Polish Blog A daily dose of Polish life

If you ever get invited to someone’s house in Poland you will find the Poles are very hospitable people, especially when it comes to food.

Saying no is not an option and you are likely to be offered far more than is possible to eat. I did a tour of the relatives when I first arrived in Poland with my Polish girlfriend I ate more sernik (cheesecake) and drank more vodka than you can imagine.

Make sure when you get asked “Whose sernik was best?” you stay impartial and say they were all amazing (whilst winking at your girlfriend’s mother).

If you have a sernik recipe please post it in comments, then I can tell babci people on the internet can make better sernik than her, she will give me a funny look and say “Ostrzegam Cie!”

For years in Poland a meal out meant wandering down to the local milk bar – a state run canteen serviing good heart food – and as long as you didn’t want meat or alcohol, prices were cheap.

Many thought the milk bar’s days were numbered with the end of communism, but after more than a decade later, those that remain are carving out their own place in the country’s competitive catering marketplace.

In the communist years of food shortages and endless queues the milk bars provided an affordable place for most people to eat out.

They served basic traditional Polish meals – such as pierogi dumplings and cabbage – and because of state subsidies they were able to keep costs down.

Partial solar eclipse images taken from Poland:

Video:

I’ve been to the main nightclub “Don Kichot” in Czestochowa a few times now, it is always packed with quite a large crowd, especially as it gets late.

There are quite a few rooms to choose from, one chill out area with a number of tables to sit at, be warned however it can get cold here in winter!

A Salsa dance room that has a small stage where local girls perform some kind of Salsa dance routine, not that impressive really but a little different all the same, some of the guys and girls are very good at this type of dancing, I am however rubbish but after a few drinks no one really cares right? and finally a “dance” room playing dance/house music.

A vodka and red bull is about 14zl, a beer about 7zl and the entrance fee is about 10zl (less for girls).

The age range of customers seems to go from some dubiously young looking 15/16 year olds upto about early 30′s.

Its open till about 7am although the latest I’ve stayed is till about 2am, there are a number of tables in the Latino room but apparently these have to be pre-booked to sit at.

The bar staff and doorman understood a little English, however it won’t really matter if your Polish isn’t great.

Piwo = Beer

There are always plenty of Taxi’s outside for when you need to get home.

Jeans are ok but wear smart shoes.

Don Kichot

ul. Najswietszej

Czestochowa

Zygmunt Solorz-Zak lives in Warsaw and is married with 3 children.

Solorz-Zak launched the free to air commercial TV channel Polsat in 1991, broadcasted through satellite, and obtained a national commercial license in 1993. Polsat remains on of the Poland’s biggest commercial stations.

Other assests include pay TV platform Cyfrowy Polsat, pension fund PTE Polsat, retail bank Invest Bank and the electricity producer PAK.

Those that have been to Poland will have seen that quite a lot of the toilets are of the ‘Shelf’ kind. If you are not familiar with this kind of toilet then let me explain. Shelf toilets are popular throughout Germany and Eastern Europe as they enable German or Polish people to inspect the contents of their poop in case they have some kind of terrible intestinal disease or worms.

We Westerners are not used to these kinds of toilet and frankly find them confusing and disgusting. They are the most ridiculous invention ever, far worse than the pedal powered wheelchair, helicopter ejector seat and the Bible.

If you stand up to pee you get the dreaded splash back and end up with your trousers and half the toilet floor covered in piss, when you poop your business sits festering in the open air until you hit the flush button where it slowly slides down the toilet mocking you by leaving a messy trail right down the bowl.

One day at my girlfriend’s parents house we’d been out mushroom picking and had eaten huge bowls of mushroom soup. The next morning I felt the urge and deposited something the size of a house brick that smelt like a family of dead rodents had fallen out of my bottom. When I flushed my poop just sat there… laughing at me. I flushed again. Nothing. I ended up having to roll up a twig like piece of toilet paper and drag it down the shelf into the water below, leaving the kind of stain that a stabbing victim who had crawled across a clean lino floor might leave. It was then I decided something had to be done.

“The Magic Carpet” is what I nicknamed my technique which also gave birth to the phrase “I’m going for an Aladdin”. You take some sheets of toilet paper and fold them up and lay them on the shelf. Do your business on top of the paper and flush, the water gets underneath the paper and carries it off to the bowl below, this part of the procedure I named “The Log Flume”.

Getting the correct number of sheets is important, too many it acts as a barrier and goes nowhere, too few and it falls through. 3 sheets folded into one is about right.

So if you go to Poland and find yourself in a shelf toilet, don’t forget to lay your magic carpet, it will save a lot of embarrassment.

Note: The Magic Carpet will not work if you have recently eaten the following: Fajitas, Chilli, Vindaloo, Madras or Prunes.

I could fill a book with the amount of toilet horror stories I have from Poland. If you want to hear more, please leave a comment.

In an effort to win back public support UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has introduced new measures to halt the wave of migration from Poland to the UK.

All the women entering the UK will now be entered into a “Miss Poland UK” contest with the best looking getting to stay and the ugly ones being sent back.

These are the lucky ones who get to stay.