the job market in Poland is pretty tight? Without knowledge of Polish and real professional qualifications and experience that make you valuable on the job market, the likelihood of you finding a stable job at decent wages is exceedingly remote.

Right now, I have to say that you are chasing a rather silly fantasy. You haven't done your homework. Poland will chew you up and spit you out.

USA, Canada / Pol-Am citizen wanting to move to Poland - documentations of my Polish ancestors? [14]


What kind of work do you expect to find? What qualifications and experience do you have? Where do you expect to live? Do you have a good-sized nest egg built up to tide you over through the first difficult year or two?

USA, Canada / Pol-Am citizen wanting to move to Poland - documentations of my Polish ancestors? [14]


A skill you will certainly not be able to sell in Poland. Keep on researching. Get some real education and qualifications in the meantime ( a bachelor's level degree in logistics, international shipping and transport seems the logical choice here, and after that some management courses), and beef up that Polish. Right now, the best you're looking at is a job in a call center. Probably doing cold calling for sales. A lousy job for lousy pay.

Law / Picking up a child from preschool in Poland. How much should I charge? [7]


Indeed. Unless you can get the kid to take a nap or sit and stare at the TV like a zombie, it can be quite exasperating. And dealing with an exaperating child even for an hour can leave you drained for the rest of the evening. Don't forget to figure in the cost of any food you may have to provide. A hungry kid is not going to be well-behaved. If you're gong to be teaching the kid English, charge for that as well. 50 PLN an hour is not unfair. Whatever you want is fair as you have zero obligations toward your wife's co-worker. If she doesn't think it's fair, then she can find someone else.

Study / Gdańsk University of Technology- good school? Job opportunities after graduation? [3]

The safest thing to do would be to assume you will NOT get a job in Poland, and make your decisions based on that assumption.

The job market in Poland is tight and competitive, and unless you are exceptionally qualified and experienced and have unique skills to offer, not the most promising job market in the world for someone from outside of the EU. Granted, things are a little better for engineers than for most professions, but still, the chances are very much against you.

Also, while an engineering degree from Poland is much more portable than most degrees from that country, it really doesn't open up any more doors to you as an Indian than an engineering degree from India. If you're looking at it as an easy way into the EU, forget about it. My advice would be either to study at home in India, or, if you're talented, motivated and have the means, to get an engineering degree from a top-notch university.

Work / Information about jobs for Indian students in Poland [286]


It isn't going to happen, so don't even waste your time trying. Instead, spend your time reading and improving your English. There is a big difference between "reputed" and "reputable", for instance.

Work / 3500 PLN gross - not happy with my salary (working in Warsaw for an international company) [55]


At that rate, there is little reason for you to be in Warsaw at all. And it is unlikely that they will substantially increase your pay, as you have already demonstrated that you are willing to work for peanuts.


Without knowing your qualifications and experience, it is impossible to say whether your request is realistic or not. It doesn't matter what your friends earn. It simply has zero relevance to your case.


You will have to leave if you are only making 2450 zł netto. The only possible reason to stay for that pay is to get experience and have fun slumming it as a poor recent graduate. And experience in working for a call center means very little on the job market unless you have an outstanding proven sales record or substantial managerial experience. As an ordinary call center worker, you might as well be flipping burgers or stocking shelves at the supermarket.

Also, in "customer service", which I understand as "call center", the most difficult and unpleasant jobs (cold-call sales) are the ones that are paid the lowest. Companies relocate customer service jobs to countries like Poland specifically so that they can pay very low wages. That is their primary incentive.

Work / Living in Katowice (programmer, 3000 PLN) - is it enough? [65]


Probably 50% more. 1500 PLN for a studio apartment with utilities included, and a bit more than 600 PLN for food, unless the guy cooks all meals at home himself from scratch. Clothes are going to cost extra. 3000 PL a month netto is going to be a frugal existence with no chance of luxury or savings, but doable and tolerable in the short term.


Guess did not mention race. He mentioned nationality. The answer is going to be be very different, for example, for a UK national (go ahead and give it a try, but expect to be slumming it), and for a US national (forget about it, you will lose out financially on the deal with having to pay for travel and residence permit).

As it turns out, the OP is from India. Basically depends on what type of existence he can eek out in his home country, but overall, I would say that there are better places to try than Poland, especially for those wages. Try Canada or Australia, for example. Moving to Poland would be simply putting his life on hold for a year or two. He would not be able to save up much, and the experience he gains will not be worth more than experience gained elsewhere. At best, he would break even. At worst, he would lose a couple of years of prime career-building time.

Law / Opening an English bookstore in Poland - what are the prospects and profitability? [17]


I'll third that. The potential clientele would be quite small indeed. Far too small to sustain a profitable business. You're competing not only with established real and online bookstores, but also with plenty of online sources of free, pirated electronic versions of just about any book you can imagine, as well a inexpensive used paper versions. I'm an avid reader, but it's been many years since I actually bought a paper version of a book. Of course, a lot of it has to do with bad vision, which makes electronic versions much more actractive, but a lot has to do with the availability of these versions for free. It takes a little time and ingenuity to locate some of the more offbeat books, and recent releases are not always available, but for the most part, there's little that's not readily available.

As for potential Polish customers, that clientele is even more limited than the few expats that live in Poland. I don't meet with many Polish people that read English books. Getting your students to pick up a book and read it will be by far your greatest challenge as an English teacher. The psychological resistance is enormous.

USA, Canada / Jobs for Poles in America [3]


Not a very useful major, I'm afraid, without loads of prior experience working successfully in the business world. Tell him to get a magister or second degree in actuarial or financial mathematics at a good school like SGH or one of the top politechnikas, and the world is his oyster. Actuarial mathematicians in particular are in very short supply and earn a lot; they can basically name their own price.

A useful rule in any job market anywhere is that the more serious applied mathematics and hard sciences you study, the more good jobs are available to you, and the more money you receive. High-level applied mathematics is the best predictor of future earning potential. A non-mathematics-based major ("humanistic") does not open many doors unless you are a top student at a top school, and are very politically adept at exploiting contacts (especially professors, and, sadly, in many cases, family connections as well).

Simple supply and demand. There is a glut of "humanistic" graduates on the job market in every country, while there is a desperate shortage of graduates in serious applied mathematics-based majors, even in the United States. Spend a few minutes in the line of any unemployment office in America and you will meet lots of business, English and Spanish graduates.

Don't get me wrong, humanistic subjects are very useful, and I have two humanistic degrees myself (classical languages and German). But it is the science degrees I hold that open up the job market to me.

A second rule about language majors is that they don't offer much earning potential if you are not a voracious reader of literature in that language. The more books you read, the more you can earn. Sadly, few of the language majors I meet are avid readers. Last night I was speaking to a graduate of filologia angielska from the University of Wrocław and was aghast at how little she had read, and how, even though she "loves" English, she doesn't habitually read books in English. Predictably, her spoken English was not impressive.

Work / Living in Katowice (programmer, 3000 PLN) - is it enough? [65]

sobieski

I've noticed that, too, and am undecided whether it is trolling by a single troll, or genuine questions from unsuspecting victims of a scam artist who provided them with the link to this site. There are apparently lots of scam artists that advertise Poland as a back door to the EU for residents of third-world countries.


The classic "foreign boy meets Polish girl and moves to Poland to be with her" story. The ending is usually quite tragic. Plenty of stories in the archives of this forum. The reality is that Polish girls very quickly lose interest in foreign guys who don't earn well. As a rule, Polish girls are far more mercenary than their western counterparts (and I don't blame them for that). As another rule, high-quality Polish girls (those who are ambitious and earn well themselves) are very, very mercenary indeed. If you're not at least pulling your own weight, they will drop you like a hot potato without batting an eyelash or shedding a tear.


Warsaw ain't cheap. If you're not making at least 5000 PLN netto, forget about it. There's little incentive to move.


A common strategy here in Poland. At your current rate of pay, that would give you about 3000 PLN, depending on taxes. Not enough on its own, but a nice supplement.

Law / Opening an English bookstore in Poland - what are the prospects and profitability? [17]

A bookstore is a high capital, low profitability business that takes plenty of business savvy and experience to pull off. Gastronomy even more so: it's not for the faint of heart or dilettantes. Someone who is trying to "get his foot in the door" by teaching English at Berlitz clearly lacks the wherewithal and know-how to make a go of it in either sort of business.

Law / Opening an English bookstore in Poland - what are the prospects and profitability? [17]


And I gave him some friendly advice, which was not to even think about starting a business in highly competitve, high capital, high risk, low profitability areas like retail and gastronomy, unless 1) you are a highly motivated, ambitious, tenacious natural-born self-starter who can take the licks and still keep ticking from early morning to late at night for years without turning a profit; 2) have sufficient capital to invest and plenty of savings to tide you over for the three, four or five years before your company finally emerges from the red; 3) have abundant academic education in business in general and the business you are going in to in particular; 4) have plenty of on-the-job business experience from working in sucessful businesses; and 5) a very realistic, analytical and practical vision that is not clouded by silly hopes and dreams viewed through rose-tinted lenses.

If the OP fulfilled these requirements, he certainly would not try to be "getting his foot in the door" as an English teacher for Berlitz. And working for Berlitz is going to do zip toward acchieving competence in starting a business. Nothing "not nice" in pointing out the bleeding obvious.


There's no substitute for reading. Podcasts and radio are a good supplement, but a lousy subtitute. Non-readers never, ever achieve a high level of proficiency in any language, not even their own. They reach a certain level of basic spoken communicative proficiency and level off there, often getting frustrated and giving up the language altogether. Their writing remains horrific. There is no other way to get out of that trap than reading, reading and more reading. No pain, no gain.

Work / Living in Katowice (programmer, 3000 PLN) - is it enough? [65]


Her chances of making a go of it and advancing herself in the Netherlands far exceeds your chances of making a go of it and advancing yourself in Poland. By several orders of magnitude.

You might last a year here, but long-term life here is going to be rough. Unless you land a cushy, well paid job for an international company, my advice would be to continue building a life in common in the Netherlands or elsewhere in the West. Both of you should constantly further your education so that you can increase your earnings. Then you can afford to take extended vacations for her to be with her family in Poland, and increase your chances of landing a cushy, well paid job for an international company in Poland.

Law / Financial Proof for Poland's Karta Pobytu (Residence Card) [15]

Don't waste your time trying to get the decision reversed. They've concluded that you are trying to use the residence permit as a way into the EU, and that you have no intention of actually staying in Poland for long. Attempting to convince the otherwise is totally futile. Return to India and try something else entirely.

Genealogy / Is Witkowski A Common Polish Surname? [4]


A simple Google search for "rypin" and "witkowski" turns up plenty of residents with that surname. Whether they are related to you is a different matter. Witkowski is a very common Polish name.