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TL;DR Wall of text, Warsaw specific info on salaries and renting flats, some cultural advice, Poland = Great.

I see there's some really good advice but usually from people outside Warsaw and Warsaw is really quite different from the rest of the country. I lived there for 10 years so I'll offer some hints.

As an American graphics designer at a decent company, you can easily make around 8000 PLN before taxes. Being an American and having experience from there will give you the upper hand if you apply for a job at an international company. I don't exactly know what tax rules apply to non-Polish citizens so you have to figure that out for yourself but it's around 5500 PLN if Polish tax laws apply. Anyway, applying for a graphics design job will get you much more money than teaching English, simply because there is a lot of people already doing that. I think you can expect somewhere around 4-5k before taxes so not really worth it in your position.

Renting a flat is quite tricky. Warsaw is big and public transport quality varies depending on the place you're at but is usually very good. Assuming your husband will be working in downtown (Śródmieście), you'd want to rent a flag in Śródmieście, Żoliborz, Ochota, Mokotów, Wola, maybe Wilanów or Praga Północ (avoid Praga Południe, they sound similar but are very different). Avoid northern and southern outskirts because you'll be stuck in traffic and overcrowded buses that will take an hour to get you to your workplace. Targówek, Bemowo, Białołęka, Bielany, Wawer should rather be out of the question. Ursynów goes both ways because metro (subway) is there so if you can rent something near a stop then it's ok but sucks otherwise.

You might be used to long commutes from the US but it's entirely possible to spend 40 minutes a day or less on commuting both ways so don't waste your time.

Someone has already mentioned gumtree.pl for renting a flat (renting a flat in Warsaw is here). szybko.pl is also very popular in Warsaw. There are two ways to rent a flat, either directly from a person owning the flat or through an agency. If you rent through an agency, you'll have to pay them a hefty amount for doing simply nothing since you yourself found the ad. It usually amounts to around 1 monthly rent. Landlords will also expect an upfront security payment of 1 monthly rent, as a sort of insurance for anything you might break in the apartment while you stay there. You also need to know that a lot of apartments are rented without the furniture, even if it's there on the photos, you need to look in the description. I assume you don't speak Polish so this might be hard for you. In this case, I would suggest contacting an agency, like metrohouse - I know this one caters to English speakers but there surely are others and asking them to find offers that might be interesting for you could be a good solution. You'll have to pay for that service of course but if you find an ad on a website yourself and it's from an agency, you'll pay either way so that's an option to consider.

Rent prices differ tremendously. You can have a big apartment in an unsafe neighborhood for dirt cheap but you won't be happy about it because it's far, far away from any civilization and well, unsafe. You should be able to rent something really comfortable for around 3000 PLN or less a month, with furniture and all the home stuff that you need (dish cleaner, fridge, sometimes a tv, also washing machine; be aware that each apartment has its own washing machine but we do not usually have dryers). Utilities are usually paid separately and will amount to ~300 PLN a month if you don't have children, this includes electricity, water, heating. You will need an Internet connection as well, in most of the places it's cable provider UPC, you can get Internet without the TV if you want. It's not expensive, 30 Mbps will cost you around 60 PLN. One more thing to remember is parking. There's a paid parking zone in downtown and extends to other places too so if you get a flat in that area (here's a map, everything in red and blue is paid parking zone), you will either need a parking garage or work something out with the landlord (it's possible to get a pass for your car if you live in the zone but it's quite some paper work to do so be clear about it with your landlord if you need it).

Overall, you'll need around 8500 PLN after taxes to live comfortably, including your student loans. That's not really that much for two people but might be a lot for only one. You said your husband got a good job offer so I'm assuming it's somewhere around that. 3000 PLN for flat and utilities, 2300 PLN for your student loan and ~3000 PLN for very comfortable living.

Now about how it's like in Poland - I'm Polish so I might be biased :) Warsaw is also quite different from the rest of Poland so I'll offer two views for you. You'll be OK in Warsaw, it's a really nice city, a lot of people speak English, even at local shops. The food is great and quite cheap, although some things might be expensive to get, like good steak. I really loved the city itself but it depends on what you like, and some people hate it. It's a fast paced, crowded (not as much as LA or NY of course, but still) but very active. If you enjoy partying, you'll find it more difficult than in other more tourist friendly cities (Cracow, Wrocław) but there are a lot of great clubs, pubs and restaurants around downtown. There's a lot of great things to see there but that's for another post, you can also get a lot of info on the Internet. One nice thing is that you're only around 6 hour drive (by car or train) from the Baltic sea to the north or Tatry mountains to the south. Even closer are the Mazurian lakes (north-east). Poland is quite a beautiful country although obviously not as diverse as US. It's only as big as New Mexico, and considerably smaller than California (Texas is twice its size). In three hours (by train, longer by car) you can get to Cracow which is a very well known tourist destination, a lot of things to see here and around the city (Auschwitz concentration camp museum, Wieliczka Salt Mine and a number of things in Cracow itself).

As I said, Warsaw is quite different from the rest of the country. In small towns and villages it's possible you won't find anyone speaking English so if you're lost and want to ask for directions - tough luck (less of a problem now with GPS and Google Maps). They will be also far less tolerant. You didn't mention race but it can be a problem if you're not white, even in Warsaw but obviously less so than in smaller cities or towns. But generally everyone are quite friendly, unless they do not look friendly and first impression won't usually fail you here. Even if they don't speak English, everyone will try to help you out, maybe they know someone who speaks it and they'll call them and pass you the phone so that you can ask questions or something.

Someone else mentioned the weather so you should know already. It's way colder in winter but around the same in the summer as LA, here's temperature and humidity comparison between Warsaw and LA for the past 5 years.

One more thing I wanted to tell you is to be aware of cultural differences. Americans are often seen as obnoxious and for a good reason. Yelling at restaurants and laughing loudly so that the people in the pub across the street can hear you will make other people want to stab you with a blunt fork multiple times. Keep your voice down around other people. "Customer is always right" is not always the rule, just because you're paying for something doesn't mean you get to boss or badmouth the clerk. Be polite. Sorry if this offends you but I have really seen numerous Americans behave this way. Also, tipping rules are not as strict as in the US, you should tip waiters, pizza delivery guys and taxi drivers but not hairdressers and in general, it's not 100% mandatory. If you're not happy with the service, you don't tip. I generally suggest this book, it's about business interactions but a lot of it translates great to everyday life. It's not about Poland specifically so you might find it interesting for other reasons.

In general - the opinions I've heard about Poland, and Warsaw in particular, are almost always positive, including from Americans. Not only from tourist point of view, also expats claim Poland is great. If you want to try something else, it can be a great experience for you. If you both get jobs, you will live very comfortably with a lot of expendable income (for Polish standards) but you won't save any substantial amount in USD simply because we don't make nearly enough here ($30k a year is a good salary in Warsaw and great elsewhere). Our beer is cheap and girls are beautiful (though that may, or may not, be relevant to you) so come along!

lol don't be ridiculous, American Jews are even proud of their over-representation in socially liberal, left-wing causes.

From US presidential approval ratings in 2009 (Obama’s approval in the Jewish community is holding steady at 62 percent. Gallup reported 64 percent
approval rating in an October 2009 poll. Obama’s approval rating among Jews is 15 points higher than
among all Americans) http://jstreet.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/JStreetMarch2010PollRelease_FINAL.pdf to 2016 (According to exit polls, 71% of American Jews voted Democrat during the 2016 US Presidential election), the affinity of Jews in the USA for the left is well-noted

here, even is a nice book for you by well-known american jewish politologue Norman Podhoretz on 'Why are Jews liberal?' - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Why-Jews-Liberals-Norman-Podhoretz-x/dp/0307456250

However, worth noting that the opposite is the case in Israel since the 1980's as being in the pressure cooker has encouraged patriotism and national identity to naturally assert itself - https://www.timesofisrael.com/young-israeli-jews-are-mostly-right-wing-increasingly-religious-survey/

For sure, I have met many Israelis who sympathise with right-wing patriot parties in Europe, even of the ethnic variety as long as not literal Nazi of course. But very few of those people around any more. What leftists take for Nazis are just people with a strong sense of tribalism, which exists everywhere from China to India to Kenya to Serbia

If he liked the story of Wojtek, check out also these, they're WWII but more adventure than martyrological gloom:

• "Dywizjon 303" (English edition here ) and "Dziękuję ci, kapitanie" (English ) by Arkady Fiedler
  
  
• basically anything by Janusz Meissner
  
  He could also give a try to the Pan Samochodzik series by Zbigniew Nienacki (starts with "Wyspa złoczyńców"). It's aimed at younger teens, but the protagonist is adult. Quests for precious historical artifacts with James Bond vibe.
  
  Greetings for your grandpa! :)

May I recommend Uprising and The Pianist for films.

As for books, I recommend The Eagle Unbowed, When God Looked the Other Way, and No Greater Ally.

I'm a bit late, but this book is fantastic: https://www.amazon.com/Iron-Curtain-Crushing-Eastern-1944-1956/dp/140009593X

The main center of attention focuses on Poland, but also talks about all of the other countries that were under the Soviet sphere of influence. I highly recommend it.

I have a good book edited by Czesław Miłosz that is a collection of a shit ton of Polish Poetry (with some of Miłosz's poetry in it as well). I put an amazon link to it at the end of my post.

Also I really suggest Wisława Szymborska. She and Miłosz are the two most known in western culture - both received the Nobel Prize in Literature, and Miłosz taught at UC Berkeley.

One other great one is Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz.

Also Bruno Schulz if you're looking for some prose.

https://www.amazon.com/Postwar-Polish-Poetry-Czeslaw-Milosz/dp/0520044762/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499014974&sr=8-1&keywords=post-war+polish+poetry

thank you for your attempts to do further research and not simply following what others say, write. I recommend you double check and verify the facts and sources that Gross and Grabowski have used, this might be quite an enlightening excercise, at least see what other authors had to say on the matter. I also recommend the book Polish-Jewish relations 1939-1945. Beyond the limits of solidarity.

That sounds amazing. You might be too humble, so I just put a link to Amazon here. Do you plan to release Polish translation?

> I mean we were so supportive of their independence and in the middle ages we were very close.

From the nationalist Lithuanian point of view, the Poles conspired with Lithuanian elites to subdue Lithuania to the Polish Crown in return for giving the Lithuanian nobles a freer hand to run the show within Lithuania. Those centuries of being "very close" are interpreted as a belligerent occupation by determined Lithuanian nationalists. The conflict over Wilno/Vilnius was seen as an existential threat to Lithuanian nationalists: the entirety of what is now Belarus had already been stripped away from Lithuania, so losing the capital to Poland would doom the project of national independence to failure.

The tension is almost entirely one-sided precisely because Poland and Lithuania were historically so close. The Lithuanian nationalist movement was starting with basically nothing: the Lithuanian middle and upper classes, if they even identified as "Lithuanian," were overwhelmingly Polonized. The language of education and religion throughout Lithuania was Polish. In order to establish a "Lithuanian" nation outside of a Polish superidentity, they had to demonize Polish and Polonization. That's why Lithuanian nationalists were willing to use German and Russian invaders against the local Poles: Lithuanians weren't assimilating to German or Russian culture, so those peoples weren't threats. Lithuanians had for centuries assimilated to Polish culture, so that Polish culture had to be made the enemy, and a lot of Lithuanian behavior post-independence can be explained by the nationalists' need to set themselves opposite Poland in order to encourage a burgeoning Lithuanian middle class to continue to identify as Lithuanians and not become Poles.

Also, at the time of independence, Poles were still having an internal discussion about whether or not the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth should be revived in a federation between Poland and Lithuania. The assumption among Poles, obviously, was that Poland would be the leader of this federation. Lithuanian nationalists trying to carve out independence resented this assumption and saw any Polish support for Lithuanian independence as support for a quasi-independent Lithuanian vassal for Poland.

Edit: This book, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999, by Timothy Snyder, has a great history of Vilnius (as well as Lvov).

Norman Davies is a very good historian, and an author. I reccomend a book God's Playground
https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Playground-History-Poland-Origins/dp/0231128177

https://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Poland-Cambridge-Histories/dp/0521618576/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1542455395&sr=8-1&keywords=a+concise+history+of+poland

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Kind of a dry read, but if you want to learn about Poland, this is the book.

I recommend this memoir about it: A Memoir of the Warsaw Uprising by Miron Białoszewski.
https://www.amazon.com/Memoir-Warsaw-Uprising-Review-Classics/dp/1590176650
It’s insightful and also has poetry about what he went through.

The man with white eyes by Leopold Tyrmand

Minor Apocalypse by Tadeusz Konwicki

Damn, nothing heartwarming and making you to fall in love with Warsaw, but still suitable for December :D

Lynn and Vanhanen study has not been successfully replicated so far, their methodology has been criticized and they have also been accused of ignoring high IQ scores from Africa. There's a vast literature, u/humanprideworldwide has already mentioned [this good short reading] (https://www.reddit.com/r/badscience/comments/7o5hxx/a_response_to_the_alternative_hypothesis_video/) on this topic

More in depth readings :

I think a good starting point would be to read this APA paper on the state of intelligence research. It's fairly recent and it should answer most of your questions.

How heritability misleads about race by Ned Block, a more theoretical response to Murray and Hernsein's The Bell Curve.

Intelligence, Genes, and Success: Scientists Respond to The Bell Curve

What went wrong? Reflections on science by observation and The Bell Curve by Clark Glymour

Intelligence: New Findings and Theoretical Developments by Nisbett et al.

A study by Turkheimer et al. about the dependence of IQ heritability on socioeconomic status (ses). Another study by Kirkpatrick et al. on replication efforts.

A recent meta-analysis by Tucker-Drob & Bates for further edification.

The Bell Curve Revisited: Testing Controversial Hypotheses with Molecular Genetic Data by Dalton Conley and Benjamin Domingue.

Race and IQ in the postgenomic age: The microcephaly case by Sarah Richardson

Aaron Panofsky's chapter, From Behavior to Postgenomics, in Postgenomics: Perspectives on Biology After the Genome provides a succinct overview of recent developments on the "nature vs. nurture" debate over the genetic foundations of behavior.

God's Playground: A History of Poland, Vol. 2, 1795 to the Present by Norman Davies

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL152AC32B64E4069E

Unbiased history of Poland during/after WW2. I found this book which is what I was looking for:

https://www.amazon.com/Poland-History-Adam-Zamoyski/dp/0781813018/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1487557388&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=Poland%3A+A+history+Paperback+%E2%80%93+July+30%2C+2015

https://www.amazon.com/IPS-level-i5-8300H-Processor-GeForce-Gigabit/dp/B07JF6HRJ1
I want to by this and when i add it cart it doesn't show any additional taxes, only price for shipping. And there is no option to shipping to pocztamat.

Yes, context. Violence between Poles and Jews was driven by economic and political sentiments, not by racialist motives. Many of these events were also back-and-forth exchanges. For the most part, it wasn't blood-libel 'anti-semitism.' It was far from that.

https://www.amazon.com/No-Way-Out-1935-1939-Monographs/dp/0822963914#customerReviews

Read this book review by Tom Peczkis, scroll to the bottom.

My grandad was Polish. He was born in Nova Mysh near Baranovichi in 1923. He was 16 when ww2 started. He fought against the invading Russian army and joined a partisan group fighting against the Russians. He had lots of bloody encounters with the Red army before he was finally captured during a shootout in a potato field.

Rather than being killed on the spot like some of his friends he was taken to a local prison and interrogated. He then went through various prisons. Each move from one prison to another he was sent further east. He was always interrogated at each prison and he was tortured by being hung by his arms until his joints dislocated.

The worst prison for him was in a town called Orsha where her spent 23 days in a condemned cell waiting to be shot.
For some reason his sentence was changed to 25 years hard labour in an Arctic Gulag.
He and a group of prisoners escaped the transport train and he was the only one to survive the journey across Russia and in to Finland.

After a long time recovering and being debriefed in England he returned to Europe as a member of the SOE. After the Germans attacked Russia he headed east and ended up in the middle east before joining up with the RAF to become a Mustang pilot for the last two years of the war.

That was a quick sum up of what he did. We self published his memoirs.

My mum, dad and brother will be attending the Krakow book fare next month. Hopefully a Polish publisher might be interested in printing the story in Poland.

Www.23days.eu

They are also on Amazon as a kindle.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00LD8207E