5 ms·

the only Polish person I know of that mentioned Warsaw recently said "no way - stay away from it" .. no idea why

ses1984 2y ago
Rural/conservative person maybe? My sister lives there with her husband and two kids, she likes it, it’s expensive though.
- thrw087248 2y ago
  Coming from a German part of Poland[1] to Warsaw, a Russian city, it actually seems conservative. It was the first place I saw someone pray the rosary on public transport... kneeling. It blew my mind. There is also a lot of fetishisation of its history by conservatives, since history in Polish schools is told in a very martyr way, and history of Warsaw, its monuments and all that play well into it. If anything, it’s a very good place for conservatives. [1]: partitions and other shenanigans of Polish history.
  - panzagl 2y ago
    > since history in Polish schools is told in a very martyr way I think that's the perception of Polish history pretty much everywhere except Russia, Ukraine, maybe Lithuania? I'm genuinely curious as to what other theories of Polish history exist, especially in Poland.
    - thrw087248 2y ago
      I think outside of Poland people think of it as a victim mostly in the context of the XX century, but inside, the martyrology begins much earlier and was the leading ideological current in the XIX century. It just seems we have a long tradition of not wanting to own up to our faults, always ready to blame someone else for our misfortunes. This also jives with the catholic doctrine of noble suffering. Personally I’m a fan of taking responsibility. And in the context of falling into partitions we did have a role in that internally the country was a mess, conflicted and for sale. We could learn something from our western neighbours when it comes to forming some unity and valuing work/grit over aristocratic navel-gazing.
      - panzagl 2y ago
        I would argue most of the mess of the 17th-18th centuries comes from not having a strong centralized government at a time when that meant having an absolute monarch or emperor. Sure the back-biting oligarchy was not ideal, but neither was the alternative, at least to most modern audiences. Getting it's act together as a nation would have been an anachronistic thought until well after the first partition. So while wallowing in victimhood isn't helpful, neither are/were Poland's issues entirely self-inflicted.
      - ido 2y ago
        One somewhat weird aspect of it I encountered: my Polish grandfather (born in Łódź in the 1920s and fled as a refugee at the beginning of WW2) always told of how his experience growing up Jewish in Poland was that Poles were virulently antisemitic and he didn’t really consider them any better than the Nazis (on that specific account). I multiple times had exchanges online where Poles absolutely refused to acknowledge any antisemitism was ever present and that everything was the Germans’ fault (to the point where if there was any it was “due to German influences” and other such weird reasoning). I don’t consider anyone at fault for something their ancestors did, I just didn’t expect such total denial of wrongdoings before encountering it.
        krzyk 2y ago
        It is something that was present everywhere. People tend to value their own group than the other. Jews tended to keep to themselves, which had two reasons: they were forced to by laws in many countries (e.g. Ashkenazi group evolved to have good math skills mostly because they were forbidden from owning land etc. but were allowed to be merchants) and by Jews themselves tending to one another and keeping outsiders out (which is quite natural for any group, but not to that extent). Consider what happens in most cases when w given ethnicity moves out of their country - they integrate in century or two (see USA). Jews do not, at least orthodox ones (which were majority before I think). Similar thing happens with other immigrants - if they don't integrate, they are feared. If they have different religion even more so. Countries outside of Germany during (and before) WWII didn't have state level killings of those "alien" groups.
        2y ago
  - stratocumulus0 2y ago
    Regarding the rosary, I would rather guess Warsaw being the seat of government attracts lots of fringe types who come there to protest. I've last been living there in 2019 and I remember that the political climate was already heating up back then, with religious groups protesting in various places spontaneously - groups with loudspeakers at entrances to public transit, trucks driving around blasting anti-gay slogans all day, random marches of people in knight gowns carrying that certain picture of Jesus in a lavish crown that's a dogwhistle among certain ultra-religious groups - I've seen all of that, and still I would consider Warsaw to be overwhelmingly liberal in comaprison to the rest of the country. One exception is the city's football team of course - but football in this country is synonymous with ultra-nationalism.
  - surfingdino 2y ago
    Ever been to Oxford Street in London where one preacher or another is banging on about god?
- krzyk 2y ago
  Not sure, it depends what you like. Putting it on rural/conservative is pretty low. There are more progressive people outside Warsaw than inside. I like old buildings, so prefer Cracow as it wasn't rebuilt, the old buildings there are really old, not built in past 80 years. Also capital dwellers tend to have such self-centric attitude that makes other people upset (Warsaw is known as the "default city", because in some early days of internet when some of them asked about where to buy stuff, they didn't mention in which city, they assumed it was Warsaw).
  - ses1984 2y ago
    There are also more conservative people outside Warsaw than inside, simply because there are less than 2m people and Poland has 38m people. It’s one thing to prefer another city (because it happened to have fewer bombs dropped on it?) it’s another thing to say “stay away.”
pzo 2y ago
Polish population is quite distributed across many middle sized cities. Warsaw has a population of less than 2 million but next one Cracow has ~800k. For many Warsaw will be still too big also considering it has only 2 metro lines. I usually recommend my foreign friends to go visit Cracow, Wroclaw or Gdansk - all the also more interesting for tourism since they haven't been as much destroyed as Warsaw during WW2.
- hackandthink 2y ago
  Gdansk was destroyed in WW2: "Ruins all around" https://artsandculture.google.com/story/9QUBrz3ybHcAzg https://artsandculture.google.com/story/9QUBrz3ybHcAzg
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
danelski 2y ago
Isn't hatred of one's own capital city by all non-residents pretty much universal across Europe?
brandall10 2y ago
Just spent a couple weeks in Poland, including Krakow, Wroclaw, and Warsaw. In general it's considered an uninteresting city to visit as a tourist... of course as detailed here, the historic parts have been rebuilt, so what you're seeing isn't authentic. As well it's considered to be a modern, Western European'ish city, so the idea it's not a great representation of Polish culture. That said, I enjoyed my time there the most. I love the fact that this city that was ravaged by the Nazis w/ an Eastern Bloc past has emerged as this beacon of resilience and modernity. The part that was hit the most, the Wola district - perhaps the most by the Nazis over any other part of Europe - was the most modern. It has some really great museums and public artworks. Also to note, the areas that were rebuilt were done so well that it's not obvious to me the difference between those and the actual medieval structures in the other cities. The old towns in all had a pretty similar flavor and of course the facades of these structures have likely been updated/fixed/repainted multiple times over the centuries.
- futureshock 2y ago
  I don’t usually recommend that tourists visit Warsaw for their first trip to Poland. There are plenty of interesting things to see there, but an international tourist is going to have a certain expectation of what they will want to see, which is mostly Kraków’s medieval center and the Jewish history. That is course is a very narrow slice of Poland, which is a rapidly developing modern European powerhouse in its own right. Another interesting thing is that almost all “old” things are materially mostly new, like the Ship of Theseus. Most structures take regular refurbishment to stay standing. So in a way, while Warsaw Old Town is materially new, the form is old, so it is still in some sense old. This is in contrast to Gdańsk’s old town which are facades slapped on top of communist block buildings meant to create a Polish themed city out of the former German city, much more Disney than architectural conservation.
surfingdino 2y ago
It's where power and money converge, because of its status as the capital city of Poland. This gives its residents a feeling of exceptionalism. It's a typical Eastern European capital city where you go to join the corporate rat race. Just like London and the rest of the UK, you see a huge gap in income and quality of life between Warsaw and the rest of Poland. That's why the rest of the country dislikes Warsaw, just like the rest of the UK dislikes London.

ses1984 2y ago

Rural/conservative person maybe? My sister lives there with her husband and two kids, she likes it, it’s expensive though.

thrw087248 2y ago
Coming from a German part of Poland[1] to Warsaw, a Russian city, it actually seems conservative. It was the first place I saw someone pray the rosary on public transport... kneeling. It blew my mind. There is also a lot of fetishisation of its history by conservatives, since history in Polish schools is told in a very martyr way, and history of Warsaw, its monuments and all that play well into it. If anything, it’s a very good place for conservatives. [1]: partitions and other shenanigans of Polish history.
- panzagl 2y ago
  > since history in Polish schools is told in a very martyr way I think that's the perception of Polish history pretty much everywhere except Russia, Ukraine, maybe Lithuania? I'm genuinely curious as to what other theories of Polish history exist, especially in Poland.
  - thrw087248 2y ago
    I think outside of Poland people think of it as a victim mostly in the context of the XX century, but inside, the martyrology begins much earlier and was the leading ideological current in the XIX century. It just seems we have a long tradition of not wanting to own up to our faults, always ready to blame someone else for our misfortunes. This also jives with the catholic doctrine of noble suffering. Personally I’m a fan of taking responsibility. And in the context of falling into partitions we did have a role in that internally the country was a mess, conflicted and for sale. We could learn something from our western neighbours when it comes to forming some unity and valuing work/grit over aristocratic navel-gazing.
    - panzagl 2y ago
      I would argue most of the mess of the 17th-18th centuries comes from not having a strong centralized government at a time when that meant having an absolute monarch or emperor. Sure the back-biting oligarchy was not ideal, but neither was the alternative, at least to most modern audiences. Getting it's act together as a nation would have been an anachronistic thought until well after the first partition. So while wallowing in victimhood isn't helpful, neither are/were Poland's issues entirely self-inflicted.
    - ido 2y ago
      One somewhat weird aspect of it I encountered: my Polish grandfather (born in Łódź in the 1920s and fled as a refugee at the beginning of WW2) always told of how his experience growing up Jewish in Poland was that Poles were virulently antisemitic and he didn’t really consider them any better than the Nazis (on that specific account). I multiple times had exchanges online where Poles absolutely refused to acknowledge any antisemitism was ever present and that everything was the Germans’ fault (to the point where if there was any it was “due to German influences” and other such weird reasoning). I don’t consider anyone at fault for something their ancestors did, I just didn’t expect such total denial of wrongdoings before encountering it.
      - krzyk 2y ago
        It is something that was present everywhere. People tend to value their own group than the other. Jews tended to keep to themselves, which had two reasons: they were forced to by laws in many countries (e.g. Ashkenazi group evolved to have good math skills mostly because they were forbidden from owning land etc. but were allowed to be merchants) and by Jews themselves tending to one another and keeping outsiders out (which is quite natural for any group, but not to that extent). Consider what happens in most cases when w given ethnicity moves out of their country - they integrate in century or two (see USA). Jews do not, at least orthodox ones (which were majority before I think). Similar thing happens with other immigrants - if they don't integrate, they are feared. If they have different religion even more so. Countries outside of Germany during (and before) WWII didn't have state level killings of those "alien" groups.
      - 2y ago
- stratocumulus0 2y ago
  Regarding the rosary, I would rather guess Warsaw being the seat of government attracts lots of fringe types who come there to protest. I've last been living there in 2019 and I remember that the political climate was already heating up back then, with religious groups protesting in various places spontaneously - groups with loudspeakers at entrances to public transit, trucks driving around blasting anti-gay slogans all day, random marches of people in knight gowns carrying that certain picture of Jesus in a lavish crown that's a dogwhistle among certain ultra-religious groups - I've seen all of that, and still I would consider Warsaw to be overwhelmingly liberal in comaprison to the rest of the country. One exception is the city's football team of course - but football in this country is synonymous with ultra-nationalism.
- surfingdino 2y ago
  Ever been to Oxford Street in London where one preacher or another is banging on about god?
krzyk 2y ago
Not sure, it depends what you like. Putting it on rural/conservative is pretty low. There are more progressive people outside Warsaw than inside. I like old buildings, so prefer Cracow as it wasn't rebuilt, the old buildings there are really old, not built in past 80 years. Also capital dwellers tend to have such self-centric attitude that makes other people upset (Warsaw is known as the "default city", because in some early days of internet when some of them asked about where to buy stuff, they didn't mention in which city, they assumed it was Warsaw).
- ses1984 2y ago
  There are also more conservative people outside Warsaw than inside, simply because there are less than 2m people and Poland has 38m people. It’s one thing to prefer another city (because it happened to have fewer bombs dropped on it?) it’s another thing to say “stay away.”

pzo 2y ago

Polish population is quite distributed across many middle sized cities. Warsaw has a population of less than 2 million but next one Cracow has ~800k. For many Warsaw will be still too big also considering it has only 2 metro lines. I usually recommend my foreign friends to go visit Cracow, Wroclaw or Gdansk - all the also more interesting for tourism since they haven't been as much destroyed as Warsaw during WW2.

hackandthink 2y ago
Gdansk was destroyed in WW2: "Ruins all around" https://artsandculture.google.com/story/9QUBrz3ybHcAzg https://artsandculture.google.com/story/9QUBrz3ybHcAzg

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

danelski 2y ago

Isn't hatred of one's own capital city by all non-residents pretty much universal across Europe?

brandall10 2y ago

Just spent a couple weeks in Poland, including Krakow, Wroclaw, and Warsaw. In general it's considered an uninteresting city to visit as a tourist... of course as detailed here, the historic parts have been rebuilt, so what you're seeing isn't authentic. As well it's considered to be a modern, Western European'ish city, so the idea it's not a great representation of Polish culture. That said, I enjoyed my time there the most. I love the fact that this city that was ravaged by the Nazis w/ an Eastern Bloc past has emerged as this beacon of resilience and modernity. The part that was hit the most, the Wola district - perhaps the most by the Nazis over any other part of Europe - was the most modern. It has some really great museums and public artworks. Also to note, the areas that were rebuilt were done so well that it's not obvious to me the difference between those and the actual medieval structures in the other cities. The old towns in all had a pretty similar flavor and of course the facades of these structures have likely been updated/fixed/repainted multiple times over the centuries.

futureshock 2y ago
I don’t usually recommend that tourists visit Warsaw for their first trip to Poland. There are plenty of interesting things to see there, but an international tourist is going to have a certain expectation of what they will want to see, which is mostly Kraków’s medieval center and the Jewish history. That is course is a very narrow slice of Poland, which is a rapidly developing modern European powerhouse in its own right. Another interesting thing is that almost all “old” things are materially mostly new, like the Ship of Theseus. Most structures take regular refurbishment to stay standing. So in a way, while Warsaw Old Town is materially new, the form is old, so it is still in some sense old. This is in contrast to Gdańsk’s old town which are facades slapped on top of communist block buildings meant to create a Polish themed city out of the former German city, much more Disney than architectural conservation.

surfingdino 2y ago

It's where power and money converge, because of its status as the capital city of Poland. This gives its residents a feeling of exceptionalism. It's a typical Eastern European capital city where you go to join the corporate rat race. Just like London and the rest of the UK, you see a huge gap in income and quality of life between Warsaw and the rest of Poland. That's why the rest of the country dislikes Warsaw, just like the rest of the UK dislikes London.