Learn Hardcore Polish: Przed granicą sprawdzamy jeszcze raz, czy mamy paszport i bilet powrotny. - Before the border we check once again whether we have a passport and a return ticket.

In this sentence, przed granicą is most naturally understood as “before reaching/crossing the border” in a spatial sense: while you are approaching the border, but not there yet.

However, in many contexts przed + noun (instrumental) can be:

temporal:
- przed śniadaniem – before breakfast
- przed wyjazdem – before departure
spatial:
- przed domem – in front of the house
- przed granicą – in front of the border

Here, because you’re checking passports and tickets while travelling, it’s a mix of “before we get to the border” (time) and “before we arrive at the border checkpoint” (place). Both ideas overlap.

Why is it sprawdzamy (present tense) and not something like “we will check” (sprawdzimy)?

Polish often uses the present tense to talk about planned future actions, especially when the plan is quite fixed or is part of instructions:

Jutro jedziemy do Warszawy. – Tomorrow we’re going to Warsaw.
Wieczorem oglądamy film. – This evening we’re (going to) watch a film.

So sprawdzamy here can be understood as:

“we check” (as a general routine), or
“we will check” / “we’re going to check” (as a plan/step in a procedure).

Grammatically:

sprawdzamy – imperfective, present; often used for habit, process, or planned step.
sprawdzimy – perfective, future; more like “we will check (once, successfully, and be done).”

Both are possible:

Przed granicą sprawdzamy jeszcze raz… – describes a routine step (“what we do”) or instructions.
Przed granicą sprawdzimy jeszcze raz… – more like a concrete promise/decision about one future situation.

What exactly does jeszcze raz mean, and where can it go in the sentence?

Jeszcze raz literally means “one more time / once again”.

In this sentence:

sprawdzamy jeszcze raz – “we check once more / we check again”.

Word order with jeszcze raz is fairly flexible. All of these are possible and natural, with slightly different emphasis or rhythm:

Przed granicą sprawdzamy jeszcze raz, czy…
Przed granicą jeszcze raz sprawdzamy, czy…
Jeszcze raz przed granicą sprawdzamy, czy…

The neutral, most common choice here is the one you have:
Przed granicą sprawdzamy jeszcze raz, czy…

Moving jeszcze raz earlier often adds a bit of emphasis on “once more” rather than on “checking”.

What is the role of czy here? Is it “if”, “whether”, or something else?

Here czy introduces an indirect yes/no question (embedded question).

Polish uses czy where English typically uses if or whether:

Nie wiem, czy on przyjdzie. – I don’t know if / whether he will come.
Sprawdź, czy drzwi są zamknięte. – Check if the door is locked.

So in your sentence:

sprawdzamy, czy mamy paszport i bilet powrotny
= “we check whether we have a passport and a return ticket.”

Important points:

In direct yes/no questions you can start with czy:
- Czy masz paszport? – Do you have a passport?
In indirect questions, czy is almost always there and cannot be omitted:
- Sprawdzamy, czy mamy paszport. – Not ✗ Sprawdzamy, mamy paszport.

So here czy is best translated as “whether / if”.

Why is it mamy paszport i bilet powrotny, and not something with są (“there are”) like in some English structures?

Polish strongly prefers “have” (mieć) for possession in this kind of sentence.

Mamy paszport i bilet powrotny. – We have a passport and a return ticket.

Using są (“there are”) would sound unnatural here:

✗ Sprawdzamy, czy są paszport i bilet powrotny. – grammatically possible, but wrong focus: it sounds like you are checking if these objects exist somewhere, not if you have them.

In English you might sometimes say “we check if there is a passport and a return ticket (with us)”, but in Polish you keep the subject “we”:

sprawdzamy, czy (my) mamy… – we check if we have…

What case are paszport and bilet powrotny in, and why do they look like nominative?

They are in the accusative case, because they are direct objects of the verb mamy (“we have”).

Verb: mieć (“to have”)
Pattern: mieć + [object in accusative]

For masculine inanimate nouns, the accusative singular form is identical to the nominative:

paszport (nom.) → paszport (acc.)
bilet (nom.) → bilet (acc.)

The adjective powrotny (“return”) also takes the accusative masculine inanimate form, which is the same as the nominative:

powrotny (nom.) → powrotny (acc.)

So:

paszport i bilet powrotny are both in accusative, but they look like nominative because of this regular pattern.

Why doesn’t Polish say “our” here (like “our passport and return ticket”)?

Polish often omits possessive pronouns (like nasz = “our”) when the owner is obvious from context, especially with body parts, personal things, and in “we/you”-type sentences.

English:

We check if we have our passport and return ticket.

Polish:

Sprawdzamy, czy mamy paszport i bilet powrotny.
(literally: “we check if we have passport and return ticket”)

Adding nasz is possible but usually unnecessary and can sound heavier or more emphatic:

Sprawdzamy, czy mamy nasz paszport i nasz bilet powrotny. – stylistically a bit clunky here; you’d only do it with special emphasis (e.g. contrasting with someone else’s passport).

So the “our” in English is just understood in Polish from mamy (“we have”).

Why is it bilet powrotny and not powrotny bilet? Does adjective order matter?

The normal, neutral order in Polish is adjective after the noun in English, but before the noun in Polish:

English: return ticket
Polish: bilet powrotny

So here bilet (ticket) is the noun, and powrotny (return) is an adjective, and the standard order is:

bilet powrotny, dom rodzinny, film dokumentalny, etc.

Can you say powrotny bilet?

It’s grammatically possible, but it sounds marked / poetic / stylistically special or like you are contrasting different types of tickets.
Neutral everyday speech: bilet powrotny.

So in this sentence bilet powrotny is the natural, default phrasing.

Why is there a comma before czy? Would English put a comma there too?

Polish punctuation rules require a comma before clauses introduced by conjunctions, including czy when it introduces a subordinate clause (here: an indirect question).

Sprawdzamy, czy mamy paszport…
main clause: Sprawdzamy
subordinate clause: czy mamy paszport i bilet powrotny

So the comma before czy is mandatory in standard Polish.

In English, you’d often not put a comma:

We check whether we have our passport and return ticket. (no comma)

So:

Polish: comma before czy in this structure.
English: usually no comma in the equivalent sentence.

Are there natural alternative ways to say the same thing in Polish, and do they change the meaning?

You can rephrase while keeping essentially the same meaning. Some common variants:

Przed granicą jeszcze raz sprawdzamy, czy mamy paszport i bilet powrotny.
– Word order change for rhythm/emphasis; meaning the same.
Przed granicą sprawdzamy ponownie, czy mamy paszport i bilet powrotny.
– ponownie instead of jeszcze raz; slightly more formal/literary.
Przed granicą sprawdzamy, czy na pewno mamy paszport i bilet powrotny.
– Adds na pewno (“for sure”): “we check that we definitely have…”
Przed granicą sprawdzimy jeszcze raz, czy mamy paszport i bilet powrotny.
– sprawdzimy (future perfective): more like a specific plan (“we will check once more”).

The original sentence is neutral, natural, and works well as a general statement of what you (always) do or what you (should) do.