News / How will BREXIT affect the immigrants in UK and Poland. [1114]


It could turn out as you predict but somehow I don't think so. I think Brexit will go ahead. If the UK re-enter the EU it will be a few years down the road, maybe ten years and it will be an overhauled new EU, not the present arrangement which is becoming more and more unwieldy and messy. Next thing we'll have is Israel wanting to join! The EU has become like the Eurovision song contest.

News / How will BREXIT affect the immigrants in UK and Poland. [1114]

Of course it's reversible. The powers that be all make up the rules as they go along. The 'rules' may presently say there's no way back but if the EU wants to let the UK back in at some point, they'll simply change the rules to make that possible. As for people saying 'oh but all the other states would have to agree' in theory yes, in practice no. If the Brussels big wigs want Britain back, then back they will be allowed to come.

News / How will BREXIT affect the immigrants in UK and Poland. [1114]

And according to this it could be Ireland:
independent.ie/opinion/columnists/colm-mccarthy/colm-mccarthy-ireland-could-be-biggest-brexit-loser-after-the-uk-35585777.html

And according to this it's Ireland, Cyprus, Malta and Luxembourg:
cnbc.com/2017/03/01/ireland-cyprus-malta-and-luxembourg-to-be-hardest-hit-by-brexit-kpmg-report.html

Let's see how things pan out shall we, instead of pointless speculating. There's nothing to be said really until 29 April at earliest when the draft negotiation guidelines will be voted on by the other EU members.

News / How will BREXIT affect the immigrants in UK and Poland. [1114]

@ Tobias, No, that's not how it works. As an EU citizen you cannot be expelled from an EU country because you don't have a residence card. Your personal rights override administrative requirements. You can be subject to sanctions, for example a fine but you can't be deported. Therefore under the proposed guidelines any Brits living in any EU country before 29 March 2019 would be allowed to remain in that country after Britain exits. I should add, that the only condition you need to satisfy is that you have sufficient resources to maintain yourself. And that's it. No official paperwork or permits are legally required of you. If you are unable to maintain yourself financially however, then yes, you can, in theory be hoofed out.

News / How will BREXIT affect the immigrants in UK and Poland. [1114]

The first guidelines for the the withdrawal treaty have been issued.

"Among other elements in the eight-page document, which Mr Tusk will outline at a news conference later, is a priority to settle legal uncertainty for EU expatriates living on either side of the new EU-UK frontier.

It says rights acquired before a cut-off on the day Brexit takes effect should be retained."

The hope is that all the remaining EU states will agree to these guidelines by 29 April. The guidelines will form the basis of a mandate for chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier.

Travel / Warsaw in May, Auschwitz, Kantor in Old Town [33]


Well then don't bother with the jewellery. You could take a bike ride along the Wisła quite easily and take lots of photos.

@Dominic, now you're showing your American perspective on the world Dom! Not everything originates in America :)) The giving of a 'bethrothal ring' is a very old custom though it wasn't always a ring, sometimes other jewellery. De Beers didn't invent it, they merely developed and gave new life to an an existing theme, good old R&D.


There are shops in the Stare Miasto in Warsaw that give certificates of authenticity with your purchase, though of course the certs may not be genuine!

Travel / Warsaw in May, Auschwitz, Kantor in Old Town [33]


I'm not sure about that for two reasons Spiritus. Firstly these recitals are culture not cabaret and the pianists are all dedicated classical musicians who might be just a wee bit offended by such a suggestion. Also the statue of Chopin is in a very prominent position and would be surrounded by a sea of curious onlookers. Personally as a woman, I would feel uncomfortable in that situation. There are lots of lovely leafy, secluded spots nearby and some benches where you can sit. Paulina's suggestion is lovely but again you'd need the boat to yourself, I wouldn't want a couple of strangers practically sitting on my lap!

@Reeko, have you thought about a ring to mark the occasion? There are lots of beautiful jewellery shops in Warsaw and a good range of prices, you don't have to pay a fortune. You could perhaps go the Stare Miasto next day and get an amber ring as it's a traditional souvenir to bring from Poland and they have some fabulous designs. If you're religious you could keep the Chopin theme going and go the church where his heart is kept, the Baylika Świętego Krzyźa, and light some candles in thanks for the happy years you've shared and the hope of many more to come :))

I wouldn't go for the Pałac Kultury as it would be full of tourists and quite possibly gangs of kids on school trips.

Travel / Warsaw in May, Auschwitz, Kantor in Old Town [33]

You could take her to the Royal park of Łazienki in central Warsaw. There are lots of beautiful spots there including the 'Palace on the Isle' with a lovely waterside location. If you go on a Sunday there are open air Chopin concerts. They have afternoon and evening ones. You can hear the music for some distance around the park so you could propose in an historic Royal location, to the strains of Chopin on a summer's evening, what could be nicer? :))

Genealogy / Why did(do) Poles sometimes have German first names? [28]

Have been meaning to mention this to you CB. He most definitely would have been baptised whatever his family's religion. Quite apart from the fact that most people back then were sincere believers, it was the social and cultural norm. However, it's most unlikely that he was Orthodox. But what religion was his son, your grandfather??

Regarding records, although he was certainly baptised there's no guarantee that the priest recorded it in any register, they didn't always you know.

By the way, if it's an unusual surname, it's always worth contacting other people who are researching the name, as even if you're not related, they may have turned up some information on your own family during their research.

News / How will BREXIT affect the immigrants in UK and Poland. [1114]


December 2017 is the target for the basic bones of the Withdrawal Treaty which will include treatment of British citizens living in the EU and conversely EU citizens living in Britain. October 2018 should see the final draft of the treaty for approval by all concerned. Talks regarding a trade deal may not even begin until after the two year exit procedure and the whole process of exiting may take up to five years.

Law / Residence permit in Poland. Starting an own business is enough to get this? [14]


Are you doing a degree? If so have you nearly completed it? I'm just wondering because how would you continue your studies if you move to Poland? There is no way you could live on that salary in Warsaw. I suppose if you live with your sister you could just about manage but after you've paid her something towards your keep, your budget would be really tight.

News / Berlin terrorist attack -- Poland's ethnic homogeneity a true blessing [436]


Ironside, to whom are you speaking? Not me I hope. I wasn't the one who made the initial comparison. In fact I said:

News / Berlin terrorist attack -- Poland's ethnic homogeneity a true blessing [436]


The Troubles is a euphemism used by both the British and Irish governments to refer to the conflict in Northern Ireland. It's always referred to as 'the Troubles'.

bbc.co.uk/history/troubles


Lenka I've lived alongside Muslims for years, both in England and Ireland and never had any problems with them at all. They were my neighbours, my local chemist, my bus driver, my doctor and in recent years my pupils when I was teaching. The only sign I ever saw of them being difficult were the few complaints from Muslim parents about things that were against Muslim beliefs and which they wanted us to respect in school. School policy was that it was a Catholic school in a western country and we couldnt' go along with that. They accepted that. I never had the impression that any of them would take out a fatwa on us or come charging up the school yard waving sabres.

Nonetheless Islamic terrorists (as opposed to Muslims) claim to be acting in accord with and indeed as dictated by their religious faith and use Islam to justify their acts.


Anyone who commits deliberate acts of murder can hardly call themselves a Catholic and yet..........people focus on the Troubles of recent years but in the centuries of conflict on the island of Ireland, scores of practising and very devout Catholics committed murder repeatedly, or were prepared to do so to free Ireland from British rule. Michael Collins' last act on this earth was to respond to one of his men who realising that he was still breathing asked him' Mick do you repent your sins?' whereupon Collins squeezed his hand. All the patriots of Ireland and indeed of Poland, knew they were committing sin and placed the fate of their souls in God's hands. Those commiting murder in the name of Islam claim that they are not commiting sin but are, quite to the contrary, doing God's work on earth.

News / Berlin terrorist attack -- Poland's ethnic homogeneity a true blessing [436]

I'm getting tired of pointing this out but that never stopped me yet so.............here goes once more.

There is no valid comparison to be made between the present Islamic terror campaign and the troubles in Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland conflict was a political one and the religions of those involved were incidental. They never bombed or killed in the name of Catholicism or Protestantism but in the names of Republicanism and Unionism. They might just as easily have been aetheists.

Genealogy / Why did(do) Poles sometimes have German first names? [28]


What were the christian names like in either of those families? Any Wilhelms or Andreas's??


Where is the nearest area to that, where you can see a concentration of the surname and what are the christian names like in those families? People in those days didn't generally move that far from the place where they were born. I'm Irish, not Polish, but in my own family, on my maternal grandfather's side the largest concentration of his surname is in Limerick where the family first arrived from England in Norman times and you can see a clear pattern of migration eastwards with smaller and smaller concentrations of the name in each successive county in a westerly direction.


I don't know how common it was but German men certainly did marry Polish women in the Prussian part of Poland and I imagine that there is an even greather likelihood of it in the Austrian part as both would have been Catholic for a start and it was the least repressive administration. Usually though it seems to be the men marrying the women.

Genealogy / Why did(do) Poles sometimes have German first names? [28]

Now that's very interesting. So his father was 'William'. Well there is no exact Polish equivalent of the name William as far as I know, so this would suggest to me that your great-great grandfather may well have been Wilhelm and this would explain why he named his son Andreas, if there is a German or Austrian connection in your family. Great-great grandpa Wilhelm may have had a German mother, not necessarily father, and been named for her father perhaps. Who can say........however, you say that your family's surname is unusual/uncommon. In the absence of any other knowledge about your own branch of the family, I would start putting out feelers to find any other people with that surname in the area your great grandfather came from and see if you can find any German naming pattern. Catherine would be Katarzyna, a common Polish name for girls.

Genealogy / Why did(do) Poles sometimes have German first names? [28]


As Galicia was very poor it seems highly unlikely that any Germans would want to migrate to it. There were plenty of rich cities in Germany where there would be far more opportunities. What I would do is look at other names in your great grandfather's family and see if there's a pattern of German names. This would indicate that perhaps one of the family married a German at some point and the naming reflected that. If Andreas seems to be an isolated case of German naming, then it could be that they named him after a friend or benefactor, somebody who was kind or good to the family. Or they felt the German name would be a help to the child in later life in his social advancement though that seems unlikely if the surname is obviously Polish, a bit pointless really. There is always the possibility that he was christened Andrzej but changed it to Andreas when going to America because it would be much easier for Americans to pronounce. Perhaps somebody advised him to do so.

Life / Good place to live in Poland (if you want to move on)? [66]


How old is your son? The younger the better. I presume he doesn't speak any Polish so it will be quite a struggle for him at first. Polish schools do not provide any language support or Polish classes for foreign students and Polish is not an easy language to just 'pick up' unless you're a speaker of another Slavic language, that helps a bit.

You can survive on 6,000 if you budget really carefully but you will by no means be 'comfortable'. 8,000 net would be a lot better but as Dominic says you will struggle to save anything out of it. There is really no point in leaving your homeland to struggle for survival in a foreign country unless you have a clear set of short, medium and long term goals and some contingency plan in place if it doesn't go according to your original vision.

Genealogy / Why Polish aren't white?? [272]

Another troll. However we can't let 'it' whatever its gender, have the last word here. Isn't it remarkable how these ignorant lumps who've never been outside Hicksville or Ba Diddly Boing, Idaho, are such experts on everything 'European', not to mention anthropology, sociology, history and human biology.

History / Catholic Irish or Scottish Immigrants to Poland [3]

I'm Irish and have never heard of Catholics going to Poland. The Catholic gentry who could afford it often had their children educated in France during the Penal Laws when education was forbidden to Catholics, but large scale emigration from Ireland only really kicked off in the nineteenth century and most people went to America and Australia. You might be confusing them with those earlier Irish who migrated to Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These were mostly soliders fighting in various foreign armies. For example in the early 17th century over a thousand Irish soldiers fought in the Polish-Muscovite wars but they did not remain in the Polish army and did not settle in Poland. By the way I love your username!

Classifieds / Studio Apartment in Poznan, Poland [8]

You do need to be careful when dealing with any strangers in Poland as there is a bit of a scam culture. However most websites are simply portals where estate agents or private individuals advertise their properties for sale or rent so it's the individual landlord whom you're dealing with who is the potential scammer, rather than the website itself. Your best bet is to just book yourself into a cheap student type hostel prior to your arrival and then physically visit the office of the agent and give them you requirements. Private ads are a bit riskier and will be more difficult especially if you don't speak Polish or have a Polish friend to help you. It has been known for people who don't own the apartment to somehow manage to get hold of keys to an empty place, rent it out, take a large deposit and a month's rent in advance from you and then a few weeks later, the real owner shows up!

Work / Salary for a senior software engineer in Poland [195]

Now that's very interesting. 3000 zł is an absolute joke. Clearly they underestimate your intelligence if they think they could get away with offering you peanuts like that so I'm not sure you'd be very happy working for them in any case. Just ask yourself, what sort of people are they to make an insulting offer like that? Anyway it sounds like you have every chance of getting a good job with a decent salary if you just keep plugging away at it. Good luck!

Work / Salary for a senior software engineer in Poland [195]


I'm afraid that will confuse the OP even further! The bottom line is that when you go to a website and look at details for an apartment they usually show two separate figures, one for rent and the other for czynsz and the two added together is what the tenant will have to pay each month.

@ Fappper, yes, as the job is advertised at 9,000-10,000 zł then I would say definitely press for the 9,000. Now the thing is obviously I haven't seen your CV, don't know your skill set and I don't know how you answered the interview questions or whether they gave you a techincal test and if so, how you did. Any of those things could have influenced their offer of 7.5. Perhaps they really feel that it's a fair offer, but they could just be trying it on to see how cheap they can get you. Polish employers are not generous even with their own so don't take it too personally :)

If the offer falls through, then as I say, keep looking and if you keep getting the same low offers, then maybe look at your skills and consider adding to them in your spare time by teaching yourself another programming language or something.

Classifieds / Studio Apartment in Poznan, Poland [8]

Fappper you need to go to google Nieruchomości and you'll get plenty of websites. What's included in the rent will vary with each apartment.

Work / Salary for a senior software engineer in Poland [195]

The problem is that it's hard to determine exactly how much you'll pay for rent and bills as sometimes the cynsz covers gas and electricity and sometimes it doesn't. But you would certainly need to budget around 1500 per month for rent and bills. Food, I suppose a thousand would cover it and allow another 200 for internet, phone and transport. So your bare minimum expenses at just survival level each month would be 2,700. You can save whatever is left over but you will have to dip into it at some point for clothes (especially for the Polish winter), maybe a vist to the dentist or doctor or some other emergency. You certainly won't live a 'handsome' life and bear in mind you will be living alone in a foreign country so add that to lack of money and you have a recipe for quite a miserable existence. Peter Olsztyn was pretty much spot on when he said if you're very tough you could save 2,000zł. No matter how many times you ask the same question, you'll keep getting the same answer because it's the truth! You're being offered a very low salary for somebody with five years experience. My advice would be that if you're not in urgent need of changing your present job, keep searching until somebody offers you 10,000 gross.

Work / Salary for a senior software engineer in Poland [195]

Firstly Fapper Poles don't use the term 'bedroom'. They describe apartments by the number of rooms apart from kitchen and bathroom, so you're looking in local language for a one room apartment which is how they describe a studio.

Sorry but your employer is talking rubbish. Here's a link to a Polish website showing 1 room apartments in Poznań. As you can see one of the cheapest is 700zł but if you click on the ad you'll see that there's a czynsz of 400. The cynsz is a service charge which usually covers water, rubbish collection and sometimes central heating. It's often very high. The czynsz is always going to be at least 400 on top of the advertised rent. So your total cost will be 1100 per month. There is also what they call 'minor charges' for electricity and gas every two months. Beware of such vague contracts. The minor charges can turn out to be considerably more than minor and you're locked into a lease agreement.

otodom.pl/wynajem/mieszkanie/poznan/?search%5Bfilter_enum_rooms_num%5D%5B0%5D=1&search%5Bdescription%5D=1&search%5Bdist%5D=0

Off-Topic / Being a Slav: a blessing or a curse? [199]

And such a reply could only be given by somebody who doesn't understand the first thing about sportsmanship as practised not only by the Irish but by any civilised nation.

Anybody who even watches, let alone plays sports knows that it's not normal for team officials to run on to the pitch and assault a player. It's especially not normal for the host country to attack their guests and for the host team to assault the visitors and kick them in the head as a gesture of their support for their nutter team official.

The fact that you can provide a link to a brawl between Poland and Croatia at a friendly only serves to prove my original point, that Slavs don't share the same mindset as the Irish. When the Serbian incident happened, the Irish team did not retaliate. They walked off the ptich because as I often try to explain to people, the Irish, contrary to the popular image of 'the fighting Irish' generally prefer to avoid confrontation whenever possible and will usually try to defuse a potentially violent situation.

Recently there was more trouble when Serbian fans subjected a black player on an opposing team to racist chants, something about monkey or banana eater or something. Again, you wouldn't see the Irish doing that. And then of course there was the Serbia-Albania flag incident, fault on both sides there. Albanians provoked it, Serbian security was rubbish and Serbian players should have walked off. It's sport, not war.

As for Roy Keane, the fact that he ended up being fined 150,000 pounds for bringing the sport into disrepute sends a clear message of how unacceptable his behaviour was. Everybody understands the concept of the legitmate tackle, an aggressive tackle and a foul. They are a normal part of football. But he went way beyond that and public opinion was strongly against him. However that's a very exceptional incident and in no way typical of Irish players.


Actually it was a long standing injury to his other knee that ended his career. That was why he had to drop his legal case against Keane.

The point I'm making C3 (sorry I have to shorten you, I'm struggling trying to remember how to spell the full thing!) is that while a Serb and an Irish man can enjoy a drink together and the sounds of Irish music, they are poles apart in their outlook on life. The Irish are essentially a light hearted people and Slavs have an intensity and a dark side that the Irish lack. You'd need to live in Ireland for a year or two to understand that difference. Slavs are very decided about everything, hold strong, even rigid views, very stubborn, that's my experience of them anyway. The Irish are the exact opposite. We don't even have a word for yes or no in the Irish language.

Have you heard of The Door of Reconcilation from the feud between the Butlers and the Fitzgeralds back in the fifteenth century?

stpatrickscathedral.ie/the-door-of-reconciliation

It typifies what I'm trying to explain, that the Irish instinct is to make peace and not war.

Off-Topic / Being a Slav: a blessing or a curse? [199]

God you really are as daft as a brush Notty. Crnogorac3 wno is supposedly Serbian has been posting copious amounts of stuff about the Irish, so what's it to you, you miserable old Rooskie??

Here, this might cheer you up a bit, Russians learn how to do it Irish style in Moscow. Face it Notty, the world loves us:

youtube.com/watch?v=TatmDAawrHE

and as it's St Patrick's Day an added bonus :

youtube.com/watch?v=WNGwQpfoEG0

They loved us in France, they loved us in Poznan. Stand up for the boys in green :D

Off-Topic / Being a Slav: a blessing or a curse? [199]


You don't know much about Ulster loyalists! You need to read about them. I can tell you that they would despise Serbs at least as much, if not more than they despise the indigenous Irish. The one thing they have in common with Serbs and the Balkan nations is that for them, the Battle of the Boyne happened not 350 odd years ago, but yesterday and feelings run as deep as they did back then.


Did you look at the link I posted to what happend when we tried to play a 'friendly' with the Serbs about two years ago? The Irish are a much milder, less hot headed bunch than Slavs and we are a forgiving people. We don't hold grudges or seek vengeance in the way that Slavic nations tend to. We gained our independence from England through centuries of armed conflict but we've forged a strong friendship with them since.

Off-Topic / Being a Slav: a blessing or a curse? [199]


It's grammar Ziemowit, the creas takes an h because of the case and yes there is a difference. Creas has a hard c, so a k sound basically and the 'ch' is soft almost like the ch sound in Polish, a sort of cross between that and the German 'ch', not as guttral as the German though. Tine chreasach is two words by the way. The word 'tine' is the one used for the fire in the fireplace. The fireside is tinteán (pronounced roughly thinthawn). There's an old Irish saying 'Níl aon tinteán mar do thinteán féin' There's no fireside like your own fireside meaning of course there's no place like home. Notice how the second tinteán takes an h again because of the grammar. It changes the pronunciation from thin-thawn to hin-thawn :)