A visitors report
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A visitor's report on Poland / Lodz.
Taken off a forum post.
Tittle: I thought I should make you Poles blush a bit....
Posted by Tull from Hvitsten, Norway
Edited by Toniwalia
Bente
I have discovered a new country in Europe. The country is not very far from me, I know more people from that country than any other country except for Sweden, I have been there before, eight years ago, to the same town we went now, and yet: If you had put me in the town center, I would have thought I was in Oslo or Helsinki, if you had put me in it’s outskirts I would have thought I was in Paris, if you had put me in one of they’re markets I would have thought I was in Italy and if you put me in the country side I would have thought I was in Germany. And if you haven’t guessed which country I am talking about, it’s Poland. Which has had an EXTREME MAKEOVER in the last years and has become prosperous, pretty and even a little bit posh.
If you, like us, watched CNN the day when Obama was elected, you might have noticed that in between there was a commercial that told you to “come to Lodz and be a star”. Which is what we did – and we felt like stars all the time we were there.
We took the opportunity to go to the dentist there, since we had a lovely surfer from Poland and the city of Lodz at our house last summer. She organized not only a dentist, but a dental prosthesis surgeon (which we both thought we needed) for us, and as some of you might not know, dentist in Poland are a lot cheaper than dentists in Norway although there is no difference in they’re quality.
The fist noticeable difference happened in the airport. Eight years ago we were greeted by an officer in Eastern European grey uniform with a gun on each hip, (creepy for us who grew up to fear the communists). He tried to, and succeeded in convincing us that to get into Poland, we had to pay him something and as the suckers we are, we did.
This time we were greeted by a Polish beauty in NATO uniform (they have chosen the same ones as Norway) who, with a sparkling smile wished us welcome to Poland and just waved at us when we wanted to show our passports. Polish women are famous for being beautiful in Norway (and they are too), and since Poland is the heart of Europe literally, they come in all European shapes and sizes. You can have long legged and blond Scandinavian looking ones, high cheek boned ones with big eyes like the Slavic ones, or if you prefer dark, small Italian looking cuties, they have them too.
The next thing we noticed was how clean it was. We are talking German clean on the inside (which basically means you can drink out of they’re toilet bowls) and Scandinavian clean on the outside: Poles DO NOT litter. Our CS hosts picked us up and took us to Lodz, which I did not recognize at all.
What before was grey “communist”-looking apartment buildings had now got new plaster and had been painted in beautiful colours very pleasing to my West European eye. The little grey houses had got new tilted and tiled roofs, and some of them had got bay windows, verandas and terraces. The first Poles who came to Norway 25 years ago, came to pick strawberries, and if they did that for two years, they could normally build themselves a house after. Of course they were a bit influenced of what they saw here some of they’re houses ended up looking a bit like houses in Norway: White with red roof tiles – in Norway called the “strawberry houses” (it was an article about them in a Norwegian newspaper some years ago, because not only do they look like our houses they are also filled with all sorts of energy saving devices such as central heating run on woodchips and spill water for the garden hose)), but we could also see that others had been influenced by Ireland, Sweden, Denmark – or wherever they had been.
The old down town area of Lodz, which is built in the same period as Oslo and Helsinki (1800-1900) had got a fresh coat of paint also and looked quite familiar. They have also converted an old and huge textile factory into Europe’s biggest shopping center with restaurants, coffee shops and museums. The restoration was done by French architects and Polish bricklayers (who are the best in Europe) and was absolutely amazing. And as for the shops: There is nothing in Paris that you can’t get in Lodz, and as for the prices: I hate to say that anything in Poland these days is cheap because it is more posh than cheap, but the prices were. Mostly ¼ of Norwegian prices, which should make it at least half price for most other Europeans and Americans.
Poland used to be the best agricultural country of Europe (which is why every dictator of a starving nation couldn’t keep they’re fingers off it) and today basically everything produced in Poland is organic. And not only do they have the best tomatoes in Europe (they are a bit tart) they also have the best potatoes. To me a potato was a potato, but the Polish ones taste just amazingly good. They also have the best cooked ham, sausages and meat products in general. They are not bad with fish either since they border on the Baltic coast, and they have game galore since they have both big forests and mountains in the south. And for those of you who think like I did, that Poland was a grey industrial country: Poland is mostly very green, has lots of lakes, ponds and rivers and they are NOT polluted. All Polish women, who are probably the best organized and multi functional women in Europe, makes they’re own pickles, cucumbers, plums, peppers, apples bits and mushrooms. I have Polish friends who are dentists and directors and they STILL make they’re own pickles (I wouldn’t be surprised if I hear that Madame Curie made her own pickles). Well, Martha Stewart is Polish – need I say more? They have wonderful salads and cakes and biscuits also. The only draw back of eating in Poland is they’re portion sizes: A meal meant for two in Poland could probably feed about 15 hungry lumber jacks coming in from the cold – and in spite of this, there are no fat people there (in my next life I too want to be Polish)!
The most surprising thing, however, was the people, the Poles. They have now learned English to such an extent that they are easy to communicate with. Most sales ladies and waiters speak English so that is no problem, and even if you should go into a “hole in the wall” - where the food is always excellent and cost next to nothing, and the lady there does not speak English, some of her customers will, and they are dying to speak it and dying to help you. Even in the market, where I always ask if they speak English just to tell them that I don’t speak Polish, when all the old people shook they’re heads, a little boy jumped up and said “I speak, I speak” and he helped me buy all the stuff I wanted, while his parents beamed with joy.
A double room with bath in Lodz (and with air condition – they are also expecting global heating I expect!) was 37 Euros so I am sure we could easily have stayed in a hotel, but we preferred to surf. And we had the most amazing host/cook/private secretary/tourist guide. Every morning she had made a little note to us with map, tram tickets, telephone numbers, appointments and what have you. We just followed her instructions, so even if we didn’t understand Polish and might have got lost in that big town (twice the size of Oslo, mind you), things went as smoothly as a hot knife in butter. I had a haircut (called up by Kaisa the night before where she told the only Polish speaking hairdresser how I wanted my hair), manicure, pedicure and a facial and it cost so little that it’s almost embarrassing to mention the price.
The Poles have an endearing quality. They blush or even cry when you give them compliments. Which of course made us do it all the time. We took a picture of a waiter at Wedel’s. A place which is famous for having invented hot chocolate and they’re coffee is excellent too. The manager opened up his very posh restaurant one hour early because Pål and I had been to the dentist very early and was dying for some coffee and nothing was open at that time. I asked him to stand still so I could take a picture of him because he was so handsome (hey, I am 56 I can say things like that to 30 year olds). It looks like it’s something wrong with the picture because his face has the same color of his apron, which was wine red, and his face has the same color, but it was because he blushed so much.
The same happened when we ate in another restaurant. A sparkling, Polish beauty asked us how we liked Lodz, and we answered truthfully and said we had the feeling that they actually had expected the King and Queen of Norway and had mistaken them for us, and that we found everything in Lodz just fantastic. She sat down and cried. “You know” she said, “I was au pair girl in USA and do you have any idea of how much ugly things they say about us? They say we are dirty, do you think so?” It made me remember some of the horrid Polish jokes I had heard in USA when I was there in the 70s and then I thought how horrible it must have been for her to hear those jokes. She was not much different than I was at the time, and I could always straighten my back and say I was Norwegian and I never heard a bad word. Poles are next to the Germans, the cleanest people in Europe, so stop those ugly jokes. And if you are hard up for a good Polish joke, here is one we tell in Norway and which all Poles love: “What do you get when you cross a Pole with an octopus? One hell of a strawberry picker!” All Norwegian Polish jokes are about how incredible hard working they are.
I used to think (here comes more of my misconceptions) that the Poles were some sort of extra Russians (although my father kept telling me that before WW2 they were more considered as almost part of the North along with the other Baltic nations) even if the ones I know from Norway were more like Scandinavians (a bit more hard working, a bit more shy, but with the same humor). What we found now that so many Poles speak English is that they are in fact more like extra Scandinavians – like my father told me.
Since we came home we have taken out Pål’s grandpas history book from Poland because we got really curious about what people thought of Poland before the 50 gray years, and it turns out that Norway have had connections with Poland for more than 1000 years, and yet we never even heard of them when we learned history in school. Well, we are reading up now and it’s quite interesting.
You can also shop till you drop in Poland - literally, But since both Pål and I have a very short attention span when it comes shopping and actually have all the stuff we need (hey, we are Norwegians!) we decided that we had much more fun tipping people the same amount we would tip a person for the same service in Norway never mind what it cost. A T-shirt wears out, a good memory never does. If the dinner in Norway would be about 1000 and it was 300 in Poland we would tip about 100 if the service was good – which it was all the time. “The greatest joy you can have in life is to make another person happy” is a Norwegian proverb, and when we left the restaurants both we and the waiters were very happy. A win win situation all around, can it be better?
So now while the currencies of most countries are down in the dump and you think you can’t go to Paris after all, give Lodz a try, I bet you will not regret it. And lucky me. Pål needs to go back in December for titan screws and crowns (lucky him too, in fact. His Norwegian dentist told him he needed dentures) so we are going back there in December.
Poland both needs and wants tourists now. And as for us tourists, why use all your money and risk being treated like dirt in Paris and Rome (not that I criticize them, they just get too many tourists), when you can spend half or less and be treated like a star in Poland? In Poland most of us can still hold our cigars high, and I think we should go there while it lasts. We are actually doing them a favor!
