Poland

From: Ravi
Message:
Richard Lee wrote:
> Just bagged me a couple of gigs in Poland, Warsaw and
> Poznan. Anyone here been to Poland, what can I
> expect, where should I go, what should I look out for?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Roo
>
about 15 ago whilst i was working for my local council me and my boss
went to Poznan 3 times as part of our council's twinning arrangements to
teach our Polish colleagues all we knew about our area of expertise
(energy efficiency). our 3 trips funded by the british taxpayer were a
great success (ahem) in terms of teaching our Polish colleagues all of
our tricks plus me and my boss had a great time in Poland. Anyway from
what i remember here are my tips:

poznan is closer to berlin than it is to warsaw and if you are going to
poznan first you could fly to berlin stop there for a day and tehhn get
teh train to poznan.

poznan itself is (or was when i went) a reasonably wealthy town by
polish standards and not as industrial as some other parts of poland.
when we went to poznan the last time it was regrettably beginning the
unstoppable march to being subsumed by global capitalism - macdonalds
(which was packed even tho it was more than 10 times the price of the
burger bar 100 yards away), benetton etc all making their way into the city.

poznan was culturally different to other parts of poland because of its
proximity to germnay. although the poles have good historical reasons to
distrust the germans (i think they still do) poznan was very geared up
to trading with the germans and al lot of folk in poznan spoke german -
iirc a lot of resturanrt menus are in polish and german.

im still in irregular touch with someone i know there - i will try and
get the lowdown from him and post again.

as to warsaw i remember it being very interesting - the jewish quarter
was fascinating. cant remember much more than that - it was 15 years ago
and my memory is getting worse.

i do remember the food being cheap in poland and you could get a really
good three course meal plus wine in a pretty swanky place for around
£15. pizza and a beer in a local pizza place was £2. again this is 1990
prices but i know food is still cheap there.

oh yeah one last thing - taxi drivers will try to hook you up with the
local ladies of the night. i have no moral perspective on this but i do
remember having to be pretty insistenet with them that i didnt want
hooking up - finally switched on to telling them that i was meeting my
wife at the hotel / bar / restuarant that they were taking me to.

final music related thing - the vast majority of polish youth were into
varying types of metal, including classic british, polish hardcore,
american metal, thrash etc.

ravi