Are British people really interested to integrate with Poles?

well a few examples:

When waiting outside a nightclub on numerous occasions a group of Eastern Europeans think that its ok to push all the way to the front and just walk in without no checks or even having to file to the back of the cue. Even when the bouncers tell them you must go to the back they stand there looking shocked like they own the place.

The street is busy and your walking down the high street with a number of friends. Somebody barges past you, you or whoever has been barged out the way turns round and says something and the reply comes back at you in rapid fire Polish, i mean there is nothing wrong with saying excuse me, is there??

My Polish friend wanted to borrow my laptop, his way of asking was to reach over and take it!!!! I mean really that is the definition of been cheeky or rude either one will do.

Getting on a bus or using public transport and you usually try and give the older generation a seat to sit in or leave the ones at the front for them, not the poles or eastern europeans just plonk themselves down and even light up a fag!!!!

all small things but if you don't do them you stick out like a sore thumb. I could give you thousands of examples and yes of course there are rude Brits but i've never seen anything like it since the sudden influx of Eastern Europeans in my city.

hay when i went to America i loved it, as soon as they realsied you were from england or the UK they were falling over themselves to be polite and help out in anyway they could. I haven't many bad things to say about Americans at all. I think there are some parts of America that are just truly fantastically weird like some of the deep south, now thats another planet all together :)

Of course you get the American jokes etc but on the whole i don't think the UK has a bad word to say about America unless were talking about politics.

I'm shocked myself

in reference to what??

your stories about poles in UK

I had to stand behind an American tourist ordering food from a Chinese noodle stall on a market.
He pointed a lot and kept saying 'Can I get... ?'
He came across as very impolite.

I have also met one or two very polite Americans,
and Poles both rude and polite.

hay l isten i haven't got anything against the Polish i mean why would i be here its just a point of view i've built up through my own experiences of the Polish in the UK and from what others have told me

'Can I get... ?'

yes osiol its a very good example of difference in language and culture, in America that is a perfectly acceptable term when ordering something.

Tell that to my boyfriend.....lol....actually, he liked it very much when he came here to visit me.....a lot of myths were dispelled; of course, some were reconfirmed too.


LOL....yeah, we were in a convenient store somewhere down south and the girls behind the counter asked my boyfriend if his accent was real? They kept wanting him to talk....he just gave me a look like "those chicks are strange." LOL.....ahhh, memories.

yeah I know, I'm not saying you do anything againts poles.
there are polite and coarse ppl everywhere.

As am I - in my workplace, the Polish guys and Eastern European guys I talk to/just come across are far more polite, helpful, considerate etc than and Scottish guy I work with! Some have gone out of their way to help me many times, and I have thought how fantastic their manners were! I could say a large amount of example as complete opposite of what you have experienced - perhaps it has just been bad luck!

my goodness i had so many Americans who just wanted me to continually talk so they could her my 'United Kingdom accent' lol. I didn't mind humoring them as i had to speak anyway.

Although it could be a good thing, some American girls love the accent especially and will even as they say 'date a guy with a cool accent' which was something new to me :)

Very true!

I have to admit, I love my guy's accent....quite a turnon.....;)

My cousin from Canada gets me to speak to her friends on the phone to let them hear my accent, and when she comes over she tries to impersonate a lot, I was so amused at how pleased they were!

Like when you're driving - you don't notice the plain sailing like you notice the traffic jams,
rudeness stands out more than politeness.
It is how you categorise the person or people who have been rude:

by profession,
by hair colour,
by nationality...

There are 2 kinds of people in the world:

those who categorise everyone in the world into 2 kinds of people,
and those who don'tl.

Hmm, any guy ever says that to me in a pub he better be used to feeling a fist smashing half his teeth out! :)

Are British people really interested to integrate with Poles?

Well, I can't speak for an entire natoin of people, only the small corner of it that I live in. I have a two sets of friends. One set of old friends from childhood who I see often and the other group which is a mixture of Polish people, British people, and an Estonian. I'd say the mix between Poles and Brits is 50/50 and it's so natural to me. It does seem to me that we integrate well but that may just be the people I know. I do hear that Poles don't wish to mix with Brits and no doubt there is that situation from both sides. That's life.

Interestingly I find Polish men generally more polite than British men, but that could just be down to the men I have met from both nationalities.

I don't know about kissing on hands, I just get hugged to death when I meet up with my Polish friends. :)

I had this from a girl on a bus in Warsaw. She'd spent the last 5 years in Chicago.
'Keep talking to me in your British accent!' she kept asking me.
I almost run out of things to say!

well said Osiol.

you earned it:

i know all this stuff and i tell people all the time you can't judge by nationality or continent but its the only time i have ever said or felt anything like this, i don't know why, maybe its just as ranj and sofi say bad experiences

Mmmm - dessert!

Goes down very nicely after the hay (and the carrot).

dolly i'd love to see you do that, i would pay good money to see you lamp somebody i would fall of my chair with laughter :):):):):)


Ok then we just got a bad batch down south, my theory is blown totally out of the water :)

Sofi, The whole kiss on the hand thing,I admit myself I would probably hesitate to use it on a British girl, but on my last visit to Warsaw I was "taught" the proper way,ie you lightly but firmly hold her hand at around waist/chest level then you,the bloke,bend your head to her hand till she see's the top of your head(hard luck if youve a bald spot :) ) after a bit I was getting right into it all. Id love if we had those sort of manners still over here.
I also remember about 6 or 7 years ago going to Arnhem in holland ( if you know your history scene of "a bridge too far" where british paras were on one side of the rhine and poles on the other trying to reach each other) , I had walked to the bridge,leaving my then g/f at our mates house, to pay a little pilgramage to a memorial.On the bridge was another lad ,who turned out to be Polish,maybe a couple of years younger than my 23, it was pretty obvious that we were both in the area for the history as he was reading one plaque and I another. So I introduced myself and so did he,but with a click of the heels and a little bow of the head!!! that stunned me but Im pretty old fashioned like that and love all the old 30s40s manners from b/w films.Shame it seems to be dying out in Poland now aswell but,you never know,the way he world is the "norm" soon becomes something to rebel against so with all the coursness and rudness around maybe it will soon be "cool" to behave like a Gentlman again?

you think?

You can be my practice shot then...

;)

When you don't hear many pleasantries such as 'Dziekuje', 'Przepraszam', etc.
you do start to wonder if anyone is taking any notice of you yourself being polite.
That was on a recent visit to Lomza - ie. not a big city where they're suffering tourists all the time.
My politeness had been commented on, more than once during my trip.
One lady even called me a gentleman.
I wasn't trying to get in her knickers either!


Doesn't everyone just wants to hug you to death!

hahaha that would be good too, i told you i'd be falling of my chair, i guess it depends how hard you punch. but i could understand your reaction to a line like the one given above about the shag. It wasn't that i was laughing at it was your reaction :)

very

You know, the more I'm thinking of it, the more fun it sounds and much more pleasant for this kind of thing to exist! I enjoy good manners in a man after all, why not such a gesture! I still would not be comfortable unless it was rather common... but I've always thought it would be something to have lived back in the days (well I'd say more) the Jane Austen novels are written in (I should know these dates, I sutdied her novels damn!!). It is far more romantic sounding than today. I think I would only be embarrased because it would seem so out of place where I live. Were I in Poland and this happened, I would be less flustered (?).

couldn't i just have a kiss instead, not a Glasgow one though, lol :)

they are almost as fun as the real ones to give :P

j/k I've not ever given one of those...well not since I was like five and one of my brothers annoyed me...

whats a glasgow kiss?