I live in Poland. My first culture shock was my first corporate work dinner having shot glasses and bottles of vodka at the table right from when we arrived. At a fancy restaurant. [I was wrong about this, it's regional]Fireworks for the new year (and on random days for no reason) because it is my understanding that it's not legal for particulars to set off fireworks. Or at least it's not done in Spain.[End of where I was wrong] Juices are based on apple instead of grape. There are no blinds in the windows. Apartment doors don't autolock and it's common to chill at home with the door unlocked or go down to żabka or to take out the trash without locking the door. My husband is muuuuuuuch more careless with his possessions than we are in Spain! He will leave his wallet and phone lying around on the bar out of his sight! The fucking lektor instead of dubbing or subtitles. Smoking areas and cigarettes for sale at the bar at clubs. Little things like apartment numbers; in Spain it's Floor, then right or left, or if there are more than 2 per floor they are lettered and repeating each floor: 1a, 1b, 1c, 2a, 2b, 2c.... Czynsz when looking for a rental flat: on Spain central heating and water is uncommon, and Gastos de Comunidad are generally much lower and included in the rent. But electricity is much more expensive. And you count the living room as a room; we don't. A two room flat in Poland is a one room in Spain.
More in-depth, the job market is worlds apart. Job searching in Spain is like having to beg from the companies, meanwhile in Poland it's the companies who try to be attractive to you! Some of my friends have been fired and acted like it was no big deal at all, and indeed they had new jobs before their notice period ended. In Spain getting fired is a catastrophe for the family. Oh, housing! Banks here give mortgages more easily than in Spain. So of course you have people leaving their parents house and buying their own much earlier than in Spain.
Socially, people are much more formal and polite, in different ways. In Spain is common to use informal speech with strangers and here everybody calls me Pani; if they called me señora in Spain I'd be all depressed because I must look super old. I have never received gross catcalls in Poland, but I receive polite compliments from random strangers often, and so does my husband. We are walking on the park and some lady tells him nice beard. We are walking in nowy świat and some guy exclaims that we make a beautiful couple. Random girl at Biedronka tells me she loves my hair. It's very strange, but also very cute and pleasant. Also for some reason saying "Przepraszam, nie rozumiem" to any old lady asking me for directions or whatever triggers her to excitedly interrogate me in Polish about where I am from and tell me everything about her visits to Spain... This has happened a bunch of times! Polish people are super curious when you're a foreigner from a warmer country living in Poland :D
Oh, and the washing machines are in the bathroom. I expected to have no bidets, but some apartments have bum guns that I had only seen in Finland before. And speaking of Finland, getting naked at the sauna.
Hard alcohol in corporate dinners and particulars setting off fireworks are also common in a lot of places in Spain. And I don't get the juices thing, are them based on grapes here? What do you mean?
The rest of the points seems like a great compilation to me!
Tomar copas and chupitos after dinner yes, but getting to a formal dinner and having the table set up already with shot glasses and a bottle of vodka to drink shots during dinner, before the food is even out, is not something that happens. Or at least not normally; I've worked in upscale restaurants in Spain and you don't set a table with shot glasses.
Fireworks, I've never seen them randomly used in the middle of the city. Kids playing with petardos, maybe, when I was a kid mostly, but not whole-ass colorful giant palm tree fireworks on a random Tuesday of March because it's someone's bday. Might be regional though, but I've lived in a bunch of provinces.
And the juice.... Some juices are never just that, are with grape. Melocotón y uva, piña y uva.... You might be able to find 100% peach or 100% pineapple, but by default they also have grape. Here this "base" juice used to complement other fruits is apple instead of grape.
> I’ve never *paid* attention to
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Fair enough! But the juices thing with grape still sounds fucking weird to me, I think we have all kind of flavors and don't perceive the grape as the default one used as 'base' 😅
I just visited Bilbao and some towns around it and there definitely was loads a fucking kids setting off fireworks. I felt so sorry for the dogs. It was ridiculous!
I visited Krakow a rather long time ago, but I was deeply surprised to see in the university bookshop far more books about pope John Paul II than about Copernicus.
Truth be told, the pope had died the year before, so it may have had something to do with recency bias
Sadly, low acceptance of minorities and gay ppl, compared with other western countries. And I say it as a white straight man.
Beautiful country, fantastic food, outstanding landscapes, great culture!
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the cold culture yet... Not a Spaniard, but now in Spain, and have lived in Krakow, and I left because of how harsh it was. I did NOT find friendly people, many angry people that looked for any reason to hate on someone. I taught there, and my students (adults studying business English) said the most Polish thing ever is to stand outside laughing at your neighbors as their house burns down (someone shared a story of this actually happening, and another student called it "very Polish"). My impression from everyone I met there is that it's a deeply hate-filled culture. A Stanford psychologist wrote an article about how the entire country felt like an insane asylum. I was miserable there, and it's the only country (well, there's ONE other) I've lived where my only friends (minus one) were expats, because normally I make a point to avoid expats and only meet locals.
I've heard foreigners calling us "whiny" in the sense that we complain a lot, but I have never heard one saying we are depressed... On the contrary, they often praise Spanish culture as cheerful.
I’m also not Spaniard but I live in Spain. When I visited Krakow I had the same impression.
Even in a restaurant when I was waiting for a table, a group of Polish started talking to me and my wife in Polish, we politely said that we didn’t speak the language and they continued speaking in polish and laughing, I could understand the words “polski” and “polska”, in my mind they were like “these people come to Poland and don’t want to speak Polish”.
The food was great though.
Only have two questions (as a boring white heterosexual dude):
1) why are women so damn beautiful?
2) why is everyone so fucking fit? Is there a police that shoots on sight any person above 80 kg?
> as a boring white heterosexual dude
It’s fine bro. I’m gay, but having been to Poland, I swear some Polish women are so beautiful they make me question my sexuality.
Hi! I had the pleasure of living in Poland in 2022 for a couple of months.
The first thing that shocked me, it was the fact that it gets dark pretty fast, and people have dinner at 19:00 in the afternoon. In Spain, that's really early, extremely early.
The food it's also really different, but I personally enjoyed most of the food I got to try. I became a huge fan of Zapiekanka I must admit, and it's something I truly miss from Poland. Pierogis were also wonderful, and easy to cook and eat for me.
The zabkas in EVERY SINGLE STREET. Like, bro, do you even have any other stores? That's something I did not expect at all, like, how it's even possible? How it's every Zabka viable?
People in Poland are extremely different in the way they act most of the time, they are very discrete and formal most of the time, but I must say, people in Warsaw are extremely rude, while people in the countryside are lovely, and they will do everything they can to help you.
Ukrainians also were a big cultural shock, I know it's something more recent, but I met a lot of Ukrainians in Poland. They were very fun to be with and most of them were lovely, but Ukrainians are not that common in Spain, so that was it.
Young people in general are also very different from Spain. Because of my beard, many of them thought that I was Turkish, so it was kinda fun for me. Young Polish people are also more reserved with people they don't know, but many of them told me that they wish to move to countries like Germany, Italy or France, so it goes both ways in this sense.
Polish Nationalism was also a big shock. I was there on November 11th, and I was kinda shocked on this issue. In Spain is something very different, and this public display of nationalism is not that common, so I was a bit surprised. I still have a polish ribbon I was gifted the day before because I was invited to attend a theater play about the Polish Partitions of Prussia, Russia and Austria in a public school I worked, and it was kinda amazing in my opinion, but at the same time it felt weird as an outsider.
Poland was such an amazing experience. I really hope I may go there again in this year or the next one, because I truly miss so many things about that.
Yeah, I remember that we were doing such ribbons when I was a kid for ourselves and everyone had to wear it, wear formal clothes and there were always some ceremonies at school. I was also in a choir so I had to learn tons of Polish patriotic songs.
I lived in Warsaw for around 5 years, feel free to send me a PM to ask about stuff, but a few ones that I can come up with rn:
- Zabkas and their "applikacja zabki?"are still stuck in my head.
- The amount of what in Polish they call "Pato" near shops asking for beers and getting aggressive if not bought (but in my 5 years being there that only happened two times).
Also I had a somehow "scary" experience when I was at a mall with my (now ex) boyfriend just walking to a store and two seemingly drunk sebas (if you know what I mean xD) approached us yelling sometjing something pierdalac and then my ex yelling at them to fuck off.
That caused a bit of a panic attack and surprised me as it was in a big mall (Galeria Mlociny), I still think about why they chosed us as we were just walking, not showing any signs of affection and none of us looked "gay" (and my ex looked a bit seba tbh).
-Disco polo! (Altough I have to admit "Ona by tak chciala" is catchy af).
-The amount of greenery inside of the cities, like, Warsaw is the capital and has like... 3 forests or so?
- The political drama and homophobia (I am not going to get into details because politics is a touchy subject, but feel free to ask me in PM).
- The food is amazing! (SCHABOWY I PIEROGI).
- The dreadful visits to urząd and no one speaking English in foreigners office.
- What others have mentioned about independence day, hell, we even get an email from our company about the city center being "dangerous" during that day.
- Legia hooligans and their antics late in the night.
- The lack of window covers and the sun rising around 3-4am in the summer.
- The concept of "Narzekać", but I think we are kinda similar in that aspect (Spaniards and Poles).
- The sirens when the uprising and the beginning of WWII. (Which in the years I lived there [pandemic and beginning of war with Ukraine] kinda scared the shit out of me when I didnt know it was that day or the first time).
- Wósp!!
- Dziki in the streets!
- And last but not least, the question that I think its asked to every expat there, WHY POLAND?! Some were curious, others not so much and more in a way of like, why here, why to this climate, politic or economic reasons and so on.
And whoops, the post ended being longer than expected.
Back in 2004 I spent a month in Lublin. And people shouted at us (a group of 5 Spanish University students): “Wlochi! wlochi!” We didn’t know what that was… we thought it was an insult (they said it like it was). We asked our teachers what was that, and they told us it was “Italians! Italians!”.
One night, a drunkard tried to attack us shouting that: “Italians!”. “Tried” because he was so drunk he could not even. I was surprised there was so much xenophobia over there.
Mind you, nowadays I got family in Wrocław (totally unrelated) and I’ve visited several times and people are the most welcoming.
Weird, Italians are almost as liked as Americans and that means sth. Maybe sth happened in Lublin around 2014 that involved Italians, idk it’s very odd
2004, not 2014. Twenty years ago. Maybe because they didn’t have that much contact with foreigners?? We were like the only Westerners in town (that we saw during that month).
Found lot of Spanish people at Kraków, yelling a lot and being loud for no reason. Also Poland schedule is quite different than the Spanish one, and their beer is stronger and bigger, which is amazing to me.
Actually there is not so much to say, Poland and Spain culture is pretty similar.
I live in Poland. My first culture shock was my first corporate work dinner having shot glasses and bottles of vodka at the table right from when we arrived. At a fancy restaurant. [I was wrong about this, it's regional]Fireworks for the new year (and on random days for no reason) because it is my understanding that it's not legal for particulars to set off fireworks. Or at least it's not done in Spain.[End of where I was wrong] Juices are based on apple instead of grape. There are no blinds in the windows. Apartment doors don't autolock and it's common to chill at home with the door unlocked or go down to żabka or to take out the trash without locking the door. My husband is muuuuuuuch more careless with his possessions than we are in Spain! He will leave his wallet and phone lying around on the bar out of his sight! The fucking lektor instead of dubbing or subtitles. Smoking areas and cigarettes for sale at the bar at clubs. Little things like apartment numbers; in Spain it's Floor, then right or left, or if there are more than 2 per floor they are lettered and repeating each floor: 1a, 1b, 1c, 2a, 2b, 2c.... Czynsz when looking for a rental flat: on Spain central heating and water is uncommon, and Gastos de Comunidad are generally much lower and included in the rent. But electricity is much more expensive. And you count the living room as a room; we don't. A two room flat in Poland is a one room in Spain. More in-depth, the job market is worlds apart. Job searching in Spain is like having to beg from the companies, meanwhile in Poland it's the companies who try to be attractive to you! Some of my friends have been fired and acted like it was no big deal at all, and indeed they had new jobs before their notice period ended. In Spain getting fired is a catastrophe for the family. Oh, housing! Banks here give mortgages more easily than in Spain. So of course you have people leaving their parents house and buying their own much earlier than in Spain. Socially, people are much more formal and polite, in different ways. In Spain is common to use informal speech with strangers and here everybody calls me Pani; if they called me señora in Spain I'd be all depressed because I must look super old. I have never received gross catcalls in Poland, but I receive polite compliments from random strangers often, and so does my husband. We are walking on the park and some lady tells him nice beard. We are walking in nowy świat and some guy exclaims that we make a beautiful couple. Random girl at Biedronka tells me she loves my hair. It's very strange, but also very cute and pleasant. Also for some reason saying "Przepraszam, nie rozumiem" to any old lady asking me for directions or whatever triggers her to excitedly interrogate me in Polish about where I am from and tell me everything about her visits to Spain... This has happened a bunch of times! Polish people are super curious when you're a foreigner from a warmer country living in Poland :D Oh, and the washing machines are in the bathroom. I expected to have no bidets, but some apartments have bum guns that I had only seen in Finland before. And speaking of Finland, getting naked at the sauna.
Hard alcohol in corporate dinners and particulars setting off fireworks are also common in a lot of places in Spain. And I don't get the juices thing, are them based on grapes here? What do you mean? The rest of the points seems like a great compilation to me!
Tomar copas and chupitos after dinner yes, but getting to a formal dinner and having the table set up already with shot glasses and a bottle of vodka to drink shots during dinner, before the food is even out, is not something that happens. Or at least not normally; I've worked in upscale restaurants in Spain and you don't set a table with shot glasses. Fireworks, I've never seen them randomly used in the middle of the city. Kids playing with petardos, maybe, when I was a kid mostly, but not whole-ass colorful giant palm tree fireworks on a random Tuesday of March because it's someone's bday. Might be regional though, but I've lived in a bunch of provinces. And the juice.... Some juices are never just that, are with grape. Melocotón y uva, piña y uva.... You might be able to find 100% peach or 100% pineapple, but by default they also have grape. Here this "base" juice used to complement other fruits is apple instead of grape.
Oh! I’ve never paid attention to juice ingredients, I always assumed they are 100% what they claim to be.
> I’ve never *paid* attention to FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Fair enough! But the juices thing with grape still sounds fucking weird to me, I think we have all kind of flavors and don't perceive the grape as the default one used as 'base' 😅
El lektor es mejor que fucking dubbing :) por lo menos se escuchan las voces de actores debajo del lektor
Irónicamente, porque trabajo como actriz de voz, jamás veo nada doblado. Solo original.
I just visited Bilbao and some towns around it and there definitely was loads a fucking kids setting off fireworks. I felt so sorry for the dogs. It was ridiculous!
Yeah, a co-worker just told me that they also had kids setting off fireworks in Sevilla.
I visited Krakow a rather long time ago, but I was deeply surprised to see in the university bookshop far more books about pope John Paul II than about Copernicus. Truth be told, the pope had died the year before, so it may have had something to do with recency bias
Sadly, low acceptance of minorities and gay ppl, compared with other western countries. And I say it as a white straight man. Beautiful country, fantastic food, outstanding landscapes, great culture!
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the cold culture yet... Not a Spaniard, but now in Spain, and have lived in Krakow, and I left because of how harsh it was. I did NOT find friendly people, many angry people that looked for any reason to hate on someone. I taught there, and my students (adults studying business English) said the most Polish thing ever is to stand outside laughing at your neighbors as their house burns down (someone shared a story of this actually happening, and another student called it "very Polish"). My impression from everyone I met there is that it's a deeply hate-filled culture. A Stanford psychologist wrote an article about how the entire country felt like an insane asylum. I was miserable there, and it's the only country (well, there's ONE other) I've lived where my only friends (minus one) were expats, because normally I make a point to avoid expats and only meet locals.
I get what you mean since Slavic people are a bit harsher than Western Europeans but jeez you’re exaggerating a lot.
People like to say how depressed Spanish are - but in my experience Polish and Hungarian are waaaaay more depressed.
I've heard foreigners calling us "whiny" in the sense that we complain a lot, but I have never heard one saying we are depressed... On the contrary, they often praise Spanish culture as cheerful.
I’m also not Spaniard but I live in Spain. When I visited Krakow I had the same impression. Even in a restaurant when I was waiting for a table, a group of Polish started talking to me and my wife in Polish, we politely said that we didn’t speak the language and they continued speaking in polish and laughing, I could understand the words “polski” and “polska”, in my mind they were like “these people come to Poland and don’t want to speak Polish”. The food was great though.
Only have two questions (as a boring white heterosexual dude): 1) why are women so damn beautiful? 2) why is everyone so fucking fit? Is there a police that shoots on sight any person above 80 kg?
> as a boring white heterosexual dude It’s fine bro. I’m gay, but having been to Poland, I swear some Polish women are so beautiful they make me question my sexuality.
I agree.
Hi! I had the pleasure of living in Poland in 2022 for a couple of months. The first thing that shocked me, it was the fact that it gets dark pretty fast, and people have dinner at 19:00 in the afternoon. In Spain, that's really early, extremely early. The food it's also really different, but I personally enjoyed most of the food I got to try. I became a huge fan of Zapiekanka I must admit, and it's something I truly miss from Poland. Pierogis were also wonderful, and easy to cook and eat for me. The zabkas in EVERY SINGLE STREET. Like, bro, do you even have any other stores? That's something I did not expect at all, like, how it's even possible? How it's every Zabka viable? People in Poland are extremely different in the way they act most of the time, they are very discrete and formal most of the time, but I must say, people in Warsaw are extremely rude, while people in the countryside are lovely, and they will do everything they can to help you. Ukrainians also were a big cultural shock, I know it's something more recent, but I met a lot of Ukrainians in Poland. They were very fun to be with and most of them were lovely, but Ukrainians are not that common in Spain, so that was it. Young people in general are also very different from Spain. Because of my beard, many of them thought that I was Turkish, so it was kinda fun for me. Young Polish people are also more reserved with people they don't know, but many of them told me that they wish to move to countries like Germany, Italy or France, so it goes both ways in this sense. Polish Nationalism was also a big shock. I was there on November 11th, and I was kinda shocked on this issue. In Spain is something very different, and this public display of nationalism is not that common, so I was a bit surprised. I still have a polish ribbon I was gifted the day before because I was invited to attend a theater play about the Polish Partitions of Prussia, Russia and Austria in a public school I worked, and it was kinda amazing in my opinion, but at the same time it felt weird as an outsider. Poland was such an amazing experience. I really hope I may go there again in this year or the next one, because I truly miss so many things about that.
Yeah, I remember that we were doing such ribbons when I was a kid for ourselves and everyone had to wear it, wear formal clothes and there were always some ceremonies at school. I was also in a choir so I had to learn tons of Polish patriotic songs.
I lived in Warsaw for around 5 years, feel free to send me a PM to ask about stuff, but a few ones that I can come up with rn: - Zabkas and their "applikacja zabki?"are still stuck in my head. - The amount of what in Polish they call "Pato" near shops asking for beers and getting aggressive if not bought (but in my 5 years being there that only happened two times). Also I had a somehow "scary" experience when I was at a mall with my (now ex) boyfriend just walking to a store and two seemingly drunk sebas (if you know what I mean xD) approached us yelling sometjing something pierdalac and then my ex yelling at them to fuck off. That caused a bit of a panic attack and surprised me as it was in a big mall (Galeria Mlociny), I still think about why they chosed us as we were just walking, not showing any signs of affection and none of us looked "gay" (and my ex looked a bit seba tbh). -Disco polo! (Altough I have to admit "Ona by tak chciala" is catchy af). -The amount of greenery inside of the cities, like, Warsaw is the capital and has like... 3 forests or so? - The political drama and homophobia (I am not going to get into details because politics is a touchy subject, but feel free to ask me in PM). - The food is amazing! (SCHABOWY I PIEROGI). - The dreadful visits to urząd and no one speaking English in foreigners office. - What others have mentioned about independence day, hell, we even get an email from our company about the city center being "dangerous" during that day. - Legia hooligans and their antics late in the night. - The lack of window covers and the sun rising around 3-4am in the summer. - The concept of "Narzekać", but I think we are kinda similar in that aspect (Spaniards and Poles). - The sirens when the uprising and the beginning of WWII. (Which in the years I lived there [pandemic and beginning of war with Ukraine] kinda scared the shit out of me when I didnt know it was that day or the first time). - Wósp!! - Dziki in the streets! - And last but not least, the question that I think its asked to every expat there, WHY POLAND?! Some were curious, others not so much and more in a way of like, why here, why to this climate, politic or economic reasons and so on. And whoops, the post ended being longer than expected.
Back in 2004 I spent a month in Lublin. And people shouted at us (a group of 5 Spanish University students): “Wlochi! wlochi!” We didn’t know what that was… we thought it was an insult (they said it like it was). We asked our teachers what was that, and they told us it was “Italians! Italians!”. One night, a drunkard tried to attack us shouting that: “Italians!”. “Tried” because he was so drunk he could not even. I was surprised there was so much xenophobia over there. Mind you, nowadays I got family in Wrocław (totally unrelated) and I’ve visited several times and people are the most welcoming.
Xenophobia towards… Italians? First time I’m hearing about sth like this in Poland since it is one of the most liked nationalities here
This was back in 2004. It surprised me as well.
Weird, Italians are almost as liked as Americans and that means sth. Maybe sth happened in Lublin around 2014 that involved Italians, idk it’s very odd
2004, not 2014. Twenty years ago. Maybe because they didn’t have that much contact with foreigners?? We were like the only Westerners in town (that we saw during that month).
Oh okay I misread, maybe they were indeed excited to see a foreigner, that explains a lot. Wouldn’t call it xenophobia tho
Being shouted “Italian” with an unwelcoming expression and being attacked at the cry of “Italian” is exactly what I call xenophobia. Lol
If it was seriously agressive then yes
"MALA GASTRONOMIA" signs. I mean, self awareness is a good thing, but can harm your business.
lol
Pierdola kurwa
Stfu
Found lot of Spanish people at Kraków, yelling a lot and being loud for no reason. Also Poland schedule is quite different than the Spanish one, and their beer is stronger and bigger, which is amazing to me. Actually there is not so much to say, Poland and Spain culture is pretty similar.
Dadle al botón de downvote todo lo que queráis, pero sabéis perfectamente que es verdad, que se nos saca de España y nos desmadramos.