Life / Where can I play volleyball in Warsaw? [10]

It should be useful if you tell me in which areas you'd like to play, Warsaw is a big city :)
Are you going to pay for it (amateur leagues usually charge the participating team, sometimes quite a lot of money) or you want to play for free (eventually only paying costs of the rent for the place where you play)?

Most universities probably have some organized games, I remember when I was at university (in Poznań, not Warsaw), we could play soccer or basketball with other students, all we needed was just to find a group of person who liked that sport, and then someone was arranging the details.

So this would probably be the best way - talk to some people in Warsaw, as I don't think you can find many informations online, if someone is playing only for pleasure, they don't start with a website :)

Or just ask in a professional club if they could recommend you a place/team, because those coaches/players would probably know (a little more than me) what's going on in their sport in Warsaw.

Life / Where can I play volleyball in Warsaw? [10]

Do you understand Polish (at least in written form)? Because I don't have addresses/phone numbers to all the clubs, so you might have to search more information online.

I liga clubs (in reality second division, because the highest is called "ekstraklasa"):
LTS Legionovia Legionowo (small city just outside Warsaw)

II liga clubs (in reality third division):
AZS Politechnika Warszawska
00-325 Warszawa; Krakowskie Przedmieście 24;
tel./fax 0/22 552 04 53; 552 26 00

AZS AWF Warszawa
01-813 Warszawa; ul. Marymoncka 34;
tel./fax 0/22 834 77 04; 864 09 58

MUKS Sparta Warszawa

SL Salos Legionowo (again the same city outside Warsaw)

If none of these is good, then try the regional branch of the Polish Volleyball Association:
Mazowiecki Związek Piłki Siatkowej
00-429 WARSZAWA; ul. Rozbrat 26;
tel. 0/22 628 11 74
fax 0/22 628 11 74

Law / Old Polish money banknotes - what's their value today? [414]


The only money in circulation in Poland is made in the 90's and 00's (since 1994), here you can see them:
nbp.pl/home.aspx?f=/banknoty_i_monety/monety_obiegowe/opisy.html


That's really their fault, because the "denomination" was made 15 years ago, so they had lots of time to introduce the changes in their system.

Food / Cream of Tartar (Warsaw) [7]


I see.
Here's an older thread about the same thing, but it seems it's hard to find in Poland.

And here are two other threads about possible substitutes (I'm not sure you can use them in your recipe)

Baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)

Baking soda and baking powder

Food / Cream of Tartar (Warsaw) [7]

There's something called "sos tatarski" (dressing for salads etc.), but I'm not sure if that's what you need (the product names seem to match, but it may be something completely different).

Life / Polish Nursery Rhymes [243]


Most people know the version with sroka (magpie) not wrona (crow), but there are regional differences, so maybe where you father lived they used wrona instead of sroka :)

Read my post from Mar 10, 15:34 hours and you'll find more info.

Life / Polish Nursery Rhymes [243]


Jedziemy na wycieczkę,
bierzemy misia w teczkę,
a misiu fiku-miku
narobił w teczkę siku.

Some other rhymes (maybe already posted, I'm not sure, don't feel like reading the whole thread again):

My jesteśmy krasnoludki,
Hopsa sa! Hopsa sa!
Pod grzybkami nasze budki,
Hopsa sa! Hopsa sa!
------------------------------------
Ślimak, ślimak pokaż rogi
Dam ci sera na pierogi
------------------------------------
Siała baba mak,
Nie wiedziała jak
Dziadek wiedział, nie powiedział,
A to było tak...
------------------------------------
Wlazł kotek na płotek i mruga,
£adna to piosenka nie długa,
Nie długa, nie krótka a w sam raz,
Zaśpiewaj koteczku jeszcze raz
------------------------------------
W pokoiku na stoliku
stało mleczko i jajeczko.
Przyszedł kotek wypił mleczko
a ogonkiem stłukł jajeczko.
Przyszła mama kotka zbiła
a skorupki wyrzuciła.

------------------------------------
And a bonus - „Stary niedźwiedź mocno śpi” game/play

1. Children go around a center point.
2. In the center there lies/sits one child - „The Bear”.
3. The other children walk around him and sing:

Stary niedźwiedź mocno śpi,
stary niedźwiedź mocno śpi.
My się go boimy, na palcach chodzimy,
jak się zbudzi to nas zje,
jak się zbudzi to nas zje.

4. And then they say, not sing:

Pierwsza godzina - niedźwiedź sapie.

5. Nothing happens, „the bear” is still resting, making a little noise while breathing.

Druga godzina - niedźwiedź chrapie.

6. Nothing happens, „the bear” is still resting, but now making a louder noise - snoring.

Trzecia godzina - niedźwiedź łapie!

7. „The bear” catches one of the children.
8. The child who got caught becomes „the bear”.
9. And they start all over again, until every child has been „the bear” or until they are tired:)

Love / Polish Pet Names For Girls. [156]


normally "motylek" in Nominative and "motylku" in Vocative (so when you're saying it to somebody you use "motylku" when saying about somebody you use "motylek"), and it's a masculine gender noun, so it might be a little confusing when used about/to a girl :)

Language / Polish Swear Words [1242]


"life is brutal and full of zasadzkas" was some stupid saying popularized when I was young (about 20 years ago), but I already forgot how it had origianted :(

zasadzka = ambush; trap (actually "trap" is "pułapka" in Polish, but I guess ambush is a kind of trap anyways)

"kopas w dupas" would be "kopy w dupę" (kop - a kick, dupa - arse/ass) so kicks in the ass (where it's your ass that gets kicked).

plugav - not 100% sure about this one, but my best guess it's for "plugawy", which I'm not sure how to best translate in English, "plugawe życie" would be more or less "squalid/seamy/sleazy life"

Law / POLISH BEER IMPORT TO UK [37]


Or maybe it's summer holidays time and many people are away?!

Anyway, you want to know how to export to UK, so your main concern is probably UK import laws, not Polish export laws.
So you should search for advice on a forum called "Business in UK", I guess.

Law / Old Polish money banknotes - what's their value today? [414]

Oh, they are worth much more. 100 times more!
10,000 old zloty = 1 new zl = (about) 33 US cents, so 30,000 old złoty = 1 US dollar :)

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]


Correct. The "old" grading system was 2 (fail), 3, 4, 5 (very good)
In the nineties they added 1 (fail) and 6 (excellent), so nowadyas 2 (dwójka) is now longer fail, but for many genrations it sound strange because the old system was in use since before the WWII.


Wrong, in this context it means high school - in cities bigger than about 25 thousands inhabitants you usually have more than one liceum (plus a few technikum and, currently less popular, professional mid-grade school, without matura (Liceum Ogólnokształcące no. 2 and no. 3, although in Polish we use Romanian numbers for high schools so it Liceum Ogólnokształcące II, Liceum Ogólnokształcące III etc.)

Travel / Getting from Krakow to Warsaw [99]


check the timetables in English (also French and German versions available)
rozklad-pkp.pl/?q=en/node/143

just be sure to type in the correct day, because there are many seasonal trains in Poland, but I just checked that date and it seems OK (14:55 is the arrival at Warszawa Centralna station in the city center)


Probably not, Polish Railways aren't happy about reduced prices, so they mostly honour it only where it's appointed by national laws, and as far as I know Intercity trains are NOT subject to such regulations (only the slower trains). Still wait for someone else's opinions, as I'm only guessing.

Life / Which on the list of Polish girl's names do you like the most? [67]


Most names in Poland aren't Polish, they are either Latin, Greek or Hebrew/Arameic (from Bible), there's a small group of names with old Slavic roots, but mostly for men, I guess.


And in Polish it would be just Aleksandra :)
Quite popular (I think that the male version Aleksander is less common, but I may be wrong). The most common diminuitive for Aleksandra is Ola

History / POLISH MEMORIES OF CHERNOBYL...April 26th 1986 [32]


Płyn Lugola (literally "Lugol's liquid", or more precisely Lugol's solution, Lugol's iodine), in Poland we drank it on May 1st during/after the obligatory Labour's Day parade.

It was like Nathan said, the official news was held secret for a long time (days), until the rumour was wide-spread throughout the country and it was impossible to hide the truth anymore.

Interesting views of professor Zbigniew Jaworowski, a member of some radiation laboratory at that time who suggested using this liquid to prevent toxic assimilation of iodine.

He claims it wasn't necessary (in Polish), but at that time they didn't know the full picture (because the Russians didn't inform about the size of the catastrophe and Polish scientists just assumed the worst case scenario).

And an article from Wprost (in English), where they say that according to UNSCEAR (United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation) report the meltdown at Chernobyl wasn't a big deal.

I don't know, I guess it's hard believe it, when you read what people, who visited those lands, are saying. We all know the UN is a corrupted organization :(

Edit: Rzeczpospolita article (in Polish) from 2008, some interesting points:


Edit time of 15 minutes is too short :)

Other fragments of this last article:



And I remember a song, heard at some concert, probably in 1986 or 1987, with the text "Płyn Lugola to nie Coca-Cola"

Travel / Getting from Krakow to Warsaw [99]


If you check Polish Railways site at the link Harry gave:


and select a train, then you click on "Fares" (at the bottom) to see the price (it works only with certain types of trains at the moment, but the fastest connection, IC train - 2 hrs 49 min - costs 107 PLN in the 2nd class and 141 PLN in the 1st class, with the following remark: "Price contains additional payment IC/EC(1): 25.00 PLN; -in some trains additional payment can differentiate")

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]


We say "trzy grosze" (for "two cents") in Polish, inflation :(

Life / Polish movies with English subtitles [87]

Yes, they are. I PM'ed eras77, so she knows more about the recent releases (I know she got her hands on Barwy ochronne, but I'm not sure if she still needs any of the other films).

History / What Was Poland like in the year 1988? [50]


Well, I don't know the life in a real prison, but you can read or see (in the movies) about people who spent years behind the bars and when they are released they struggle, because they learned how to live with the harsh, but simpler rules during their imprisonment and now the "real world" is too overwhelming, too complicated to start anew.

That's what this short poem (parable) was about. Those who were born in an oppressed country ("in the cage") didn't know any other life, so they tried to rationalize it, to find the positives (the owner supplied food and some basic security), while those who knew the life in a free world (with all its difficulties - like having to take care of themselves) still missed the freedom.

Ptaszki w klatce by Ignacy Krasicki, published 1779, after the first partition of Poland, 1772, before the second (1793) and the third partion (1795), so when only parts of Poland were divided between Russia, Preussia (today's Germany) and Austria)

"Czegoż płaczesz? — staremu mówił czyżyk młody —
Masz teraz lepsze w klatce niż w polu wygody".
"Tyś w niej zrodzon — rzekł stary — przeto ci wybaczę;
Jam był wolny, dziś w klatce — i dlatego płaczę".

English translation by Christopher Kasparek (from Wikipedia).


Written in the 18th century, it pretty much reflects what was happening under the communist rule in the years 1945-89. And what is happening today - many of the people born in the cage can't adapt to a new reality, where they are no longer given, what they need, but have to fight for it (like wild, free animals).

Poland, after so many years, or even centuries, under foreign rules, isn't as strong as it should be, so we won't have soon the western European standards of living. The price for the political freedom is a lower social security (lower wages, pensions, more unemployment), and loosened social/familiar relations (along with other cultural changes mentioned by Polonius3), hence many people (especially older ones) are unhappy with all what happened after 1989, because they had adapted well to their lives in the cage and then they had to adapt to a new situation, and quite often they failed. I think, we can't really blame them for it, still it pisses me off sometimes, and I wished they could all travel back in time to their idealized cages.

Those sentiments are strengthened especially when people see how the long-time oppressors were able to arrange their lives: most state-owned companies were privatized and the ex-communist prominents, including the cruel secret police members, got the lion shares in those companies, thus gaining the economical power, or rather keeping it, which gave them of course strong influences in politics as well.

So I can risk a statement that the transition to an indipendent Polish state in 1918 (after the WWI), after over 100 years of occupation by Russians, Germans and Austrian, was still easier than what Poland had to face in 1989, because the commies left for the next genarations only bare bones of a country.

Life / Polish Nursery Rhymes [243]


look at the first page of this thread, there's a similar question in this post (link)
and you'll some answers below (page 1, but also page 2 - aguha's post, there are many different versions of this text, so you have to choose the one that has most resemblance to what you remember.

btw, Aguha wrote:


that's incorrect, she got confused with another verb ("ważyła" - she weighted), but "warzyła" has nothing to do with measurements (weight), "warzyć" means "to boil, to cook" ("gotować" in modern Polish), the pronounciation of "ż" and "rz" is identical, hence the error.

Language / WHY IS SATELITA MASCULINE? [25]

Guys, learning Latin (or at least Italian/Spanish) never hurts :)

With some exceptions (like "mężczyzna", "sędzia", "oferma") those words were borrowed from Latin, where they also presented this irregularity (-a ending and male gender).

Since this combination isn't natural for Polish, so the rarely used words (like "asteroida" or even "planeta") switched to the common sense gramatical gender quite smoothly.

Trying to change the gender of "mężczyzna" to female (because of -a ending) would be much more difficult :)
Originally it was "mąż" for a man (today "mąż" = husband), I don't know why they applied the typically female ending to it (or more precisely to the adjective "męski" = manly, you may find the ending -yzna in other words, "ojczyzna", "ojcowizna", "£emkowszczyzna", "golizna", "blizna", "łatwizna" etc., they are always femele gender).


Well, in German "das Weib" (a woman) and "das Mädchen" (a girl) both have a neuter gender, so Polish isn't the only language with such "problems".

Language / ssać - please conjugate [15]


It's regional, I guess.
I'm from central Poland and I always use 'ssę', 'ssie' etc.
There are some verbs with different endings ("-ę" / "-am" opposition in 1st person singular) depending on the area where they are used, for example:

depczę - deptam
głaszczę - głaskam
I've been using "depczę", "głaszczę" for the most of my life, then living in Wielkopolska I found out that the forms like "deptam", "głaskam" are correct too (because at first I thought it's a common mistake in Poznań :)

Language / ssać - please conjugate [15]


I disagree,

Present tense
singular:
1. ssę
2. ssiesz
3. ssie
plural:
1. ssiemy
2. ssiecie
3. ssą

Imperative
3. person plural
niech ssą (other forms given by JustysiaS are correct)

Love / The age of consent in Poland is only 15 [147]

This thread needs reviving, because of today's news No.1

Travel / Poland wildlife and similar wild life where you live. [240]


You could open a free account on photobucket (or some similar site), upload all the files in the original resolution and post links here :)

Language / DOES POLISH LACK A WORD FOR STEPSISTER & STEPBROTHER? [15]


I don't agree.
Przybrany refers to something "taken as your own", "assumed", it's not a legal term, it's not restricted to parent-child relation, it can be also used in other contexts, like "przybrane imię" (about a pseudonim/nickname).

As for


- it's too subjective to decide. In my opinion a sentence like "My stepmother is leaving for holiday" conveys absolutely no information about your emotional stance towards your stepmother.

Language / DOES POLISH LACK A WORD FOR STEPSISTER & STEPBROTHER? [15]

If two divorced people marry each other, but they don't adopt the child(ren) of the new wife/husband, then the children are not related at all, they are just underage strangers leaving under the same roof :(

So I guess the word "przybrany" could be used here, because it's not a legal term (which would be "przysposbiony/adoptowany" for a child).

Language / What are some loanwords in the Polish language? [24]

Too many to start a list. Name a domain of life in which you're interested, so we can narrow the list.
Other important influences:
First of all the Latin, it was only in the Renaissance (14th century in Italy, but 16th century in Poland) when people started using their own languages for "noble" purposes (so not just everyday speech, but also literature, philosophy, sciences etc.), so it's natural that also Polish has many Latin terms. Ancient Greek is important in scientific names, especially prefixes and suffixes (for example tele-, -logia) often combined with stems from other languages.

Germans were popular settlers on Polish lands, and many cities were located (=founded) on German laws, hence the terminology is often borrowed from German (ratusz for Town council, burmistrz for a mayor).

Italian left many words in Polish culture and some in cuisine (and I don't mean only pizza, but also words borrowed in 17th century, when a Polish king married a woman of the Sforza family who introduced vegatables here, previously unknown, because Poland had no overseas colonies, so we weren't eating for example "pomidor"). Many terms in music, like anywhere in the word, in big part thanks to the Italian invention of opera.

After Italian the French (Enlightment) became the cultural capitol of Europe, so we naturally have many French words as well.
Other maybe less significant as for numbers:
Years of fights with the Ottoman Empire resulted in borrowing many military terms from Turkish.
Also in the Middle Ages we were borrowing from Czech, but I guess those words are harder to trace, because our languages were quite close, so many words do "look" like typically Polish after so much time.

Some Hungarian, Russian (especially because of the partitions of Poland between Russia, Germany and Austria, 1772-1918, also another wave of strong German influences).

Of course you can find other source languages too, but those loanwords came mostly indirectly (like Arabic words via Spanish, Turkish, Italian).

Edit: I probably omitted Lithuanian and Ukrainian (although I'm afraid Ukrainian wasn't considered a separate language), we had a POL-LIT Commonwealth going for 400 years, which included about half of the current Ukraine, so there must have been some influences from the locals as well.

Love / Polish Pet Names For Girls. [156]


Do you mean those?



Well, all of them are diminutive forms, in the Vocative case.
żabko - little frog,
kotku - kitty? (little cat),
rybko - little fish,
kwiatuszku - little flower
aniołku (aniołek is Nominative case) - little angel.

There's also "misiu" (little bear, teddy bear) - I hate it, but I've heard many couples using it.

Travel / Getting from Krakow to Warsaw [99]

I checked too, for an IC (3 hrs journey) you'd have to pay 136 PLN in 1st class and 102 PLN in 2nd class, I think you can safely choose the 2nd class :)

for "Express" (8.00 AM from Kraków Główny, 10.55 at Warszawa Centralny) the prices are 121 PLN (1st class) and 87 PLN (2nd class)