the POLSKI blog

This first post after a long break is a rather impressive video produced by the Public and Diplomacy Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Poland. It features a whole host of Hollywood A-listers and other celebs – from Natalie Portman to Russell Crowe, from Robert Redford and Tom Hanks to Daniel Radcliffe and [...]

Wrocław is one of five Polish cities – along with Katowice, Lublin, Gdańsk and Warszawa – vying for the title of the European Capital of Culture in 2016. So far only one Polish city – Krakow – enjoyed this privilege in 2000. Each city is obviously trying its best to impress the world and Wrocław [...]

Yes, that’s right. Daillly. It’s not a typo. And it’s not Groupon either. Although it feels a bit like Groupon. But this new Polish (but very international in its reach) site built and developed in Szczecin has taken the concept of social shopping to a new level. To stand out from the crowd, our service [...]

During my recent trip to Poland I noticed that English words, phrases and names have become a norm in everyday language. Don’t get me wrong, English borrowings have always been present in Polish.  What I’m talking about here is the presence of a huge number of foreign-sounding (mainly English) phrases or names, which often replace [...]

Over a year ago I wrote about a project called Cafe Fogg, which revived an old Polish crooner’s music and ‘translated’ it for a modern audience. Projekt Warszawiak (Warszawiak, in Polish, is a person living in Warsaw)  is inspired by – and relies on – music produced by legendary Warsaw-based folk bands like Orkiestra z [...]

You probably are if you live in Scotland. It’s called St Andrew’s Day. But in Poland it’s not so much about the saint, it’s more about predictions and parties. Andrzejki, how the day is referred to (from Andrzej, which is the Polish equivalent of Andrew), is when everybody predicts their future by observing some fun [...]

I wrote about the newly-introduced smoking ban a few days ago and a couple of my readers commented saying they remained sceptical about the effectiveness of the ban.  (Being sceptical is prerequisite to being Polish Turns out, they were right. A cafe owner in Katowice in the south of Poland bypassed the ban by turning [...]

Another Polish city is about to pump some serious money into an international TV campaign to promote itself. Poznan, one of the oldest Polish cities, for decades recognised as an important trade centre favoured by many Polish entrepreneurs, will be showing a series of ads across a number of TV channels in Britain and elsewhere. [...]