To be or not to be!

To be what you may ask! To be a citizen of Poland.

I, as you can probably guess, am a British Citizen (one of the three possible types, which on a recent internet search I was intrigued to discover existed).


I have lived here (Poland) for three and a half years in that time I have resided legally thanks to my EU resident’s card.

Well generally this state of affairs is fine as I can exist quite happily like this. However, it restricts my voting (I think, but actually haven't checked thoroughly) and it has some odd little side effects..

Last weekend my wife and i were in MediaMarkt in Łódź and we wanted to but a new hoover. It was only 500zł, but we wanted to establish a credit history with Lukas (the partner bank of MM). Therefore we said we'd pay 150zł in cash and the rest in 5 installments. In five months time we would then get letters offering huge amounts of credit (at least that was the plan).

The problem was that Lucas doesn't like foreigners (my suspicion is that its French roots detected my Englishness and bulked at the idea). When I say doesn’t like, maybe I’m stretching the story, but the result is the same, they don't give credit to foreigners full stop.

In the end we had to buy it outright, which means no credit history. The funniest thing is that I have a 2 ½ year old car which was bought in Poland primarily on credit (that was an Italian bank though :) ).

Holylodz

The city of LOdz, already a central part of the Polish film industry with the Film School, is set to increase its share os showbiz with the construction of a new film studio. David Lynch, as previously mentioned on this blog has somewhat fallen in love with Lodz and as well as gathering money for a cultral centre in the city is also planing to build a small film studio which should open in 2009.

This all comes at an important time for tthe Polish film industry as Katyn is up for an Oscar at the end of the month.

As mentioned in previous entries, I do not live in Lodz, but work there and commute daily. This meand that i actualy spend more of my time there than in the village where i live. Lodz, has a bad reputation with in POland, yet is increaseinly transorming it self. I can not wait to see the final result in around twenty years time.

Easy come easy go - making money the hard way!!

It seems that winter has returned to Łódź with a renewed vigor. After a few weeks of relatively warm and dare I say it spring-time weather, we now have snow. ... But stop, before I kill off any potential readers of this recently sporadically updated blog, let me tell you a story. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin!



Last summer I was driving around happily minding my own business, enjoying the warm rays of the summer sum. Little did I know, that Satan in all his inventive and unquestionably evil genius had plotted to entrap me in a demonic plot. Yes, you guessed it, I went straight through a speed camera. This was not one of those large grey boxes clearly marked for all to see by a procession of flashing headlights from the oncoming traffic. No this was far more ingenious. It was one of the evil goblins cunningly disguised as a little grey bog on a tri-pod, connected by some umbilical cord like cable to a chariot of hell, otherwise known as an unmarked car.

Don’t get me wrong I am not against speed cameras or for that matter covert ones. In fact they are a very good idea and I think far more effective at reducing drivers’ speeds, than overt methods. I just would rather it wasn’t me that it happened too :-)

The problem with this occasion is that the covertness was so effective that I had absolutely no idea I had been caught. I then proceeded to go up north for the summer and it was not until early September that my local policeman cam a knocking (that is something that, after 3 & 1/2 years I still haven’t got used to ... the personal service that Polish police provide). The problem was that he had come round several times while i was away and that now over two months had passed. This means that under Polish law the case must go to court and can not just be settled by the fuzz, I mean local constabulary.

Ok, I thought fair enough. The police man wrote a very nice report, recommended me for the minimal fine, and said that I wouldn’t need to attend in person. The problem is it is now rapidly approaching the end of February and I still haven’t revived my fine. Bureaucracy is one thing, but I have had to go to the police station to get booked, the police man has had to come to my house twice, while I was there, and god knows how many times when I wasn’t, and all for the amazing sum of 100zł.

Now I am no economist, but even I can see that by the end of this all the Polish state is going to be in deficit.

So far it has been 8 months, and still no result.......