I'm from China and I would like to ask about the real experience of life in Poland

I'm a Chinese
I plan to live in Poland in the future, and even later settled in Poland.please share with me the trivial things in life!! Thanks Any advise or experiences on this would be really appreciated.

We hate commies and drink a lot of Wodka.

Joker, at last you have shown some human traits in you.

As Joker said, expect to drink a lot of wodka.

But besides that, your biggest shock will be that of freedom of speech.....

Enjoy.....

Get ready to pay if you want to use a public toilet.

...or stay near McDs or hotels. There it's free.

Stay away from drunken Brit stags parties. If you see them stumbling down the street cross to the other side.

Oddly enough, in almost 30 years I've never seen even one of those groups that Joker (who lives in America and never visits Poland) is pretending to warn about

The OP should avoid vodka. It causes a lot of problems in Poland and is associated with poor people.

The Chinese don't go to McDs.

I did. I even flew on the same plane with them both ways.

Not really a thing anymore... I've seen a few but not especially loud and disorderly (I know the worst ones were in Krakow but again I don't think it's so common anymore). US Polonia tends to have very... outdated views about what's going on now.

Hopefully they had a fun (and boisterous) visit.

For myself, I've never seen such a thing. Stag parties having fun, yes, 'drunken stumbling', no.

There's enough 'drunken stumbling' by locals. The difference between that and foreign visitors is that the locals are often either aggressive, over-friendly or both, whereas the visitors aren't.


What they've heard somewhere without any understanding of context.

I saw them yelling, pulling down their pants and mooning people riding in back of a carriage. I felt bad for the poor girl driving it.


And puking as well. They would get arrested in America for disorderly conduct if they pulled that stupid crap.


But I have! And I saw a bunch of drunken Brits acting like Aholes with my own two eyes. I have the stamps on my passport that say otherwise, so youre just projecting as usual.

Krakow is beautiful city when drunken Brits aren't there to ruin it for everyone else.

Sounds fun! Better than sitting stony-faced and pretending that you're enjoying yourself.


I haven't, not in nearly 30 years. Ever. I did once see a couple of pinch-faced post-menopausal ladies in a restaurant in Gdańsk grumbling about a group of rowdy Brits. In fact the group were sailors, some Polish, some r*SSian and some American. No British people in the restaurant at all, except me who was quietly eavesdropping on the two crabby old b1tches.


It's a tourist hell, full of tat shops, rip off restaurants and people trying to get you to go into clip joint nightclubs.

I was laughing my ass off at how rowdy the Brits were, it was kind of funny. They were singing BoB Denvers " take me home country road". Hearing that song with British accents was hilarious! Ok, I was drinking with the Brits as well.

It was another group/party that I saw outside. They were totally blasted and acting obnoxious.


Its not as bad as Amsterdam or numerous other cities around the world. I like Krakow, its a fun city.


Have you ever heard about McDonalds " pink slime"?

It's got a lot worse over the past decade. Not very nice nowadays.

It depends. Their air pollution levels have dropped immensely due to restrictive laws. PolamKrakow already noticed it last winter.

....but this winter will be very special.

I have just checked their levels and they are rated as mild. It means not bad compared to previous years.

It's still pretty bad though. Still one of the worst in the world.

notesfrompoland.com/2022/11/21/polish-city-tops-global-air-pollution-ranking-as-winter-smog-sets-in/

On 20 November this year the level of PM2.5 was 800% above the maximum safe level and in Warsaw it was 400% above it,

Do you mean PolamKrakow was wrong?????

Looks that way :)

I'm thinking more of crowds and rapacious tourist traps.

Poor people heat with whatever they can.

The air pollution is not caused by poor people. It's caused by an over-reliance on coal as a power source. Burning rubbish etc is a contributory factor but not the main cause by any means - and there is a culture of burning everything that is not confined to the poor.

But I read articles in which Krakow businesspeople complained there weren`t any crowds of tourists due to covid and the war. Those crowds you saw were probably Ukrainian refugees who can hardly be called tourists. :)

Freedom to say anything that falls into official agenda? Just like in Stalin times in USSR? ;) ;)

smog is not caused by power generation simple as that - if it were, Bełchatów, Turoszów and Opole areas would be among those most affected and they are not - smog is caused by low level emissions, just plenty of them and this is caused by burning coal - it happened so that coal was the cheapest option to heat your house not so long ago (we heat our house with coal for the very reason - I don't live in a city so, yeah, don't jump on me for causing smog in Kraków or Warsaw)

My last visit was after COVID and before WWW3 and it was jammed with tourists.

I was with a group of friends, all Polish, a mix of men and women and mostly elderly and the girls who stand outside bars and restaurants trying to get people inside were at us every few metres speaking English.

It was like running a gauntlet.

Not smog , but coal fired power does cause air pollution.


A breakdown of NOx pollution highlights Poland and Germany from the EU. Bełchatów is on the top of the list, accompanied by four German plants in the top ten. These are what they call 'dirty' power plants.


I didn't. And actually smog in small villages is just as bad as in cities because of having to heat your home with stoves. People on low incomes having to burn coal and rubbish to stay warm is not their fault. It's the fault of successive governments who fail people in myriad ways. While Poland was still a Communist country (supposedly an 'equal' society), some people were lucky enough to live in a block with subsidised heating but others had to live in a freezing house and warm themselves somehow. Even coal was often too expensive. My husband's family knew one old man who literally went to bed for the winter because he couldn't keep himself warm any other way. He could not afford the tons of coal that would have been needed to warm the house for several months. That was the year that the snow came in October and didn't thaw till April.