A Muslim Arab in Poland who loves Polish KABANOS & VODKA

Few years ago I came to Poland with my polish wife for the first time, I didn't know much about Poland and frankly I thought it was a communist country which was a little bit off putting.

I was trying my convince her to immigrate to the US where I have a family and a life planned further ahead, but she really loved this country and I fell in love too the first time I stepped foot in Chopin International airport, it was spring time, everything was green and beautiful.

Since her attachment to Poland was infectious, and polish women could be very convincing sometimes, eventually we decided to move here together, where we spent quiet a lot of money to settle and learn the language and eventually recognizing my certificates etc.

The thing is, I had enormous love and respect for this country since the first time I stepped here, even though I'm originally a muslim arab, I decided to open up to my new life; I drank polish VODKA and fell in love with KABANOS and KARKOWKA, not to mention even stripping off for NAGA STREFA SAUNA when I was told that I can't put on more than a towel on Wednesdays :D I did all that and I never for once harrassed nor stared at the beautiful naked polish bodies -of course I peaked when no body was looking but so did poles.

My neighbours and colleagues love me, even the man at the Sauna likes me he even blinks sometimes ;)

But life in Poland isn't always that pink, many people really hate foreigners, you always feel them staring at or even acting rude and sometimes simply cursing and screaming about my color or my origin. I read WYBORCZA and RZECZPOZPOLITA everyday and you always feel the sense of accusation towards arabs as if we are a punch of animals coming to kill and rape women.

We are the same, we have good people and bad people just like you do, but the xenophobic sense unfortunately has taken over this country, people are afraid and ignorant which is a dangerous mix, poles criticise others all the time but they are closer to Saudi Arabia than most arabs are.

I came here with great love to Poland, I have never citicised it, I have always defended it online, I have seen myself growing old in here but now I'm afraid, I'm worried someone could hurt me or hurt my children, I'm worried that the current government could do much more to protect it's foreigners and I'm worried that Poland will end up alone with a low birth rate and a collapse in economy in the next few decades if current attitude did not change, Poles are living currently what we arabs like to call POOR PEOPLE SUDENLY GETTING RICH and SNOBBY.

Neither WYBORCZA nor RZECZPOSPOLITA describe Arabs as a punch of animals coming to kill and rape women.

Indeed Wyborcza (which is a piece of left-wing garbage) almost lick the as5 of arabs and refugees in general because os ridiculously politically correct.

"poles criticise others all the time but they are closer to Saudi Arabia than most arabs are."

As someone that lives in Saudi Arabia, i can say that you are terribly wrong. Poles will not put you in jail if you dont obbey any religious thing. On the other hand, i can go to jail if i drink water during daylight at Ramadan here.

I meant closer to Saudi in the way most people do not tolerate difference or have one vision influenced by national media.

What I ment regarding Wyborcza and Rzecz is that they are extremely biased, unfortunately the most open minded national media here is closer to the british Dailymail than to BBC

What I meant regarding your comment on Wyborcza and Rzecz is that you came here for trolling as it was obvious you never read those papers. The only question is when you get bored with your trolling.

I'm not a refugee, I've come here by my own will and with my own money with the intention of settling in and raising a family, I can still move anytime to any country of my choice but that is not what my wife nor I want.

I'm tired of being looked to as an unwanted person untill proven otherwise, a feeling that most foreigners of color in this country have, they even beat people in warsaw metro these days out of fear and hatered.

P.S. I don't think that helping refugees should be an obligation, nations should have there own decisions in regards to whom to help or sympathise with.

Peaceforce, if you want to blend in, it is all about clothes and accent.

I can tell if a black guy is British or African at fifty paces; it's all how he wears his clothes, and what style they are.

I did not even know a family friend was not English, but Lebanese, for many years. He had a posh English accent you see...:)

This is all I can suggest to you. Get to Polish elocution lessons!

I'm working on it, cheers man :D


It's sad but true that unlike in the US where most Arabs are educated elites, here in Europe many arabs came as skilled workers with no high education, they don't speak the local language and end up in low economical conditions, so people here are often surprised to meet a decent arab.

Is it so?, I don't believe it.

I don't believe you on that one.

@Alien
Kabanos (provided that it's the real thing and not that horrible 'drobiowy' or the 'plant based' one) is delicious but karkówka is never good.

It would suit Arab tastes though, basically meat for the sake of it.

I know it's tasty but it's made of pork and he's a Muslim. They, like Jews, don't eat pork.

I have the idea (from comments they have made) that most or maybe all muslims in Poland have had pork but don't like the taste (a few have told me they don't like the taste... which how would they know?)

If a person grows up eating pork (or lamb or goat) the taste is normal. A person who hasn't had either of those all their life is likely to not like them (they all have specific aftertaste that regular eaters don't notice).

I remember the first time I had lamb... I kind of wanted to spit it out because of the aftertaste....

So religious prohibition aside most won't eat it more than a time or two

Plus they've had it dinned into them in religious lessons that it's bad in various ways, as strongly as Mormons are told that coffee is bad and as strongly as evangelical Protestants are told that praying before religious statues is bad.


When I first arrived in PL years ago (and was missing lamb, a staple meat where I come from and entirely normal, whereas pork is seen as the poorest and least favoured choice for a Sunday dinner).

I went to dinner with a friend of a friend. Hardly unsophisticated since he worked at the Warsaw office of the BBC. He'd been to Greece on holiday and had cooked Moussaka. The first thing he said, even before his guests had taken their shoes off was: "it's lamb, but don't worry, I've cooked it for so long that you won't taste anything at all".

@jon357, that's interesting, because in my family (and I guess not only) kotlet schabowy (pork chop) was the most favoured choice for a Sunday dinner :)) For my mother a pork chop was a must for Sunday and when I was a kid you could hear the pork chops getting whammed on Sunday all over my block of flats lol To be honest I love pork lol ;O For me it's the tastiest meat aside from fish. If I'm given a choice - to eat a kotlet schabowy or kotlet drobiowy I choose the pork chop ;d

I suppose it's memories and fond times. I'm never really happy with the word chop as a translation of kotlet. Pork steaks is a bit better but not perfect, and you can say schnitzel in English. It's comfort food, and the first thing I eat when I come back to PL.

In the U.K., they have a tradition of doing a large joint of meat on Sundays, with the meat appearing in different forms (like pies) later in the week. Because a leg or other cut of pork (always but always with apple sauce) was always cheaper than lamb or beef, it was traditionally less favoured.

We used to have gammon joints sometimes, a sort of brined pork that's a reddish colour.

@jon357, my guess why pork was cheaper is that it was probably because cows and sheep were killed for meat less often since cows give milk and you get wool from sheep, so you need them alive, while pigs couldn't be used for anything else than meat. In my grandma's village cows were slaughtered for food very rarely. People needed them to get milk and to make cheese.


So what would be the right translation? Pork schnitzel? 🤔


Yes, I guess you could say that ;) :))

Yes. Perhaps "breaded pork schnitzel".


I'd guess the same. That and topography, since different land is suitable for different things. Poland has always had plenty of chicken and pork since both suit the type of land and rural economy well.

Also milk for cheese....


And pigs are more.... convenient than cows or sheep that either need land to graze on or preserved silage or roughage over the winter... a big part of a pig's diet is either table scraps or parts of plants that people can't eat. I remember a BBC documentary on how women in the UK coped with WWII shortages... one was a 'pig club' were four or five households fatten up a pig on kitchen refuse and then they all get some of the harvested meat.....


IME English speakers living in Poland don't translate a lot of food items.... usually they just say schabowy (maybe turning sch into sk) if I have to explain it to someone I just say breaded pork chop (though in the US pork chops are not usually pounded out and often fried without breading or are baked).

Ours are always on the bone with a lot of fat and are fried or grilled. A lot less popular than they used to be and I'm not sure why. In PL I'd not translate it (but almost never speak a word of English there unless it's with someone from abroad who's lived there for years and doesn't need translations).


Yes, that and the fact that marginal land (think Wuthering Heights or the valley in the photo in Random Chat) is only really suitable for sheep and a small farmer there wouldn't have had much to feed many pigs or chickens with.