A young Dutch man moving to Krakow-tips for work, living etc.....

Hello,
So i am currently in my summer holiday and will begin a study in 3 months. I'm 18 years old and live in Holland. I will be studying 'higher tourism and freetime management' for 1 year and after that i want to study 'Polish culture and language' at the university of Amsterdam. My mother is polish and i fell in love with the country and all its people. I have family in Krakow and i'am determend to build up a living in Krakow when i have finished my study. But i am 18 and dont have any knowledge of building up a real life in Poland.

So i would like to know what job opportunity i could expect and what a average salary would be. I know i will earn less than i would in Holland, but i can't be stopped from going to Krakow.

greetings,

David

You can look for BPO company which need a dutch speaker, Like CapGemini or so.
(3xW).news.yahoo/poland-emerging-major-european-outsourcing-1 50118152.html
(3xW).kariera.pb.pl/2174064,81893,wieza-babel-rosnie-w-krakowie
You can find also Duth company like:
(3xW).orangeofficepark.pl/ - they have just started from Cracow with office centre to hire business
(3xW).vangansewinkel.pl/ - after purchasing the bigest Cracow's branch company they established the headquarter here
I heard, learned and sometimes had possibility to see that:
There are many Duth living in Cracow, many marriages, divorces and childs with mixed bacground.
We almost had Duth candidate for the city mayor (now euro-MP from Małopolska province).
Life-style differences are significant but not overwhelming.

Thanks, those links help a lot, I know Polish woman are verry popular among Dutch men. I'm verry know with the life-style and i don't expect any big problems.

Hoi, kipje!

The Polish language you might find almost as hard as a Pole might find the Dutch languageLOL I've learned both, though I confess to knowing Dutch more fluently than Polish:-) Cracow (Kraków) has the Jagiełłoń University which offers foreigners Polish classes. Probably, you'll have an easier entree into Polish life now that you've told us you are interested in Polish language and culture. English-language education in Poland doesn't seem anywhere near as widespread as it is in the Netherlands, so learning the language's practically a must.

I was in Szczecin many years ago. I was also in Amsterdam and Utrecht some fifteen years prior. The Poles seemed to have no choice but to let me speak to them in Polish, whereas the Amsterdamers when I was there barely let me get a Dutch word in edgewise, constantly interrupting with a stream of poorly pronounced American invective which they thought somehow sounded "cool".

Both countries are enjoyable for remarkably different reasons. Frankly however, Polish women didn't stack up to Dutch women by a long shot (no pun intended)!!

If you wish further contact, marekzgerson at yahoo

Thanks Lyzko!

As 50% of my 3-year long study is about learning the language and i have attended polish school 2 times a week for 4 years long the language will not be a problem, although it is probably the hardest european language.

Living here in Holland my whole 18-year long life i can confirm that there is some strange kind of urge to use Englisch words. They think it sounds cool, but i find this quit irritating.

And concerning the girls, this is the first time someone prefers Dutch girls over Polish ones. In therms of looks i have to say no country could compete with Polish girls ;) I'm not to familiar with the charactar of Polish girls, but the ones in Holland are not to nice.... 90% only has interest in the thug-like boys that act all big and rude. So i hope this will be different in Poland.

I was recently tutoring a Polish woman in Dutch and she was having a Dickens of a time following your 'kofschip' etc... Could barely make heads or tails of Dutch orthography (spellingregels) until I explained it to her in Polish and then things were fine:-) Dutch is not as "phonetic" a language as Polish, I must say. In Polish, apart from those bloody consonant clusters, e.g. "przy", "dźdz" and so forth, the spelling is relatively transparent (compared, say, with English or even French!). Were the grammar as straightforward, there'd be no problem. Unfortunately, many find Polish harder to master than German, if nothing else, because of the former's seemingly chaotic morphology:-)

Many Europeans find English "cool" without of course understanding what they're really saying, or how awful it can sound to actual educated English native speakersLOL

Returning to the subject of women, somehow Dutch and Scandinavians seem unencumbered by the constraints of Polish Catholicism and have an unbridled naughtiness that in addition to being sexy, can be downright bewitching!

KipjeNL ("chicken man"lol)

What do you find is the hardest part of Polish?
:-)

Study some finance or engineering or you will have to work in some call center after your studies.

Do you speak Polish fluently?

As a foreign national, like I suggested to one Norwegian gentleman on this forum, check out the local consulate or mission, in your case, the Dutch embassy. If they can't at least provide you with some leads, I don't see who can. Many go through diplomatic channels for tips on employment, study, living accomodations and the like:-)

May be worth a try.

My Dutch acquaintance said once that being a Dutch native speaker he was either English or German "almost" native speaker and could read, wath TV, etc. without much effort. Being a Polish native speaker what made me at best Slovak "almost" native speaker I was a lttle jealous, I must say.


As everywhere today. Sweet 60' where are you?
If you want to meet a nice girl with a Dutch origin you may try in Wilamowice. It is the Medieval settlement established by Dutch and Scottish immigrants between Cracow and Silesia. After WW2 they corrupted a Russian general and convicted him that they had a Scoth (Netherlands was a little suspicious) - not a German - origin and that Scotland, Medieval or not, was the ally. He let them stay, but their endemic language was restricted.

I can understand 80% of a avarage conversation, meaning i know what they are talking about, but not understanding every word. For now writing is really a pain in the ass :) All the Polish I know I have learned through speaking. So i have never really learned writing. In the Dutch language there are no marks in our words, like the 'ąćęńóśźż'. Knowing when using these and also the groups of 'czsz' is difficult.


I know that these studies will get me jobs that pay more, but Poland has always been my hobby, it's like an 'obsession'. Working in tourism or somewhere where I can be involved with the nation is my dream and will give me satisfaction in my work, studying the nation and its language will be great. So I'm determined to follow this study.


At the moment not, I can make myself clear in some way, do grocery and such, however i can't be really explicit in what i mean. But attending a 3-year long study where 50% will be spend on the actual learning of the language this problem will certainly be tackled.


Dutch is closely related with German and pronouncement is almost the same, so when you know the vocabulary (which is in some cases alike) and the grammer (which is actually verry different and is really hard) than the rest is not hard. I know this because i had German for two years at my highschool. English is also related, but more distant. However, because of everything and eveything in Holland trying to be so international it is a language that every 13-year old is almost fluently in. Movie's are subtitled, pc games are in english, English is one of the three (Dutch, English, Math) main subjects in highschool and even some commercials on TV are not translated to Dutch. It's just a language you can't escape of when living in Holland.

Thanks all for the comments!

Once I met Dutch girl, when I told her that I am Polish, she started to complain about Polish people in her country saying--every Pole has a knife:))))

After some time I started to looking for something in my bag and I told her--O man where is my knife, I had to forget it somewhere lol.

Sadly what the girl said is not close to what the Dutch think about Poland. When i tell that I am going to Poland for my vacation, they think I'm crazy. They think Poland is full of '60 era grey communist flats and that everyone is poor. There even was a girl that asked my how I went through the ****** IRON CURTAIN!!! This is told by 17-18-year olds that live in a country that has an education system that is in the top 10 of the world. Knowledge about Poland almost doesn't excist. When I show pictures of the colorfull citycenters, they truly believe it isn't a picture of a Polish city. Strange and truly sad how so 'well' educated people believe in an idea that comes from a time when their parents weren't even born and that even in that time wasn't true. This common knowledge about countries that lay further than France and Germany isn't present here in Holland :(

Poles coming here to work are mostly some of the poorest in Poland, but here they think these are 'average' citizens and they confirm the idea of Poland being being poor. Poles are being spit out by the Dutch people and companies are hiring Poles for far less than minimum wages and putt them in socalled 'Poleshotels' were they are being placed with 3 people in a small room.

Sadly the idea of Poland and Poles is verry bad in Holland and it will probably take another 10 years for the Dutch to know what Poland is like :(

Admittedly, many Dutch find English presently a "cooler" language than German or even French. Along with this therefore, comes a certain "look-Ma-no-hands"-approach to speaking English, bordering often on the plain vulgar! On the one hand, English is perceived as easier than German or Polish, a great many Dutch people don't take the requisite time and make the needed effort to speaking English like a native speaker or even as an educated Dutchman would speak his or her mother tongue. On the other hand, were English perceived as harder than either Dutch, German or Polish, then I'm sure the Dutch would invest far more energy into speaking, writing and communicating in it as well as they try to communicate in other language:-)

Possibly, but it may well take even more time. My Dutch friends who have been coming to Poland as tourists every 5 years or so, say that they still meet very few fellow tourists from Holland here. They observed, for example, that big commercial centres like "Blue City" in Warsaw are rare or do not exist in the Netherlands. The camp-site in Warsaw they stay in didn't change much - they said - but the capital did quite a lot over the last 5 years.



In view of my upcoming visit to the Netherlands (Amsterdam and Friesland), I ventured to learn some basic Dutch. My presumption was that it was a language between German and English, but now I think it is neither one nor the other. Sometimes German tends to interfere (for example, I couldn't remember the Dutch verb 'herhalen' since the German verb 'wiederholen' appeared in mind instead), at other times it is helpful, but only if you can aptly find some connection (for example, I couldn't remember the meaning of the verb 'wijzen' until I realized that its root appears in German words like "gluecklicheweise"). But the Dutch sentence "Prettig ik met u kennis te maken" sounds more like Hungarian than either German or English!!!

Thank God.

I don't think you have anything interesting to say here, so take your frustration back with you to the threads on politics and history where you'll find interlocutors whose frustration matches yours. Thank you.

My opinion was perfectly on topic, we've got enough of "English tourists" crap already, don't need even more messed up guys coming here. Now bring up more of your inferiority complex.

In the same way "we" have enough of "English tourist crap" in Poland, they may have enough of "Polish workers crap" in their countries. Now bring up more of your superiority complex to your beloved "Dear Leader", will you?

They do no matter how hard your kind will try to suck them up.

The "English tourist crap" do no matter how hard your kind will try to keep them off.

I am crushed. I can unerstand that on any selfish isle or distant continent peple may not distinguish Eastern from Central Europe, but here? Not far than rzut beretem? From the other side. Much before our present 'crisis' when I was walking with my Dutch through Old City in Cracow I sow their eyes becoming more and more like saucers. They asked who had founded this or that, who used to maintain it, could afford it, etc. They were surprised what they have seen and I was surprised what they have told me. They were surprised by a present condition of Old City, its present maintain, numer of people, 500 restaurants there, etc. Now, I understand them better.


That's very true. Being in my business and tourist journeys I learned to avoid this kind of my fellow countrymen as many other Poles do. Sometimes it is a hard experience to meet them, especially when you understand their talks. Bad showcase for foreigners. Even Cracow's Balice Airport, a small but previously qiute exclusive place looks like a great barn when that people are waiting for their flight. And they are more rapacious then poor I believe. Poor people are mostly passive.

Pre-globalization Europe, that is, prior to the 90's, was essentially much more tribal than today! Sure, many of the industrialized countries had their share of immigrants, but for one thing, competition in general was not as fierce as it is now, with everybody and their uncle practically jockeying for position. I'm sure many older Dutch people remain nostalgic about the "good old days" before Amsterdam seemed overrun by Surinaamse (though technically, Dutch subjectsL0L), Asians and "others", much as Danes look back to an idyllic pre-60's Utopia, without all the social problems etc.

When I was first in Amsterdam during the late 70's, the city seemed to me incredibly homogeneous, especially for someone raised in New York City, the diversity capital of the planet:-) Smaller cities such as Utrecht, towns like Zwolle and so on, looked like a sort of picture postcard of a foreigner's conception of Holland, the faces like old burgher paintings by Frans Hals.

When last there some years back as I recall, the character of even the nicer areas, such as De Pijp, had changed decidedly, people spoke less Dutch on the streets than I could ever recall, even English was lost amid the Tower of Babel taken from so many different tongues.

On the other hand, I NEVER saw "koffiehuizen" in Poland. Imagine my shock as an American teen when I realized that "koffiehuis" meant place to buy marijuana, and not a "coffee shop".

A little funny OT about shock:
Last time I've seen the inerviev with any famous US sniper or soldier - now famous gun teacher, or bodyguard or so who promoted in Poland his new book (about shooting or so). He told that he experienced a huge shock when he saw that nobody was having a gun in his pocket here. He told that he was not able to take even his favorite riffle (yes!) to Poland and his feeling of not having a gun was unbarable for him. He felt weak (2 m toll and 100 kg weight man) as a chld, shy and unsafe walking on the streets. He was never unarmed so long before.

Differences could kill.

Are you real? Dutch language is very easy especially to these who had already learned German and English, so please don't say such silly things.. there are more complicated languages which might be difficlut for Poles to study.


Really Mr I-Know-It-All-About-Poland ? And I always thought that I studied at Uniwersytet Jagielloński or if you prefer in English- Jagiellonian University... Maybe invest in a better guide for the future (or at least check Wikipedia...). By the way, do you know at least who was Władysław Jagiełło Mr-Know-It-All-About-Poland vel Lyzko?


You made my day with this 'bright' comment.... I'm glad I'm a Polish Catholic who doesn't sleep around. That what you call 'an unbridled naughtiness that in addition to being sexy, can be downright bewitching!' is called over here 'kurestwo' or in English: being easy, for one night only and having serious problem with respecting themselves. So off you go to Scandinavia or Holland to enjoy the sexual 'freedom'.

Dear kipjeNL,

move to Poland and have no fear! Poles are very friendly nation and really like foreigners (except from these moments when we are sarcastic or get mad at these foreigners who say bloody and untrue things about our country or our mentality only because they get jealous that they cant be so cool as we are!) I'm sure you will never ever be left alone without help over here.

Our universities offer a large number of courses in English which are prepared typical for foreign students. In Krakow for example you can study in English not only such subjects like these relating to Polish language, history and culture, but you can also study here in English let's say more serious stuff like medicine (and trust me- level of medicine at Jagiellonian University do not differ much when it comes to its standards from the level offered by best American universities...)

I am a professional Polish teacher with some experience in teaching Polish as second language and I will be glad to help you to improve your language skills. In return I would be very grateful for some help with Dutch. I started learning this language (believe me or not Lyzko- but i started studying Dutch myself even though I'm Polish!) about 2 months ago and even though the grammar is very easy to study, I'm not 100% sure, if my pronunciation is correct. That's why I would need some native speaker's help to make sure Im learning speaking in Dutch correctly.

Here is my email add: irish.coffee102@yahoo

Many educated Poles find Dutch spelling guite challenging!

How many of them you know? It really seems you know Poland better than I do even though I was born here- congrats!

After all, the 'kofschip' is a rather irregular maze of consonant and vowel doubling/reduction, perplexing to those Poles who've evinced their interest to me in learning Dutch! While it is true that Polish has a much more intricate (and irregular!!) morphology, Dutch orthography is surely as bewildering to Poles as Polish conjugation as well as declensional mutations are for Dutch people.

Methinks your "aggressive" tone in previous posts reveals a linguistic overcompensation, since English isn't your first language. You needn't though mask curiosity and ignorance behind unintentionally sharp words:-) I forgive youLOL

I want to thank you all for the excellent answers!!!!!!
I have recentelly returned from vacation in Poland and I'm 100% I want to life in krakow. I will now be following a year-long studie in higher tourism management so I can get permission to study polish culture at a university.

Now I only have to choose between the uni. of Amsterdam or the Jagiellonian university, It's a hard choice but i have a full year to decide.

THANKS TO ALL OF YOU!

greetings,

KipjeNL

kipjeNL, I am Dutch and have lived in KRK for over 5 years. Drop me a message if you need more specific info on the city or general info on PL.