Polish Language skills

I've been here for four days now - and I have come to conclusions about language in Poland.

a) It seems to be impossible to speak even a little polish. I have not had any response to pleases, thank you's and hellos. I think I'm saying them wrong

b) No one speaks English apart from where it comes as standard - i.e. conference centres, conference hotels, tourist restaurants.

Now. I don't speak a word of Polish, and I don't expect everyone to speak English. Especially in a country where Russian was there international communication means until 1990, but it's a compeletly new experience to have absolutley no guaranteed access to an english speaking native. When it's clear to people talking to you that you don't speak polish, they speak it slower and louder. I'm reminded of english tourists. Slowing Polish down does not make up for my lack of grammar, vocabulary, or generally any other linguistic facet of the language.

I've been told that Polish schools started teaching English in 1990. Giving them a few years to get good at it(How many years has it taken UK schools??), you can't expect anyone over about 10 years old to have learned English from an early age at school.

This is confirmed from what happened the first night I was here. It was late, and I was hungry. I had walked in the wrong direction from the hotel - so had ended up in a burger stall in the bus station. I got a negative to English and German(I've since given up on asking for German), so did the point and nod communication.

There was a little kid some where between 8 and 12 who seemed really excited:

"Where ARE you from?" Stress, expression and pronunciation almost completely wrong but grammatically perfect. He was really excited to get to practice his English. I told him I was from Scotland, then Glasgow. His eyes lit up. I soon realised that his specialist subject was football. He started to rattle off every player in both the Glasgow Celtic and Glasgow Rangers squads. Soon the problem was not one of language, but one of my lack of knowledge about Scottish football.

I've never been that into football at the best of times, but having not seen a Daily Record(The scottish tabloid newspaper) in many months, I couldn't place money on naming anyone in either of the teams. I kind of nod and smile.

Finally, not only have I found an English speaker, it's an English speaker with not only an obsession with Scotland, but an obsession with my part of Scotland, and I can't keep up with him. This travelling thing is tough - maybe I'll get a postal subscription to the Daily Record.