I doubt GOG is well known or popular in Poland...

The only tip I've heard is to look out for pot holes when on the road. That, and hot poles. I don't know if that's outdated wisdom.

It would appear from the replies that hot water radiators are popular in Europe. I personally haven't encountered them, only steam radiators. I was under the impression that all radiator-type heating was steam, because that's all I've ever personally seen. Looks like I learned something new today.

From in-laws that live in and have lived in the UK, I have heard of having to go to the basement of a house and put coins into the hot water heater in order to have hot water to use. That is as foreign a concept to me as forced-air heating must be for you folks. Differences...seems like the more we're different, the more we're all the same. :)

I find this wise advice

Look, all I know is that God told me to go out onto Hwy 61 and kill a son.

Never heard of such a thing here. I don't know what's forced air heating, but my parents' home has grates on the floor in each room (except shower, sauna, WCs) blowing warm air into the room.

That's probably forced-air heating, then. Sometimes the vents/grates are in the floor and sometimes in ceilings or walls. Air gets pulled into an air handler by a fan (we call it a squirrel-cage fan) and then blown over a heat source (electric elements or gas flames) and then distributed through ducts where it exits from those vents/grates. In my house (and the houses of everyone I know), this system also has an "A" shaped evaporator coil in it that the air passes over in the summer in order to cool and dehumidify the air in the house.
Check this out: https://www.thespruce.com/hot-water-vs-steam-radiators-1821916

Me too!

You're half right, they'd be putting coins in the gas meter.
If you weren't too well off then you might buy your gas on a "pay as you go" basis by putting coins in the meter. It was a good way of avoiding using more gas than you could afford, as opposed to running up a bill and going into debt.
If money was less of a concern then you'd just have a meter that recorded how much gas you used, the gas man would come round every so often and read the meter and then you'd be billed for what you'd used.
Cheers!

Unlikely.

rather more likely theyre putting money into an electric or gas metre to pay for the fuel or power for the boiler to run.
this is pretty common here still, though many systems now work on electronic keys you can top up.

tends to benefit people on lower incomes as they can top up as they can afford it and be more frugal about its use. for this reason some power companies (at least locally to me) encourage it for smaller households to aid in meeting carbon emissions and the tasty tax breaks they can get.

Edit: also basements arent very common here beyond older buildings. more likely the metre is under the stairs or even mounted on an exterior wall with a lockbox. not that it has any bearing on what you said. just giving a better idea of things for you.
Edit2: shakes fist at sirprimalform and removes his ham sandwich rights!

That's interesting. Thanks for providing more info on that. When I was first told about using coin-operated hot water I thought I was being joked with. Glad to know it's a real thing. So the coins feed the gas meter...does that also mean you would have to put coins in the meter in order to have heat for warmth or gas for the stove for cooking as well?

Winter months aren't that dry over here....

I've never experienced any leakage from hot water radiators. I'm not saying that it can't happen, but most people I know have hot water radiators, without leakage.

But sure, having ancient pipes/radiators is probably not a good thing - but I'm sure that can be said about any other heating system (it's life threatening dangerous to have an antique gas heater).

more of a case of buying "units" of gas which will run out as you use them. bit like running a car from a tanker than runs alongside you that you fill up from as you need.

Yep, got it cleared up. I thought all radiators were steam. I didn't know about hot water radiators. Now I know that both exist.

OK, got it. Sounds interesting. Only buy exactly what you need, very practical. The natural gas service here is such that even if you don't use a single unit of gas in a month, you still get charged a "maintenance fee" and they send someone to your house to make sure you haven't tampered with the meter and are stealing gas.

Same here, I learned something new! ;-)