Ciekawa krytyka UK i odpowiedź anglika żyjącego w Polsce ;)

[krzyszp]

W internecie (na reddit'cie ) rozgorzała dyskusja po opublikowaniu posta przez jednego z naszych emigrantów w tym wątku.

Jedną z najciekawszych chyba odpowiedzi jest riposta (fajna) anglika żyjącego w Polsce, którą tutaj zacytuję (po angielsku, ale większość z Was zapewne sobie z tym poradzi):

This post will get drowned, but it'll provide some counter-perspective for you. I'm an Englishman who's lived in Poland for 10 years, and your country still weirds the hell out of me sometimes.

    Food. You have amazing recipes like pierogi, leczo, bigos, big chunks of golonka, and the world's most incredible array of sausages. It's like you can turn a pig into a magical meat wonderland of flavour. And the bread? Loaves stuffed with plums or cranberries, soft or crunchy rolls, dark, grain, rye... it's a baker's paradise. Considering these two incredible foodstuffs, can I get a bacon sandwich anywhere in the entire country? Nope

    Christmas food. You celebrate Christmas the night before, by banning all the tasty stuff mentioned above (no meat, no alcohol) and instead punishing yourself with the worst food available. Carp. Herring. Bland pasta covered in poppy seeds. Is this some masochistic torture for all the sinning you've done that year?

    Religion. Apparently, everybody's Catholic. If your car breaks down on the street no-one will stop and help you. Old ladies will spit and curse at you for kissing in public, and everyone cheats each other as much as possible, including never paying any taxes. People really are awful to each other on a daily basis. But they still go to Church on Sunday and own a picture of...

    John Paul II. Yeah, I know, 28 years a Pope. 28 years where he did nothing to help the spread of AIDS in Africa or end the sexual abuse of children in the Church. Dead for 9 years. But still many Poles think he's a saint and own a poster/calender/icon of him. What's the new Pope's name? Don't care, the only Pope is JP2.

    Driving. Bulgaria has worse roads than Poland, and fewer people are killed in car accidents. The Lithuanians have worse cars, and kill fewer people. The Italians have more treacherous geography, the English and Swedish have worse weather, and the Germans drive faster, and still Poland kills more people with cars than these countries. Why? Polish people suck at driving. Really, you're awful. Maybe because you're always rushing around the country on...

    Holidays. 26 days per year once you reach 10 years of employment (or 3years + 5years of studying). Plus 12 national holidays, so 38 days off a year, or nearly two working months. How does anything get done? How, even in the capital city, do shop-owners shut down for the whole of August and still run a successful business? Which leads to...

    Service. You'll never feel less welcome than when you walk into a shop and ask the seller for something. 99% of the time the answer will be "no". The other 1% the item will be handed to you in awkward silence, with an evil glare for interrupting their peace and quiet. In supermarkets, you'll go the entire transaction without hearing a single word from the cashier except...

    "Do you have any change?" I'm used to this from homeless people. Not from the store clerk, desperate to get the 5- and 10grosze coins from my pocket. The sale was 49.56zl, I gave you a 50zl note, but you still desperately plead for the 56grosze in change so that you can give me 1zl back. In a tiny village shop, ok, I get it, but in massive outlets with 20 cashiers? This is retarded. Especially in...

    Home improvement stores. Castorama, Praktiker, Obi, Leroy Merlin - huge palaces to consumption where you can buy curtains, wood flooring, lamps and bathroom furniture. Finally, you can decorate your apartment the way you always dreamed, filled with furniture from Ikea or BlackRedWhite. These names are confusing, but it's ok: they all sell exactly the same products for the same prices. You had Communism for 45 years where everyone wore identical clothes and lived in identical apartments with identical furniture. Now, after 25 years of capitalism it's exactly the same, except it's the people's choice. And Ikea in Poland is more expensive than the UK.

    Bureaucracy. I'm from the UK; I don't have an ID card. I don't have one in Poland either, but I do have a unique ID number (PESEL) and a registered address (meldunek) and a tax number (NIP) and a business number (REGON). I couldn't get an ID card becuase you need meldunek for that, but you can't get meldunek without an ID card. I worked my way around it to buy a car and a flat, butI can't be registered (meldunek) in my own flat for more than 5 years because I don't have an ID card, even though I'm listed on the land ownership record (KW) as the owner. It takes five different offices to deal with this shit.

    Decograms. If I buy ham or cheese I don't buy it in kilos, or grams, but decograms. What the fuck is a decogram? "20 decos of ham, please." Or 200 grams, for normal people. You don't use decolitres for beer or vodka, but you'll use decograms for ham, as if you've invented a metric pig.

So if it's so awful, why do I stay here?

    The weather. People think of Poland as some grey gloomy landscape, like Siberia but with more pork products. But it isn't. It has 4 very distinct seasons that are all just long enough, and even from my window in Warsaw I can see gorgeous August sunsets shining on the browning leaves of the old chestnut trees over the road. I regularly stop and stare at the beauty of the weather here.

    The geography. Mountains to the south, sea to the north, a massive lake district and some of the most ancient oak and pine forests in Europe. This place is a natural wonderland, achingly beautiful in its wilderness.

    The architecture. Poland's awful and awesome history means towns are actually distinct from each other, and Lublin is different to Krakow or to Wroclaw or to Gdansk. This is unlike Britain, where every town up and down the country has a stone cathedral surrounded by fake Tudor townhouses and a generic high street filled with the same bloody shops. Yawn.

    The people. Once people accept you, Poles display a level of genuine warmth that I never experienced in the UK. They'll hurl abuse at you on the roads and elbow you in the street without saying sorry, but if you're invited to their house you're an honored guest and nothing is too good for you. Instead of a bland evening supper of polite conversation and dinner party games (like England) you'll be invited to a three-day weekend at their place in the country with rivers of alcohol and more sausage than a Gay Pride festival. Which is how Poles "relax". A ha ha ha.

    The humour. A very dry humour prevails in Poland, mixed with a taste for the absurd. Classic books and movies are either very subtle or utterly outrageous in their weirdness, and once you get that into your head, real life in Poland starts to make sense (in the sense that you know it will never make sense).

    The work/life balance. The long holidays and generic product availability is frustrating at first, but then you learn it's how Poles think; Work to Live, not Live to Work like in the UK. Britishers put in 40-60 hours a week to fill their overpriced house with stupid shit they don't need, so that after 45 soul-destroying years they can die of a heart attack with shitloads of debt. Poles would rather save save save, pay cash up front for a couple of good products, and make those things last the rest of their life. People at the age of 25 are trying to buy the houses they'll die in, people avoid mortgages and credit cards as if they were ebola, and trade promotion and career prospects for family time with the wife and kids. As a result, they have much less stress and more stronger relationships with their family, even if it means they can't afford a 50" TV and three foreign holidays a year. I think that's a much healthier balance (although it's starting to change).

    Food. Microwave and oven-ready meals are almost unheard of. People cook fresh, and cook often (or their mothers do it for them). In summer the street stalls are bursting with fresh fruit and vegetables, and beside a few kebab and Asian bars, fast food is almost unknown. People don't really go to restaurants at all, and even Warsaw (a city of 3million people) has a very limited range of places to eat out - not only because of price, but because the stuff made at home really does taste so much better. It's also healthier, which leads to...

    Women. Girls here are beautiful, not because of genetics but because of style. They don't turn into lardbuckets at 25 like their British counterparts, they don't sport horrendous fake tans, buckets of makeup or trampstamp tattoos, or follow the latest retarded fashion trends. Sure, there's always a tasteless minority, but more often than not the women focus on looking elegant or chic rather than Kardashian clones. It's beautiful without relying solely on sex appeal.

    You can compliment people. I can tell the women in the office that their hair looks good today or that I like their new shoes without being considered sleazy or a potential rapist. Men can say nice things to women (things they honestly mean - those are nice new shoes) without the risk of HR getting involved for sexual harrassment.

    More seriously, politics. People here are informed, and the newsagents actually have a choice in weekly magazines on art, science and politics (wprost, polityka etc). Even the existence of metalist idiots like Kaczynski and Korwin-Mikke helps people have actual debates on what's important for the country, rather than the pathetic dribble of PR quotes that the British hear from Cameron and Clegg.

    Largest apple producer in Europe, and you've only just (last three years) learned how to make cider. But it's good cider - clean and fresh.

    Culture. People here have read books, recognise classical music pieces, enjoy attending the theatre and are open to discuss these things. Water cooler talk is about current events, be it big sports matches or global wars. It's not endless asinine bleating about whatever was on telly last night.

Enjoy your time in England; I wouldn't swap places with you.

[cp]

Amen to that :D

(Sorry, krzyszp)

P.S.
Nie jest to pierwsza taka opinia obcokrajowca o Polsce i Polakach, z jaką się spotkałem, więc pewnie to prawda  :P

[krzyszp]

Ty mi tu nie sorruj, bo ja się zgadzam prawie z wszystkimi tezami (aczkolwiek dyskusji o bojlerze nie miałem ) ;)

Natomiast na jednym z portali był kiedyś cykl artykułów Anglika mieszkającego w Polsce (niestety, pamięć zawodzi), była to niezwykle celna i humorystyczna krytyka napisana z wyraźną sympatią. Jeżeli ktoś wie o czym piszę, to wdzięczny będę za linka.

Edit:
Znalazłem, to cykl Okiem Angola :)

[Troll81]

Eeee. e niby nie ma fastfoodów? Na moim osiedlu są 3 pizzerie, jedna suszarnia i dwa bary z jedzeniem. A do tego kebab. I mówię tu o promieniu jakiś 200m.

Od kiedy wawa ma 3mln ludzi? raczej połowę tego....

O gotowaniu w domu można zapomnieć.... mnóstwo ludzi już nie gotuje...

i wiele innych tez już jest nieaktualnych...

[Szopler]

Liczba ludności Warszawy:

[Martin Fox]

Jak się doliczy ludzi mieszkających w podwarszawskich gminach + tych mieszkających w sypialniach (a zameldowanych ciągle gdzieś poza Warszawą) to będzie pewnie 3mln

[krzyszp]

Eeee. e niby nie ma fastfoodów? Na moim osiedlu są 3 pizzerie, jedna suszarnia i dwa bary z jedzeniem. A do tego kebab. I mówię tu o promieniu jakiś 200m.

Żartujesz? U mnie są 52 (pięćdziesiąt dwa) fastfoody w promieniu 2km od ratusza...

[kva.pl]

Fakt, na zachodzie to doslownie na kazdym rogu sa fastfoody/knajpy. W Berlinie to wlasciwie w kazdym budynku, do tego stopnia ze moi znajomi tam mieszkajacy maja w domu dwie sypialnie, salon i lazienke. Kuchni nie, jak sie tym zdziwilem to mi odpowiedzieli "a po co nam?" :D

A ludzi w Wawie jest mysle wiecej niz 3 miliony, mnostwo ludzi mieszka przeciez bez meldunku itp.

[krzyszp]

Kuchnia, to następny temat ;)
W UK, w nowych budynkach kuchnia zaczyna przypominać "kącik kuchenny", połączony z salonem, z mikro-lodówką i pojedynczym zlewozmywakiem...
Tutaj naprawdę rzadko się gotuje w domu, nawet w niedzielę i po prostu... coraz mniej osób potrafi.
Jakość usług to parodia tego co w Polsce, ale... czasami nawet to lubię. Jak człowiek wyzbędzie się oczekiwań, że jak gość zadzwonił, że "jutro będzie gotowe", a jest gotowe 2 tygodnie później, to też zacznie stosować tę zasadę do swoich działań i nikt go nie opieprzy, dlatego mogę bez większego stresu zrobić sobie 2 dni wolnego od pracy "bo tak" ;)

Oczywiście, długo by wymieniać, co w Polsce mnie wkurzało, ale nie o tym jest temat :)

Ps. Jest tak miejscowość, Luton, tam w wekeend na ulicy można usłyszeć każdy język, ale nie będzie to angielski ;)

[kva.pl]

Bywam w Londynie czasem, zdarzalo mi sie byc jedynym bialym w prawie pelnym wagonie metra takze potwierdzam, wszystkie jezyki swiata ;)

[Dario666]

Tylko jak długo pociągnie się na fastfoodach i ja się będzie wyglądać???

[kva.pl]

No na to tez ulica daje odpowiedz. Ludzie zasadniczo dziela sie na otylych w mniejszym lub wiekszym stopniu i ewidentnie wysportowanych. Takich przecietnych jest bardzo malo. W Polsce odnosze wrazenie powoli robi sie niestety to samo.