Rate Poland (Life Quality / Culture and People / Food): 1-10!

They live off credit and pretend they can afford it.

A lot of people do, but are we the only ones? Who pays cash for houses around the world? Most people have credit cards for clothing and furniture. A large part of the lavish lifestyle is bought on credit, not unique to America.

zetigrek wrote:


I just thought of a new slogan for Poland:

"It's OK to be a douche....we understand."

trener zolwia wrote:


i've been to Walmart 1,000 times.

and I'm not visiting, I'm moving back.

PlasticPole wrote:


or even cars for that matter?

That's interesting, because in just about every shop and store in Africa, they smile and joke around. Hell, bus drivers smile.

That said, I think ratings like this don't make a lot of sense without providing a base in each category to rate against. What do you consider to contribute to a high quality of life? Convenience? Infrastructure? Health care? Vacation time? Access to credit? Safety? Government intrusion on your personal life? Nightlife? Purchasing power? diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks...

For me, I like living in Poland, just couldn't see myself getting old there... The Czech Republic on the other hand would be perfect if they had a coastline..


Those that save up for them and live within their means?
It's the norm in most developing markets where consumer credit isn't as widespread.

They have sun at least ;)

Access to credit is one measure of quality of life.


Well then you need to be more clear in your posts.

You're British. You have the worst food in the world. Anyone want a potato sandwich? How can you generalize all restaurants in Poland as crap? Polish food is more real than any food in the west. Another thing, "bland", natural food is usually the best for you because it doesn't have preservatives and artificial sweetening, among other things. You can't compare limey bread with Polish bread.

To another post about credit: credit is the biggest scam in the world and should be more regulated. If you're proud of your quality of life in having access to all the credit in the world then you can just dig your own grave. Why do you think the west is in such shambles? PEOPLE JUST DON'T GET IT. Not gonna waste more energy on this.

No need for personal attacks

I didn't say that. You are getting the quotes mixed up.


Jewish? Thats a new one to me.

Weg is a the dutch name for a street, but if you think a userid is a valid way of judging someone, am I right to think you are a moldy old cricket player?


Funny that, more Michelin stared restaurants in London than Paris. Only New York comes close to London for the quality and choice of its food.

Polish bread is pretty good, but the best bread in the world is Ukrainian, albeit made in the Kolos bakery in Bradford. Some UK bread is good but there are many types bread, I've never seen a proper French baguette in Poland.

Polish bread is the best Polish bread you can get; but not all great bread is Polish bread.


How many restaurants can guarantee that their food is organic? I've never seen that in Poland. Polish farmers are NOT organic they use pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Restaurants in Poland don't give a **** about where their ingredients come from or whats in them.

In Poland you will order food and it simply doesn't come with the ingredient specified. Sea Bass for instance; they NEVER serve Sea Bass but replace it with Sea Bream. Sea Bass cost twice as much and they charge exactly the same as the same dish with Bream, but still they lie on the menu. I went to a Thai restaurant and they had the gall to serve Chicken with Thai basil; without the Thai Basil - because the ran out by Thursday every week.

I go to Mexican,Indian, Thai, Chinese or anything but Polish restaurants and the 'chief' obviously have NO idea what the dishes are supposed to be like. Usually its some weird Polish interpretation with cabbage and sauerkraut added. Polish food is better, but my mother-in-law often find major fault with the cooking skills in Polish restaurants. Hell, I can make better pirogies than virtually any I've ever been served.

I stand by my assessment of Polish restaurants; Mediocre;

Oh No.

Not the "more natural" thing again.

How many times??

Jesus - Polish sausages/hams etc are full of preservatives, salt, water.

What on earth makes you think they aren't?

Not the home made stuff :)
Anyways, that Żur sure makes me feel randy sometimes. Not sure what's in that ingredients. lol

convex wrote:


oh come on. you go on and on about not borrowing money/taking any credit but you know damn well as an american that if you don't own a car in the USA, you can't get to work in most instances. whether you have the money saved up or not, you have to get to work. how many people pay cash, in full, for their vehicles?

trener zolwia wrote:


oooooor you made an ass out of u and me.

peterweg wrote:


Then I guess you learned something today.

peterweg wrote:


oh pull your head out of your a$$. where did I judge you based on your name? you're a classic example of the guy looking to make mountains out of molehills. I never did such a thing, go back and read what I wrote earlier for crying out loud.

peterweg wrote:


unfortunately i have to agree with you on something. anything other than polish food in poland is just shite.

My brother bought his ranger cash, '98, nice truck. The total percentage put down has decreased over the years to the "zero down" environment we have now. I wouldn't buy that debt. You see the same thing happening in Poland. Down payments as a percentage of the value of the loan is dropping like a rock.

But, we're deviating :) Don't have time to read the rest, gotta run.

convex wrote:


Great! As for the 22 year old recent grad who just landed his first full time job in a city 45 minutes away, chances are he won't have such a luxury.

Fuzzy,you have been toPoland for some time and you still compare everything to America as your point of reference.

Poland is not America and it will never be and I have to admit that the Americans has one of the best customer services in the world, even better then in Canada and I also agree that Poland should improve on their customer service a lot, but there has to be a law protecting people who are underpaid and work for peanuts (really). Many people who had fairly decent life were left without nothing once the communism was down and had to re branch (in America it is accepted and people are more skilled at moving across the country to look for another job), but in Poland it is not so common, since Pole are not such risk takers in that respect and I think that they like to stay closer to their families for one. It seems that even though you have been in Poland for some time, you have failed to gain some understanding of that culture, even though it has been your home. One the other hand I understand, since it takes a lot of effort and time to grow onto another culture. I hope that once you leave Poland you will take with you some good memories, not because I am a Polish patriot, but there is no way that you have never experienced anything good in Poland.

It will only happen once you go back to the US. Nothing in life is black and white and I am looking forward to your post from the states reporting on how you are finding your beloved country.

At this point I cannot predict what you are going to write, but I will be really interested in some honest evaluation of both countries once you set your foot again in the US. Good luck to you:)

well, that was off topic.
On topic:
the quality of food in Poland. It maybe lacks in variety when it comes to cultural background, but I still think that Polish cooking is really good considering the money Polish people spend on it. They are still able to make something out of nothing and I believe that salt should not be the only spice used in cooking.

I myself use a lot of them and some of my family members would not eat it because they are not used to the taste. Unfortunately I blame the lack of exotic spices during the communism, which still can be tasted in Polish cooking, but things are improving.

Today I am cooking a classic spagetti sauce for my cousin, which taste I brought from Italy years ago and I perfected it over the years in Canada. He asked me if it will have all the spices in it:), because he likes it.

Bulls'hit. I was in the States in September and everyone looked like they wanted to kill themselves.

aphrodisiac wrote:


sure, I'm guilty of that at times, but no more than anyone else in this forum. there are probably more threads and posts about America on PF than any other country, Poland included. the america reference is constant on PF.

aphrodisiac wrote:


My animosity displayed on this forum, I would argue, is a product of my strong understanding of this very thing. I don't hang out with Americans here, I learned Polish from scratch and have a Polish wife. I have had more than enough exposure to Poland and its people to have a very good understanding of this culture and my "beef" with people out here is how they just refuse to accept what their country really is. they are SO desperate to find something that their country does well or better than the rest that they're willing to puff it up to something it isn't and never was. Sorry, but I'm not going to keep my mouth shut when someone tells me customer service is good here, that Polish food is sooooo healthy and in America we only eat radioactive waste or that ethnic food is even worth considering in Poland.....and that's just food topics!

for those that haven't been reading my posts for very long, sure, i'm sure they see me as just a blatant poland hater who regrets ever coming here....but it's simply not true. the reason i even opened up a PF account is to comment on some of the completely absurd remarks on here about Poland and of course, because it's absolutely rampant here....comments about America.

as an english teacher in poland for 4 years, you can imagine how many poles i have met and the vast exposure i've had from it. i know quite well how polish people think and what people write on this forum just confirms it all. some good, some bad like any country....just don't tell me aphrodisiac that I "don't get it" because i slam poland and its people for talking utter crap. contrary to popular belief, i'd be more than happy to do the same towards america and its citizens, only those topics get even more frustrating hearing people tell me "how it is" in the USA when they've never even so much as set foot there.

aphrodisiac wrote:


of course. my time spent in poland has changed my life forever. an amazing learning experience that i will never forget. i've experienced plenty of good out here.....i just know that now, it's time to go home to the USA.

youtube.com/watch?v=oHqUipinDyw

well, maybe the economic situation has something to do with it, but then again, I have learnt that anything you post is usually out of proportion.

anyways, back on topic.

Weg is in German a road. This name doesn't sound Jewish at all for me. It's just simple German name not Yidish.

I was simply asking you what your ID means..... Wicket is a cricketing item.


The point is that you are judging a country by your own reference points.
To you the 'customer service' you get in Poland is important and a reflection of the attitudes of the people. Whereas in other countries serving staff are expected to be miserable and there its nothing to do with the general peoples attitudes. And of course ex-communist countries have a lousy concept of customer service, but you knew that before coming here, right?

I knew the food was poor before I came here, so imported every spice I could and taught myself how to cook all the nations food I like. I spend a lot of effort investigating good source of food material. But if you grew up in the US, you would naturally yearn for that sort of food and taste and not realize that the foods are generally over processed, the vegetables bland and the fish and meat chemically modified.

peterweg wrote:


isn't that the basis of just about every opinion from anybody on anything? isn't a good opinion an experienced, educated one?

if you say a football team is excellent, they can only be excellent if they win most of the time.

if you say an employee is excellent, he can only be excellent if he's better than most other employees.

if you say that a restaurant makes amazing pizza, it's gotta taste better than almost every other pizza you've ever had.

when i judge something like customer service, i say it is bad in Poland because it's worse than anywhere i've ever been and certainly eons behind the USA.

what's wrong with that?

It's your opinion and Peter's opinion is different. You made an offtopic for 2 pages only because you didn't like someone's opinion... so why the hell you ask others to score Poland if you can't respect those scores? It's obviouse that those scores are personal feeling not objective facts. Do you have problem with that? If so why to make such threads?

Beautiful.. I could not have described it better myself

I am not so sure.

from Wiki:

Yiddish (ייִדיש yidish or אידיש idish, literally "Jewish") is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages.

Dutch is a West Germanic language.

Jewish and Dutch just have many common Germanic words.

quality of life: 7
culture and people: 8 (even a 10 if i compare it to the multicultural countries Belgium and Netherlands)
food: 5 (there's some good stuff, but too many things look and taste like dogfood)

-Quality of life
5/10
just way too low wages and too many people who would be ****** up if they had no family

-Polish culture and people
7/10 (still best rating in europe except moldavia maybe)
on the one hand educated and/or decent people on the other still too many decadent pimps

-Food
8/10 great food, but I like to pass on meat from time to time, if you are not vegetarian its 10/10

Quality of life - Dependent on financial circumstances 4 to 10

Polish culture and people - There are still some hidden gems in PL, which is like going back in time, Generally people are very hospitable and very forth coming.7 to 10

Food - Amazing to very good, but don't look in the kitchen 6 to 10

Agree 100%

Food: some 6 points. It's very tasty but not very diverse.

Fuzzy, are you going to come up with some charts using this thread? It would be interesting to see :)

zetigrek wrote:


you're wrong.

i specifically requested several times for this thread to stay on topic, to stick with poland and not to rate other countries, yet failed in doing so. i even asked peterweg in particular why he was constantly referencing the USA in his posts

post #37, he wrote, completely out of nowhere, "USA. **** hole from coast to coast, Ive refused to move there (was offered it for work) and now refuse to even visit."

post #38, i asked him why he is bringing up the USA?

in post #42, he goes on and on trashing the USA for no particular reason and even finished the post with, "You know thats exactly the impression most visitors get of America?"

post #43, i yet again asked him, "why are you bringing up America?"

post #44, YOU wrote, "To rate something you have to have a point of reference. So comparing to America, Poland doesn't look so bad in the eyes of a Brit :)"

and then you attacked me right after saying, "Now you proove that you also have "zero understanding"."

only after this, i wrote post #54, and even started the post with, "I didn't want to make any Poland/USA comparisons but i will."

post #81, peterweg wrote to me that "The point is that you are judging a country by your own reference points." Remember YOUR comment about reference points? good.

and my last post about customer service stemmed from this comment from him, something you should agree with 100%. after all, "to rate something you have to have a point of reference", no?

both you and peterweg are so blindly anti-american it's ridiculous. your opinions are so completely biased that there's simply no discussing anything. I did my best to keep this thread on topic and to leave the USA out yet others decided, like in most threads on PF, that the USA needs to be included.

Marynka11 wrote:


no charts, but i'm still waiting for some others to give their ratings.

No it was you who started that pointless discussion about the USA. He obviously doesn't like the USA but it's his problem not yours so I have no idea why you inviolved in such discussion and keep it going.

About point of reference. Yes it is important to have a point of reference. Someone who lives in e.g. Kazahstan could give Poland 10 points in quality of life. Quality of life is a matter of expectations though. For you as a "spoiled" American boy Poland sucks pretty much. For someone who lives in extreme poverty Poland can be close to paradise. So it should be obvious that people will refer to other countres when rating Poland and no problem with that at least for me.


I never said that I agree with him. I'm just saying that you shouldn't be so upset about his comments. Just ignore it if you want this thread keep on rating Poland


Where I said something antiamerican? I can't recall writting in that threat anything antiamerican. Could you quote it?

that just doesn't make sense to me. Obviously you lack patience for other culture as it is clearly displayed in your posts, or you are simply unhappy in Poland, which maybe the case since you are leaving. homesickness is what your problem is.