I,ll just give good and bad together, well maybe not bad.....just strange to me.....first and foremost good!!! Empty (relative to UK where you are constantly squeezed and in a crowd) shopping Malls....clean shopping malls.....clean/spotless empty toilets..no queues for dirty toilets (OK you find the odd small empty vodka bottle hidden behind the seat cover when you put it down!! but even the empty bottle is clean!!! (always a nice cleaning lady around - I was worried she would think the empty bottle was left by me!!!) Shopping here is a joy, not a chore. On steak.....there is always a Sphinx restaurant around....Rzeszow Sphinx does a better steak and nicely rare if you ask than Krakow...always good polite service of the kind where after you are some minutes into the food they will quickly ask if everything is OK. Stek Kruchy, Biedronka?? not bought a bad one yet, always cook nicely.......Now for a strange one for me and this is not just the 'farmers' that we know it also applies to local business people and even educators......If you meet someone here in the course of business or 'work' etc, you get on with them, find them pleasant and sociable...the UK model is to invite them round for drinks/coffee/chat and cake!!!!! UK Model = they turn up with their partner....and a pleasant time is had by all.......Poland (Maybe Podkarpacie) model = they turn up in 2 cars with all of their 6 children even 2 who have come back from university far away, grandma, granddad and 2 cousins who happened to be passing!!!!! Once you are prepared for these things no problem but a bit of a shock at first....lastly...Podkarpacie weather.....good and bad.....??? for all you who are getting rain right now...maybe you are loving it....but here it is still in the 30,sC sunny and hot......I like it!!! but the Podkarpacie dust, it is like talcum powder......closest thing I,ve come across is African dust....gets in around the car door seals..gets in the house.... everywhere.
I notice more obesity in Poland - in fact among children it's now at crisis level.
There's certainly much more obesity than when I arrived fifteen years ago, but I don't think it's quite as bad as you say among children. Having said that, it will be a serious issue within twenty years. It doesn't help that doctors are too willing to give kids a note excusing them from games. When I was a kid even 'the fat kid' (there was always and only one) had to do the hated cross country running, whose name we appropriately abbreviated. In my faculty's first year intake last year there wasn't a single student who could have been described as obese, and only one girl who was a little on the porky side. This will, I fear, not last long.
The Polish diet is very healthy compared to the UK. For an average joe good food is cheap in Poland. Bread - healthier then UK bread that tastes like cardboard Carbs - they cook a lot with healthy grains - buckwheat. millet etc. Seasonal fruit and vegetables cheap and generally good quality. In the UK fresh fruit and vegetables are generally expensive. Poles generally are used to cooking from scratch and stay away from ready meals and takeaways. But even at takeaways meals are served with salad or coleslaw.
Poles tend to spend a higher proportion of their income on good healthy food than the Brits. Obesity is worse in the UK than in Poland. theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/may/29/how-obese-is-the-uk-obesity-rates-compare-other-countries I'm not too sure where the poster above gets his bucolic vision of UK markets laden with fresh produce from but it's not one a majority of Brits live in.
Bread - healthier then UK bread that tastes like cardboard
Anything would be better than bread that tastes like cardboard. If you mean that all bread sold in the UK tastes like cardboard, then I'm afraid you haven't looked very hard.
Yes you can buy good bread in the UK. You can go to St Pancras and buy French baguettes straight off the eurostar. In my experience, in 80% of the homes I've visited in the UK they have the c**p sliced bread we both know is prevalent in all shops in the UK. It lasts about a week... And the most popular bread in the in-store bakeries tends to bloomers etc with little rye or roughage content. This is quite different from the bread you can buy in Poland. There are many more independent bakeries here producing fairly healthy bread.
True. My local one opens at 0500 and closes at 2100. It sells about twenty different loaves and rolls, as well as irresistable chocolate cake. My local supermarket sells great onion bread which reminds me of the sadly defunct Bakery and Brewhouse in Oxford, a pub which sold its own beer, and had portholes in the walls through which you could see the bakery in operation.
Polish food can be very good and not so expensive. Highways and main roads are new. Hypermarkets like Auchan or Carrefure are huge. Much bigger than in Germany. People are nice and openminded. Air pollution is at least in sommer not a big problem.
Probably. Living in Warsaw for a year your lungs absorb the same level of toxin as you get from smoking a thousand cigarettes. That makes me really angry because I don't smoke but the Warsaw air is f*cking up my lungs.
There used to be that pollution monitor with the digital display until about 20 years ago near the junction of Jerozolimskie and Bracka. They had to remove it because the reading was almost always off the top of the scale.
Air pollution is at least in sommer not a big problem
There are good reasons not to wear a white shirt in Katowice.
A unique bland of strong Latin civilisation, where ethics is the source of law and individuality and personal freedom are the vital parts of ethos and identity, with Slavic heritage; strong patriotism with roots in multicultural past (we were the first major multicultural melting pot in Europe) and respect for other nations and cultures (remembering, of course, the obvious superiority of ours).
2. Attractiveness to foreigners.
Of which this forum is the best example (ethnic Poles living in Poland are a tiny minority here). Our culture has always attracted foreignes - we had large minorities from countries as distant as Scotland or Netherlands but they didn't remain minorities for long, they all assimilated into the Polish nation, accepting our language and culture as their own.
3. History of being a benevolent, kindhearted empire that never travelled overseas.
From the 15th to 17th century, Poland was constantly expanding its territory through unions and wars, mostly eastward, bringing the light of civilisation and Polishness to backwards eastern peoples. By 1634, when it reached a maximal area of almost 1 million square kilometres, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was an empire ranging from the Baltic Sea to the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, incorporating the majority of today's Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, but also Latvia and even parts of Estonia.
Our expansion was stopped by an evil tribe, which name I shall not mention here, that until the present day brings war and destruction to its neighbours. How differently the world might look like if this evil nation didn't stand in our way 400 years ago. :(
4. Sense of honour and fairness.
I can think of only one country in the over 1000 years of Poland's history that could claim to have been treated unfairly/betrayed by Poles. I'm not going to mention this in detail because it's a painful card in our history, but it's a single instance and a lamentable exception. Apart from that, Polish conduct was always honourable and chivalrous: we kept our alliances, were generous towards friends and merciful towards enemies. This always makes me proud.
5. Overall greatness.
To cover this point I would need to write a book; it's waaay beyond the scope of a short forum post. All things considered, Poland in its entirety, when fully and properly understood, represents the peak of what human race should strive for, hope for and fight for. This fact is often obscured by trivial things and visible only to the trained eye and soul, but well worth the effort to study and cherish.
What do I like about Poland? It's home. Longer than anywhere else now and the place I'm.most used to. Warsaw will do nicely; it is a fairly easy city to live in. It's changing a lot. Although change is inevitable, I hope it doesn't change too much.
Coz Poles have always been focused on defending Europe. Like Ukraine today. Have you heard of Polish troops defending Africa? The only Polish African defender I have heard of was Staś Tarkowski:
Well, that was the colony of Great Britain at the time and Polish troops were defending British interests. I was thinking of fighting for true liberation and freedom. :):):)
but also Haiti...
French colony.
And the traditional Polish motto is .. you know what. :):)
