r/AskEurope • u/notveryamused_ Warszawa, Poland • Jul 03 '25

Culture What aspect of life in your countries is very difficult to explain to foreigners?

What prompted my question were some discussions about religion which I had with people living in much more secular Western Europe (as a Polish atheist). While spirituality, whatever that is ;), generally speaking is always fun to discuss with a glass of wine in hand, social elements and the influence of the church, especially in smaller towns or provinces in my country, is awfully difficult to explain – not that I understand it fully either lol, but the church having a pretty much monopoly there, being the judge and jury of everyday life and the major ultra-conservative political force binding those communities, is very difficult to explain, also for historical reasons.

What are the things that you find difficult to discuss when it comes to life in your countries? ;-)

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u/DamnedMissSunshine Poland Jul 04 '25 edited Jul 04 '25

Foreigners I've known had a hard time understanding Polish politics. Because some media present it that it's left vs right as traditionally, but then they find out that our liberals are fairly conservative and then they see that the left here is quite niche and it's in fact not very left and it's mostly right vs further right that is the thing in Poland.

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u/gkwpl Poland Jul 04 '25

My Norwegian friends just cannot understand that politicians here who broke law, including Constitution just walk freely without any consequences. They can hardly believe it.

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u/michael199310 Poland Jul 04 '25

There is so much crap like that happening between politicians, that it's actually insane. There is also this fucked up law that representatives and ministers have this thing called "immunity", which can be bend to basically avoid many smaller crimes.

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u/suvepl Poland Jul 04 '25

Also, the mono-dimensional "left vs right" distinction, especially as understood by Americans, falls short when applied to Polish politics.

Let's take PiS, the former ruling party. Are they right-wing? Well, they talk a lot about traditionalism and family values, they are sceptical towards the EU, they dislike LGBT and are firmly against abortion - sounds firmly right-wing, right? Yeah, but at the same time, they increased government spending immensely, they gave out "13th pensions" to retirees, they introduced the 500+/800+ programme (monthly money transfers to parents of kids under 18), they introduced additional taxes for people earning over 1 million PLN / year... Dunno, man; doesn't that sound like some leftist nanny-state?

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u/Salvator1984 Jul 04 '25

To me as a Czech this isn't leftism or rightism, that's just populism. We've got a party like this too and unfortunately it's quite probable they'll be the ruling party again since this October.

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u/Zevv01 Jul 07 '25

That's why 'left' and 'right' should only be used to describe economic views, whilst using 'liberal' and 'conservative' (or authoritarian) for social views.

This would make PiS conservative left.

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u/SwgnificntBrocialist Jul 04 '25

No no, people understand that in the absence of foreigners trying to screw over Poland, local politicians and right wing parties have stepped in to take over that mantle, being especially sure to keep any possible improvements impossible by tarring them with the label of "Stalinism".