“Why Poland?” It's the question I am asked more than any other. Part of me almost feels offended on Poland's behalf. Does it need an explanation? Would they ask somebody why they went to France? Or Italy? Or England? But, then, a lot of the people asking are Poles.
Knowing that I am a right-wing commentator in Poland, people often sense a causal connection. I must have come here in search of a more conservative – or based or trad – culture. There was no such thought process. Thank God! I cannot imagine how pretentious someone would look if they turned up in a country, with all its different people, and places, and characteristics, and began to treat it according to some kind of ideological stereotype. Witaj mój przyjacielu! Let's go to the wheat fields and find ourselves some wives!
In fact, I came here almost by accident. With no exciting opportunities at home, in England, where I had tediously misspent my youth, I thought about going abroad. English teaching seemed like an attractive vehicle. Like many eccentric young Western men, I thought about going to Japan. Murakami! New Japan Pro Wrestling! Takashi Miike! To my own good fortune, I could not get a job there. No offence to Japanese people or people in Japan. It is a beautiful country. But it would have been too unfamiliar for me, and too alienating, and would have enabled my worst traits.
Without experience, or impressive qualifications, I struggled to get a job anywhere else. I applied to some jobs in Italy, enjoying hot weather and books about the mafia, and heard nothing back. I applied to some jobs in Spain, another warm place, and heard nothing. I looked at job adverts in Saudi Arabia and decided I would rather clean toilets with a toothpick.
Now, this is when I hope that the personal will start to edge towards the universal. On the premier website for aspiring English teachers – TEFL dot com – one has to list four countries one would be interested in working in. I put Japan, and Italy, and Spain. What next? France, Germany and Scandinavia barely need teachers. Russia sounded far too cold. Iraq sounded interesting. A good place to write a book, perhaps? But also a good place to get your legs blown off. I put Poland because I knew a little of its history and admired how tough its people had to have been. But I did not think that I would actually go there.
We like to think our lives are built on deep ambitions, solid plans and careful preparation. Speak to any writer, for example, and they will talk about their inspirations, and their influences, and their creative process, and their works in progress. Of course, all those things are significant but we are vulnerable to perceiving life as being shaped in a more logical arc than it is. We filter out the randomness.
Quite randomly, I listed Poland, and quite randomly the owner of a school in Tarnowskie Góry, Upper Silesia, happened upon my CV and, finding a reference to amateur drama that I had inserted there to fill space, quite randomly decided that a dramatist might make an interesting teacher. He emailed me, we chatted for a while on Skype and within minutes I had agreed to move to a town I had never heard of in a country I knew almost nothing about. It was all luck - but wonderful luck.
It was the first time I had flown. The night before I came to Poland, on a flight that left Bristol at 6am, I stayed up all night reading about plane crashes. At the airport I was too sad about leaving my family to feel scared. Going through security, at Bristol Airport, means ascending an escalator to another floor. When I reached the top, I turned around and saw my dad standing alone, looking as if he did not quite know what to do or where to be. I was miserable. But at least I was too distracted to feel afraid of flying.
I cheered up in Poland. The town was beautiful, and the work was fun, and the friends I made were dear to me, and the love I found was precious, and last year, with some surprise, I worked out that I had been living in Tarnowskie Góry for seven years. Seven years! James Joyce wrote Ulysses in less time.
What of the place? It is tempting, especially for Englishmen, to believe one can define a country in a few words. Of course, this is preposterous. For one thing, I have spent 95% of my time here in a single town. One could hardly live in Casper, Wyoming, and insist, “I HAVE SEEN THE SOUL OF THE U.S.!”
Still, I know what I have seen. In the middle of my town is a park, where families stroll, and lovers kiss, and kids smoke their first cigarettes. At one end is a church, next to the church is a hospital, beyond them is a graveyard, and in the middle of the place is a shrine to Mary - always bathed in candlelight - and a bridge in a spot where criminals are rumoured to have once been hung. My friend saw it fit to tell me about the last detail as we stumbled drunkenly through the park at midnight.
That’s my Poland: romance, struggle, the sacred, mystery, and coal-black humour. Of course, that is a somewhat idealised image, but there it is. Is anybody's wife always charming? Are anybody's children always good?
Will I become a Polish citizen? Obviously, that is not my decision to make. At the very least, my Polish has to be far better before I ask my hosts whether I deserve that status. (I am embarrassed and ashamed that it has taken so long for me to learn the language properly but that is another story.) If it is possible, though, I will. I do not want to spend my life with one foot in one country and one in another.
Of course, it would be ridiculous to think an immigrant would have no level of attachment to the country of their birth. People are born in a country tend to have some level of attachment to another one – because of friends, or family, or cultural affinity. Still, if one hopes to live in a country all one’s life it is important to commit oneself to that community. You have to demonstrate, to borrow a phrase from a well known deadlifter and squid ink connoisseur, skin in the game. Otherwise you are treating a nation less like a house than a hotel.
Anyway, that is how I came to Poland. Or perhaps people were never interested in the answer. Asking the question was just a pleasant way to pass the time.
Terrific answer and great read, Ben. It is the BS (sorry) question. Poland? Why not? It sounds a corner of proper civilisation and for a religious mitherer a v good choice. My take from a similar age to you (without the language complexity, I am that lazy) is: it’s passé to have only one nationality. It’s also very limiting for writers who need to be both inside and outside! I have spent half my life in South Wales and half in The London area.
Apologies for going on about me, me, me, me, me but, hey shit, what am I saying, I pay Ben for his genius so forget that English over-excusing. Terry.
I actually have wondered this, so I appreciate the backstory. Best of luck on continuing to tackle such a different language.