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> But I think you overstate how good it was because you look from the perspective of Warsaw (even if it's not the best part of Warsaw). Well, it is not a Warsa
by krzyk 7y ago
> But I think you overstate how good it was because you look from the perspective of Warsaw (even if it's not the best part of Warsaw).
Well, it is not a Warsaw perspective but most probably any city perspective (versus rural areas).
E.g. I grew up in a 50 thousand people city and lived on a new neighborhood with blocks of flats and the edge of the city.
I had:
- small grocery store (10m away, it was next to my block of flats)
- supermarket (150m away)
- bus stop (150m away) - it was next to supermarket
- pharmacy (130m away)
- hairdresser (50m away)
- nursery (600m away)
- kindergarten (350m away)
- primary school (650m away)
- high school (1.5km away)
- church (600m away) - they didn't plan that for sure :), not sure if westerners are aware but communist were against any religion
- and a lot of green space between block of flats that was used as a playground or soccer fields by kids
And now the negatives:
- nursery was overcrowded, my younger sister couldn't get in
- supermarket/grocery didn't have a lot of stuff, e.g. coffee was sold 1 bag per person, when they got it finally.
Meet was sold for cards ("na kartki") - each person was given a certain amount of cards per month to buy certain things that were in high demand (like meat, I don't remember what else, maybe sugar, butter).
Basically you had two currencies: ordinary money and the cards.
Source: grew up in the 80ties there
- kolinko 7y agoIt's funny, I grew up in a 100k people city (Olsztyn), and the distances are virtually the same! When I moved to Warsaw's Ursynów to study, the numbers are the same as well. Seriously :D
- p_l 7y agoIt was actually part of government-mandated standards when selecting architectural plans for new neighbourhoods - they had rates for expected amounts of children of various age to size nursery, kindergarten, schools of all levels, etc., had to calculate in healthcare locations, kid playgrounds, minimal distances between buildings, availability of shops, etc. All of that was of course for greenfield neighbourhoods, though some work went into maintaining such standards in brownfield locations as well.
- ajuc 7y ago> not sure if westerners are aware but communist were against any religion They were trying to fight it for a while, but catholicism in Poland was too strong so they formed a kind of cease fire. That's why they even let people build churches, do mass celebrations, pilgrimages etc. And a lot of priests were secret informators of the security (communists searched for any material for blackmail and if they found something they forced them to become informators - common blackmail material was pedophilia and homosexualism (treated so because of social stigma) ).