Polish mating habits

I think the video tells it all.

Many people tell me they are Polish

Here in the Midlands people tell me they have some Polish ancestry quite often. I’ve not expected there would be so many at all. I knew about the wartime Polonia, and the Iron Curtain emigration who are still around. But I guess it’s only logical that the previous generation stayed, married and had children with the English.

The children don’t speak much of Polish, at least not enought to brag, but they have bits of stories to tell – one woman even told me about her Grandfather’s horses and land having been taken away.

I’m happy that they share this with me.

Poles have a long childhood

I started getting to know more Poles around, and, inevitably, getting business offers from them. Partnership is the word. Picking up – rozkręcanie.

In most cases the offers are laughable, naive, badly thought out, badly underfunded and hanging by the thread. Some are good, but require ‘partnership’. Two are genuine business cooperation offers – and I’ve taken them.

My thoughts about the majority of those business offers are as follows: it’s a testimony to the position of Mothers in Polish culture, that males of 25-30, or even 42, would approach me and offer to ‘hot up’ a little something, with my major financial share. Not only because asking me to fund somebody else’s attempts is naive, but also because they don’t even think about doing business on their own, they need to be with a partner.

The positive side is that they want to ‘do business’ at all. Maybe one in a thousand succeeds? That’s excellent.

To compare with a limited sample of the local, English young men: the English boys talk about ‘this little house they have, which was worth 140 grand, but now it’s only 90, so they’re loosing money, and probably will want to take up stock trading with a demo account.’ It was equally naive as the Polish boys, maybe even more clueless. Those boys will end up as shark fodder on the stock market – the same as they ended up as shark fodder when they bought a house at the peak of the market, for a mortgage…

I think this also signifies a long childhood, but at least they are not asking for ‘business partnership’, and are prepared to take up a mortgage, apprenticeship or a job in trade.

Jihad and the Polish Kingdom

old stuff – but another perspective is always welcome.

The History of Jihad against the Poles, Lithuanians, Belarusians and Ukrainians (1444 -1699)

Even across the water some people remember the brave King Jan! Nice

Raf Uzar: Lost Polish tribe in Haiti

Hey, Raf, your post is so interesting to me that I’m linking it with a separate post. HERE

Raf writes about Polish Napoleonic soldiers sent to quell a rebellion, who turned sides and stayed in Haiti.
I am most grateful, Raf. I have honestly thought that we had a sin of a mass murder against a weaker nation on our collective hands.

Angloshpere – a networking culture vs. Poland – a privacy culture

The most notable but least noticeable difference between my Polish culture and Anglo culture is the fact that they are the networking culture. It means that they are never for once alone. If they talk, others listen, others answer. If they walk – other walk as well. If they ever want any alone-time, they have to buy a house and fence it off with a privacy fence.

Perhaps this is the most nagging difference, that is decoded by my subconscious as most direct savagery – the lack of any basic respect for privacy that is not physically fenced. They don’t seem to need, understand, or want the idea of privacy. They listen to me when I speak with anyone, they look at me when I drive, I walk, I shop. Luckily, apart from the crudest exceptions, they don’t try to touch me.

I deduce from my strong feelings that my own culture is one of privacy, separate being, self-decidedness. And I seem to be right. The polishforums is full of Anglos complaining about their ex-pat life in Poland. They hate that people on the street don’t look at them, don’t smile at them, and treat one another like trees. I had not thought about it this way, naturally. To me it’s normal to hit the third gear while walking on the pavement, get on the imaginary fast lane on the right hand side and power my way forward. occasionally I get scolded by Elders for marching when I should be walking. But that’s not very often.

It seems that we live in bubbles of our own private time, which I find very comforting. When someone wants to interact, they usually lift their hand and call our: przepraszam? halo? proszę Pana? Then we stop and greet and talk. Then and Anglo would get their prized interaction – but possibly more than bargained for.

Presentation of Poland: come and go as you please

A great difference between Poland and England surfaced on occasion of parties. My friends here on the Island include a few English, whom we mostly meet in the pubs, and various expat professionals. We take turns throwing parties at home, with some hot food laid out in the kitchen and drinks served on the coffee table. I would say this is not a przyjęcie which would be with a dining table and a cloth, just a normal get-together. But we normally give the rough hour that we will be ready by.

The party timing issue seems to be huge, it’s like a gigantic rift between cultures. For example, if the Afrikaner guy gives the party – he expects people not to be late, and he is always on time. If the Balkan people give a party – they expect people to be on time, but they are always two hours late. If the Arabic girl gives a party, she never minds what time the guests come as long as they come, and usually is some time late, not to be the first one. If the Nigerian guy gives a party, we wants people to come in between say 7.30-8, but always lets us know that he will come around 11PM.

We Poles will give some time of starting an opening but will expect people to start showing up in the roughly evening hour, and come and go all the time through the night. But we try not to be late.

The rift is clearly visible in the attitude toward lateness – I don’t mind if somebody is late, but some other people do, and they tell me if I am late. Which makes us Poles very uneasy, because a party is a totally separate affair from work, so time-keeping and stress should be left behind the door.

We operate exactly the same system in Poland – set the party up for Saturday meaning that the door will be open between 7 and morning, various people will show up and go away during the night, the whole party may decide to move to other people’s house, and some drunken souls may decide to stay and sleep on the floor (or in the bathroom). No problem (I would advise against shagging when your host is talking to you, it’s exceptionally annoying for the host).

I’m talking about people in their 20s-30s partying among themselves, not a proper family imieniny dinner, of course.

Presentation of Poland: mating habits

I have this feeling of complete misunderstanding when I’m watching English language romantic films. What is happening there is so outlandish! People dress up, sombrely go to a mating place: like for example a restaurant, consume a meal with great effort to have fun, try to be at their best behaviour and then go to bed. The thing that I don’t understand is: if people know that they are behaving better than usual & dressing better than usual then how do they expect to form a relationship, since everyday behaviour will have to be different?

After I noticed this seems weird to me, I thought that we have to differ in this regards since I’m surprised. It looks as though we are far more casual about relationships. We definitely don’t set out with a goal of forming one. We rather party with friends and once day we realise that one of the friends has been a boyfriend for some time now. Which is nice.

One story that come to mind: Luke’s brother had a prospective girlfriend in China once and they started spending time together. He was shocked to find that she expected him to ask her formally to be together. He didn’t. This was far too strange. This is what kindergarten children do in Poland and then we get more subtle.

Naturally, with that kind of society the whole thing is in the grey area for months or years. You are officially together if you start throwing parties together and going to one another’s family feasts. Once that happens it’s really easy to stick together because of the momentum. You just carry on – you’ve never signed up for anything, made any formal declarations that could be broken or make you feel enslaved. One day you may feel that it’s time for all the church pageant, buying vodka for the family and being lords and masters of your life. That is: time for a wedding.

All through the being together time your friends will probably call you two with one name: Maciek and Magda will be Macki, DJ Flow and DJ Indee will be Flowki, so the general method is to take the shorter and funnier of all your names and nicks, and slap it across both. You are also probably going to be a twin pack most of the time – together at all parties, holidays, movies & hanging out.

Splitting up is terrible – not only for the couple, but for the friends and families. Your pack will be shocked, not sure how to call you now, how to invite both friends to the same party, and what to do now since you formed part of the environment, and life is not as much fun any more. The family will be sore – Moms and Dads have been trying to treat the partners as natural children, like them and be liked by them, learn the birthdays, favourite dishes, and make friends. And now they will be cut off from the new friend. Not fun at all.

And then getting another bond like that may take some time, since finding a mate involves so much time and does not involve conscious effort – it may just not happen for a second time.

King Sigismund Vasa, the source of the fall: Presentation of Poland

The Swedish King-elect of Poland, Sigismund Vasa, has made the fall of the 1st Republic possible.

Scary, I know.

Poland was once a multinational, multi-state Republic, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The beauty of this was that the countries signing up formed union with us to unite against the Teutonic Knights, not because we conquered them. Even the case of Ukraine, which had indeed involved combat, is not the tale of military conquest, but of marriages with inheritant Dukes.

We had it all: religious freedoms, rich peasants, German craftsmen in towns, Jewish traders in their stetls, Ormian weapon-masters, Scottish settlers, the richest salt mines in Europe, the gold – wheat, sold through the Baltic trade all over the world.

And we have long lost it, among other causes, because of stupidity of this particular Swede.

Kind Sigmund was elected because he was a grandson of Zygmunt Stary, and because it’s never preferable to side with the Habsburgs. He had proven to use Poland as means to conquer back his former land, Sweden, and also to gain lands for Catholicism. The problem was that his understanding of Catholicism had differed much from ours. Where our own noble families saw fir to change the denomination between Arian, Calvinist, Protestant and Orthodox as dictated by interests, and felt no less honourable – Vasa had banned his heir, Władysław IV, from accepting Orthodox denomination, which was the condition of becoming a Tzar of Muscovy and forming the Polish-Lithuanian-Russian Commonwealth. We are paying for this error until the present day.

It was not so much as an error, as treason. Vasa has accepted the offer of Muscovy boyars, who were in a period of interregnum and anarchy, to make his son the Tzar. Władysław was crowned. Coins were forged with his name. But the condition was to leave the Orthodox denomination alone. Vasa has not only forbade the conversion of his son to Orthodox, he tried to convert Muscovy to Catholicism, and even usurped the title legally belonging to his own son.

This is what caused an awakening in Russia, the forming of national spirit, and emergence of their own royal family. A new Tzar was crowned, Michael Romanov I. From now on, Russia only remembers about Poland that for Polish state Catholicism is more important than politics. What is worse, Russia feels she has to defend her crown against the Vasa usurpation.

The politics in other directions VAsa has abandoned to the hetmans, commanders, who continued the politics of King Batory – however without the support of a wise Monarch. This mean that Hetman Żółkiewski alone went to make war for Moldavia, and against the Turks. After a period of ruling Moldavia, he had lost in Cecora.

Sweden has attacked Poland in the reign of the youger Vasa, Joannes Casimir, who still held on to his claim to their throne. This war, the Deluge,  was absolutely destructive, because the Swedes had no hopes of any permanent gains – they chose to scourge the ground instead. The retaliation of Hetman Czarniecki involved the pillage of New March, taking of Kolding and the invasion of Als. The last feat was achieved by boats, while leading the horses, who swam.

The Deluge brought to an end the era of Polish religious tolerance: mostly non-Catholic invaders antagonised the mostly Catholic Poles.

In later years, when there were a Catholic-Protestant riot in Toruń, the German King-elect orders incredibly cruel capital punishment.
That is the time when Poland realises that she cannot trust her own Kings.

Presentation of Poland

I receive some very weird statements from people who don’t really know Poland sometimes – one is that in Poland everything is grey and people queue for bread. Others are that we only eat meat and potatoes. Or that we are Anti-Semite. I don’t know what else! The only good way to straighten it all out is to blog the presentation of Poland.

I will do it on irregular basis. I am already giving you the view of England through Polish eyes, so the time comes for the view of Poland through Polish eyes!