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

You're getting it wrong here. From what I've noticed that's what mainly foreigners (usually from the West, but also from Ukraine, RuSSia, etc.) are saying who are visiting or living in Poland plus the Poles who live or lived in the West and are visiting. Majority of Poles never lived anywhere else and they have no comparison and the first they hear (often to their surprise) of "Poland being clean" is from people from "outside".


Sorry, but I'm getting some sort of cognitive dissonance here. So many people have been saying what a great city Warsaw has become, both foreigners and Poles living in Warsaw...
When you moved to Warsaw - was it such a "hole" too back then or has it become one only recently, according to you?



Why is that? Too cosmopolitan for their taste?

That's funny, because the only city that comes to my mind as worthy of visiting in the US is New York.

I think the only complaint I've heard about people from Warsaw was them being arrogant and rude/boorish. As for the city - the complaint was that it was ugly, but that has been changing with time. 🤔

Btw, I knew WarSore wouldn't go away lol This forum will be his life now ;D I'm afraid that "two Novichoks" will be too much for PF to handle though...

It's great to visit, though people say it can be challenging to live in.

Some places in the South sound worth a visit, Charleston, Savannah. Miami, the cities like Biloxi in a string along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico

In Annie Hall, Woody Allen said this about New York:

"Don't you see? The rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left‑wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes-and I live here."

New York is Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots, and Abominations of the Earth.

People hate it for its arrogance, its sinfulness, and its greed. Same reason people hate Moscow.

People hate its power. The state used to be called the Empire State, because New York had its long tentacles dipping into every single pie. Whether it was the studios of Hollywood, the factories of Detroit, the oils derricks of Houston, or the meat packing districts of Chicago. The whole country worked for New York. The same way all of Russia works for Moscow.

@Paulina

Initially, and for a long while, it was like "Well, this is kind of gritty and cool. There's graffiti all over the place and high-rise blocks, it evokes the 'eastern Europe' of the imagination." Then, when you get tired of looking at "TYLKO LEGIA" on every other wall, and dodging dogs*t and malpki all the time, and actually living in the tiny, cramped, old block apartments surrounded by said sh*t and malpki and covered with said Legia Ls and so on, you realise you don't actually like living here as much as you originally did.

Mainly because they can earn more money in the West. As for the UK I also heard about less bureaucracy - it's easier to set up your own company, for example. I've never heard of Poles moving there because of "lower taxes" though. Or anywhere else in the Western Europe for that matter, I think. 🤔 For example, my relative moved to Germany to earn enough money to build a house in Poland. He built the house and moved back to Poland. I've never heard of Germany being some kind of "tax heaven".


Yeah, exactly.


Which one?


I think couchmigrant either doesn't realise or is forgetting what kind of place Poland, Warsaw and Poles are coming from. He could use some empathy and maybe basic knowledge about the history of the country he's living in currently. 🤨

No one moves because of this. No active or potential entrepreneur.

If Poles are at all like Russians - then it may be a larger problem of attitude.

In Russia, if I share with my friends that I'm starting a business, they'll give me 50 reasons for why it's not gonna work.

In America, everyone wishes you luck, and tries to connect you with somebody who could be useful.

Britain has the same problem though, if not worse. Not sure the business climate is any better in Britain than in Poland.

@Bobko, I'm not saying that this is the reason why Poles initially move to the UK. I'm saying what they notice once they're there.


Oh, I can imagine. I just don't understand why people living outside of New York would hate the most famous and interesting city in their country?


In my mind New York is the centre of art, fashion, etc. Many American movies were made there and I guess that made it a big tourist attraction.


Isn't there also a bit of jealousy at play though? Because sometimes I have an impression that some people in Poland suffer from some kind of "Warsaw jealousy syndrome". 🤔


How? Obviously Warsaw, New York and Moscow attract many more people from around the country than other cities, but I don't quite understand how the whole country "works" for those cities?

Well, clearly the novelty wore off and the reality of living in the country set in. It sounds like it's time for you to move to another country, because Poland doesn't sound like "your place on Earth" lol


Maybe once you're already visiting the US anyway. New Orleans too, I guess. But there are so many more interesting places in the world (at least for me) - so those definitely wouldn't be high on my list for visiting. 🤔

@Paulina


London gets this too. It's where the wealthiest and the rulers all are, it gets the most investment in public transport, etc. The north of the country, and also Scotland and Wales, feel like they are being ruled over by a load of effete rich southerners with no connection to them, their needs and concerns, etc. And historically, yeah, that's been the case and still is. I get it.

Meanwhile, racists hate London because it's incredibly multicultural. Right-wingers in general hate it because of all the left-wing intellectuals there (and those they would term "the blue-hair brigade" or something).

What I've noticed about Warsaw is that people from outside don't like it for some of the kinds of reasons above, and also because they hate big, busy cities and it's hell to them (there is a DRAMATIC difference between Warsaw and somewhere like Lublin, for instance) but they generally love Krakow. It's because Krakow is more like their typical image of a Polish city, with old architecture, an old town and castle and stary rynek (that weren't rebuilt after WW2) and not so much concrete everywhere. Many seem to wish Krakow was the capital and kind of see it as the real one.

Varsovians are guilty of being a bit sh*tty about non-Varsovians too, though - all this talk of people being 'jars', and the way some mock/disregard Praga for not being part of the 'real city' - very similar to the way certain Londoners talk about south of the river, or some New Yorkers talk about "bridge and tunnel folk" from Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, etc.

for the love of god, stop telling me to get out of your country all the time, you sound like a Konfederacja supporter. I am going nowhere anytime soon, just like all the moaning Poles in my country talking sh*t about it constantly. You sound like a stuck record - give it a rest FFS. I am trying to actually have conversations with you and not have flipping slanging matches and all that nonsense.

....not very much different than Berlin. The west-Germans got used to bankroll Berlin since the times of the wall...the rest not so much!

Amarillo.
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Your mind can be misleading, so don't rely on it completely.
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Yes, the same is with Paris. Which I enjoyed visiting greatly, even though it wasn't terribly clean :)


I'm not telling you anything, I'm just making an observation. You clearly hate Poland and everything about the country, including the people. You wrote yourself that you're here only for the EU passport. So I think it's fair to say that it's not "your place on the Earth", right? o_O

Btw, where did you grow up in the UK, if you don't mind me asking?


I'm just saying what I personally find interesting and appealing about New York. That city is the cultural centre of the US, so it's pretty obvious that someone like me would find it interesting.
That, and the cosmopolitan vibe :)

@Paulina


I doubt Poland is many Ukrainians' "place on Earth". The UK sure isn't many Poles', with all the gripes they have with it. Yet they stay, and so do I. People move to all kinds of places and stay there for all kinds of reasons. For most of us immigrants, it's not as simple as just putting a pin on the map and moving somewhere, and similarly moving elsewhere / "back home" is also not just as simple as packing up and going. Have you ever emigrated? If so, you would get it, I think...?

"Just here for the passport" was hyperbole used during arguments btw.

I'm from the Big Smoke. Dirty, expensive, crazy, tiring, exhilarating...

I don't see it. I don't see him hating Poland. Even if he does, as long as he obeys the law and does not riot with a Mexican, sorry, British flag, I don't care.
Hey, don't you call me a nationalist, and aren't you a proud liberal? What's going on here?
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The cosmopolitan vibe is often appreciated by those who visit, but it has been negatively impacted by globalization. Now, when you go to any city, you'll encounter a chaotic mix of cultures that some may label as cosmopolitan, but what it really reflects is the effect of illegal migration. To genuinely experience a cosmopolitan atmosphere, you typically need significant financial resources, similar to someone like Jeff Bezos.

Nearly every movie is based in New York. Sometimes I'm sitting in a movie theater, and a scene comes up that features the actual building in which I'm sitting in that very moment.

But it's not all Devil Wears Prada and Sex in the City. We also get to see the city destroyed by aliens, asteroids, terrorists, etc. If it's an American city getting wrecked in some movie - it's always NY and never Chicago.


There's a lot of New Yorkers everywhere. In Miami, in LA, in Denver, in St Louis - literally everywhere. They carry their NYC attitude with them, and it pisses people off.

John Updike said:

"The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding."

Then Woody Allen also said, that a real New Yorker sees traveling outside New York as "camping".

These people weren't making it up - some New Yorkers are really this insufferable.

Some anecdotes from my own experience:

1) Took some folks skiing. In the middle of nowhere. Had to go to like 5 places, before it was decent enough for them to eat in. Then they started ordering fancy cocktails, from a bartender that only serves Jack and Coke or Coors Light. They didn't even understand why he hated them.

2) Again, took some folks upstate, to show where my plant is located. To the people in the car, it was like a safari. A girl in the back, kept asking me: "What do people do here? Do they have jobs? Where do they work?". I had to explain to her, that it works like any other economy. You need a haircut, so there is a barber. You need food - so there is a supermarket clerk. She couldn't believe me, that these people were actually seriously trying to live their life out there.

3) I had a girlfriend, that for trips outside New York, would pack food for herself for every day, because she felt she could not find edible food in the rest of this huge country.

So yeah, New Yorkers can sorta be blamed for the hate they attract. They think other Americans are insects.

@Ironside
Stary thank you. Also ironic that the 'liberal' is the one who's basically told me to get out of her country about five times already xD

@WarSore, firstly, I'm not a liberal, I'm a centrist. Secondly, I don't recall telling you to get out of my country (even though I actually do want you out :)).


I can understand why Ukrainians have been coming to Poland though. Also, in many aspects moving to Poland was an "upgrade" for them. For you it's clearly a "downgrade."


What is that supposed to mean?


Why did you move out then?


Ah, so he's no Poland-hater, he's just a generalising, exaggerating, unfair, hysterical, trolling a$$hole - OK, I get it :)))

@Paulina
Would say moving to the UK was an 'upgrade' for Poles, in many ways? Or does the nationalism just not allow even the idea of that? ;))))

Thinking in terms of upgrades and downgrades is simplistic. Every emigration is a complex series of trades in every way, except for if you're fleeing a warzone, and even then you're leaving SOME things behind.

If you ever emigrated, you would understand these things a little more. To you, I'm just being mean and unfair about your beloved country. You don't have any insight into the experience of living abroad long-term, and how hard it is to be a foreigner in another country - especially one as homogenous and tight-knit as Poland. You also can't really comprehend what it's like to be living somewhere and seeing the people of that country, many of whom live in yours, insulting your homeland relentlessly online. It's a pretty unique experience and not you'll enjoy if you're lucky.

It is a coping mechanism; it reflects how the minds of villagers deal with the alien realities of living in a different country.

I don't know about him, but many British people come from small villages like Trent on Stick, where they have lived their entire lives. The people they associate with are those they have known since kindergarten, and they rarely travel more than 70 kilometers for work or education. For such a person, being in another country can lead to intense panic.

@Ironside
I come from a city that makes Warsaw look like a mud hut village. So, try again. Most Poles go into a panic when they come to my city, see how big and multicultural it is, and sh*t their boksery.

It's funny, what you've just described is about 95% of Polish emigres in the west. They come from Shitholeowo to a seriously big western metropolis and their defence mechanism is to start complaining about all the black/Asian people, and stupid things like the weather...

Of course, all of Western Europe was better developed than Poland when we joined the EU.


Dude, you don't know me, hold your wild horses a bit :)))


Yes, yes, sure, but that "upgrade" usually means the same for majority of people when moving from poorer to richer and more developed countries.


I'm just commenting on your generalising, and yes, often unfair, comments. You dropped on this forum like a bomb behaving like some maniacal rage-ranting weirdo o_O

@Paulina
I have now calmed down a bit. Sorry. Trying my best to just have conversations.

The combative culture of this place is crazy though. I'd almost forgotten how forums are like this, not like the sanitised wider web. It doesn't exactly bring out the best in people, lol.

Where have I stated that this is about you? I clearly indicated that it is not about you. However, you must admit that this could be a story shared by many English teachers who have moved abroad.
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Imagine seeing rats walking on the sidewalks with top hats and umbrellas. Anyone would be taken aback.

@Ironside
Lol. Top hats and umbrellas - is your view of the UK based on a PRL newsreel from the 1950s? I knew PiS got up to some sh*t with TVP during their rule, but...

You think that nationalism is bad, yet you hate on foreign people in Poland, any chance you get. lol!
You are going in circles. Hey, don't forget he is a male. I bet he is oppressing women. Go after this as well.
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Hey, don't you have top hats and umbrellas in Lodonstan?

Stereotypes: Rude people
(like the old joke: How do you ask the time in New York?
"Excuse me, do you have the time or should I just go fvkk myself?")

Also a lot of propaganda from New Yorkers about how great it is, you can only listen to people call it the greatest place on Earth so many times.... especially since cleanliness... issues are well known as its infested with rats and cockroaches (unusual for a city that far north in the US).

And the living conditions don't appeal to most. In a lot of ways it's the most similar to large European cities. Lots of NYers live in apartments which is not appealing to most Americans and there's an extensive public transport system (though it's far below standard of pretty much any European city).

Perceptions about high crime and bad local government: There's actually a cycle... they elect democratic liberals who are soft on crime and living conditions deteriorate and they they vote for a law and order republican to clean things up until its much safer and better run... and then they vote for liberal democrats who let the city decline again...

There's more but that's enough to start

@Ironside
No, you're right, plenty of top hats. You can hide a really big knife in a top hat...

now you are talking ...
Wasn't that in your city? Peaky Blinders

@Ironside
NOW who's trolling?!

City living anywhere is crap.