no crisis in poland ... OMG! what an airplane tragedy :-( ... RIP ...

(april 10, 2010) OMG! what an airplane tragedy in smolensk/russia ... 88 polish elites including president lech kaczynski dead :-( ... RIP ...

slovak singer martina schindlerova performs 'birds of paradise' for the 42 slovak ('peace force') soldiers who died in a plane accident in hungary on their flight home from kosovo in january 2006.

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(february 2010): folks, there is everything fine in poland

well, we are visiting my wife's family and i think there is everything fine here ... just look: on the very 1st day there was not a single parking slot for our car in front of the city's huuuuge shopping + entertainment center manufaktura (= the former textile factory areal). well, after a while we found a place in the very last row and could finally move to the shopping paradise ... ok, lets move to an ATM and withdraw some local currency (= zloty), u think ... well, i've tried 5 or 7 cash machines and all of them were nearly empty or had just small notes inside so i would have to take the money out in several steps (and pay the corresponding commission of 6 EUR every time). well, the last possible ATM in the 2nd floor offered me to withdraw 3,900 zloty instead of the wished 4,000 (approx 1,000 euros), i said yes, of course ...

the shops are full, cafes and restaurants as well an there was not a single cinema ticket out there (well, that was the valntine's day and therefore a very special situation, but anyway ... )

what else? very sexy clothed women despite the cold weather (-3 celsius), too expensive coffee shops (not much cheaper than in germany even if the folks in poland earn significantly less), soooo much food at family's dinner table, so much snow outside, shopping with wife + children (you still remember my horror experience few weeks ago, dont u?), visit in manufaktura's small but intersting museum ... hell, u wouldn't believe how loud the 2 textile machines were (loud like hell, i would say: http://www.youtube.com/v/iVD-1xBPiNo) and none of us could imagine the damned noise the former 200 machines produced in factory's active days ...

folks, i will post some pictures (but not the sexy girls!) and write some more comments later (just in case if s.th. interesting happens, of course).

well, 2day evening is a pub visit with few of my wife's school friends on the agenda (again in the sooo nice and intersting manufaktura). i knew few of them from my former visits already, so it could be a quite interesting beer/vodka evening again. FOLKS, I SWEAR I WILL NOT TOUCH ANY TEQUILA THIS TIME .... aaaaaaand im not going 2 start any poll whether beer + caipirinha + hot wine punch was a better choice than tequila, u agree?

any other observations? kindly people everywhere (except the waiters/waitresses ~ they prolly dont care whether the customers are satisfied or not), many bazaars with cheap local and chinese products of low quality, traditional local food in the markets + restaurants (prolly much better + healthier than the german industrialized food supply!), very good + still cheap bread, buckled streets (btw, by far not as bad as in bali/indonesia), sooo much waste + doggy sh*t on the streets, nice shops in the city's centre, still no fast intercity roads and you have to drive slowly from village to village in order to move forward (esp. in the area of poland's 2nd or 3rd largest city lodz), still no wind/solar power generators out there, still sooooo many shabby appartment houses, still no waste recycling at all (hell, that's sad!!! paper, glass, food leavings, plastic, everything into one can => waste depony and/or fired in the city's heat power plant => dont ask abt pollution ) ... well, poland has still a loooong way to go to reach western european standards ... but the sexy girls makes the country a "must see" event, i think!

any investment ideas? yep, there is the huuuge copper + silver producer KGHM which pays huuuge dividends, but the price is quite high now and i cant order it directly (traded just in poland, england + usa), so maybe there will be sometime in the future a buying opportunity ...

few more pictures? ok, here we go, enjoy

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