Emanuela Derdowska
I am 34 years old now. I emigrated to Great Britain in November 2006 and joined the great wave of Polish emigration to the British Isles. My reasons for leaving, like most emigrants at the time, were money, the need to become independent, but also the need for change in my life.
I spent close to three years abroad. I returned to Poland in September 2009 and settled in Gdynia.
Edward Lubera
The month of February is an important month in my life. In February 1945, among the debris of the border areas of Eastern Poland, in the town of Chełm, a single mother gave birth to me. Meanwhile, my father, Marian, together with Uncle Adam were chasing Nazi scum with the soviet army. Unfortunately, neither of them returned, they both died. According to the death certificate, my father died in the final stage of the Battle of Berlin.
In February 1967, as a student in my fourth year of German and Scandinavian studies at the AMU in Poznań, I left Poland and moved to Sweden. In February 1973, Eva, my Swedish wife, gave birth to our son, Johan. My deliberate return to Poland also took place in February 2002, though the final and formal decision regarding the permanent change of place of residence from Sweden to Poland was made in May 2006, when I bought my own flat in Gdynia – a new building at Beniowskiego 5, where I live to this day.
Why did I return to Poland and Tricity? The reasons are partially personal – my Swedish spouse and I divorced, I felt lonely, my mother, who lives in Poland, had come down with a serious illness. My opinion on the system change in Poland post ‘89 was positive. I was the initiator and chairman of a South Swedish NGO, the “Polish-Swedish Business Club” at the Skania chamber of commerce, Sydsvenska Handelskammaren, from 1990–2003. I myself became a co-owner and board member of a newly founded logistics company, Ytrans Polska, based in Świnoujście and Szczecin. Revived business contacts and the rapid pace of economic development in Poland enticed me more and more to return, and Tricity seemed to offer unique prospects. The closeness to Sweden from the shores of Gdynia was the ultimate argument for moving to this young and dynamic city.
I would like to emphasize here the astounding development of Tricity’s infrastructure: the modern A1 motorway, the PKP Pendolino railroad connection, the Pomeranian Metropolitan Railway, Gdynia’s efficient municipal transport system with its state-of-the art fleet and the new Tristar system, new and modernised cycle lanes being built all the time. All this will surely have a positive impact on new investments coming into the region, new jobs being created and the development of Pomerania as well as increasing the wealth of its residents. The cultural life in Gdynia also merits a mention: “Kolosy”, the annual congress of explorers from all over Poland, the “Złote Lwy” film festival, as well as the founding of a new film centre, the ethnic music festival “Globatica”, the Gdynia literature award, but also the numerous sport events including international sailing competitions.
All these investments, as well as many other successful and much-needed ones which I have not mentioned, confirm my opinion that my choice of Gdynia as the place of my return to my homeland was the right one.
I practically left Poland when I was almost twenty-three but my education was connected with Scandinavia at the Adam Mickiewicz University, my faculty was Scandinavian studies. So I learnt a bit of Swedish. And I wanted to see that part of north Europe, maybe due to my earlier interests, Scandinavian geography, the Norwegian fiords, this Swedish north, Finland. There was some magic to it. And this was what provoked me to go there someday, to see that. I’d never realized that it will all happen so fast. And the direct reason, maybe the last motive that pushed me to leave Poland, was personal. It was unreciprocated love to a woman, my fried at the university. When some opportunities appeared before me, thanks to my friend whose father was very influential when it came to issuing passports and permissions to leave Poland, it became more and more real. At the time I decided that I have to manage somehow. And it was also an escape from her and from the situation that followed. That was practically my main motive. When I got my passport and I knew… I was just for a definite time but in my mind I thought that I probably won’t go back to Poland. The first ticket I bought when I was leaving from the Poznań Główny railway station. Of course, many people came to see me off, many of my friends came. It was a really moving scene when my friends, also from the university, they were seeing me off. I suppose most of them thought that I’ll come back after a couple of months because I had a permission during studies for six months only. I remember that back then in Poland “empiki” were such windows on the world where one could read western newspapers free of charge. And in most cases, whether in Cracow, Poznań or Warsaw, they were the venues where the Polish the Intelligentsia used to came around. For instance, one bought there a cup of black coffee, or at least what they’d call it, and one could read all newspapers from West Germany or even those from the UK. They had New York Times, Herald Tribune and I was privileged a bit because I knew the language quite well… I knew a few foreign languages, including German, of course, English, a little Swedish and maybe it was also something that enticed me to go to the West. Emigration is always a hard thing because it’s really emotional, especially for young people. So it was really early for me to leave my family nest because I was a bit unformed back then. One goes to a different country, different culture and becomes like a sponge. You can take everything in and when you are young you chase pleasures, you want things to be all smooth and easy but there is a risk that you can lose some things. One loses roots, forgets tradition, religion because life seems very different, generally better, in the economic sense, than in Poland. And that was also my case. Due to the fact that I entered that environment intensively, with impetus, I believe that there is some trust in people, some integrity. I wasn’t accustomed to the fact that you could get everything done without problems. There was this respect for the law and the rules set by the state, the governing bodies or the parliament, adopted by the society. When it comes to employers and employees I really liked it and I adopted an attitude that employee’s loyalty pays off in the long run. It means that when I’m employed I do my best while working for my employer, I perform all my tasks. One just cannot lose one’s roots, cannot forget about Poland, about the language, one has to foster it and be an ambassador of Poland when one is abroad. So whenever I meet someone, whenever I’m in a group of people, with Spanish, for instance, because I’m in Spain quite often nowadays, whenever they ask me where I’m from, my reply will be true for them, it will be a geography lesson I suppose. What I tell them they can see in my behaviour and I would like to tell all Poles that their behaviour, that they are a trademark of our country. To every citizen abroad who encounters other people in a given country and is an emigrant there: “Remember, you are all ambassadors of Poland”.
We left because of economic reasons, the idea was to leave only for a few years. We never thought about staying in the British Isles for good. Leaving for Great Britain, we just knew that we would be back in a few years. The first problems we encountered, or difficulties – were the difficulties with finding work, the way of finding work, finding jobs for ourselves. But apart from that, at the same time, we had problems with fluent communication. As it turned out, the English we had learned in Poland was a little bit different than what is used every day on the streets. And then you have the accent, the local urban slang that made everything more difficult. But that was a matter of time, a matter of getting accustomed to it. After my arrival in the British Isles, I’ve acquired a weakness, a habit of drinking white tea, heavily sweetened strong tea with milk. We wanted to try again in Poland. We wanted to try to do what we liked in jobs that we liked. Perhaps it was also family-related matters that brought us back. Besides, we realised we were afraid that, were we to stay longer, we would take root and, with each passing year, it would be more and more difficult to come back and find our way around the country which we had weaned ourselves off of, which we had unlearned. The customs, the habits of Great Britain really permeated us so much that we would have trouble going back to our jobs, to our everyday life in Poland.
- So at this point you kind of refer to the reasons why you decided to return to the country. Was that reference perhaps related to some kind of disappointment, or maybe because the work was not as satisfying as you had expected? But I would also like you to confirm what really made you finally decide to return. As far as I know, you did spend a few years there after all.
- Exactly 3 years.
- 3 years. That is quite a long time. 3 years of your youth is a certain stage. From my own experience, for me, back in the day in PRL when I was abroad, such a return to Poland after a few years would have been perceived as a failure in my hometown. He could not make it. He’s back because he could not accomplish anything there. Everything was supposed to be better over there, why is he back? To return like that was in a sense considered to be a fiasco, a failure. But as I am sitting here listening and looking at you, I feel otherwise.
Perhaps because, first, we did not really care what people would say after and about our return, how we would be perceived. Second, well, the fact that we wanted to try our hand in Poland again played the most important role. We wanted to work the jobs we liked, doing what we liked. Perhaps it was also family-related matters that brought us back. We were also afraid that, were we to stay longer, we would take root and, with each passing year, it would be more and more difficult to come back and find our way around the country which we had weaned ourselves off of, which we had unlearned.
- Now I want to ask you one more thing. You returned after living there for almost 3 years, you gained experience. Why, then, did you return, do you ever regret doing so?
- No, we have no regrets; it was not a spontaneous decision either. That decision, honestly, we left for Great Britain knowing that we were not leaving forever or for many years. It was supposed to be a trial period, a time to test ourselves, to give us the opportunity to learn something. And of course to make a large sum of money as well. And besides, we are the type of people who do not regret the decisions they make, who do not go back to what used to be, to what has passed, and we do not dwell on what ifs. We did not operate under the assumption that we would stay in a different country.
- Longing for Poland kicked in about halfway through our stay. After about two years. I can’t really pinpoint the exact moment. It manifested in, for example, things like the nature, the landscapes. We missed the greenery, having a forest we could just go into and take a walk or ride your bicycle in. We missed being able to bathe in lakes, we missed the access to the sea, for example. Great Britain might be an island, but if you live in its centre...
- You unlearned it.
- Yes. You have no easy access to water. I also kind of missed traditional Polish food. Good Polish lunch meat, good Polish bread. Such simple, basic things. That is how it manifested.
