The strangest things in Poland

siht I think I got it right as well.. oh well back to shreck for me..:) what's the prize I won I want my prize, Donkey will you shut up?/ butt I won I want my prize:):)

I knew PF before you did but only just........work it out cos you are clever an all LOL.

I know already.

Yeah, I thought you might. I left a few clues here and there lol.........cos I knew you was clever and wud work it out.....


I need my bed <not a typo now> so 'Goodnight All' I'll ask the question tomorrow.

More will be revealed tomorrow.............:-)

I knew that the prize would be an inflatable donkey.
I'm sure I'm not the only one looking forward to tomorrow.
The last page or so on this thread is looking forward to the random chat bin.

That's not the prize ! And I'm the only one that knows what the prize is because you see, I don't believe in the carrot and donkey stories........I believe in telling you what the prize is when you win...........so to get a donkey to do something I don't wave carrots first.

If all else fails though, I may dangle summat not sure what yet .....

I am coming back tomorrow:):):) butt goodnight all..

Pollocks are just like they are in their jokes.

Some anecdotes about the naive American in Poland: I used to interpret for a lady from Texas, she was a certified accountant with a university degree, so no laughing matter intellectually.
1) One day, she told me she was surprised because there were no potatoes in Poland. Is there a potato famine, she asked. I thought Poland lived on potatoes, but I can't seem to be able buy any, she added.
I must admit this really sounded outlandish to me. We were in a small town surrounded by villages, and potatoes were everywhere. I took a walk and made note of all the fruit and veg stalls, overflowing with the stuff. I then asked her to come out and pointed out this starchy abundance. She was genuinely shocked. She had looked for potatoes ONLY in the local small supermarket, which did not bother to stock most vegetables because you could buy them fresh on every street corner. And blinded by her assumption that you bought stuff in supermarkets, she somehow subconsciously chose not to see what the reality was.
2) I was accusingly confronted by her one day: your stupid Polish washing machine has totally ruined my laundry!
The facts of the case were:
- she had put in white and black stuff at the same time
- then turned on the 90 degree Cent. cycle
- the washing machine was actually Italian (which doesn't mean anything, but was fun to point out to her) ;-)
I know she was intelligent, or smart at least. She did know that Poland uses the metric system. How could she have possibly assumed the 90 degrees were meant to be in Fahrenheit? And most interesting of all, why was all this perceived to be my fault - or Poland's?
3) Sour cream was another ongoing problem, she couldn't find it anywhere, but when told to buy fresh cream and keep it in the fridge for a day or two, she recoiled in horror because it would be "spoilt". Whereas as far as I know, sour cream is just that, it is "soured cream". You cannot scoop sour cream fresh from a jug of newly collected milk. The poor soul rather went without.

Every day was a source of new, unexpected culture shocks of this caliber. I tend not to sympathize with people who get so upset over such minor and frankly stupid issues. I have lived in several different countries myself, and while adjusting is not always easy from day one, it is really rude to assume that if anything goes wrong, it is "their" fault.

I find it strange that in the US, Macaroni Cheese comes in packet, dried pasta with dried sauce. People I spoke to didn't seem to realise that you could make it with pasta and pour a cheese sauce over it. Another odd thing was the poor quality and choice of food in American supermarkets. A limited selection of cheeses, tinned Tuna only in brine (I guess its only eaten as a diet food therefore it has to taste ****).
In the US, quality is all about quantity, not taste. So when you buy prawns they have been chemically injected with water to make them bigger, fluffier and less tasty. Meat is injected with hormones and anti-biotics, fresh tuna is chemically treated to keep its pink colour when its spoilt.
The list goes on (the GMO experiment on unknowing, human subjects), when I stay in the US, Organic is the only food safe to eat.

I agree and this woman was definately a strange cookie, but mind you, a lot of Americans don't travel (not to offend the ones who do) and for some reason, they do expect things to be teh same as they are in the USA.

It's a classic mistake made by many many speakers of foreign languages.

The definite and indefinite article one of the wonderful quirks of English.
Along with our ability to have inanimate objects without them having to have a gender! lol!

True, correct article use is hard for many countries' people. Even native speakers are not entirely consistent in their use of them.

Last time I was visiting the Baltic coast I've decided to take a bike ride along the coast to Sarbinowo. I rode the bike with no shirt on because it was hot as hell. I travelled through a short wooded area to the town and onto the path along the beach. I noticed that I was itching all over and it was starting to freak me out, so I look down at my chest and notice that I'm covered with thousands of little flies/larvae looking things and they were biting the hell out of me. They're called Meszki. They should be around now in some areas. I'd recommend trying to steer clear of these little devils.

Indeed, those can be nasty, especially during very hot periods (I guess it helps much their breeding), I remember one summer in Poznań, when the city was plagued the whole month of June.
Still better than scorpions and some killing spiders :)

we change them in ontario and the weather is the same as in poland!

I love Poland which I consider my homeland so here are some things I found a little different from my country of origin:

- taking shoes off before entering the house; it's so nice, but some ppl actually already told me it was ok to keep them on, even though, I took them off too! :)

- whenever I visited someone in Poland they ALWAYS offered me something to drink, water, vodka, coffee, etc. . .

- having to buy your tickets in those Polish kioskis and when you enter the bus you need to put it in some sort of little box and then this little box gives you back

- i often saw many drivers hitting the side-walks while parking their car, LOL :P

- many poles manage to drink warm beer, how's that possible?! =/ other thing is, if someone in Poland offers you something e.g: Beer, just drink it. . otherwise they will insist until you drink at least once sip of it, [are all poles like that?], I talked to some and they to me is quite normal to insist that you should drink lol :D great, uh? But what if you don't drink at all? =/ in my case there was no problem, i love drinking hahaha yes, and Polish beer has a higher percentage of alcohol, that mean I get drunk much faster :D


- they seem to drink tea or coffee all the time


- for the 2 years and a half that I was in Poland I saw ONCE one black person there, I was freaked out, not because I'm a racist but because I was so used to see ONLY white people, that when I saw once guy once I was REALLY surprised, and started to point, (oh no) now I understand why Poles consider blacks exotic o.O

- having to wait the streets lights go green for pedestrians, even if there's no car coming your way, I've heard, you might get a fine if you attempt to do so when those are red for pedestrians


- having the name day as most important rather than the birthday, though my name is German :(

- taking shower once a week LOL :)

- listening to the word kurwa all the time ahaha mostly said by men. . . 5 out of ten words lol

- putting on fat on the entire face before going out in the snowy cold winter of
-20C degrees :D uhullll \m/


- drinking shots of vodka in the winter to get warm :D yuuupie!


- in the summer everyone wants to get a tan

- just about everyone has a great sense of fashion

- the toilette is separate from the bathroom

- on Easter they eat cooked egg and pray

- they do appreciate when you (non-polish) try to speak their language

- they always talked in Polish to me thinking I was a Pole lol

- the doors open inwards lol, nice!

well I can't remember anything else being so soooo different from where I'm from, but I love that experience as I as consider myself Polish too.

let's post more stuff, people!

omg, i forgot to mention, the wedding ring i use is on the right hand :)


very nice!

I love this post!
I now live here perminantly but only moved from london a few weeks ago, i find the following odd:

*to give a tip at a bar, you say thanks and walk away, or tap the bar with your money as you hand it over, and you put your money in a tray, not hand it into there hand.

*there seems to be little regard for speed limits, drunk driving and street signs. in london you would be hung for the driving here!

*always turning headlights on, regarless for the time of day (only put them on in the dark in the UK)

*again, the people clapping when you land, i physicly Jumped when it happned the first time i landed in Gdansk! my boyfriend said '******* idiots' in polish (he is polish) it irritates him alot.

*people seem to be much much more superstitious here.

*HOW IS IT THAT ALL THE POLISH WOMEN LOOK LIKE SUPERMODELS? - i ask my boyfriend almost every day, there seems to be no answer.

*Iv only met about 2 people who dont smoke, and everyone drinks. I wory about the future of my health.

more to come no doubt...

Katiekasia

And here are couple of USA <> Poland differences - on Poland + ;)

Poland+
- in Poland you don`t have to tell shop seller that you wanna use Fitting rooms and get "special key".. you just get staff and go there.

- supermarket shoping is better here, because you can actually put the car on the parking, and after shopping reach you car with "truck"? . In USA you can`t go with shop truck on the parking.

- hard to say that, but there are much better clothes in shop here than in USA (yeap, sounds weird but true).

- MacDonald is better (Chessburger taste much better)

- Girls are 1000 more hot than USA girls (their "hot girl" definition is our normal)

"The sklep people" drinking cheap beer or wine in front of little "skleps".

they are called "żule spod sklepu" <lol>

Is that why 2 Polish men literary smashed into a lamppsot staring at me in utter shock upon hearing me speak perfect Polish in Oxford- England? Laughed so hard I nearly pissed myself!

hahahahah :D
nice!
well, I figure they appreciate it a lot because Polish is so difficult to learn and it's everyone that's able to speak, now if you speak it near perfect Polish then they might really shocked. . .no wonder then LOL
Few people were like jaw-dropping after listening my Polish too xD I'm from Brazil by the way :)
I guess I wouldn't have learned this good if I hadn't lived there for more than 2 years, which I did xD
Other thing is, I find very respectful when you're in another country and at least try to speak this country's language, don't ya think so?
:)

You'd think so, depends on the person I suppose. When I tried to speak Polish to Poles in UK, they were like totally amazed, but when you're living here, you're kind of expected to speak Polish, so if you don't speak it perfectly I suppose you're more the silly foreigner who can't speak Polish properly.

I was in the supermarket the other day and the cashier was trying to ask me if I wanted a points card, and took me a while to understand her. When I said that Polish was a hard language, she said, nie jest asz taki trudny, 'it's not that hard'. Little does she know. :)

That is so not true. But I think the myth is kept alive by remebering only the pretty ones....

I'm not sure I understand. Are you referring to the trolley? In the US, you can walk your trolley home if you wish :) There's never a problem with taking it into the parking lot. It's the whole point of a trolley. Maybe I misunderstood you though.



In boutiques you have to do this, most department stores have open rooms in the back...similar to stores in PL malls ie. H&M


Crappy beef is crappy beef no matter what country you're in :)

I don't agree too much with you that we pass as "silly foreigner" if we can't speak it very good, you know? I lived in Poland for 2 years, and my Polish is almost perfect (the pronunciation), I just lack of some vocabulary, people were dropping their jaw literally when I was speaking it, I think they appreciate they effort you put on it, no matter how you speak it, if you speak it somehow just for the sake of communicating with them, then you will gain some respect, I'm saying this because people were often telling me: "it's great that you're trying to speak our language, thank you and keep it up", Btw, I would love to see a foreigner trying to speak my native language too :)

It's compulsory all year long now in Poland.

Or simply 'żule' ('żul' for one individual).

he he, i would love to speak that well. Having only been here for a couple of months it's still a bit of an uphill struggle. I do get quite a bit of respect from Polish friends, and they are constantly saying my Polish is coming on very well. Very encouraging. It's just in day to day life - shopping, asking for directions, as in this example, not everyone, is understanding of how difficult it is to learn for an English person.

Par example, Eu esterai seis mesas em Sao Paulo, ainde falar porque portuguese. Eu pensar que portuguese e muito mais faco que polonaise. Sorry probably a bit rusty, but hope that cheers you up. :) It's been 7 years since I've spoken it properly.