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Thoughts after your first trip home from Poland........
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dynow



Joined: 07 Nov 2006
Posts: 1080

PostPosted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 11:23 pm    Post subject: Thoughts after your first trip home from Poland........ Reply with quote

Came to Poland in January and had my first trip back to the states in August for 2 weeks. I had many mixed emotions. Wondering what others felt?

Just to mention a few of my own:

-the "conveniences" of the US just didn't seem as convenient/important anymore.

-the food that I was craving made me sick an hour after I ate it.

-I was bored with hearing only english all the time.

-basically nobody did anything other than gain weight and work too much.

-Reeeeeeally appreciated good tasting soda again. MMmmmmmm.....i most certainly missed my Mountain Dew.

-The pizza really is the best in the world in NJ/NYC.
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simon_porter00



Joined: 09 Nov 2005
Posts: 505
Location: Warsaw, Poland

PostPosted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 7:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Whenever i return to the UK i always look forward to a few things:
-Overhearing people's conversations on the bus/train/street and actually understanding what they are talking about.
-Cleaner quality air
-the novelty of being in my home country always puts a smile on my face
-bitter - London's Pride, IPA, Brains SA, Speckled Hen etc etc
-the best TV in the world
-at home, being able to hear the birds
-at home, the chilly mist that you get on winter mornings

However, after landing the realisation is:
the conversations you overhear makes you dispair at the intellect of some people
Pikies, chavs, garys, kevins - whatever you want to call these people
The picture of 'perfect England' that you have in head is just that - a picture and nothing else
And of course, the girls aren't up to Polish standards.
Directly related to that, my finacee keeps on getting chatted up which pi**es me off a treat
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Master Shake



Joined: 03 Nov 2006
Posts: 1202
Location: Colorado, USA

PostPosted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 1:45 pm    Post subject: Re: Thoughts after your first trip home from Poland........ Reply with quote

dynow wrote:

-basically nobody did anything other than gain weight and work too much.


Yea, that pretty much sums up my Summer at home in Colorado.

Dynow, did you feel that life in general back in the States was more complicated?
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dynow



Joined: 07 Nov 2006
Posts: 1080

PostPosted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 2:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

shake,

it really was like stepping onto another planet. the people seemed so completely different. after about 4-5 days there, i was ready to come back to Poland. things certainly seemed more complicated there. i credit most of it to people spreading themselves too thin, that being with time and money. they own too many things, most of them unnecessary or don't even get used, and they have very little time to unwind. life is a bit of a whirlwind to me in the states. here, i actually feel like i can think before doing something.

simon, i had the same thoughts about the peripheral conversations in earshot while in my hometown. it was a bit disappointing listening to people talking.
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Tumteetum



Joined: 04 Feb 2005
Posts: 144

PostPosted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 6:08 pm    Post subject: Re: Thoughts after your first trip home from Poland........ Reply with quote

Bad

Neds (aka chavs)
Fat birds
Remembering that everyone can understand what I say!!
Aggro - erseholes out drinking looking for fights
Information overload - I could understand every P.A., advert, voice in the street etc.

Good
Rediscovered vocabulary
Being able to question bar/restaurant bills
Customer service (not great in Glasgow but better than Wroclaw)
Eclectic culture
Variety in shops
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Harry from NWE



Joined: 13 Sep 2007
Posts: 283

PostPosted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 3:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

simon_porter00 wrote:
-bitter - London's Pride, IPA, Brains SA, Speckled Hen etc etc
-the best TV in the world


You can buy a good selection of British bitter at Bomi (in Galeria Mokotow, Klif, the shopping centre next to Silver Screen Pulawska and Jupiter but the one at Jupiter has a very limited selection) and at Piotr i Pawel (Blue City and Ikea development at Janki).

All British TV channels are available in Poland and no problem to receive.
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simon_porter00



Joined: 09 Nov 2005
Posts: 505
Location: Warsaw, Poland

PostPosted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 5:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Are they all available? Ever since they directed the signals at another satellite which has a footprint just over the UK i thought that was that. I'll have to do some further research in that case.
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Scawie



Joined: 24 Apr 2006
Posts: 44

PostPosted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 8:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Things I liked when I went back to Blighty (in no particular order):
Curry
Other food with spices in
Draught real ales
Seeing friends and family
Less dog crap and litter
Cleaner air
Better manners on the roads, better roads
Rolling hills and rugged cliffs
Nice houses and other buildings (not just in historic centres)
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nabakow30



Joined: 25 Jan 2006
Posts: 35
Location: Ljubljana, Slovenia

PostPosted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 9:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

There's no doubt that picking up the thread or lack of one on public transport conversations can be disheartening. I felt it accutely.

But then I learnt polish to a good level and, well, you can guess the rest. As bad, if not worse. Of course I wouldn't swap the opportunities being able to converse well affords with blissful ignorance of the extent of polish chavness but...

the chilly winter mist. Yep, you got it.

friends and family.

the air, the sense of home which makes being a foreigner so tiring after a few years, the random banter which british people do so much better than poles.

alternative people. Scratch its affluent surface (not even that deeply) and you'll see Britain has a far more heterogenous society than Poland.

A degree of environmental awareness.

Girls who don't want to sit on your lap and be 'looked after' or signal their arrival 5 minutes beforehand by the sheer click clack of their heels.

of course there were plenty of things I like more about Poland and its people. Higher degrees of loyalty, better understanding of friendship and other things. But I never found myself either waiting to go back to Poland, or indeed sad to get there.

But I'm not there now...
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YakTamer



Joined: 29 Mar 2004
Posts: 86
Location: Warszawa, Polska

PostPosted: Fri Sep 28, 2007 4:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Harry from NWE wrote:

You can buy a good selection of British bitter at Bomi (in Galeria Mokotow, Klif, the shopping centre next to Silver Screen Pulawska and Jupiter but the one at Jupiter has a very limited selection) and at Piotr i Pawel (Blue City and Ikea development at Janki).


Thanks for the info, Harry. I'm heading off there right now! Razz
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Harry from NWE



Joined: 13 Sep 2007
Posts: 283

PostPosted: Mon Oct 01, 2007 3:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

simon_porter00 wrote:
Are they all available? Ever since they directed the signals at another satellite which has a footprint just over the UK i thought that was that. I'll have to do some further research in that case.


They are all available here. The difficult ones are the BBCs, the ITVs and the Channel 4 extra channels. For those you need a 2.7 metre dish. For all other channels you just need a Sky decoder (I recommend a Panasonic DSB-50 but a Panasonic DSB-30 will work fine too, you can pick up a DSB-30 for about �25 on ebay, a DSB-50 will be about �10 more but is a better box) and a 1 metre dish. Oh, and a subscription to Sky which is at an UK address which has a TV license and is paid for by a UK credit card which bills to an address in the UK.
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simon_porter00



Joined: 09 Nov 2005
Posts: 505
Location: Warsaw, Poland

PostPosted: Mon Oct 01, 2007 4:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

2.7 metre dish you say???

Hmm, can't see the neighbours being too happy with that, and the size of the bolts you'd need to anchor it in on the 6th floor might be difficult to come by. Seriously though, if i've got any more questions i'll PM you if i may
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Harry from NWE



Joined: 13 Sep 2007
Posts: 283

PostPosted: Tue Oct 02, 2007 10:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

simon_porter00 wrote:
2.7 metre dish you say???

Hmm, can't see the neighbours being too happy with that, and the size of the bolts you'd need to anchor it in on the 6th floor might be difficult to come by. Seriously though, if i've got any more questions i'll PM you if i may


Feel free to PM me with questions.

The 2.7 metre dish can be a bit of a bugger to fit to an apartment block. You can expect to pay about 6,000 zloty for the dish and the fitting (they have to go on the roof, getting it on a wall can be tricky!)

However, a 1 metre dish is about 400 zloty including fitting and for that kind of price you can just offer to leave it behind when you move out provided that the landlord applies to the administration of the place where you live for permission to mount a dish.
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JPM



Joined: 05 Sep 2005
Posts: 69
Location: Krakow

PostPosted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 10:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

An article I recently wrote. 'Seems appropriate ...

"An immigrant�s thoughts on returning to Krakow."

I�ve just come back from a week�s walking and camping in Devon, south-west England. The sun shined brightly as me and my girlfriend hauled rucksack, sleeping bags and tent around one of the most beautiful stretches of coastline in the country. As an unfit, middle-aged man, I was anxious how my body would cope. Surprisingly well, it turned out, and that old knee problem from my abortive Pennine Way trip many years ago seems to have healed up nicely. All this by way of saying that I stepped off the Ryanair plane last Saturday night feeling like a new man.

Under a full, crisp, Krakowian moon, the Balice shuttle bus whisked us efficiently the thirty or so metres from the aircraft to Customs. This fifteen-second hop always seems quite unnecessary to me. Is it a piece of classic British health & safety stowed away to Poland via an Extraordinary Rendition flight, a nod to a full-employment Communist past or, and this I suspect, a simple act of kindness to us, the weary travellers? Either way, it is infinitely preferable to the fifteen-minute slog through the Essex countryside when arriving at London Stansted.

Owing to my somewhat old-fashioned and probably reactionary English attitude to standards of public behaviour, I have, for as long as I can remember, always adopted a sedate, almost langorous, pace when joining a queue, considering any unseemly jostling or scrambling for position to be rather barbaric, certainly not �British�. However, I�ve been an expat for two years now and, hopping quickly first off the bus, I found myself the first to stand before the guard at passport control, looking just over his shoulder with a carefully-constructed mix of innocence (me, a terrorist?) and affected boredom in an effort to convince him I feel just the same as he does and the sooner he lets me back onto Polish soil, the sooner both he and I can go home. He appears not to notice my subliminal attempt at camaraderie and merely slides my passport back to me, his gaze already transferred to the babcia behind me, who is already digging her passport into my back, in mute defiance of both regulations and what was once-upon-a-time known as �personal space�.

On the bus, I�m immersed, cocoon-like, into blissful ignorance as the still largely-unfamiliar Polish language begins to bubble all around me. I�m tired of being shouted at from invisible speakers to buy Ryanair scratchcards and to choose from the exclusive range of in-flight purchases. Now, as the familiar houses and blocks slip past in the night, I relax, safe in the knowledge that whatever inanities and profanities are being muttered, most of them will slip harmlessly by.

I close my flat door behind me, disconnect myself from my rucksack (na koncu!) and, as my granny advises, try to �feel how I feel�. It, in fact, feels good to be back in Krakow. And I like my flat. A little cold now in the autumn, but a small adjustment to the brown ceramic sentinel standing guard in the corner will soon sort that. I switched on the kettle and fired up some BBC radio comedy on the laptop.

Windows XP appears rudely disturbed by my presence. It yawns, rubs the sleep out of its eyes and staggers slowly out of hibernation.

Under the streetlight outside, an alcoholic shakily proffers his mate a cigarette and receives, in exchange, a swig of something nameless and purple from a clear glass bottle. I wonder, once again, just how many broken, middle-aged alcoholic men there are in Krakow. Tens of thousands? Maybe. For every one on the street, you can bet there are another ten creeping about in dosshouses and soon-to-be redeveloped attics and basements. Where do these poor souls go when they get their marching orders? Where now, for example, are all those dangerous individuals who, we hear, made it impossible to walk safely through Kazimierz before the fall of Communism began to reunite kamienicas with long-forgotten landlords?

Because of the passage of time, and the passing of both generations and title deeds, some of these nouveau landlords, of course, have little connection to the city and have probably never even set foot here. Strangers from afar remoulding the country and its economy. I�m an immigrant myself, of course. Sounds strange, doesn�t it? Me, an Englishman, an immigrant. �Funny how we all prefer the term �ex-pat�, when the name we give to the rest of the world is immigrant. Is it because many of us �ex-pats� consider ourselves only temporary Krakowians, ready to skip off to the next country in a year or two or is it that the word �immigrant� suggests a search for money and material gain while we are, in contrast, so wonderful, talented and comparatively affluent that �ex-pat� is so much more appropriate: empowered, assured, cosmopolitan, safe?

If the truth be told, I am three things in one: ex-pat, immigrant and asylum-seeker. Firstly, I am an ex-pat, by which I mean that I am an educated Westerner who is blessed with opportunity and choice. Imagine, as a native English-speaker and teacher with money in my pocket, I can actually choose just about any country in the world to live in! Like most ex-pats, I am fairly affluent by Polish standards and I am also an ex-pat because I am able to skim along the surface of everyday Polish life without getting bogged down in details. It�s easy to be invisible in Poland. It�s easy not to pay taxes. It�s easy not to understand the language and remain aloof from day-to-day life. There is, to use Milan Kundera�s phrase, a �lightness of being� in being an ex-pat.

But if immigration is about seeking a better standard of living, then I am also an immigrant as well as an ex-pat. Currently, I am in the process of buying a flat in Krakow and have also begun working for a company that never, never pays cash. After two years, I have this week officially become a resident, I have applied to the tax office for a tax number and I shortly intend to start my own business. Why this sudden loss of social invisibility? Money. I want more of it and I want it here, in Poland, where I don�t have to work as hard as I would in England - just like any other immigrant.

Oh, yes, I said I was an asylum-seeker, too. OK, maybe not in the real sense of the term but, come on, have you seen your country lately? Americans love America and I sure love England, but, to quote the bard himself, I fear that England has become quote a country afraid to know itself unquote. I am happy to be back in Poland. Sure, Krakow�s not all Rynek Glowny and beautiful Planty: outside the old city dogsh1t, graffiti and alcoholics assault the eye at every turn while the city and its people struggle to find a sense of self and of pride after generations, if not centuries, of humiliation and subjugation to foreign powers. But at least Poland is moving, slowly and painfully, in the right direction, not squandering its inheritance, afraid of its own shadow like England. I am here seeking asylum, not from oppression or tyranny, but from cultural ignorance, mental slavery and moral and political cowardice. Now of course Eastern Europe (like much of the world) is seeking to emulate the west in so many ways: its embrace of free-market economics and the attendant fracturing of once-supportive communities, for example. Poland is not a paradise and I am very glad I don�t understand the moronic television news or the foul-mouthed teenager standing next to me on the tram. But I am lucky: in England, it would be nigh-impossible to escape such things. Here, I am an ex-pat, an immigrant and an asylum-seeker, and am thus largely able to cherry-pick from Krakow and Poland only those experiences and realities I wish to.

One thing that definitely is �ex-pat� and not �immigrant� or �asylum-seeker� is that sense of difference, the feeling of otherness that we all enjoy so much. I suspect that, for many of us, besides the wanderlust and sense of cultural inquiry that first sent us from our shores, there is also a desire to be a little out of focus, just a bit off the radar in a way that we could never be back home. We enjoy being the foreigner, the one looking in instead of out. As we wonder, marvel, gripe and groan about our new surroundings, we sometimes also stop and learn things about ourselves and those around us: things we�d never notice in our own cultures. And that�s worth a hell of a lot of dogsh1t!
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dynow



Joined: 07 Nov 2006
Posts: 1080

PostPosted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 8:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

nice job, JPM.

i don't think i'll ever be able to really, truly explain to my family and friends in America why I am here, or what it's like to live "on the other side of the pond", specifically Poland. I'm in Wroclaw, and I love it.

i enjoyed your article. some of it felt right at home.
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