“The Three Heroes” by Viktor Vasnetsov (1848-1926)
They certainly do know this. Usually they would spell it Lechistan, though. It hearkens back to an old legend of three Slavic brothers Lech, Czech and Rus. They were having a drink of local beer in Poznań when they realised that they each wanted to father a nation. In order not to get in each other’s way they decided Czech would go south and Rus would go east. Lech on the other hand would stay in Poznań and look after the local brewery, which bears his name to this day.
Protoplast
He regularly would become plastered on his own product, and thus became known as the “protoplasta Polaków”. Among his achievements is setting up a capital city in Gniezno, a form of the old Polish word for a nest, and from this nest the Polish nation was fledged.
Czech and Rus fathered the nations named after them, while Lech fathered the Polish nation. He became the patron saint of Polish beer, and of big moustaches, and of smashing up invaders such as Islam or Communism.
Various Lechs and Leszeks
As well as a full-sized Lech you also get diminutive ones, namely Leszek, although linguistically speaking, Leszek is a lexicalised diminutive of Lech. You can add it to your lexicon, or Lech’s icon if you happen to be honouring the Patron saint, whose saint’s day is on the 28th February with another go on 12 August if you missed the earlier one.”
Well I have to admit that the air quality is reckoned to be the lowest in Europe. Earnings are still lower than they should be because we let in about a million immigrants from Ukraine pretending to be refugees. And not everyone goes to church. People could pay more attention to recycling and some laws are in need of change in order to help the charity sector and also the tax laws could do with a bit of modernisation. The foreign interests in our media and whining expats who try to make Poland like their own countries also are not great. I’m also not a great fan of closing shops on Sundays as some people go shopping to relax and the shop people can always have another day off. Business needs to be treated with a little bit more respect by government.
If you are a man, it is. Poland doesn’t do same-sex marriage.
The next prerequisite is finding a Polish girl who wants to marry you.
You then need to visit her family. On the last evening, when there is a big meal and you are the guest of honour, it is the time when you formally ask for the daughter’s hand in marriage. This you do after the main course but if you were given duck blood soup, a dark sweet soup called czernina as the first course, then it is a signal not to ask, as she is already intended for another nobleman.
Once these formalities are concluded the rest is easy.
Topinambur – grown in Poland, or: “the new Jerusalem artichoke”.
If someone doesn’t like tasty food and pretty women, easy-going, polite and positive people with a good sense of humour plus great sights of various kinds, from the historical to the futuristic, from the urban to the most rural landscapes, and if someone likes to overpay for their purchases, then such a person ought not to visit Poland.
If someone likes to criticise a nation for being proud about its history and independent-minded, if someone wants to mock someone else’s religion, or behave in an anti-social manner while mouthing off about how rude the locals are for not having identical habits and manners as in their country of origin, well I think such a person won’t enjoy Poland much either. And Poland certainly won’t enjoy them. Continue reading “Why should I never visit Poland?”→
If someone has a low view of Poland, it usually means one of four things.
1. Ignorance
They don’t know Poland and have not spent time here. Maybe they don’t know Polish or have only a tiny grasp and cannot get over the cultural nuances. This is typical of ex-pats with little to offer who populate Facebook groups in order to grumble about the host nation, in comments laced with spelling mistakes, poor vocabulary and grammatical howlers in their own language. What hope had they to contribute much to Polish society? Their role here is only to embarrass the more elevated ex-patriate community and to get on their nerves by failing to observe rules.
In Poland for instance, fewer than two-thirds of the registered British community have bothered to sort out their withdrawal agreement documentation in the year they had in which to do so. A further group of UK people and other Anglosphere people in Poland are simply here using money they saved in the UK or have some
Poland, a paradise for those who know how to appreciate it.
informal ways of making money, and are not actually registered anywhere at all. In some cases they even run vehicles which are likewise unregistered. None of which stops them from whinging on about the host nation in a way that makes most of us simply hang our heads.
2. Grass is greener-ness
They could be Poles who buy into the optimism about other countries but who never went there.
The majority of Poles going abroad to work miss home and come home. The most famous Polish poem starts with the sentiment that this country (Mickiewicz codenames it Lithuania to stay out of trouble) is only truly appreciated by those who have left it.
3. Neo-Marxist pseudo-fragilities
They might be leftist people with a jaundiced view of the influence of a conservative Church in the politics of the country. Such people are able easily to move to other European countries with left leaning governments who cannot wait to erode the Christian heritage, but don’t call Poland bad if it wants to buck that trend, and thankfully we are not the only ones.
4. General Uselessness
They could be people unable to give much to society and who need to live from social welfare who do not get that much support here. This is why the refugees we already took ran back to Germany one night. This is something the government are working on but in business I can tell you the improvements to welfare have a negative impact on cheap labour. So there are people who could work but who are low-skilled persons who now live on benefits as people do in the West, but thankfully at much lower levels.
Conclusion
There is clearly an overlap between these 4 conditions. A person can, in theory (and also usually in practice), be both a butt-hurt Neo-Marxist and generally useless both at the same time. But for the sake of having a list, I have separated them out. The internet loves lists.
Poland is not helped by the presence of malcontents, whether home-grown or imported. I do however have good news, the borders, other than closures due to Coronavirus restrictions or in defence against hybrid warfare (yes, I added that since 2017, but if Jeremy Clarkson can do that, so can I), tend to be open, so if you do not like it, escape should not be too challenging, even for you.
Now stick your thumbs down under the article and see if I care.
