What are your 10 fave things about Poland? And 10 least favourite?

Yes but the UK stopped building those architectural monstrosities in the 1970s. In Poland they don't seem to even realize that these blocks are monstrosities and are still building soul-destroying 15-story blocks all over the place...

In Poland the run-down areas and ghettos extend over 90% of all the urban area. True, it's mostly the result of WWII, followed by 60 years of neglect under communism, but that doesn't make living here any more pleasant for a foreigner. (All you blockersi are used to it, you were born into it, you hardly even notice that you're all living in a barren wasteland of concrete. Good luck to you all if you want to live in those blocks, you're welcome to them).

Let's just face it, over 90% most of Poland's towns and especially the villages are drop-dead ugly. Plain and simple fact.

My point exactly. You can sample the fragrant delights of this in "beautiful" concrete housing estates in almost every single Polish town. At least the new 15 story blocks don't stink so much.

Pissing in Poland. Hahahahaha!!!
If they didn't charge for using the tiolets, maybe they wouldn't piss so much all over!
I've seen guys in Poland go in the bushes or behind a building. I don't know what they do there....?
In the US, when you travel, there are rest stops, gas stations, restaurants, stores with free toilets.
In Poland there are the woods!!!!! Often you see pieces of sand-paper toilet paper floating around in the woods and when you go mushroom picking, you have to watch what you're stepping on!!!

Good one Krysia.. :D I know people who still piss in the halls of buildings (since they cannot find a toilet).

I would add this to the least favourite: When you come from abroad to Poland people think you MUST be rich and have a lot of money to spend :).

Yeah, and when they go to the US, they are surprised they have to work for a living. They thought dollars grow on trees. They soon find out the truth and many don't like it and go back.

OK guys. Enough of these negative vibes.

Let's fire up them brains cells and think of some good things about Poland!

I've been caught standing on some brown smelly matter, I can relate to seeing used toilet paper scattered around the forests (thats probally why mushrooms taste so nice in poland) and the sight of naked bums poping up and down as you aproach.

Lets start the ball rolling..


!.. The faith of the polish people and role of the Catholic Church.. Poland has a long proud history, its people over long generations have been faithful to the church and have maintained Christian values...(the old generation pole is second to none)
As poles move away from catholic values the poorer the country is becoming.

2. Polish folk law and music....excellent

3. Taste of fruit, vegetable, milk products, berries, and mushrooms..

Good things:
1. The food. Breads, cakes, desserts. Polish people are excellent cooks.
2. Scenery. Beautiful countryside, but too populated.
3. Good transit systems.
4. Flower shops everywhere.
5. Architecture. Castles and churches full of history.

Not any more... they've all moved to Britain.

Anway, besides that there is a strong drift to the big cities, experienced in more developed countries back in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

There's fewer young being born, and they all want to leave the farms.

So, give it a few decades and Polska wieś will be empty.

I've noticed some puste homes when driving around the wieś, all the młodzi moved to town. And everybody has a płot around their yard. ( Maybe so the kury don't go and lay jajka at the neighbor's dom)

Good sides ? OK
1. My house at the river;
2. Town 20 mins away by car;
3. See above posts.

Disadvantages:
1. Unemployment;
2. Poor quality of politics, that's discouraging people from staying in their country and changing it.

I don't mind constructive criticism about Poland but some of things are radiculous.

Bad in Poland is:
1.unemployment
2. Too many people who try too much intrude in your life, give you advices....

Church? I don't know I am Catholic and I don't see anything wrong about it.

I don't like abortion, eutanasia, starving old people in hospitals and pensioners homes( what happens in UK).... What is wrong about it.

I used before word "lefty"- I meant views of UK goverment and yes I don't like it at all.

Arrgghh!!

I think that you compare so many things from your country to Poland-it doesn't work. I did it when I moved to Uk and in the beginning I really hated living here.
But I learn tolerance and it is ok now.

Poland has his own culture, history and I think that everything is changing there maybe to slowly I don't know.

You say about smell.... When I was last time in London it was awful there dirty, smelly full bins on the pavement - and it was relatively area....

Flats... in UK they start to build more and more of them as there is no enough space.

This is a big plus ...never happend anywhere else...........A taxi driver who lets you off on the small change......It happend to me twice in Krakow.

Sorry wozzy, but I don't get it. Must be the blonde streak I have.

Fare= 3.58 zl

give driver 5.00 zl

driver gives 2.00 change because he didn't have the small coin.

cabies elswere would hang out for a tip not there....... pehaps I look as though I need the money.

90% you say? How come you didn't notice it when you were buying your house then?
Shame on you.

"Pecunia non olet", krysia. We take example from the best.

heres my list-

Raves-
1- beautiful women that take care of themselves

2- women wearing tight jeans to just below the knee, then boots to meet the jeans.

3- A wide selection of beer.

4- Zubrowka and apple juice

5- the people i work with and teach that have included my in thier social circles.

6- loads of different foods to try

7- cheap chocolate and plenty of selection

8- you can pretty much find what you are looking for on every block.


Rants-
1- noisy people in the building i live in. they walk with heavy feet on the floor, and i hear their thud thud of every footstep. even as i type this. I've talked with them about it, and they don't give a shiz.

2- at 630-7am someone has to take their empty cans and bottles to the garbage room on each floor and has to drop 3-4 of them and they bounce down 2 flights of stairs making one heck of a racket. i'm moving out of here in 40 days. thank god.

3- the fight for seats among the old ladies on the tram. too funny.

4- people standing in "your space" in lineups. Look, food lines ended a long time ago, give some space.

5- barking dogs tied up outside of the Berti. they bark once every second or 2 seconds while their owners are inside for shopping. So 10 mintes later they come out, and it stops. The noise echos amongst all the flats.

6- taxi drivers that rip me off, by charging too much. its amazing how 4 different cab rides from exactly the same place to exactly the same place can vary in price from 10PLN to 18PLN. I have been informed by my friend that i can make a complaint, and will start doing so now. When you don't have a command of the language, it's kind of hard to argue with the driver.

7- dog crap just left on the sidewalk. I've seen countless people (old ppl the worst offenders) watch their dog take a crap on the sidewalk and just walk away.

8- lack of recycling. the garbage cans are filled with all types of plastic bottles and glass containers. PL needs to start getting on the recycling porgram. there are however, large collection bins located in housing areas. Paper in not recycled, just all thrown into the bin.

9- cigarette smoke everywhere. being a non smoker really sucks.

10- bus/tram frequency drops from 10am-1pm. and non existant to my area after 22:30.

It depends on part of Poland where you live in. I come from a village in South-West, and we have full recycling service in that matter (plastics, paper, scrap metal, glass).

Prices of CDs are f*n high - I'm asking, why the hell an album can cost £5 in the UK, and the same CD is ZLP60 in Poland (to make things worse, you don't see many promotions) ???

No. I'd rather leave you feeling miserable

well u guys arent being to encouraging about the different aspects of poland i guess i cant really say cuz ive only just visited but for an eastern european country u guys got it good trust me.. u ever been to bosnia? even turkey is one fu*ked up place man we drove U.N trucks w medical eqipment through sergovia in the nineties n it wuz lame

i am actually seriously moving to poland for to marry me the hottest girl ive ever met but im thinkin the way u make it sound i might just try to talk her into movin to america

Perhaps she could provide you with some feedback, since she(as I understand) is from Poland
Good luck in your marriage.

you better meet her in person before getting married. i thought i had met "the one" a hot PL babe, and after living together for 1 month in PL, there were many clashes. Many cultural differences. Needless to say, it ended about 2 weeks after i got back home. I'm from Van BC and living here (PL) now.

but good luck, you never know what will happen.

Best for me:

in Warsaw-

the Muzeum Ziemi (Earth Science Museum) on Na Skarpie;

the stone terrace a few steps away, surrounded by ancient urns, where I sat to eat my sandwich one day (does anyone know the name of that park? in the area of ul. Rozbrat between Ksiazeca and Prusa);

the Polonia Palace;

Wedel's on Szpitalna;

the roses and lace curtains everywhere;

the quietness;

the low-rise buildings that allow the sky and the sun to be seen in the city;

the light colour of the buildings (white, yellow);

the chestnuts that fall from the trees in October;

the ceramic tiles;

the outdoor observation decks at the airport;

the chandeliers in one of the shops on Jerozolimskie;

elsewhere -

the Baltic;

the space between the trees in the forest that allows you to walk easily in it (unlike most Canadian forests that are unbelievably bushy compared to that);

the castles, elegant but not overdone;

the width of the aleja and ulica;

the Polish men who remind me of my father.

OK, here is my list:

1. The quality of food: There’s no division into organic and “normal” food as everything here is organic. The veggies and fruits don’t always have the perfect size and shape, but that’s the way nature wanted it to be. Their taste is incomparably better to the taste of their pumped with chemicals perfectly shaped counterparts. Poland is probably one of the few places in Europe where tomatoes taste really like tomatoes. It’s a huge plus.


2. Polish cuisine! Still to be discovered by the westerners, something that will leave you with a lot of good memories. There’s a tendency now for the cooks to discover regional dishes which is very good news. Also when I’m saying polish cuisine I don’t think only about the dishes but also abot the unique polish products such as: smoked hames, large variety of sausages, kasznka, buczanka, wątrubki, salcesony, lots of polish cheeses, maślanki, kefiry, polish bread, deserts, pickled cucumbers (“po warszawsku”, “kiszone”, “po żydowsku”, itp), pickled mushrooms, surówki, polish quality beverages ( beer, vodka, nalewka and mead), etc… Some of this products you can find also outside of Poland, but never with the same taste.


3. Very interesting and tragic history which you can almost smell in the air walking the streets of Kraków, Gdańsk, Łódź, Wrocław, Szczecin, Kazimierz, Zamość, Przemyśl, etc… Beautiful castles in Książ (ment to be Hitler’s headquarters in Poland, with underground tunels, etc), Moszna, Bolkowo, Łańcut, Malbork, Kwidzyń, and the so called “orle gniazda” (Eagles nests) which basically means ruins of castles like Ogrodzieniec (my favourite place in Poland ), fortresses Boyen, or fortress in Kłodzko, The Międzyrzecz Fortification Region (Built in 1934-1938, it was the most technologically advanced fortification system of Nazi Germany and remains one of the largest and the most interesting systems of this type in the world), etc…. Many great characters like: Mieszko I, Bolesław Chrobry, Władysław Jagiełło, Stefan Batory, Jan III Sobieski, Koścuszko, Kazimierz Wielki, hetman Żółkiweski, Chodkiewicz, Zamoyski, Czarniecki, etc…To many to even to name.


4. Sarmatian culture of polish nobles, with all the unique customs, clothes, dances(like polonais, which was later very popular in Western Europe) and their residences called “dworki” spread all over the country.


5. Folklore of the common people! That includes clothes, dances( if someone will have the chance to see the “Mazowsze” or “Śląsk” group perform, don’t hesitate and go for it!), beliefs, customs, hospitality (“Guest in the house means God in the house” and demonology. Vampires, werewolves, strzygi, devils, etc… Very fascinating!


6. Very strong family ties and the whole atmosphere of holidays spend “the Polish way”! Absolutely love it!


7. Literature! Sienkiewicz, Lem, Sapkowski, Szymborska, Tetmajer, Bursa, Mickiewicz, etc…


8. Countryside! Don’t have to have the biggest mountains and the deepest lakes to enjoy a countryside. Baltic looses with “Mediterranean Sea” but still walking on the “Molo” during a storm is a great experience for me.


9. Weather! Beautiful sun in the summer, snow in the winter, melancholic autumn and my favorite season, spring, where everything comes back to life! What else could one possibly need? Ok, maybe the winter could end in January, but you can’t have it all, right?


10. Great audience! Poles react very lively during rock, hip hop, reggae, etc concerts! Just thinking about last U2 concert gives me goose bumps.




There’s so many beautiful and stunning things about Poland that I wanted to share with the members of this forum, but instead I was wasting my time arguing about polish immigrants, commie block’s and Polish miserable faces. It’s really frustrating and I really fell tired. Sure Poland isn’t perfect, but it also isn’t all bad. It has it’s brighter side about some people seem to forget. It’s sad really.

Arrrggghhhh, you lied at the beginning of this thread when you said that you are still trying to figure out if “the glass is half full or half empty”. We all know that the answer for you is half empty. For me it’s half full. You also said that by heavy critic you are trying to help polish people open their eyes and do something constructive to improve their life. I don’t think that by taking some polish disadvantages and blowing them out of proportion you will achieve yur goal. You would help as more if you would go back from where you came from. I think that it would be better both, for us, and for you. And remember, “Co złego, to nie my!”.
Pozdrawiam.

I wish I had said that. Matyjasz, you're the best.

With oratory skills like this and your intellect, I foresee a very impressive future for you.


Syrena

Matyjasz....very good post.

There is one thing about us Slavs.... we have spirit , we are romantic, family orientated,warm people- even can be sometimes loud and argumentative

Problem with native people from UK is that lots ( not all) of them are "cold as a fish" - as they don't understand us they attack us. They think that their world is perfect with getting rid of old unwanted people ( eutanasia or living them in "homes" and sending card once a year), getting rid of unwanted children (abortion) , no religion -for what? Just enjoy your life to max and have as many pleasures as possible giving back as little as possible.

This is shallow, consumer Society.

Even I admire their history, literature, their sense of humour , sarcasm....