Few months ago one of my egyptian friends has visited me in Poland. Her first impression was - "What a hall - everything on the streets in polish language!". Well somehow it was understandable, she was in Poland.
What I realized lastly - that not only in Poland everything on the streets might be in polish. I experienced that last two weeks in Hurghada in EGYPT. Somehow I was going to Egypt with expectations to experience egyptian everyday life, to have a problem with communication with people, to see everything on the streets written in arabic...
I got dissapointed. Firstly I came to the hotel ful of polish tourists. Noone there was even trying to use English. I was shocked when I have seen people saying "excuse me" to the foreign people in polish in the dinning room.
Then going out of the hotel. Walking down the street. Entering first shop to buy some juice. And... I heared Egyptian asking me in polish "hello, are you looking for water?". Afterwards it was happening all the time, everybody on the street was saying to me "dzień dobry" (good morning/hello).
It took me also some time to realize that almost everything is translated in to polish (or even worser written only in polish). While walking around the city I have seen I lot of advertisments in polish, information in the toilets not to put toilet paper into to toilet and many other differet important information.
Very popular was to write on the doors of travel agency - "here we speak polish". And they did! We entered one tourist agency to buy a diving trip. Altough we were there with egyptians friends over there guy who was talking with us was drinking out vodka and complaining about polish embassy in Cairo, because he didn't get visa and he was planning to go for language course in Warsaw.
It was before our trip to real Egypt, but after coming back I still have found some shocking polish accents. In da hotel we were having a nice dinner next to pool and of course what I have heared - the very old polish song;) And lastly in the airport - I went to the bar and there were two TVs with - polish channels!
Well maybe it shoudn't surprize me, maybe with polish people is the some like with spanish, they are not able to learn English so everybody around is learing their language.
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