Ok so currently staying with the Polish in-laws. I am so f...ing bored!!!! Poland for me once we arrive is the flat, tesco and the pub. Nothing seems to ever get done. This is literally the normal day. Get up at 8am. Coffee for hour then breakfast. Go out at 10am and **** about going tesco, bakers, butchers and off licence. Go to pub for first and second beer. Go back to flat and cook food bought while continuing to drink beer. Eat food and fall asleep for next 2 hours. Return to pub and stay for rest of day. Is this really what all of Poland is like? I've been here about 8 times now and this is every single time. I have to throw a full on tantrum to get to do anything else all that's resulted in is a trip to the zoo and paid for 'entire' family to come with us and the same at Auschwitz. The other thing is we literally pay for everything here to the point we go home with nothing.
I feel like I'm wasting my life away and I literally can't stand the thought of coming back here anymore. I don't mind a drink now and again but this is not normal :/
Carlyjam: cinema, theatre, museums, parks, books, forest walks, sightseeing, day trips (just the two of you), the night sky (at the moment you can see the moon, Jupiter, Venus and Mars in an arc in the eastern sky at 0530). Sorry, but I've never been bored in my life.
Wrocław is also a nice day trip from Opole, the old town area is nice and there's the Panorama, not the most exiting thing ever but worth a visit if you're in town. There's also
panoramaraclawicka.pl/?lang=en
I think maybe what's going on is that for your husband visits to Poland are mostly to chill and be with family and/or friends and he doesn't realize how uninteresting that can be someone who doesn't know those people as well as he does.
For Opole I found this in two seconds:
kulturalne.opole.pl/
No english version, though. But every Polish town has a page like this. If nothing else you can use it to plan things ahead of time.
Thank you for your help everyone. I think the answer might be to go by myself and maybe improve my Polish but I think the in-laws think there is a market out there for stealing English women and take this suggestion with absolute outrage. I will be sucked into the underworld and never escape Poland haha :)
Now you're cooking girl. Get a nice hotel room and don't even stay with your relatives. Find a nice English speaking Polish boy for a tour guide and I am sure you would go home with a smile.
Ohh man i used to hate visiting my Polish in laws, my day was basically the same but with no pub. Used to drive me absolutely nuts, small town nothing to do. I used to watch the old mans old Boxing videos, (which i actually gave him), maybe take a walk round the brother in laws for some really crap computer games and sh1te loads of beer. They didn't even have a gym in the whole damn place. I used to be like lets just take a drive down to Krakow and grab a hotel room for a few days.
It was always highly family orientated, sat around the table with them all chatting away, they used to treat me like a king but i really didn't feel comfortable in that kind of environment.
Poland isn't boring at all , even if you don't speak polish, I don't know what are your hobbies , but if you like sightseeing and nature you can never get bored , krakow , wroclaw , and a lot of natural reserves that you can visit , oh zakopane ! , even nights in big cities like krakow and wroclaw can be fun , karaoke and other events...
if you haven't visited these cities yet you are really missing out on Poland , and this is not all ! there are plenty of other polish cities that are worth visiting and discovering .
Cheers from a foreigner who has been studying in poland for 2 years...
When you sing karaoke in the average Polish establishment the locals look at you like you're some kind of abnormal being.
Hmm , i don't know about that, i live in Poznan, and i have visited many karaoke pubs, everyone is drunk and singing english and polish songs, even i got cheered by the whole pub for singing "bohemian rhapsody" (and i don't have a nice voice), nevertheless , people weren't rude .
Hmm , i don't know about that, i live in Poznan, and i have visited many karaoke pubs,
Poznan and the student environment of which you talk are not the reality in Poland for many, certainly not the OP. The OP is residing in Opole, I've stayed there a few times and a Wroclaw, Krakow or Poznan it is not.
Lebanon :)
We need to take into account personal perspectives, plenty of people from third world countries visit Poland and for them it is amazing, for those of us from more established first world countries it can present issues in certain areas.
Haha great tips! I actually started by driving for the first time in Poland because tato had a hangover :) it was extremely scary especially turning left. And I only tried to drive on the left once :)
the nearest mall might well have free wifi good enough for facetime back to the UK. are you down south? or you could take up knitting for those Polish visits :P
Carlylam, kinda tough without knowing the language sufficiently! Betcha if you learned enough Polish to even communicate, it wouldn't be boring any more:-)
Roger and others live in quiet places. But I would do a Kurt Cobain in a couple of months. It's boring enough here in Gdynia, the so called number one place to live in Poland. I hear you Carly. But Poles don't get bored because:
1. They have expensive new toys to play with, that didn't exist for daddy in communist times. 2. They go to bed early because they insist on getting up at 6 in the morning for a pow-wow. 3. Some drink themselves stupid in small groups to show that Poles "are the best." 4. Some move around like snails, touching all the fruit at the market, self satisfied types dressed in their tracksuits.... 5. Some are obsessed by fitness, and die young.... 6. Others are driven by material gain - the old "Build a house, plant a tree, have a son, an. other......"
Nowt wrong with all that - but they are not bored.
However the UK has far more going on in all facets of life - why do we think Poles love it so much there?
I Google'd your little town, (to us it's village actually), and it looks absolutely charming. I'm from L.A. and well everything is always greener on the other side. I'd give anything to be a smaller less busy atmosphere where things were slow and there's no traffic and you can breath fresh clean air. I hope that you are able to enjoy the solitude and clean country living for now at least.
That's true, Doug, but my workplace is anything but quiet. I spent eleven hours yesterday in a university building with hundreds of students sitting on the stairs (what is it with students and stairs?) chatting away noisily. It's great to get back to the village, but even there we have the sounds of tractors, birds, cats singing love songs, neighbourhood dogs, chain saws, etc. Having said that, sometimes, in the dead of night, you can hear a pin drop, and when they sometimes turn off the street lights the stars are magnificent. We may not have the big city attractions, but we also don't have to listen to sirens all night. Horses for courses.
the stars are magnificent. We may not have the big city attractions, but we also don't have to listen to sirens all night.
Grand. I spent 15 years in a Nottinghamshire village, and some winters we were snowed in, because we lived on a hill. It were fab! Polish village life must be nice but I couldn't stand all the people wanting to know your business, or simply staring :)
Very much horses for courses:)
And I know what you mean about university. I too worked in one (Univ of Silesia) for 9 years. I loved going there, and reading in my "office" with a cup of tea and peace and quiet................... in the summer holidays:)
Szczecin's a lovely city too! Bored?? Far from it. I was sad it was only a day trip. Pity I didn't see more of it though:-) Folks didn't speak English there back in the mid-90's when I was first there. Luckily I knew enough of the language to negotiate relatively simple everyday stuff without a hassle (or a translator)!
Figure, as elsewhere in Poland, things have changed someLOL
"Day trips" are key ;) I live in a city 1000x better than Opole but I still take at least monthly day trips for a couple of days of break and solitary mediation (read: partying at clubs and pubs in other cities ;)
Get out of Opole and head to Krakow or WROclaw - you will wrocLOVE them wayyy more than Opole.
