the POLSKI blog

Can’t believe it’s already been twenty years since Communism in Poland collapsed. I was still at school, had just a year or so to go till my matura (final secondary school exams) and couldn’t quite believe it when my literature teacher asked us to start reading  The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. You what?! Solzhenitsyn? [...]

… but this one, despite its hilariously abstract headline, is apparently true:
German women flock to Polish hair salon heaven
Had to go for the bold headline. So, according to expatica.com,
A village on the Polish-German border is becoming a hotspot for German bargain hunters seeking cheap haircuts. It may only be a small Polish village of 200 [...]

My good friend from uni, Kasia, came to London last week for a short trip with her students.
“What do you want from Poland?” she asked me over the phone. Hmm, the list can run into pages – new music, good books, a bottle of good vodka, sausages.
“Sausages,” I said without hesitation. “Actually just one, we [...]

Some discoveries surprise me more than others. I have only just learned that Poland might be a byword for extreme sports. Well, some extreme sports.
A Polish website reports on a regular contest, which allegedly has already been taking place in a remote part of north-east Poland for 19 editions (how did that bypass me?) – [...]

Good news if you live in the UK and want to experience more Polish culture locally. For the next year cities all over Britain will participate in an initiative called Polska! Year. According to the organisers’ website,
The purpose of the Year is to bring communities of Poland and Great Britain closer by strengthening cultural relations, [...]

If you’re on a diet, look away now. Last Thursday Poles celebrated Tłusty Czwartek, aka the Fat Thursday.
Tłusty Czwartek[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
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 [...]

Indeed, WHAT do you think? This is my new Twitter mini-poll.
All you need to do is to finish the sentence and pass it on on Twitter. Just remember to tag it by adding #polblog to your message so that I can find it and blog about it, of course. That’s if you are on Twitter [...]

Only just got a Xmas card from a friend in Poland, it arrived almost three weeks late, but it’s by a Polish artist named Andrzej Tylkowski and I love it. I’ve known of him, I’ve seen his cards, but have never visited his website.
If you’re not put off by Flash, have a look (click on [...]