Archive for March, 2008

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Summer and Winter tyres

Monday, March 31st, 2008

I hadn’t heard of winter tyres and summer tyres before coming to Poland. I have owned a number of vehicles in the UK (cars, motorbikes and a van) at one time or other and although not a mechanic would like to think I know the basic stuff about looking after vehicles.

So I was a little suprised that in Poland they make a big fuss about having the right tyres on their cars according to the time of year. My first impression was that this was probably a scam by the tyre companies just to shift more tyres. So I did a little bit of research on the Internet and found the following:

  • In some EU countries (not suprisingly mainly those cold ones up north) such as Finland and Latvia you are legally required to have winter tyres on between certain dates. There are no laws in Poland or the UK as far as I know however.
  • If you have an accident in Poland and the tyres are considered to be a contributory factor I have heard that this can count against you. But I can’t find any specific rules about it.
  • The difference between the two types is that they have different rubber compounds and different tread patterns. When the weather is less than 7 degrees winter tyres should be used. Above 7 degrees summer tyres according to www.tyres-online.co.uk
  • You can get universal ‘all-year-round’ tyres. I guess these are what we use in the UK. They aren’t recommended in Poland.

There is loads of tyre info at www.etyres.co.uk about it if anyone is that sad enough like me to be interested.

When last winter came (2007) I had just bought a car with summer tyres. One day it really snowed and driving in that car I felt like bamby on ice. Whilst drunk. My braking distance was terrible and I couldn’t accelerate away from junctions without wheel-spinning and sliding. The same day I decided that winter tyres probably wasn’t a load of bollocks and went and got some. The difference that same day was evidence enough – I am no longer a sceptic.

Where to buy tyres in Poland?

Every town and village normally has loads of garages that just sell tyres and oil. They are easy to find with the brands advertised outside such as Dębica, Goodyear and Continental. The price depends on the size of course. Fitting and balancing is normally included in the price if you are buying tyres there. If you already have tyres from last year then expect to pay about 10 zloty per tyre for them to change them.

How do I know what tyre size I need?

Easiest way is look on your current tyres and get the same. Tyres are measured according to tredwidth, profile height and wheel diameter and this is written on the side – e.g. 175/65/R14 means tread width is 175mm, profile height is 65% and wheel diameter is 14 inches. It is always written in this format. There is also an alphabetical maximum speed rating. For example H means your tyres are rated for you to drive up to 210 km/h.

Buying tyres online

I was quoted 160 – 170 zloty per tyre for summer tyres from my local garage for tyres made by Sava. I found my size made by Goodride online for 114 zloty and Dębica (a Polish brand but made by Goodyear) for 158 zloty which I ordered from www.oponytanio.pl

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Posted in life and living, vehicles and driving | 9 Comments »

Apparently I’m Polish and don’t know it

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

The other day I got a phone call from some guy in the office regarding my application for my karta pobytu. That was a nice suprise as I was wondering what was happening with it having not heard anything since applying. He asked me about my Polish looking surname. When I told him it was because my Grandfather was Polish he asked if I knew that I probably already had Polish citizenship.

What?

Yes that’s right – I might already have Polish citizenship. Apparently, if you have a parent or grandparent who is/was Polish then you automatically became Polish the moment you were born whether you knew it or not, regardless of where you or your parents were born!

So today I did a bit of googling to see how this could be, and what the impact would be for me.
It seems that as long as my Grandfather didn’t renounce or otherwise ‘lose’ his Polish citizenship, then by blood rights I too have Polish citizenship. The rules are complicated though because if your ancestors left Poland before 1962 (as my Granddad did) then there are a number of caveats.

To check whether I have citizenship or not apparently I need to do an application to my local embassy and supply documents such as birth certificates with translations and so on.

These are the links for more information:

Polish nationality law – good ol’ wikipedia.
Polish Embassy in London, Citizenship info – explains exactly what the rules are
Polish Citizenship, ancestry and geneology - questions and answers from polishforums.com

This has got me thinking though – what are the advantages and disadvantages of getting Polish citizenship? I have come up with the following – let me know what you reckon:

Pros:

  • Will be treated like a Pole whilst in Poland, therefore bureacracy should be less complicated than it is for me now with registration, buying property etc..
  • Ability to get a Polish passport. Not much use to me as a Brit, but might be useful to non-EU citizens who want an easy way to get an EU passport

Cons:

  • No doubt applying for citizenship (or rather I should say “getting confirmation of citizenship” as these are two different applications) will be tedious, bureaucratic and time-consuming
  • New legal responsibilities (for example you have to declare your nationality as Polish to the authorities when in Poland)
  • Potential tax/legal issues could arise (I read about some guys who suddenly became obliged to do national service or pay taxes etc..)
  • If you are involved with the armed services or areas requiring special security clearance then dual nationality can be problematic

This whole thing has also got me thinking about whether or not I want to be Polish or not. Would I feel comfortable having to carry an ID card? How would I feel about declaring myself as Polish? Which country would I feel I had the most allegiance to? How would this change my view of Poland?

I am still quite suprised to discover that this could be possible and will think about it all some more before deciding if I will apply or not.

Meanwhile I have written to the UK embassy with my details to find out exactly what the process involves.

Apparently the blood line can go further back than just 2 generations – which is food for thought – who knows what citizenships you might have that you don’t even know about!?!

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Posted in citizenship, life and living | 14 Comments »

Runaway boy cycled 600 miles to Poland

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008

So this is the effect of being in the Schenghen zone!

“A teenage Dutch boy who ran away from home and headed to China with just £6 and a bag of crisps has finally been caught in Poland. Residents in Przemkow, a town of 7,000 inhabitants in south west Poland, phoned the local police after discovering a boy who ‘looked lost’, and spoke no Polish, at a bus stop.”

www.ananova.com

Brilliant!

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Posted in life and living | 1 Comment »

Polish language books and websites

Sunday, March 16th, 2008

It goes without saying that one of the toughest parts to living abroad is dealing with the local language.

I tried learning Polish from zero when I was still in the UK but without much luck. Now, a couple of years later, there are more resources available including evening classes (which my parents thoroughly enjoy going to back in London!).

As everyone says, there is nothing like being in the country to help you learn. Obviously the more enveloped you are in the language the better. But even this ranges – I know some people who live and work with English speakers and don’t bother to learn Polish at all. At the other end of the scale, I was thrown in at the deep-end because I rarely have contact with English speakers, and I have only got Polish TV. It was tough at the start but was worth the extra effort.

I’m by no means an expert, but my advice to anyone starting to learn Polish is this – THE FIRST 100 WORDS ARE THE HARDEST – KEEP GOING! When it’s all new nothing makes sense and you don’t see any patterns in the words. It’s very easy to give up at the start – but the start is the most difficult as that’s the steepest part of the learning curve. DON’T GIVE UP – KEEP DOING A LITTLE BIT EACH WEEK. You will get a lot of satisfaction when you start to work things out for yourself and when you start seeing patterns in the words and spellings.

I have been asked a couple of times how I learnt Polish – basically I taught myself (and am still going of course!). I already had a good understanding of grammar from studying German and dabbling with Latin, so was happy with things like cases and tenses etc.. Therefore I just got myself a couple of books, found a course on the Internet, and went from there.

Websites for learning Polish:

University of Pittsburgh Polish Language Website
Without a doubt the best course I have found (and it’s free!) is at the University of Pittsburgh. The course is a little dated and there are a number of typos and mistakes in there (increasing in density as the course goes on), but I think the structure and content are excellent.

Polish Forums Learning Links
This link is a thread at PolishForums.com where people have posted useful stuff. Worth having a dig around.

Books for learning Polish:

Polish/English Dictionaries:

Oxford PWN Polish/English dictionary
If you want a hardcore heavy duty dictionary for your bookshelf then by far this is the best one. This is the daddy of all dictionaries. I paid about £75 for it and I reckon it’s a good investment. It is actually two huge books – one is Polish to English, the other English to Polish. I like this one as it has a vast collection of swear words (always handy). When I can’t find a word in one of my smaller dictionaries or I want a fuller description then that’s the one I use.

Cambridge Klett Concise Polish-English dictionary
This one is good value at £8.49 and very useful. This is the one I use day to day and am very happy with it.

Langensheidt Pocket dictionary
I have added this one for completeness because I also have it BUT IT SUCKS so don’t buy it.
Annoyingly it has many blank pages presumably due to a printing error. Whether that’s just my one or a whole batch I don’t know.

Polish Text Books

I like to get stuff for free which is why I use the online courses where possible, but sometimes it’s nice to have a book for when you want a rest from the screen, want to make notes in it or are travelling etc..

Here is a list of the books I have used and my rating on them:

301 Polish Verbs
This book is basically a list of common verbs and how to conjugate them. For example if you know the word “prosić” (to ask, request, beg, plead, invite) then it will show you what the perfective is (poprosić) and how to conjugate them to make the past/present/future/conditional/imperative etc… It will also show you related words (e.g. przeprosić – to apologise) which I find useful for improving my vocabulary. Good as a reference book.

Teach Yourself Polish
Typical teach yourself style book where you are expected to work through the chapters progressively. Useful enough, contains some good vocabulary but not my favourite book by far. The book avoids using grammatical terms which some people might like but I don’t – for example one chapter talks extensively about the difference between determinate and indeterminate verbs of motion (e.g. iść versus chodzić) but without mentioning even once the words “determinate” or “indeterminate”. Also by trying to avoid the grammar, the order the content is delivered in seems strange to me and things aren’t explained as they crop up but are left until their own chapter which I find frustrating.

Polish in 3 months
Good alround book and one of the first ones I bought. The title annoys me though – does anyone really think they can master Polish in 3 months? Guess a book called “A polish course that lasts 3 months if you do a lesson a week” probably wouldn’t sell as well though…
Anyway a good book for beginners.

For intermediate to advanced speakers:

It’s easy to find resources such as the ones above if you are a total beginner, but beyond the basics it get’s harder to find suitable material.

My suggestions are:

  1. Try this Polish educational publisher who have books for foreigners: http://www.universitas.com.pl/
  2. Join the local library (free) and get childrens’ books. I once asked my wife to go for me and she asked the librarian where the kiddie books were with pictures. The librarian asked her – “how old’s your boy?”. My wife said 28. The librarian was obviously stuck for words until my wife told her I am a foreigner!
  3. Get Polish TV and try and listen to Polish radio.
  4. Read the news in Polish. I don’t particulary have any favourite Polish news sites – they seem to be full of ads and pop-ups – if anyone has any good ones please drop me a comment.

I hope this post has been useful. As ever, comments are welcome.

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Posted in language | 5 Comments »

How to report your marriage in Poland

Saturday, March 15th, 2008

How to get a “Odpis skrócony aktu małżenstwa” – Polish marriage certificate

Given that the theme of my blog is foreigners (well OK Brits) in Poland, then my razor sharp logic suggests to me that if you are reading this blog then it’s quite likely that you or your spouse (if you have one) aren’t Polish. Therefore there’s a fair chance that you didn’t get married in Poland. This means you may well have another piece of Polish bureacracy to take care of – reporting your foreign marriage!

Why?

If you are lucky you might not need to bother. If you don’t need to then I suggest you save yourself the money and the hassle and don’t. So by now you are surely thinking – so when would I need to? I can think of the following cases:

  • Your Polish wife wants to change her surname to yours.
  • You want to register a newly born child in Poland as a married couple.
  • You are applying for a residence card (karta pobytu) and need to demonstrate that you have a Polish spouse.
  • You or your spouse want to avoid problems with the ruthless Urząd Skarbowy (treasury office) and want to report your marriage to them for financial/tax reasons.

How?

First of all you will need a Polish translation of your marriage certificate from a sworn translator. 1 page shouldn’t cost you more than around 44 złoty. Translators for languages such as English and German can be found in every town. I know a couple who got married in Egypt. I can’t imagine that there are many Arabic translators in the phone book so my practical tip for today is to avoid getting married in odd places, or to odd people, or preferably both.

Next you need to go to the Urząd Stanu Cywilnego (office of civil affairs) in the town where your spouse is permanently melded with your translation and original. My wife did this part so I can’t remember what she paid for the priviledge or how long it took, but I can tell you that THEY WILL KEEP YOUR ORIGINAL so make sure you have photocopies for your own records!

Why they keep your original I don’t understand. What happens if you need your original for any reason back home I don’t know. I am sure there is Polish logic in there somewhere. Come to think of it, like most Polish bureacracy there probably isn’t…

So now you are the proud owner of a yellow piece of A5 paper that has the summary of your wedding details on it. Unfortunately you are likely to face the following potential problems with it:

  1. Polish wedding certificates have the places and dates of birth of the bride and groom on them. Your certificate probably doesn’t (e.g. UK wedding certificates). Therefore your details will just be blanked out. This will cause you no end of problems when you try and use this document in other Polish offices. When I tried to register the birth of our daughter the woman insisted that our document must have been translated wrong and wouldn’t accept it. It was only after a long phone call with the director of that office that they relented.
  2. Some offices won’t accept this certificate once it’s older than 3 months old. They expect you to go and get another one. An example is when applying for a karta pobytu. This means going back to the office holding your original wedding certificate, regardless of whether you now live on the other side of Poland because you reported your wedding X years ago and have since moved… This alone is a good argument for not bothering to report your wedding until you find you need to.

I wrote this article based on my experience (a Brit) who married a Pole in the UK. Let me know about your experiences!

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Posted in bureacracy, citizenship | 14 Comments »

5 year registration – karta pobytu

Tuesday, March 11th, 2008

I already blogged about my experiences with registering locally, well after growing tired of traipsing to the local council every 3 months I decided to bite the bullet and get my karta pobytu (card of stay). This allows me to register for a 5 year period.

It’s worth mentioning that apparently you can register permanently, but I haven’t looked into this too much and you need the card of stay first anyway. Quoting from the “instruction to the nationals of the European Union member states and their family members” leaflet that they gave me when I applied for my karta pobytu, it says “the Union citizen shall obtain right of permanent residence after five years of continuous residence within the territory of Republic of Poland”.

Also note that you can only get the karta pobytu having already been here for 3 months having already done the local registration as above.

The first problem in doing this is the difficulty in finding out exactly what you are supposed to do, what documents you need and where to go.

There’s a thread here about it on Polish forums where I asked if anyone had tried doing this in Krakow. Just to be sure though I called up the office in Kraków myself to check. They referred me to their portal at www.wrotamalopolski.pl where the forms and instructions are available for download. It took a bit of hunting down but here is the page for registration in małopolskie. Unfortunately the link entitled “wniosek do pobrania (ob. UE)” which in English is “form for download (EU citizens)” is the wrong form. That form is for a replacement card, not a new application. I had to do my application a second time and of course go and get photocopies there and then because of this.

If anyone has links for the right form or for other regions please post a comment.

Where to go

Oddzial do Spraw Cudzoziemców Wydziału Spraw Obywatelskich i Cudzoziemców Małopolskiego Urzędu Wojewódzkiego w Krakowie, ul. św. Sebastiana 9-11, I piętro, pokój 102

Here it is on google maps.

Basically that is the office for foreigners, room 102, 1st floor on Świetego Sebastiana street. It’s pretty near the Wawel behind the hotel Royal, so if you get lost head for the castle and ask. Also there is a photocopy place (ksero) in the same street near the kiosk. You might find yourself having to go there to get photocopies of whatever they decide to demand from you.

There’s also an office in Nowy Sącz if that’s nearer for you (ul. Jagiellońska 52).

What you need

  1. Forms. First fill out the 5 page form. As mentioned it is supposed to be downloadable from their website but my experience is different. You need 3 photocopies too. If you don’t have copies they’ll just send you out to get them. I should mention here that you even need to copy the blank sections that you are for them to fill in – I didn’t, and of course I was sent out to get photocopies. I did ask her what the point of photocopying empty pages was but she wasn’t having any of it.
  2. Passport with 1 photocopy of the page with your details on it.
  3. Proof that you have health insurance. This ones a bit tricker because it depends on whether you are working for a Polish company, are a student or still work for a UK company. I work for a UK company so just got the new European Health Insurance Card by filling out this form on the NHS website. Of course I needed 1 photocopy of it.
  4. Proof that you have financial means. This one is tricky because again it depends on whether you are a student, working locally, retired or whatever. Either they will ask for some crap such as a letter from a Polish bank confirming that you have a bank account, or they will ask for 1 photocopy of your credit card if you have one.
  5. Photocopy of your 3 month temporary registration.

Note that when you give them photocopies they will probably want to see the originals too, so bring them with you.

Because my wife is Polish they also asked me for our Polish marriage certificate. Because we got married in English we previously had to “announce” our marriage to the Polish authorities and they gave us a little yellow A5 document which seems to keep the officials happy. However I didn’t have this with me because when I rang I hadn’t been told this was necessary. Even if I had had it with me it would have been no good, because they said they wanted one less than 3 months old. We have been married 2 years and our Polish translation/certificate is already 1 year old.

Still following this?

So according to them I have to go all the way back to Opole (where we first lived when we came to Poland and where we announced our English wedding) to get another Polish certificate, to then bring to them in Kraków, even though I live nowhere near either place.

I pointed out to her politely that that was bollocks and I wasn’t going to, so she decided instead that photocopies of my credit cards would suffice, but that I should call up after 2 weeks to check it wasn’t going to cause a problem with my application.

MORAL OF THE STORY – I STRONGLY ADVISE YOU TO CALL UP AND ASK THEM EXACTLY WHAT YOU WILL NEED FIRST!

The Kraków office phone number is 012 392 1845.

What to do

Turn up. Queue. Get told that you have the wrong form or have filled it out wrong. Fill out the right form correctly. Go back to the photocopier place. Return to the office again. This time she decides that she wants photocopies of your credit card as you don’t have your Polish marriage certificate with you. Go back to the photocopier place. Return to the office again. Call after 2 weeks to check your application is OK. Wait for the Police to turn up at your door to ask you strange questions about your educational history, work experience and if you are a terrorist or some sort of nutter. Tell them “no”. Go back to the office again after 1 month to collect your certificate. Pay 1 złoty at the till first.

Springer’s Final Thought

This process has to be the biggest load of bureaucratical bollocks I have dealt with to date living in Poland. I really don’t see the point – if I am a terrorist why would I apply for a residence card to start with? If we’re all in the EU aren’t we free to live anywhere we want? What p*sses me off the most is that they ask you to bring photocopies with you – how primitive is that? What happens if you have made a mistake or have the wrong form? Would it not be more logical for them to check your forms and originals and then take whatever copies they want themselves?

Anyway that’s my rant over for now… please post your experiences of applying for the karta pobytu if you have any.

EDIT – I got a phone call on 13th May 2008 to say my karta pobytu was ready. I went back to the office in Krakow, paid 1 zloty and collected it. What an anticlimax – just a little bit of paper with a stamp :-(

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Posted in bureacracy, citizenship | 25 Comments »

Polish exams for foreigners

Monday, March 10th, 2008

Recently I have been thinking about sitting a Polish language exam. I figured that now my Polish is a little stronger having lived here a while, it makes sense to sit the exam and get something to show for my time here on my CV. Plus I reckon it will spur me on to study some more if I know I have an exam looming…

After a bit of research on the Internet (god I love wikipedia) it turns out that there is a Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and an Association of Language Testers in Europe (ALTE). After digging a bit further it turns out that the prestigious Jagiellonian University in Krakow is the Polish ALTE member responsible for the Polish language exam for foreigners as commissioned by no less than the Polish Ministry of National Education and Sports.

Here is the official website (from what I can work out anyway) on the Polish as a Foreign Language series of exams. There are currently 3 exams:

  • Basic level – Poziom podstawowy – ALTE level B1
  • Medium level – Poziom sredni ogólny – ALTE level B2
  • Advanced level – Poziom zaawansowany – ALTE level C2

There is an online bookshop that has Polish books for foreigners and most of the titles are labelled with their corresponding ALTE difficulty levels. Also, on the official website there are downloadable sample papers (see the link above).

If anyone has done these exams or can recommend preparatory materials, please let me know!

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Posted in language, life and living | 2 Comments »

Women’s day – 8th March

Saturday, March 8th, 2008

Our baby crying woke me up at 4am this morning, my wife too. First thing she said to me was “aren’t you going to wish me happy women’s day?” I couldn’t believe it! I told her that until my brain wakes up in at least another 4 hours time it’s not women’s day or any other day and to go back to sleep.

Of course when we finally did get up today I had forgotten all about our earlier verbal exchange and so again got another nagging.

So anyway, this got me thinking, what exactly is this women’s day thing? I remember being equally confused about it last year and presuming it was some communist throwback. I have heard the stories many times from my mother-in-law about how my father-in-law used to get incredibly drunk (as all the men did) and give flowers and tights to the female workers at the local factory. But my wife insists it’s an American tradition and not communist at all. Being sceptical about that I turned to the holy grail of knowledge – wikipedia - which says that the tradition started in America and was adopted by Russia (amongst other countries).

I presume that this day has died out in America or isn’t so popular, because as a Brit I have never heard of it or seen it mentioned in any films or news. Therefore I still reckon it’s a communist throwback, just don’t tell my wife.

Posted in life and living | 2 Comments »

Pole caught having sex with Henry Hoover

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

I like to read the “strange news” from around the world and I like to read news about Poland or Polish people. This one cropped up for being both strange and Polish:

Worker caught having sex with Henry Hoover

Apparently though he was just “cleaning his underpants”, and that “vacuuming underpants is a common practice in Poland”. Wierd.

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Posted in life and living | 2 Comments »

Pudzianowski dancing

Monday, March 3rd, 2008

I had to blog about this. For those of you who don’t know who Mariusz Pudzianowski, he’s a world famous body-builder. One of only 3 men to have won the world strong man competition 4 times.

Before I had heard of other famous Poles such as Lech Wałesa or who the Kaczyński twins were I knew who Mariusz was – guys in the gym I trained in in London would talk about him and I’d seen him on TV in the strongman competitions.

So as the first Pole I had heard of and as a weight-trainer myself I have always admired Pudzianowski.

But then he went on Polish TV’s “dancing with stars”.

Why oh why Mariusz? Please stick to lifting heavy things and not poncing around on the dancefloor with C-list celebraties, actors nobody has heard of and wanna-make-a-comeback singers!

I am worried the kids in my new local gym will take your pictures down otherwise…

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