tram driver foreigner

cześć everyone, i'm a spanish citizen who is thinking about going to live to Poland or Ukraine someday, my question is does anybody know what are the linguistic requirements to work as a tram driver in warsaw or any other tram as a foreigner? does a B2 level on english allow me to get the job or do i need polish 100%?

Poland will not let you in. To them, one must out of his mind to move there to be "a tram driver".

Hello and welcome to PF!

In terms of "linguistic requirements" to work as a street car driver in Warsaw, I'd think a
knowledge of Polish would prove more valuable in the long run, don't you?

A foreigner in Spain without knowledge of Spanish probably today would have more
chance at communication in basic English than in Poland.

Merely a suggestion. Good luck in your job search.

Why not, he is a European Union citizen, he can live and work wherever he wants.

You'd need to speak Polish.

There are Indian bus drivers in some towns now.

Not sure about trams though - never seen a foreigner driving one

Pretty sure I've heard some Ukrainians driving them (not sure if that really counts).

Originally Indian bus drivers weren't expected to know Polish (they had translators on standby that could be reached by phone). I'm not sure how many now know Polish and to what degree.....

Polskie Tramwaje dla Polaków!

A jak nie chcą?

There must have been a dire shortage of bus drivers. Ukrainians are allowed to train as tram drivers in some cities but not Warsaw I believe.

A B2 level in Polish, maybe...

@jon357
Everyone would love a tram driver who announced stops in Spanish.

I'd be up for that.

Exactly! Spot on there, Atch!!
Speaking Polish in Poland's really just a no-brainer.

Speaking the language of any country you settle in is a no brainer.

Righto. Never any argument on that score.

...unless you are Chinese living in Chinatown...Then you are exempt.

Sadly so, Rich, I'll give you that one.
It's all a matter of political clout, voting blocks,
that sort of thing.

" Polskie Tramwaje dla Polaków!"

thgis is exactly why you people are inferior and why i hope the world will know one day whart sort of naiton this is and this will finalyl give excuse to kamala harris and biden to move nato troops and abses away from this antionalsit racist backweard sh-hole and make russia great again by making dog **** in polan d with 16 yr olds like they do there.

Such a sign is clearly racist and ought to be removed post haste!!!

Fortunately, there are no such signs, but there used to be signs on Polish trams "for Germans only".

He was being tongue-in-cheek. This strange phenomenon is known as 'a sense of humour'.


How charming. Incoherent but charming.

Indeed, Alien. This was during the 1930's, therefore no longer applicable.

1939-1945.

While we're splitting hairs about it.

i didn't mention i speak a little ukrainian, i saw you mentioned some ukrainian drivers are now working in poland, could this be a plus? also, it's very similar to polish so it would be "easy" to learn

In showing that foreigners are accepted as drivers yes.


Look at it the other way, any Ukrainian you know would help you learn Polish very quickly.

But beware about mixing slavic languages. For non-native speakers, a second or third slavic language is liable to interfere with those you already know in weird and unpredictable ways.

This is unlike Romance languages where knowledge of one mostly helps with others and where interference (dropping Italian words into Spanish or vice versa) doesn't make you sound crazy.

Especially Polish and Ukrainian are just similar enough and just far enough apart that it will be tricky to keep them apart but randomly using words from one in the other will sound.... very weird.

Learn Polish (not so hard if you know some Ukrainian) and start contacting the mass transit authorities in cities with streetcar networks, see here for the larger cities with trams to enquire about feasability of your plan:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Poland#Tram

nb. Very often in Poland the first answer to any request or enquiry is "No." Don't take that too seriously... often it means "I'm busy now" or "Let me think about it" or "Convince me".... persistence pays off!

The regulations on employing foreign nationals in public transport seem to vary from city to city. Warsaw seems to not want foreign drivers. There are some special training courses for Ukrainians but that seems to be because of the war and giving refugees a chance to find work. These courses are for Ukrainians only.

I did a bit more looking into the process for being a tram driver and it IS possible in theory for a foreigner to drive a tram in some Polish cities anyway, but you have to do a training course and that will be conducted in Polish so ................. it's probably better to improve your Polish skills. It will be more useful to you anyway if you want to live in Poland.

A bit puzzled as to why you are considering living in Ukraine. Much harder life there than in Poland.

Right on, Maf!

life maybe harder in Ukraine, but i see it as a country with a great hidden(repressed) potential, i also fell in love with ukrainian culture, language, history, etc, so when everything is over i would like to move to Ukraine, but Poland is also a land i know a few things of and feel a lot of sympathy to, especially history(my passion), so both are good options, an advantage of living in Poland is i could switch to another profession i'm interested in, historical advisor in the film and entertainment industry in general, and your historical movies and series are usually much more real, much more crude and with a great attention to detail, i know they are two very different paths but both are a part of my life and interests along with some others