First shot on Warsaw! History, incomes and more

Introduction

There are 18 districts in Warsaw, but most important are only few like Śródmieście, Wola or Praga (both called północ – north and południe – south). Don’t get me wrong, in almost every of them you can find some nice places to live, eat or something to do but most of the events, meetings or hang outs are taking places in those 3 main districts. Well, it slowly start to head to the ‘night life’ subject but for the beginning I want to show you something else. Maybe not as spectacular as fights on the streets or night car races but at least I hope you will like it. The very first thing you have to know is that “average” is very accurate word to describe nearly every Pole’s life.

History

Why’s that? Because of very long soviet occupation after WWII. It’s not history lesson but I have to give you some information about history. It’s key to understand most people way of think or life. For a nearly 50 years our industry was exploited and sold out, every political and economical decides were made in Moskva or with their blessing. The whole army, government and institutions were polish only by the name. The country and central/east Europe was cut off the rest of the world by iron curtain. If u wanted to made a career and live in a little better conditions you had to make many deletions(that’s why reporting anything to any institution, especially to police is hated so much by the society. It’s just in our minds, notice that Poland was under occupation de facto for nearly 200 years- only exeption is between First and Second World War. Most of the people don’t know ‘My home is my castle’ sentence but strongly believe that way), be a member of socialist political party and hate everything what’s connected to the west. It’s sad but many people were very poor and had to eat only bread sprinkled with sugar or even worse. Everything (not much things at all to be honest) what was in the shops was rationed and u had had a special bon to buy something. If you know what’s going on in e.g Venezuela you have the perfect example of life in PRL (Polish People’s Republic).

Daily queue to butchery

Incomes

The point is that people were poor. Living standard for common family from West, on the East was reserved only for the most rich. Nowadays step by step whole society is starting to earn more money. We are still far, far away from West payments (in general - nearly the same numbers but in PLN not € or $ without lower prices on stuff like electronics, cars etc) but slowly getting closer to them. For example for being a salesman in electronic store you are getting about 605$ base and if u fill your targets - up to 100$ bonus. Cashier in some supermarkets earn very similar. It’s hard to find job(except corporations) that allows you to break 850-900$ in comfortable conditions. Anyway, other result of this was very fast and strong spreading subcultures based on poverty and inequality like hip-hop or punk (with all subgenres like oi! or new wave). While 2nd of them is pretty dead, 1st came already into mainstream but still signs of oldschool like tags, grafittis or underground MC’s are literally everywhere.

Guess who is this?

Buildings and environment

The most popular buildings Warsaw are colorful blocks (especially 10-12 floors tall) and tenement house in more poor or older parts of the city.

Without few exeptions there are a lot of green. Being eco and taking care about the Earth is really getting trendy here so you can find a lot of parks, fields and even forests across whole Warsaw. When you ride 20km away you can even swim or sail on sailboat.

It's "łabędź" - don't even try to say it haha

Of course there is also Vistula River which both riversides are literally occupied every weekend by people who wants to have fun but I will write about this in other article. Returning to main theme you can feel touch of socialism when you look at the playgrounds that have been built with whole estate. Just like with payments its getting better and better every year, modernization is still in progress and old stuff is replaced with new swings and so on but it’s still easy to find neglected places.

Summary

Well, I think that’s enough for the first time. Like I said before ‘avarage’ is perfect word to desicribe where we – as a nation, or country – are. We have left extreme poverty behind and look straight into future and to the West but it’s still long way to reach this. We want to participate in every part of modern human life and change the world for better but with saving our national spirit and identify. This article was made a little bit general but please remember that is very first time I’m writing something like that and some of you probably don’t know literally nothing about this place so it was nessesery to describes some basics.

First polish supercar - Arrinera Hussarya

As always let me know what do you think about it? What do you want to hear about (I guess I will write about drugs) ? Maybe you have some fast questions?