Greetings
Dzień dobry
jane DOH-bry
Good day — used with everyone you have not been introduced to, including in lifts and waiting rooms. Not saying it reads as brusque rather than shy.
Daily life
Trójmiasto
TROOY-myas-to
The Tricity: Gdańsk, Sopot and Gdynia, three separate municipalities strung along 40 km of coast. People live in one, work in another and go out in a third.
SKM
es-ka-EM
The fast urban rail spine running the whole length of the Tricity every ten to fifteen minutes. It is the single most important piece of infrastructure in your daily life here.
Bilet metropolitalny
BEE-let me-tro-po-li-TAL-ny
The metropolitan ticket valid across all three cities and the SKM. A Gdańsk city pass alone does not get you to Gdynia, and this catches almost every newcomer once.
PESEL
PEH-sel
Your national identification number. Tax, NFZ healthcare, e-government and most banking are gated behind it.
Karta pobytu
KAR-ta po-BY-too
The residence card. Pomorskie is one of the quicker voivodeships, but the appointment for biometrics is still the bottleneck.
Sinice
shee-NEE-tse
Cyanobacteria. Warm still summers can bloom them along the bay and beaches are closed to swimming for days at a time — check before you plan the afternoon.
Culture
Bursztyn
BOORSH-tin
Amber. Gdańsk has traded it for a thousand years and still calls itself the world capital of it — the Amber Museum sits in the medieval Great Mill.
Stocznia
STOCH-nya
The shipyard. Solidarity was founded at this one in August 1980, and the European Solidarity Centre stands at its gate.
Kaszubi
ka-SHOO-bee
The Kashubians, the region's own Slavic people with their own recognised language, still spoken in the lake country an hour west of the city.
Emergency
112 / 601 100 100
—
112 for any emergency. 601 100 100 is the national water rescue number — worth having in a city where people swim from May to September.
Some of this may be out of date. Spotted something inaccurate? Help us keep it right for the next newcomer.