On the German-Polish border 10 years after enlargement

"The only way to tell a Pole apart from a German these days is at the swimming pool. Poles keep their swimming suits on under the shower, Germans don't," quips Krzysztof Wojciechowski, head of Collegium Pollonicum – an academic institute in Slubice, just across the river from Frankfurt/Oder.

Differences were far more apparent 10 years ago when Poland joined the EU.

Back then "you could tell just by the way people dressed and walked" who was a Pole and who a German, the Polish acad...