7 things that can shock you in Poland

Photo totally not related with post. Me in Warsaw, first time for sightseeing, in age 21. Yeah, I know that it is capital, but it different world for me...

Did you ever experienced “culture shock”? It is the feeling of disorientation experienced by someone when they are suddenly subjected to an unfamiliar culture, way of life, or set of attitudes. We can feel that during longer stay abroad, but also during short trips to other countries. Even fact that globalization is spreading through the world, we still experience culture shock, when we dive more into culture of other society and nation.

Today ONLY 7 things that can shock you in Poland. I could do much more, based on self-experience, jokes of foreigners and stories from exchange students. Even people from one country can experience culture shock, because differences are so big among various regions (I felt that in Poland, really!)

“No tak”, “No”, “No nie”. 

So basics. “Tak” means “Yes”. “Nie” means “No”. Easy-peasy, isn’t it?  But in daily language we don’t use only short “tak” or “nie”. Unfortunately, sorry foreigners. We have such short, cool word (which I really like) as “No”. It doesn’t mean the same as in English, it’s trick. “No” means also “Yes” in Polish, it’s more slang and it isn’t so polite to answer, for example, a teacher. So you can be in situation, that you will talk and your Polish friend will answer you all the time “No, no, no no….”. He or she just nods you. Really, belive me, it isn’t “NO”.

The problem is when we use “no” with normal “tak” and “nie”. “No tak” is just stronger “yes”. “No nie” doesn’t mean “Yes no”. It is just stronger “Nie”. Understood? I know that’s hard.

Moreover we use “no” before ANY sentence, for example “No chcesz iść na piwo?” – “Do you want to go for a beer?”. “No” sometimes makes sentences stronger, give them a little bit of excitement / boredom / anger / reminder… Anything what you want!

Second thing is difference between (mostly) north and south of Poland, when you say “go out” – in Polish “wyjść” or “wychodzić”. At south you say “wychodzić na pole” and when we translate it directly it means “go out to the field”. At north you say “wychodzić na dwór” and direct translation is “go out to the manor”. People from north (Warsaw, Poznań, but also Wrocław) think that “wychodzić na pole” is not grammatically correct, and say that it is more regionalism. People used to think that “wychodzić na dwór” sounds nicer and more cultural. Because of it this form from north has status of nationwide form.

As proud habitant of south, I always say “wychodzić na pole” and I don’t care, when somebody corrects me ;) Also as I said before that “pole” means field and “dwór” means manor – we have some joke about it. We say that people from north say “wychodzić na dwór”, because they go  from field to manor (“z pola na dwór”), so they’re farmers, and people from south say “wychodzić na pole”, because they go  from manor to field (“z dworu na pole”), so they’re rulers. I leave that for you to think!

That post supposed to be shorter. Sorry. Here you have other things that can shock you in Poland!


Does anything shock you in Poland or in other countries? How do you deal with culture shock? Tell me!

If you want to ask anything about my country or something is not clear, I’ll explain it to you J Just leave a comment!