History / POLAND: EASTERN or CENTRAL European country? [1080]

Wait, what's everyone arguing about? It all depends on the definition you use.

Wrt geography, central.
Wrt language, eastern.
Wrt religion, western.

If the Slavic and Finno-Ugric languages are considered eastern, then Finland, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Bulgaria, Slovenia and what have you are eastern linguistically.

The Japanese have no qualms about being eastern. I don't see what the problem is.

Law / Visa to Poland? Invitation by a Polish student? [21]

abu3issa
If you're an EU citizen, you don't need a visa and might not even need a passport. If your country issues national identity cards, they're good enough for crossing the border.

If you're a citizen of another country, you need to check specifically what requirements there are. Your girlfriend may need to get the relevant paperwork done at her District Office. I've sent out work invitations to some Ukrainians a good few years back, and as far as I remember, it was quite a straightforward process. That said, I was doing it from the position of an employer, so it might be different. It's up to your girlfriend to ask around in the local bureaucracy.

Language / Fun with Polish ambiguous language [59]

I find the word "zamykać" ambiguous in general.

Zamknąć/zamykać means both "to close" and "to lock." You can disambiguate the two meanings by saying "zamknąć na klucz," but I've had misunderstandings happen because of the ambiguous nature of this word.

Someone else: "Zamknąłeś drzwi?" - What they mean: "Have you locked the door"? (What I think they mean: "Have you closed the door?")

Me: "Zamknąłem." - What I mean: "Yeah, I've closed it." (What someone else thinks I mean: "Yeah, I've locked it.")

The next day,

Someone else: "Czemu drzwi zostały otwarte? Przecież mówiłeś, że je zamknąłeś." ("Why was the door left unlocked? I mean, you said you locked it.")

Me: "Bo zamknąłem. Ale nie zamknąłem na klucz." ("Because I did close it. But I didn't lock it.")

History / Life in communist Poland - personal relations [413]

The Great Leader was certainly popular with many people, not least because of a brief period of material well-being and an easing of repressions against relatives of prominent anti-communists and of the Church.

My parents were in their teens and therefore too young to care, but my non-communist grandparents do remember a brief period of relative material well-being around that time. My communist grandparents were first-class citizens and always had it good, having access to material luxuries that were out of reach for the populace at large, so naturally, they're nostalgic about the period of Soviet occupation in its entirety.

While Comrade Gierek does, arguably, deserve some credit for being forward-looking and innovative, even if some of his reforms turned out to be a dud, declaring 2013 the year of Edward Gierek makes the modern post-communists appear backward-looking and stuck in the past. In the whole history of the People's Republic, there was just one person who managed to make Communism reasonably tolerable for a large part of the population for a few short years. What about the rest of the Polish Communist Party, and their successors, the Democratic Left Alliance? What good did they do?

They might as well declare it the year of a more modern prominent figure of the Polish Left. How about Lew Rywin?

Life / Advocating euthanasia routinely causes scandals in Poland... [63]

Well, it's essentially a conflict between the Christian vs liberal secular worldviews. The current secular philosophical trend is for the maximisation of freedom wherever possible so we see liberals pushing for voluntary and not involuntary euthanasia (though involuntary euthanasia is certainly a likely possibility in a dystopian, Orwellian future).

Now, of course, we have secular conservatives in both Poland and the West agreeing with Christians, but their position is difficult to reconcile with the prevailing secular ideologies. Why would you want to deny someone the right to end their lives when they no longer wish to live? Why would you spare your dog of the suffering of disease and old age, and yet force your grandparents to suffer? Would you permit euthanasia in very specific and narrow circumstances? Why not in others?

Now, religious Poles naturally, but also many secular Poles are still deeply influenced by the Catholic mindset, and so euthanasia is still seen as scandalous in Poland, even by those who do not identify themselves as Christian. But unless there is a marked shift in either the direction of secular philosophy or in the secularisation of Polish society, then it seems it's only a matter of time before Poland joins the ever increasing number of Western jurisdictions that have permitted ethanasia.

The current abortion law, which is a result of a compromise between Catholics and communists, will probably be overturned with time, and I imagine many politicians too would like it to be liberalised already, but they don't want to rock the boat and risk arousing the ire of the still-influential Catholic Church.

Sooner or later, you will get a "hard case" where euthanasia seems like a good option being covered in the media, which will portray all Poles who disagree with euthanasia in an intolerant and uncompassionate light, and once a critical mass is reached, mainstream public opinion will rapidly shift in favour of euthanasia as a result.


Is that the same thing as assisted suicide?

Genealogy / Typical Polish Eye Color [77]


Yeah, I know, I was just kidding about eye colour being somehow significant.

For the eye colours in Poland, I'd imagine we would get a bell-curve on a light-to-dark axis. Same with hair and skin types, with the very darkest Poles having dark brown or black hair and deep olive/light brown skin and the very lightest having ginger hair and freckles, and most people falling somewhere in between. So too, I expect only a minority of people to have the very palest of eye colours and the very darkest tar-black eyes, and for most people to be somewhere in the middle.

Genealogy / Typical Polish Eye Color [77]

I get the impression that Poles generally have either blue or brown eyes, with the former being more common. I have dark hazel green eyes, but I'm not ethnically pure, as it were.

History / POLAND: EASTERN or CENTRAL European country? [1080]

Poland is eastern, central and western.

Geographically, it's in Central Europe.

Culturally, it's both eastern and western. Eastern because it's Slavic. Western because it's historically been rather more Catholic than Eastern Orthodox.

Linguistically, it's eastern because its language is from a family that has dominated in Eastern Europe.

News / The quality of Polish media coverage [50]


American channels also have to grab your attention so that you sit through the ridiculously frequent ad breaks, which seem to occur every 3 to 7 minutes. And they tell you something really interesting is coming up "right after the break," when it fact it's not right after the break, but right after a break 20 minutes down the line. Polish TV is equally unwatchable, though. After watching the news, I never make it to the weather forecast because you have to sit through about half an hour of mind-numbing ads to get to it, with a short and uninteresting sports segment somewhere in the middle, which is itself pre- and postfixed with a half a dozen sponsor messages.


I have tried to compare TVP's Wiadomości, TVN's Fakty and Polsat's Wydarzenia, and Fakty stands out to me as being the worst. This is entirely subjective, of course, but I've noticed it is sometimes completely silent on a significant event that's covered on the other news programmes, and I find it difficult to swallow that the reporters on a programme that purports to give you the Facts so often adopt a mocking and sarcastic tone in their reports on the opposition parties. Oh, I bet they think they're so clever.

Genealogy / Last name History or help please: BREJ surname [20]

Here's a map of where Polish Brejs live. .moikrewni.pl/mapa/kompletny/brej.html

I've googled the net, and I can't find many Czechs with "Brej" as their surname. It definitely appears to be far more common in Polish.

News / The quality of Polish media coverage [50]

There always has been and always will be media bias, in every country.

Every journalist reports a story based on how he sees it, and how we perceive things is based on the various preconceptions we have about the world.

Sometimes, the bias is cynical and imposed by the editorial office. Sometimes, journalists aren't entirely honest, and try to force their opinions on others. Sometimes, the bias is simply a result of how the journalist sees things from his perspective.

Instead of hoping the media will somehow become unbiased (I think that's impossible), I think it would be better for us to become conscious of the fact that the media is biased and that it's impossible to get the full story without looking at several sources of information.

Genealogy / THE MEANING AND RESEARCH OF MY POLISH LAST NAME, SURNAME? [4500]

I thought so too. Still, the place name, "Dębina" and "Dębiny" itself would probably be derived from "dąb" ("oak").

Genealogy / THE MEANING AND RESEARCH OF MY POLISH LAST NAME, SURNAME? [4500]

Dembińska looks like an alternative spelling of Dębińska (it's pronounced identically). At first glance, "dębina" means "oak forest-stand" or "oak woods".


It's good my surname can pass for a Polish one, but I still look like an Israeli soldier and can calculate compound interest faster than I can add :D

History / Destructions of Poland thoughout centuries [55]


LOL! Brilliant! :D

Genealogy / THE MEANING AND RESEARCH OF MY POLISH LAST NAME, SURNAME? [4500]

Jabłoński.

Jabłoń means apple tree. It's probably a Polonisation of Apfelbaum, since that part of my family is Jewish. Lest there be any doubt, Apfelbaum also means apple tree in German.

History / Destructions of Poland thoughout centuries [55]


Lol, I wouldn't blame a Catholic upbringing. It certainly didn't help our neighbours be any less brutal. The Germans were originally Catholic too, and aside from having rather different liturgical traditions, the Russian Orthodox faith is in actual fact very similar to Catholicism.

Being Catholic did make Poles a royal pain in the ass when under foreign domination, though, and probably helped prevent too many Poles assimilating into Protestant Prussia and Orthodox Russia. If Poland had been Orthodox, religious Poles would look up to the Patriarch of Moscow instead of the Bishop of Rome, and since Polish would have been written in the Cyrillic alphabet, Poles would have found it much easier to assimilate into the Russian empire.

Nowadays, the territories of Poland and Germany are quite similar in size, so both countries ultimately ended up mediocre, probably due to, quite simply, their geographical location. Russia was the big winner simply by virtue of the fact that it was the easternmost European power, and the fact that there weren't many people east of the Urals who could check its expansion. Were it not for Soviet domination in the 20th Century, I'd imagine both Poland and Germany would have achieved a comparable level of economic development too.

History / Destructions of Poland thoughout centuries [55]

Were those territories ethnically Lithuanian? What business was the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth doing on territories inhabited by Finno-Ugric Estonians, Baltic Latvians, and Eastern Orthodox Slavic Ruthenians/Belarusians/Ukrainians and Russians?

I'm awfully tempted to say that what they were actually doing is expanding. Russia was naturally doing the very same thing, and was competing with Poland over control. And in the expansionist race, it's Russia that has ultimately prevailed.

History / Destructions of Poland thoughout centuries [55]

Now, now, what about Polish troops invading Moscow? I don't believe there were many Poles living there at the time.

History / Destructions of Poland thoughout centuries [55]

It wouldn't surprise me one bit if Poland had at some point invaded Moldova. In the interwar years, it also had serious border disputes with Czechoslovakia and annexed Cieszyn in 1938.

Poland has historically been expansionist and colonialist, and there is only one thing that stopped it from becoming like Russia. Russia. Of course, Poland's not alone in this. Germany to the West and Hungary to the south were other expansionist European powers, and the only reason Poland and Hungary had maintained generally good relations is because they seldom had competing territorial interests. The same cannot be said for Germany.

History / Destructions of Poland thoughout centuries [55]


We could argue about how representative it really was of the population, but yes, I guess you could put it that way.

History / Destructions of Poland thoughout centuries [55]


I think we both agree that the Polish nobility was at fault.

My point was to stress that it was the nobility and not necessarily the populace at large.

History / Destructions of Poland thoughout centuries [55]


Right. But they weren't particularly loyal to their country, were they?

In fact, I'd much rather they had been Jewish, Russian or German, or Martian, as long as they were loyal to the Polish state.

Historically, there have been many Polish Jews, Polish Lithuanians or Polish Ukrainians, for example, who were also Polish patriots. And that's wonderful.

History / Destructions of Poland thoughout centuries [55]


Or maybe rather their disloyal aristocracy, who would betray Poland again and again in the years to come.

History / Destructions of Poland thoughout centuries [55]

Thanks, pawian. Interesting.

History / Destructions of Poland thoughout centuries [55]

Fascinating and tragic.

History / Destructions of Poland thoughout centuries [55]

Those are insane population losses. Are they credible?

Law / Poland economy is slowing down - how does it affect you? [117]


Oh, of course. Naturally, downturns have more losers than winners.


That is so true. I can't imagine not being entitled to ordinary healthcare. The American healthcare system is ridiculously overpriced for what it is, and, worse, not everyone is entitled to it.

Law / Poland economy is slowing down - how does it affect you? [117]

I stand to gain from the slowdown if it causes a significant reduction in prices in the still overvalued property market. I'm still outpriced of the London market (i.e. I don't plan on slaving away for years to pay off a huge mortgage or buying-to-let and risking interest rates going up with my investment being repossessed due to the rent not covering the mortgage payment) so I intend on moving to Poland permanently and purchasing some property to rent it out to generate a low-risk passive income sufficient to live comfortably without working too hard.