Shopping in Poland

The shopping experience in Poland is pretty similar to shopping in the UK but it is alot cheaper. Polish Zloty, the national currency converts to 1 polish zloty = 0.21 pence (British pound). Therefore, we have been able to get alot more for our money when we have been out shopping.

The first shop we did was at a local corner shop on the first day when we arrived. We went to get the essentials such as milk and sugar for tea, pasta, water and toilet rolls as well as tomato sauce and gouda cheese for dinner, chocolate filled croissants for breakfast and some cheese & onion crisps for a snack. This cost around 16 zloty in total which is just over £3. The corner shop was very full up and the aisles were quite narrow, this did make it difficult to stay in there for too long looking and reading labels because other people wanted to navigate their way around the store as well. This is in contrast to shop layouts in the UK, they tend to be more spread out and perhaps more minimalist. There were some recogniseable brands such as Lays (Walkers crisps), Nestle, Lipton Tea and Mars to name a few but we tended to buy the cheapest brands we could find, we are students after all!

Corner shop haul

During our first visit to the large shopping mall, I bought some useful items in Tiger including a canvas bag to take my art equipment into uni, a travel mug, a pad of brown cartridge paper, some blue toned marker pens, a glue stick and a few other goodies. It was interesting to see items that aren't available in the UK Tiger stores and I think we may go back to get more art supplies and homeware. Tiger is cheap enough in the UK but it is even cheaper in Poland and I was even given a free heart shaped dish because it was Valentine's Day. 

Tiger and a Chemist shop haul

We have both noticed that shop assistants tend to speak to us in Polish first when we go to pay because they can't distinguish us from the locals. I would like to learn some basic phrases so that I am able to converse with them because some of the older Polish people can't speak English and I also don't want people to think I am being ignorant because I haven't attempted to learn the language. The customer service is good and all of the assistants have seemed friendly.

Today, we managed to find a larger supermarket. This not only gave us more of a variety of food and drink to buy, but more space to spend time looking around. We bought ingredients to make pancakes and supplies to make a few dinners and also packed lunches to take to uni. We both plan to sit down at the weekend and budget in English, then convert it to Polish Zloty to ensure we don't overspend. We will try to cook when we can but would also like to be able to eat out and try the traditional food so we are going to make sure we don't spend money unnecessarily so we have some savings for eating out and buying souvenirs. 

Supermarket haul