Two week absence

Just letting everyone know that early next morning I am leaving my usual residential area for just over two weeks and will not return until the 14th of July. I am going abroad and will be busy, so chances are that I will not have access to an internet connection and will not able to check the forum during this time at all. However, if there will be any opportunities to steal someone's wi-fi connection or whatever, I will use them to check the forum through my phone and delete any spam I find. Even if I'll be able to do that then I can't promise I will post much because I won't have the time and browsing the internet on a phone is really shite anyway.

That is all.

 

Cheers guys! I'm sleeping at a very remote place right now but surprisingly it is the first to have wi-fi. :lol: I doubt I will have access to internet often or time and strength to check the forum during this absence, but if I do then see ya then. Also, going through all the recently active profiles for new members and deleting all that are spambots before they can post anything is such a pain in the ass.

 

I wanted to post this from my phone when I was still on holiday, but it was not possible for reasons I will post in another thread. Now that I am back in Britain, I've adapted the original post I wanted to make so that it is actually relevant:

I was on holiday in Occitania, spent most of my time there cycling with the family along with our luggage. Overall it was quite tiresome but also very satisfying. I have to say that this region is very naturally beautiful. Moreover, it sort of feels less French than Paris in Northern France because it is so Mediterranean and close to Spain (some small parts in the mountains actually look kinda Mexican), yet at the same time it feels so much more French than Paris - especially all the villages and smaller towns where people lead more traditional lifestyles and it's so much more authentically French. The architecture is beautiful, both the little houses in villages and imposing cathedrals in the cities. Some rural areas are really charming with fields of wine grapes growing all around. The places I went to have a really long history too, with some prehistoric traces, then remains of Roman settlements as well as the much later struggles for control over Occitania between France and its neighbours. The history of the Cathars is perhaps the most fascinating. Anyway, I am not much of a wine person, but whilst in this region I felt obliged to try stuff from the local vineyards with cheeses and olives... it was delicious. This was probably the most varied and expensive holiday trip I've ever had and likely the only such trip I may have with my family, so I enjoyed the most out of it.

Also, Skaara, I don't know whereabouts in Poland you are going to but I can recommend you some places. This might be a bit biased since I'm talking about my original hometown here, but I honestly think that one cannot visit Poland without going to Warsaw. It's the capital and there are many tourist attractions there, especially in the Old Town, but there are also plenty of cool post-Eastern Bloc things to see that tourists from culturally Western countries usually find somewhat exotic. Plus there are countless alternative caffes, places serving traditional cuisine or the awesome "bar mleczny"s still from the pseudo-socialist times that all give Warsaw some urban charm. Furthermore, I honestly think it's more representative and Polish than places like Szczecin (which feels much more Germanic in comparison). Gdańsk is another interesting city to see due to how varied it is since many cultures have passed through it during its history as a port town. Kraków is kind of like our cultural capital (and was one of the previous capitals of Poland too) so there are many things to see there as well. If you're looking for natural beauty, the Tatra mountains are perfect for hiking since they look stunning and are very well-kept so the wildlife still thrives there. And you get to taste the regional Góral culture too (especially in Zakopane, which is quite tourist-oriented).

Last but not least, I gotta highlight the fact that you'll have to try some vodka whilst you are in Poland as it's the homeland of this beverage. A good clear vodka is Sobieski, but I prefer Żubrówka - it is a flavoured vodka based on a very old tradition that uses bison grass. However, we have tons of different brands and regional variants of vodka (most of the clear vodkas in Poland are made from cereal grain - usually rye - but potato vodkas can be found in addition to many aromatised types). There is also kwas chlebowy (kvass in English) - it is more Ukrainian and Russian than Polish really, but it has been drunk in Poland for centuries so it is part of our history too. It's not alcoholic, it's basically made using bread and the original natural variants of it (in Warsaw you can find glass bottles of it in Hale Banacha) are very refreshing on a hot summer day.

 

I've only been to Poznań once for a few hours, at midnight and into the very early morning when travelling from one part of Poland to another (waiting at a railway station), so I can't say I'm as familiar with it as I am with Warsaw, Kraków, Gdańsk, etc. but I'm glad you enjoyed it.

You don't like pickles? Heretic! Warka is fine, though I prefer Żubr Ciemnozłoty and Specjal when it comes to can lagers. I'm no expert on beers at all, though I can tell you that Poland isn't really known for its beer and our Czech neighbours generally have a longer and richer history of brewing beer than we do so they are considered much more of a beer country than Poland is. Though I'm guessing most people have heard of Tyskie and Lech, two most popular Polish beer brands that are also easier to find abroad than most other Polish lagers. Nevertheless, Poland is much better known for its vodka, but we all have different tastes so tis fine.

Nice, that's much more effort than most tourists seem to put in... or maybe I'm just basing my experiences off primarily English and American tourists who are generally really bad when it comes to this, walking about and speaking English to everyone as if they owned the world and over-focusing on drinking rather than experiencing something more of the local culture. Not saying all English-speaking tourists are like that, but that's the stereotype that I've come across.

I wonder what stereotypical Polish tourists are like? I've heard people saying that they are overly religious and drink a lot too, both sound likely, but something that I've personally come across is the strange tradition of clapping when the pilot of the plane lands. I know not only Poles do this but I find this syndrome is especially prevalent among us. I always did this myself thinking it was normal (most of my flights are between Poland and England), but one time I went someplace else where no one else on the plane was speaking Polish and no one clapped when the pilot landed that time.

Obviously, before learning about other languages, I never thought that using W instead of V in Polish was weird, but ever since grasping English and learning more about other Slavic languages I actually think it's pretty strange. Almost all other Slavic languages that use the Latin alphabet, even Czech and Slovak (whose orthographies are the most similar to Polish), use the V instead. The only Slavic languages that use the W are Kashubian and Silesian (by many still considered to be dialects of Polish rather than separate languages) and Upper/Lower Sorbian (whose alphabet was probably based on the Polish one to some extent). What makes it even more strange is that a few centuries ago, when Polish orthography was a bit different and less organised, the V was used too! But nowadays the letters Q, V and X are rarely used in Polish - only for foreign words or ones that have been borrowed from other languages.

Yep, but in addition to Ł we have Ą, Ć, Ę, Ń, Ó, Ś, Ź and Ż too, plus when some letters come together they make completely different sounds as opposed to when they're on their own - so we also have 7 different digraphs (ch, cz, dz, dź, dż, rz, sz) and 1 trigraph (dzi)... have fun learning that! :lol:

 

I know what you mean and I feel the same way. I guess it's natural in a world where "national culture" is supposed to define everyone - if someone hears something about a particular country (especially one they've never been to), to some extent they automatically assume that everyone from that place is the same. So even people like us, who aren't particularly patriotic, want their country to have at least a respectable or cool reputation so that we are not associated with fuckwits because of where we originate from.

Based on how others perceive you, at times it actually kinda sucks being Polish because we are stereotyped to be jingoists, racists, drunkards, sexists, homophobes and religious fanatics... I know that Americans get accused of the exact same qualities plenty of times, but whereas the US is a huge and diverse powerhouse that many people admire (for right or wrong reasons), Poland is an insignificant country in Eastern Europe with an overblown sense of self-importance that brags about being a place where "workforce productivity is rising faster than salaries - as a result, labour cost is one of the lowest in Europe" and also thinks the fact that "Poland is the biggest beneficiary of EU funding" is a good thing. :facepalm:

 

Agreed, I don't mind tongue-in-cheek stereotyping and jokes, and even if I didn't like it I sort of had to get used to it growing up in a different culture where people used jokes to express their prejudices (as opposed to Poland, where if someone has a problem with where you come from they are much more direct about it). It ceases to be fun when one party stops finding it funny or when it's happening all the time, because one or two jokes about national stereotypes are funny but if someone uses them all the time - then they really aren't any better than an overt racist and are probably using humour to hide their shitty views.