Things I learned in Poland

Things I Learned While in Poland

The client I’m working on has a division in Poland. We’re helping the client get ready to comply with US regulations and as you can imagine the Poland team is finding it challenging between the distance from the project team here in Dublin and the language barrier. I and two colleagues were sent there at the last moment to give them some hands on help. This is what I learned:

1. The Polish are way more modern and technological than I expected.

I don’t know a lot about Polish history, but I knew enough before heading there that they played a part in the cold war and were definitely heavily affected by WWII. That’s all true, but they have a large population of young professionals and the country has been rebuilt since the war and is flourishing. They recently joined the EU which has further helped their stance as a country in Europe.

2. Not much of Wroclaw (pronounced phonetically as Rottsloff) that was around prior to WWII is left.

The client took us out on Tuesday night and took us on a walk. We walked by several churches and one of the spires had burned on one of them. We asked when it had burned and one of the guys with us checked noting that it had burned in the 1700s. They commented how that must be strange for me being from America that a building would be so old. I agreed noting that we in the US are just babies really. James and I were talking later and comparing America to the teenager in the family. They tend to think that everyone else including their parents are stupid and that they know everything and are invincible. I think this compares to the general American culture, don’t you? It’s nice to be over here expanding our view of the world. Anyway, the clients would point out buildings that were around prior to the war as this was a special and unique thing in Wroclaw.

3. Working in a country that operates in a different language is strange.

We did workshops around what the client needed to do while I was there. There is an entire department of translators at the bank whose sole job is to translate documents and meetings into English. While many of the folks we were working with understood much and spoke a bit, they were more comfortable in the meetings with the translator. One or two had very limited understanding, so my and my colleague’s English was translated to Polish and vice versa. It was strange to be up in front of a group explaining something and then realize you’d gone further than the translator could remember and that you needed to stop so that he/she could translate. Then the clients would have side conversations in Polish where my colleague and I would just wait for them to come to the theme at which point it would be translated to us. It was a situation where something that could have been done in a couple of hours in all English would take much longer as there were both translation delays along with just the challenge of communicating detailed concepts that had to go through translation.

4. Polish food is definitely different, but still good.

When we went to restaurants, we had to ask for English menus. Most of them had them, thank goodness. On the menus there were always basics like chicken and pork. In addition there was often boar, wild turkey, veal and venison. Dishes were served with potatoes and folks ate a lot of beets in Poland. Speaking of beets, I wish I’d been able to get a picture of this soup they served at the bank. I promise you it was fluorescent pink. They had to have added food coloring to it. It was beetroot soup, and I kindly said no thank you to that!

5. Pharmacy is Apteka in Polish.

This you need to know if you need anything you might get from a drugstore in the US. Let’s just say that I found myself in need and found it challenging to communicate what I needed. (Picture me and my colleague trying to motion how to take an aspirin to a taxi driver and you’ll get the idea….)

Those were really the highlights. Enjoy the pictures! Signing off….Amy