Culture & Identity of Poland
Introduction

People gathering in Krakow
Life in Poland is heavily based on family and their religion, Catholicism. However,
today many young people are heading to the cities for a university education and
jobs, slightly changing the dynamic, but the active social lives found in cities
have always had a significant role in Polish culture, especially considering the
country was the likely birthplace of vodka.
Today about 60% of the people in Poland live in cities, but this number is slowly
growing. However, the rural lifestyle of the people is an important part of the
culture and as young people move to the cities, they seem to share their local customs
and traditions. From a job perspective, the people are somewhat divided as nearly
15% of the people work in agriculture, another 30% in industry, and the rest work
in the services sector, which takes on many forms.
For the farmers the daily way of life revolves around the rising and falling of
the sun as well as seasonal variations. The industry and service workers tend to
have more static hours, but even these can change as some industry positions have
evening and night shifts and many service industries, particularly those in the
entertainment and food industries, have evening and weekend hours. For those with
more set hours, the regular work day runs from about 7:00 or 8:00 am to about 6:00
pm.