Essential Polish phrases

Good day and goodbye. Said on entering and leaving a shop, a lift or a waiting room. Skipping it reads as rudeness, not reserve.

Sir / madam, and the grammatical subject of the sentence. Polish has no neutral 'you', so every sentence commits you to formal or informal.

Your national identification number. Nothing digital in Poland works without it — tax, NFZ, e-government, most banking.

The government digital identity. Since 27 April 2026 you cannot file a residence application without one, and the fastest way to get it is your bank's app.

'Just over the fence' — how people here refer to Germany. The border is fifteen minutes from the western suburbs and locals cross it for petrol, groceries and, increasingly, to live.

The star-shaped squares that organise the street plan. Szczecin was rebuilt in the nineteenth century on a radial pattern with avenues meeting at circular plazas, so the city is navigated by roundabout rather than by grid.

The lump-sum tax on revenue that most Polish IT contractors elect — 12% for software development. The choice is annual and the deadline is unforgiving.

The Beech Forest on the city's south-eastern edge — a hilly, genuinely wild woodland inside the city's reach. Szczecin has more green space per resident than any other large Polish city and this is the best of it.

The city's German name until 1945. Szczecin's population was almost wholly exchanged after the war, which is why almost nobody's grandparents are from here and why being new is unremarkable.

The tinned fish-and-rice paste invented by the local deep-sea fleet in 1967, adapted from a West African recipe. Genuinely local, genuinely still eaten, and a small monument to the era when this city fished the Atlantic.

The shipyard. Its 1970 and 1980 strikes were part of what became Solidarity, and its collapse after 2009 is the wound the offshore wind industry is now being asked to close.

112 for any emergency from any phone, in Polish or English. 999 goes directly to an ambulance dispatcher.