Poland is horrible and I have to live here - somebody call a whambulance!

@WarSore

You joined the board 5 days ago and in this short period of time somehow managed to make over 100 posts, all containing pretty much the same thing. Therefore, I started this thread especially for you because I'm a thoughtful kinda guy. If you work really hard this thread may become a sort of All Things Wrong With Poland Encyclopedia - your magnum opus, so to speak.

So, please post all your anti-Polish rants here instead of polluting tens of threads all over the forum. Thank you.

He's very much in line with Brits I've known in real life who are personally offended by anything in Poland that's different from the UK.... IME they are the Europeans that adapt least well to Poland and usually either leave as quickly as they can or bump along from disaster to disaster until they can't take the country not adapting to them anymore and leave.

Some do settle and acclimate and learn the language and how things function but that's a minority.

As I've said, I did my fair share of venting about things in my early days but at some level I did realize I was venting* and fortunately there was no internet for me to immortalize my rants about how I needed to take over Polish TV and give a series of educational lectures....

*complaining when living in a new country is a necessary process to deal with cognitive dissonance and other tensions... I don't trust anyone who doesn't vent in that kind of situation....

In fairness now, he's quite right in many of his observations. One cannot but sympathise. I notice he uses the word 'no-mark' - haven't heard that for years, wonder if he's from Liverpool. And although I'm sure he's not laughing, I found his comments rather entertaining :)

The only words of consolation I can offer him are that he has no idea how much worse it was twenty years ago!

I'm sure that lots of Poles would agree about the youtube channels that seem to bother him wherein Poles criticize the modern UK (or Ireland, I'm sure there are some criticizing Ireland too....)

He's spot on.

About what, specifically?

I just found this video by a Ślązak living in Ireland for 20 years about the benefits and drawbacks... he likes the people and the location but hates the weather, traffic culture, poor workmanship and the healthcare system...

Another video, this time from England...

This guy complains about general ugliness, depressing surroundings and 'bylejakossść'... (starts around 9:10)

In other words, he likes the people who caused climate change, don't know how to make things and run the healthcare system.

Other than that, Ireland is a lovely place...if you ignore migrants...

I watched both videos.

When I was done, I fell on my knees to thank God for telling me to run from Poland and never be forced to listen to this horrible language.

Now this for comparison...perfect...

Why are you being so silly? Have you caught the Novi disease?

Of course there are ugly places everywhere, especially in inner cities around the world, but England is a beautiful country with some of the best preserved architectural history, including the vernacular, maintained in most cases by the ordinary citizens for love of their heritage. It also has acre upon acre of stunning countryside and coastline.

As for Ireland - he doesn't like the driving culture?? What a joke. Drive on Irish roads and see the difference between driving there and in Poland. Irish drivers generally are courteous and drive safely. We have some of the safest roads in the EU. Poles drive badly because as a society they tend to be rude and impatient. Irish people aren't, they're the opposite. Maybe visit sometime and discover for yourself.

As someone who spent 3 years in Ireland and drove there for about 2.5 years, I can speak only in superlatives about Irish drivers.

They are cuddly, fluffy teddy bears behind the wheel compared to the overwhelming majority of Poles.

In the words of the youtube guy in Ireland: na poczuntku ci tłumacza.

I'm not making any claims.... I just watching videos and reporting what others say. The guy who didn't like Irish driving/parking is a bus driver and that could color his perception. One particular complaint relates to people parking in such a way that he has to make a detour....

Did you listen to the guy complaining about bylejakość? He says there are very nice places in England but also many that are just depressing with badly built and poorly maintained buildings (and Polish people will never get over the prevalence of single pane windows in England).

I remember you commenting on how pleasant the driving was there, compared to Poland - and you were in Dublin mostly. You never really experienced how relaxing and beautiful it is when you get out of the city and drive on the open road. People don't tailgate, they don't overtake in the face of oncoming traffic, basically they don't drive recklessly for the sake of getting to their destination five minutes earlier. We had a public information campaign years ago in Ireland and I can still remember the slogan 'Arrive alive' ........ Poles could do with reflecting on that. The number of single vehicle accidents in Poland on empty country roads, with people crashing into trees etc. and being killed, is purely a result of speeding and losing control of the vehicle as a result.


He's talking through his arse. He has limited experience of driving in one place, Limerick city. The patience of people sharing very narrow streets in rural towns and villages, with massive expressway coaches is extraordinary - as is the skill of the drivers. If you read the comments on the video you'll see that a lot of his countrymen disagreed with him.

You are preaching to the converted, Atch. I would really love to see Poles adopting Irish driving style but I wouldn't hold my breath. Hot Slavic blood, ridiculously high testoterone levels, Sarmatian ambition... what to do? Ehh...

Judging by the limited number of his posts that I've read - I wouldn't say so. He picks one negative thing about Poland and blows it out of proportion.


Well, someone like you and jon357 - for sure :)))


Funny you should say that, because it looks to me like WarSore caught that disease, it's just, unlike Novichok, he can be quite funny :)

But he doesn't realize we're laughing at him and not with him....


What about his problems with the healthcare system?

Healthcare - partly depends on where you live. Quality is generally very good when you can access the services. Accessing them is an ever-increasing problem. Severe staff shortages in certain areas and lack of provision of things like cancer services in the more remote regions like the northwest, also very little in the way of post-operative care etc. in those places for more serious things like heart surgery. You can get the care but you have to travel to the next county for it. There is a particular shortage of GPs (general practitioners/family doctors).

Waiting times to see specialists can be long so a lot of people will go privately for the initial consultation with a specialist in order to get into the system for treatment. That's what I did back in 2013. Waited two weeks for an appointment (instead of three months) to see the specialist at his private rooms and then he treated me as a public patient at the hospital. The surgery was done within a couple of weeks and there was no charge for it, only for one night in the hospital. We have a similar system to the UK where specialists do both private and public work at the same time.

this is even more pronounced in Poland (to the extent that you cannot get to hospital with a serious health issue, unless you first privately consult the doctor who works in the hospital, so I heard)

In my previous post I meant that his writing style can be funny at times from what I've noticed :) For example here:

https://polishforums.com/life/poland-around-horrible-smell-sweat-26785/7/#msg2034151

I laughed out loud at that "ripe yeti soaked in spirytus" lol 😂

And as a Tolkien fan I appreciate the Uruk-hai reference :)


I've never heard about it being that bad. Apparently you can get more interest from a doctor at the hospital if you went for a private visit first and he was the one who sent you to the hospital (that's something I've also observed from my own experience when I had a surgery, I guess). My PRL-raised mother even told me to bribe that surgeon, but I'd rather die than do such a thing lol

Simple minds are easily amused.

@amiga500, "love" you too, kangaroo boy :)))

It's a valid point. People in PL often block pavements and entrances. Very bad for wheelchair users and others with impaired mobility. U de EU disability discrimination rules, people who park so badly that they impair access are supposed to be fined. I would give points for parking that badly.


I did that in the U.K. once. It was for something elective but still annoying so it wasn't a priority. He put me on a list he had of patients who were in a trial (the trial was a nurse doing the procedure) and it was sorted within weeks.

At the same time, provide parking spaces that do not cost a fortune. Retard Trzaskowski and his green policies aim to drive cars out of the city.