What do eat in the morning? Nothing? Or maybe you grab a croissant and a large cup of coffee? Maybe you're cereal-with-cold-milk type of person? Anyways, if you don't eat a sandwich in the morning, you're not Polish...

Sandwich is a thing that we eat all the time - for breakfast, for lunch at school or work, for dinner. There's even this figure of Mr. Sandwich who comes to offices to sell sandwiches for lunch and that's no joke - reception calls everyone and says "Mr. Sandwich is here". 

The prototypical sandwich consists of: a wheat bread roll or wheat bread, butter, yellow cheese (Gouda or Emmentaler), and ham. Some people who are health-oriented add a slice of tomatoe, a slice of cucumber or a leaf of lettuce, but this is not compulsory. But... we don't close our sandwiches. What I mean is that when we eat at home or at desk we eat an open-faced sandwiches. Apart from ham, we like twaróg (quark), egg spread, hard-boiled eggs with mayo, smoked makerel, nutella (who doesn't like nutella), all types of jam. Some people eat yellow cheese with jam... PB&J is not a Polish thing at all. Yes, you can find peanut butter in the Polish stories, but it's not that popular. However, hummus is gaining on popularity among "Warsaw foodies". 

OK, so what do we do with the second slice of bread and how to we transport our sandwiches?

We "close" our sandwiches with another slice of bread only if we want to wrap them in a plastic foil. Zip-lock bags are gaining on popularity, but if we use any bags at all, these are paper lunch bags - and they are white, most often. Only hipsters can afford these brown paper bags - the rest has to deal with the white ones. Sorry... 

So, if you are somewhere in a hotel or a hostel having continental breakfast and with a corner of your eye you see people putting ham and cheese on their bread (and not eating it with a fork), you can listen closely - do they speak Polish?