Poland-My 9-day experience

AussieSheila wrote:


I wouldn't worry about it Sheila. read my last post (#203) and you'll see you're not alone in your opinions.

What does Australia produce, apart from destroying her environment just to sell metals to the Chinese?


You bought something worth 10 zloty and thought that it would be made in a developed country? My my...you're either a complete idiot or completely naive.

Like I said in my message on this same page, there were countless handicraft and antiques stalls at Gdansk's St. Dominic's Fair last year, and they had really wonderful genuine Made in Poland products there. Too bad I had already too much luggage to carry, but I bought some very nice ceramic figurines for souvenirs from there for reasonable price (more than 10zl but still great value). There were some pretty necklaces, children's dresses, wooden toys, etc. too, and tons of other things. But it's true you may have hard time finding such good selection elsewhere if you don't plan your visit for such an event.

Interesting thread

Warsaw - a big NO

Baltic holidays - a big YES

Wisla - a YES

Silesian food - NO, too calorific, only if faced with a fait d'accompli, MIL style :)

Silesian food is too calorific for sure. Drenched in oil and dripping with fat :( :( I'll stick with my tuna, thanks :) Beef rolls (rolada) are great for winter but I can't imagine eating them in summer.

Polski Ogorski, bottled in India - Poles are creative, there are probably genuine reasons for this, maybe transport costs and export/import agreements between india and Australia related to tax. In respect of Poland being more westernized, since 1989 the changes have been significant and you come to Poland to visit Poland, not to see another USA or UK. In order to appreciate Poland you have to look beneath the surface and understand the history to fully appreciate it. Thats why men of great like Norman Davies and Wildrower are an authority on this subject...

I'm glad that some here value Poland's image abroad. I've been helped by some really helpful folk in different offices and I think it was because I was foreign. Otherwise, I've had to roast a lot of boors here. Downright rude!! Still, it's those positive experiences that stick in my mind as it's the exception to the rule. God Bless them for trying against the grain of their culture :) :) :)

My first post but I am keen reader of PF for the last 6-8 months...(since I started to think seriously about return to my old country for good)...

After reading the whole tread, I am surprised that almost everyone (except obviously Torq) failed to recognise that AussieSheila is not who she/he said she/he was and perhaps she/he never visited Poland after all (difficult to imagine that anyone 14years old + and with any above 30% of average intelligence would make such shallow, biased comments after 9 days in any country ) ....thus the whole purpose of her post was just to stir PF community and create the opportunity for further bagging of Poland and its people.... typical troll behavior


No good !!

Although I disagree with many Torq past posts I (and no doubts many others) always liked to read them... :)
Pity, he has gone but somehow it is understandable... at least moderators should be able to recognize trollish behavior :)

Well, there is the other side where some truths are incorporated which don't sit well with some. There should always be a balanced perspective.

Not meaning to just point out negatives but some negatives Iv seen on two of my visits are;

Drunk old people.

Shop keepers can seem glum and not that I agree with the OP but well, I did see a few shop keepers that I did seem to have just annoyed them by even buying water.

On a whole though I love Poland, every places has its negatives, these are just some stuff iv noticed on two stays in a south eastern polish town near the Ukraine border, and my points are just stuff iv noticed when i compare it with life in Ireland.

And I mean it... lots of drunk old people.

(View based on a ten day stay in Feb "10 & a three week stay in July)

There tends to be more drunk and desperate people in the east of Poland. It's a hapless plight for them. I see quite a few drunks here but its standing out depends where you are from. I saw many more in Scotland so it isn't striking for me at all here. There's very little staggering around, unlike in Scotland.

Yes...my wife is visiting Krakow at the moment and she complained about that too but .... I can point to places in Australia where you see invariably drunk beggars everyday...places like that exist almost in any country...perhaps in Poland more than in others but as Seanus is saying


:)


This is the key...I live in arguably one of the nicest city in the world but I could point to all negatives from OP existing here too ....except perhaps lack of waves :)

He was serious hey, i wonder if he'll be back.

If it makes you feel any better Torq ive had lots of friends and family visit me in Poland and every single one of them loved it and all but one have come back again and again.

Wroclawboy wrote:


my parents came out once, also enjoyed it.

Gdansk old town is great - if you only walk through in 10 -15 mins rather than stop to look in Crane, go to St Mary's, visit Artus Court, see ul MAriacka, National Museum, Oliwa, Westerplatte....


We visited the Baltic Coast last summer and we were loved Wolin Nat Park, bison, sand dunes at Leba, forests along sea and sunsets over sea along coast

And since as Londoner


Agreed - we hate it too, but it becomes part of the adventure and a perfect illustration of the weird way we Brisitsh have of doing things sometime, plus the fact that we Brits also , like Poland, have had certain economic problems for years. We try to fly from Gatwick! But at least we have the choice of more than one airport


I love our cheap shops. I love the fact that Poles can come to UK and sometimes get cheaper clothes than at home (eg TKmax). One of our services to Europe apart from our tragi-comic football team.


Ouch! I think you might find they are all English - you might find there parents or grandparents perhaps were not born in the uk. Such a comment could easily suggest troll like qualities, but I'm going for cultural insensitivity

Having addressed these vital points (and adding how much we enjoyed meeting various Polish peoples especially the peoples at the Baptist Church in Gdynia and the amazing Magda and Magdalena in London and Ola the massager in Gdynia etc - and that it might be nice if people in Polish shops smiled a bit more but then you could say you wish that the british stopped being grinning so stupidly for no reason -culture hey ) , we are turning up in Szczecin on a Monday at the end of August by coach from Berlin and plan to book a flight back from somewhere in the east 12 days later (probably Gdansk but not necessarily), stopping off again at some stage in £eba. Not wanting to spend too much monies and enjoying art, beaches, interesting city centres and beautiful Polish countryside, where would you stop off if you were making trip?

,

What a strange attitude to form an opinion about a country after seeing less than 5% of things worth seeing here.


Funny. The person considers Zakopane beautiful. :):):)

That totally discredits him/her in my eyes. :):):) Scam!

How stupid. So St. Petersburg should be still called Leningrad, huh?
Great.
The rest of these insights are also cr@p.

Fek me, you're from Ireland and your complaining about drunken people?


Not exactly a brilliant comparison...Britain has had boom bust, boom bust..etc etc..Poland just had a miserable existence (economically) for a long time due to being cut off from the outside world...Not because of incompetent governments and greedy consumers..


Our transport system is excellent - we have high speed rail links and metro systems in cities..nothing strange about that..When I go to Prague I have to take a bus to the metro and than change twice to get the centre...Where as in the UK most if not all airports have a direct link to the respective city, if they dont they have a bus/coach service..so you're talking boll*cks! Please dont make Britain out to be backwards and a bit slow!

Danzig is the name for anyone educated outside Poland. Most people know Danzig, not Gdansk.

PGH1


The British Grin...you don't say?

Amathyst


From the historical record (posts & links on this forum), after the German occupation a sizable proportion of the Polish population supported communism. It wasn't imposed on them by Russia. If the Poles wanted to, they could have kicked out the Russians like they did in 1920-22. So the Poles are responsible for their lousy economy of the post war years. It was the Poles who cut themselves off from the World.

AussieSheila


The geography books that you're using are 60 years old. Especially since "Solidarity" the whole world knows it's Gdansk.

You made it to Hell and back, I give you credit

Really, do try harder.

Or are Australian history books so poor that they're using names from 70 years ago? Must be a very poor country then!

Rubbish. Even in the early 1980s, when the developing Solidarity movement was one of the biggest news items over here, references were made to the "Gdańsk shipyards" - not Danzig shipyards - I was very young then, but I remember it well!

Of course, some people may prefer to use the German name, but people in the UK tend to be more enlightened these days. You won't hear names like Bombay or Calcutta being used so often these days, either; because when other countries stop referring to their cities with names which remind people of colonialism, we respect their decision to do so.

People who still insist on using Germanic names like Posen, Danzig or Warschau (or indeed, words like Juden) usually have some kind of agenda; no prizes for guessing what that "agenda" is.

In Scotland, we were told that Copernicus was Polish and Gdańsk was the name. Danzig was a metal group :)

Ok, what's the agenda for using Polish names like Nowy Jork, Londyn, and Monachium? Comeon, lets see if there's any depth to your argument here. And how else would you say Jew in German?

the guy claims from australia did few mistakes in first post
biggest is using german name
i'm in uk for few years now and none of english i met and know never ever heard of gdansk not mention foreign names of city

other is statement that cities,towns look like poorest western etc.. which is far from true, just look at many houses that brits could only dream about and so on , ofcourse poland is poor country..well its different topic

and about prostitution the guy mention
i don't know the topic i've never used any esort agencies in poland or else whatsoever but i met a some english dude in uk who was disapointed about poland as he though it was one of the best sex tourists destination .. well aparently it isn't

Sex tourism is big over here.

AussieSheila, some of the polish people on this forum didn't like to hear the truth. Poland has a long way to go. This country is far behind than it's western counterparts. Polish people are not very open and friendly, they like talking people behind their back and treat foreigners like a sh**. They don't like anybody coming to their country but they are everywhere in a huge numbers. These guys flooded Ireland, UK, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands and all of the western Europe. They live here but make sure to abuse locals and calling them names behind their back. Their government is like someone who drives a motorbike after having 3-4 bottles of vodka...so you can imagine ;P If anyone with Chinese or Japanese looks or a black or colored guy passed by them, they make sure to pass sarcastic remarks or give a weird look..................like some monkey from the zoo has entered a wedding party.

terrible customer service in the shops, they are big headed/pig headed, they are disrespectful, have a very bad attitude, I consider them inferior than anybody in Europe and this country is a Bangladesh of Europe with a huge mess in it's society.

I totally disagree on this. poland has the lowest overweight percentage among young people in whole world (sth like 7 percent) there are so many countries in a worse economic situation than poland for example Turkey (I am talking about per capita not as a goverment) but that percentage is in the roof! when it comes to older people being overweight it alcohol believe it or not.