Michał Borowski

What do you do?

I’m an architect, engineer and developer.

What is your current place of residence?

I live in Warsaw, in Mokotów, in ulica Ludowa.

Was your departure from Poland a chance or a necessity for you?

It was a necessity but also a great chance.

What were the circumstances of your departure to Sweden?

I was nineteen when I left Poland. I left after completing two years of studies. My departure had nothing to do with my studies, of course. I left on the wave of antisemitism that took place in Poland back in 1968. And in 1969, just like most of my friends from the technical university and from the schools I had attended left for different countries. I went to Sweden.

What surprised you in the Swedish education system or in the approach to architecture comparing to what you knew from Poland?

The Swedish society is really pragmatic. Back there the mind over matter ended a long time ago. The matter won that that’s that, right? The Swedish society, due to various reasons, is also stricter which means that it’s really difficult to get absolution. You just cannot... I mean that the entire Protestant faith is based on the assumption of not sinning because it’s really difficult to get absolution. Thus, one needs to avoid making mistakes and one should be industrious. And for hundreds of years the Lutheran priests or Protestant priests have been telling people to work hard. The most important thing is the cult of work. It has different sides to it. But when it comes to the material sphere, including architecture or maintenance of grounds, streets, cities, it is really effective. And this is why Stockholm is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, like Copenhagen or Helsinki. It’s a really beautiful, well-groomed city that grows steadily.

Did you expect that you will be going to Sweden for such a long time?

Yes. We left forever. It didn’t occur to me that we will be going back one day. It did occur... My mother wanted us to go back because she believed that one day everything will change. She didn’t want to accept the fact that people had to leave their country. And she was right.

Do you remember your first impressions after coming to Sweden?

Yes, absolutely. I remember it all really well. I may not remember what I had to do yesterday morning, but I remember 13th August 1969 when we landed, we got off the train at Central Stockholm station while travelling from Copenhagen. I remember it really well. A job centre employee was waiting for us because at the time the state job centre was the organization handling emigrants.

What barriers did you encounter in emigration?

I didn’t encounter any barriers. I was really lucky, a lot of happy coincidences happened to me so that my life in Sweden turned out really well.

What did you miss abroad? What did you lack?

Let me say that I was so overwhelmed with the new country and those opportunities it gave me that I didn’t miss anything. Maybe I missed some of my friends but most of them left Poland when I departed or later and some of them I could meet, and I met them in Paris or Berlin.

What would you say to young people who want to leave Poland?

I would say: You have entire Europe at your hand, you can learn everything but go back to Poland because this is where you belong.

What did you dream of when coming back to Poland?

When I was coming back to Poland I wanted to participate in building the country, just like my father that after the war and to build on the successes the opposition achieved by fighting for our freedom.

What Polish flavours and smells did you miss?

There was no Polish food in Sweden. There was no myśliwska sausage in Sweden, there were no Polish apples nor Polish bread to be had. I really missed those smells.

How did you contact your family and friends who stayed in Poland?

It was all very different. There were some channels of contact. At first, East Germany was such a channel. You could get to East Germany with travel documents we were given that were not even real passports. And to Poland... You could travel to Poland from East Germany without any problems. Thus, I spent a couple of New Year’s Eve parties with my friends in East Berlin. And later, it was all different. Later, when I got the Swedish citizen status, and it had taken me four or five years, I can’t recall now, I came to Poland quite often. I was sometimes not allowed to cross the Polish border. But those contacts I kept all the time. I would say that with the course of events, with forming of the opposition and other changes, as well as with growing up, I guess those contacts became more numerous.

How did you develop your professional career in Sweden as a Pole-Emigrant?

The fact that I was a Pole didn’t matter at all. Let’s start with this. As I said I learnt Swedish really quickly and I spoke Swedish really well. Swedish is still like Polish to me. I do have an accent and when I’m taking to a Swede after about ten minutes of conversation they ask me: “Where are you from? What part?”, so they want to inquire about it in a subtle way. But I think that not many people, when they hear me speaking, believe that I’m from Poland. And it’s really important. When you don’t speak a foreign language fluently you are the one who is murdering the language. I’m a Pole and for me “a” is pronounced in only one way because in Poland there is only one way to pronounce the words starting with “a”. “A” is “a”. And in Swedish there are four ways to do it. When you can’t pronounce it, then you just don’t. For instance, Africa is not pronounced Africa but Aaafrica. (? - 06:29- I don’t really know how to write that down) Now, well, it wasn’t really a problem for me. I even felt that I was allowed more. It means that I could present my ideas that aroused laughter because I was a young architecture student from Poland, so I was allowed to do so. A serious man, a serious Swede would be ashamed to do that. And I wasn’t.

Why did you decide to go back to Poland?

Well, this decision matured in me. Back in 1989 I was convinced that I’ll be doing something in Poland. So, I started coming to Poland. At first those visits were frequent and later very frequent. And after a couple of years I felt a bit thorn apart. I had an office in Warsaw and an office in Stockholm, I was designing here and there. My children were growing up and in 2000 I thought that maybe I should make up my mind. It was my fiftieth birthday at the time and I had my birthday party in Warsaw instead of Stockholm. So, an entire plane of my friends had to arrive to celebrate my birthday here. It was really nice. But back then I wasn’t sure where I should stay. In 2003, in spring I was offered the position of the Head Architect for the Capital City of Warsaw.

Have you met people who helped you succeed in emigration?

Yes, I have. Absolutely. I think, and it may sound funny, the first such person was my boss and I worked for him when I was 21. He put trust in me, he gave me a job and allowed me to do it on my own while he assisted other employees. So, as a very young man, I was a semi-boss in a small office. I did open that office, I had my own key. It was really fantastic for a student, it was a safe haven for me. And it really mattered. His name was Buaxesu (ns – 08:56), and he is still alive. The second person that I encountered was the manager of Abba. It was a very famous band and I travelled with them to Poland back in 1976. But before I came to Poland I met them by accident. At the time they hadn’t been as popular, and I got a small project, later a bigger one and bigger and bigger. I was their court architect. They could have chosen any person, everyone wanted to work for them. I got really fascinating projects, some villas, houses, offices, etc. They liked me, and I think it was because that manager and his wife liked me a lot and that was the reason. There were a lot of equally good, young architects back there.

What should people who emigrate remember about?

They should learn languages. They should learn everything. And, they should remember that there are people living differently and they have to accept that.