Britain vs Poland: Weddings

Let me tell you about a British wedding. The bride and groom meet at the church or registry office or hotel, they stand in front of the person marrying them and they tell each other how much they love each other and then they are married. This is normally late morning. Then they pose for photos. Then more photos. Then a few more photos. Then they go for the wedding reception.
At the British wedding reception everybody has a starter, then a dinner, then a dessert until they’re full and a little bit drunk. Then the bride and groom thank the bridesmaids, the parents, the ushers and anybody else they can think of. They give them flowers and tell them how great they are. Then there is the best man’s speech.

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Valley Chicken Football

I always liked football, I was just never any good at it. It was, however, a useful hobby when I moved to Tarnowskie Gory in October 2005. On Sunday mornings I would meet my boss Rafal and I would play with him and his friends at the school pitch near Parkowa. Normally twelve-to-fifteen guys showed up and we played for about an hour. After the match we would go to the small pub in the woods and drink cheap beer for an hour or two. I think that was why I liked going to play football.

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Tarnowskie Góry dla Krolow

I don’t like Krakow. I think Tarnowskie Gory is better than Krakow. I wish I had a clever and witty way to write this opening paragraph but nothing else really has the impact of those first two sentences.
I have been a regular visitor to Krakow since autumn 2005. Between 2008 and 2011 my wife studied there and I visited and stayed with her in three different parts of town. I liked these different parts of town. In our home in Wales we even have a black and white framed picture of Krakow above the fireplace. We have stylish and artsy Krakow coasters on our coffee table for cups and glasses. In our spare bedroom we even have a toy dragon with ‘Krakow’ written across his belly! So why don’t I like Krakow?

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Is Polish Difficult? No.

If I ask a Pole a question and they answer ‘no’ I have to think – are they answering me ‘no’ in English, which means ‘no’, or are they answering me ‘no’ in Polish…which means ‘yes’? If they answer ‘nie’ I have to make sure I have heard them correctly because ‘nie’ sounds very much like ‘yeah’. Of course ‘nie’ means ‘no’ in Polish and ‘yeah’ means ‘yeah’ in English. Are you confused? I was. The title of this piece of writing is using ’No’ in the Polish way – Is Polish difficult? Too right it is. It is an absolute nightmare.

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Clever Cabbage

Before I moved to Poland the only Polish food I knew was a meal that my mother would make from time to time. She had been taught it years ago by her late Polish father and it consisted of mashed potato with bits of bacon and fried onion and covered with a sauce made from cucumber, cream, sugar and vinegar. My mum said she thought it was called ‘Mizeria’. It was known as ‘Polish Stuff’ in our Welsh house.

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