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What was it like in 1989+ when the Soviet house of cards fell


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JonnyMThreads: 16
Posts: 4,487
Joined: Mar 9, 11 ♂ 		 Jul 3, 11, 16:20    #241
alexw68:
kawa po grecku which you could stand the teaspoon up in, and feel your arteries hardening with every sip.

Real coffee heaven! Now Empik employ their staff on wanky .75 contracts in order to abuse employment laws.
alexw68  Jul 3, 11, 16:24    #242
JonnyM:
Now Empik employ their staff on wanky .75 contracts in order to abuse employment laws.

Glad you told me that. Back to supporting the local bookstore!
boletusThreads: 47
Posts: 1,095
Joined: Apr 13, 11 ♂ 		 Jul 3, 11, 17:33    #243
On my occasional travels to Warsaw I was mostly interested in visiting two bookstores: the giant one in PKiN, with its lo-o-o-n-g rows of technical books (I was mainly interested in physics and mathematics) and the small Russian bookstore on Nowy Świat, where I could buy Russian translations of western monographs and textbooks - literally for peanuts. I guess, that would compare to $2.00 vs. $60.00 in today's money. I could easily afford the translations, but never the original ones.

I still remember reading "Feynman's Lectures on Physics, vol 3, Quantum Mechanics" in Russian, and appreciating his combination of good style and clarity. Not that I was ever fluent in Russian, but Latin formulas, as well as diagrams, were quite helpful in comprehension of the language.

How I initially missed the specialized bookstores, after moving to Canada, since here they operate like any other business - they cannot afford stocking and keeping many technical books at any given time. There is one reasonable bookstore at U of T, at St. George campus, but it is not even close to the one in PKiN.

Obviously, one can always order the books via a catalogue, but this is not the same: reading readers' comments on Amazon is hardly comparable to browsing a book, smelling it, feeling its style, and judging its level of difficulty.

When the first Chapters bookstore was opened it was stocked with reasonable collection of technical books - 12 shelves or so - but now they are down to a few, representing real mismatch - from a book on "dams construction" to "knitting and crocheting". Pathetic! But Internet helps nowadays to fill the gaps.
z_dariusThreads: 22
Posts: 5,091
Joined: Oct 18, 07 ♂ 		 Jul 3, 11, 19:28    #244
boletus:
On my occasional travels to Warsaw I was mostly interested in visiting two bookstores: the giant one in PKiN, with its lo-o-o-n-g rows of technical books (I was mainly interested in physics and mathematics) and the small Russian bookstore on Nowy Świat, where I could buy Russian translations of western monographs and textbooks - literally for peanuts. I guess, that would compare to $2.00 vs. $60.00 in today's money. I could easily afford the translations, but never the original ones.

That's where I bought a huge, 4 volume Russian/Chinese dictionary. It wasn't awfully cheap but something of that caliber in the West would have cost a few hundred dollars at the time. In hard currency the 4 volumes cost me about $1.50 in 1986.

Never before or after did I see a language dictionary so richly edited and so well graphically designed.
UK_SMD_PL0xThreads: -
Posts: 1
Joined: Jul 4, 11 ♂ 		 Jul 4, 11, 02:37    #245
My parents tell me stories of how it was pretty bad all the time.
rybnikThreads: 29
Posts: 1,232
Joined: Jan 16, 11  Pictures: 4 ♂ 		 Feb 15, 12, 04:02    #246
So, when did Western stuff like CD's, car dealerships, fast food restaurants, travel agencies, Biedronka, German food stores arrive on the scene?
Zman  Feb 15, 12, 04:08    #247
German food stores? What are they? everything else was here b/w 90 and 96 more or less....
rybnikThreads: 29
Posts: 1,232
Joined: Jan 16, 11  Pictures: 4 ♂ 		 Feb 15, 12, 04:36    #248
Zman:
German food stores?

eg Lidl
g r u b a s  Feb 15, 12, 07:29    #249
rybnik:
eg Lidl

Long before Lidl there were SAMs and SUPERSAMs in Poland so it's nothing new to us.
rybnikThreads: 29
Posts: 1,232
Joined: Jan 16, 11  Pictures: 4 ♂ 		 Feb 15, 12, 08:00    #250
g r u b a s:
Long before Lidl there were SAMs and SUPERSAMs in Poland so it's nothing new to us.

that's right but in my day all that was available in the Super Sam was canned peas, vinegar and canned mutton (if you were lucky).
g r u b a s  Feb 15, 12, 08:32    #251
rybnik:
that's right but in my day all that was available in the Super Sam was canned peas, vinegar and canned mutton (if you were lucky)

Yeah,well was your question about stores or about products availability?Anyway you should know that was our speciality during PRL times.What I mean is that there was no coal in a coal producing country yet nobody was cold in a winter,there was no food in stores yet nobody was hungry,there was no gas but whoever had a car was driving and so on.In another words nic nie było ale było.
g r u b a s  Feb 15, 12, 08:44    #252
rybnik:
right but in my day all that was available in the Super Sam was canned peas, vinegar and canned mutton (if you were lucky).

You also need to take into account that in "your day" styrofoam band a.k.a Solidaruchy was calling for strikes and work stoppages.You know their credo Im gorzej tym lepiej.
a.k.  Feb 15, 12, 08:57    #253
rybnik:
German food stores arrive on the scene?


No. First were local family stores and local businessmens' chain stores. You belittle Polish enterprise skills.
g r u b a s  Feb 15, 12, 09:42    #254
rybnik:
travel agencies

Orbis,Gromada,Juventur.
rybnik:
car dealerships

Pol-Mot (western cars),Polmozbyt (domestic and KLD cars).
rybnik:
CD's,

Pewex,Baltona,bazars.
rybnik:
fast food restaurants

Bary mleczne and small private enterprises.
HarryThreads: 62
Posts: 8,508
Joined: May 2, 07 ♂ [Suspended] 		 Feb 15, 12, 10:09    #255
g r u b a s:
Orbis

A prize for the first person who can tell me what building replaced this Orbis office (in 2003!):
Orbis office

I wish I'd got a colour photo of it while I could have....
BorrkaThreads: 49
Posts: 770
Joined: Apr 25, 08 ♂ 		 Feb 15, 12, 10:13    #256
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/11223612.jpg

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