I did smile at your statement that you would never pronounce "v" as "w" - to an Anglophones ears, Central Europeans don't pronounce "w" as "w", let alone "v."

I was referring to English v's/w's, of course. In fact, we don't have 'v' in our alphabet. The only v's you can meet being a Pole are in loanwords and foreign writtten texts. And we pronounce it just like 'w' - it resembles the 'v' of yours but with more sound put into it.