the POLSKI blog

If you’re into photography, you are probably aware of the yearly World Press Photo awards and subsequent exhibitions. The 2009 winners gallery has recently been published and I’m glad to see a few Polish photographers made it to the top 3 in a few categories. Wojciech Grzedzinski’s picture of the Georgian Conflict or Tomasz Gudzowaty’s [...]

Poland has never embraced a music single in the way the Western world did. There have always been singles, but mainly as songs on the radio – those that were available in shops, if at all, were never popular. Therefore Poland has never had ‘proper’ charts based on record sales. With piracy in Poland in [...]

Another relatively big international name records a single with a Polish artist. This time it’s Wyclef Jean who’s teamed up with a Polish singer Tatiana Okupnik to record a song called ‘Valentine’, released on 14th February (obviously). Tatiana used to be in a Polish group called Blue Cafe but went solo around 2005. She has [...]

If you’re on a diet, look away now. Last Thursday Poles celebrated Tłusty Czwartek, aka the Fat Thursday. Tłusty Czwartek is mainly celebrated in Poland and in Germany and it marks the end of the carnival. It’s the last Thursday before Lent, which starts with Ash Wednesday the following week. So what is Tłusty Czwartek [...]

Have you heard about a Mr Prawo Jazdy? He made the headlines in the UK, Poland and Ireland this week and managed to embarrass the Irish  police. Because while they were searching for this elusive driver with multiple addresses, the Poles reading the story, including me, couldn’t really believe it. According to the BBC: He [...]

She’s 34, a well-known Polish journalist, the editor of National Geographic Poland and a seasoned traveller. Her name is Martyna Wojciechowska and she’s just started a photoblog, where she will be uploading pics from her travels. She’s also planning to upload older pictures from her ealier travels, so if you’re into challenging expeditions – from [...]

…with the Flickr plug-in I’m using on this blog to display pictures tagged ‘Poland’ on Flickr. Not sure why, but this morning I noticed some random hairy legs and scary-looking toddlers there, neither of which was tagged with any word that could even loosely be associated with the subject of this blog. So apologies if [...]

‘So what?’, I hear you say. After all, all Londoners share free evening papers all the time. Yes, but they are free. You wouldn’t share your Economist or Marie Claire with the same carelessness and ease, would you? Polish InterCity and EuroCity trains still often have compartments – with six seats in the first class [...]