Asking for directions on a street in Warsaw, Poznan or Gdansk can be a curious experience these days if, as has happened to me, you get an answer from a Pole speaking fluent English with an unmistakable Irish melody.
While thousands of Poles have made Ireland their home in the last two decades, a smaller number have headed in the opposition direction, anxious to give their homeland a second try.
Just as there are no reliable numbers for traffic, there are as few typical returnees as there are Polish emigrants in Ireland. However, diverse stories share some common experiences and attitudes.
Like many Poles, Piotr Sobocinski gave Ireland a go a decade ago in the hope of better earnings. Then aged 26, with debts piling up, he left behind a partner and three children and headed to Ireland.
But, soon after he settled into work as a massage therapist in Kells, the recession struck. He found another job in the local SuperValu, then sold insurance door to door to fellow Poles.
‘Jam jar’
“They taught us Polish homes were the ones with net curtains in the windows and an ashtray outside the door,” he laughs. “Irish homes have no curtains and use a jam jar for their cigarettes.”
Finally, he turned his interest in Irish history into a business – Pendragon Tours – bringing visitors around Ireland. Success allowed him to bring over his partner and children. In 2014, however, the couple broke up after 25 years.
Piotr found a new partner: a woman who visited Ireland on a Pendragon tour. He followed her back to Warsaw for a new life with a new child in his old home town. He now runs his Irish tour business remotely from there.
Like many returned Poles, Piotr found adjusting to daily life in Poland was a shock. Interpersonal relations are more cool, distant and regimented compared to Ireland.
Perhaps the greatest difference is Sunday mass. It lasts half an hour in Ireland; in Poland, the homily alone can last 40 minutes. “The mood in the Irish mass is lighter, more relaxed,” he says. “In Poland the priests preach at you remotely in a very patronising way and make you feel like a schoolchild.”
Anna Kwasniewska, 38, from Katowice, agrees that she was caught off-guard by the heavier mood she perceived in Poland on her return.
“In Ireland things were lighter and even the simplest questions at work, ‘Hi, how was your weekend?’ make things easier,” says Anna, who came here in 2004. “The work conversations are quick conversations but they aren’t meaningless, they can make the day better or leave you smiling.”
Mediocre service
Now living in Warsaw for the last year, Anna finds that the city looks better than ever, and public transport is far better than in Dublin. But behind the fresh paint, spots of Communist-era mediocre service continue.
“People in the train ticket office or post office have an attitude that says, ‘I’m miserable doing this job and you will be too.’”
Both Anna and Piotr say their move back to Poland – in both cases for personal reasons – has been costly. Living costs are somewhat lower, but salaries are very low.
While national statistics put average gross earnings at around 4,200 zl (€958), Piotr earns 3,000 zl (€680) a month working in the national library while Anna’s office job pays 3,800 zl (€866) gross.
Incomes in Warsaw are higher than elsewhere in Poland, but the vast earnings gap with Ireland means that not every returned Pole can afford to stay.
“I had friends who came back from Ireland but had to go again after a year,” says Piotr. “Things hadn’t changed enough for them, particularly financially, so now they have kids and family in Ireland and I think they will stay there.”
For returnee Magda Wasiak, the opposite was the case. The 37-year-old, who moved to Galway in 2005, and her husband were prompted by Irish childcare costs to return to Poland.
Huge differences
Now living in Wloclawek, 200km west of Warsaw, she notices huge differences: people have more money, the roads are much better, international companies are investing. “But you have to work four times harder in Poland to get the same amount of money as in Ireland, and the cost of living here is not that low anymore,” says Magda.
Most returned Poles with children say it can be a difficult transition for the little ones. Beata Janota worked for Enterprise Ireland's Warsaw office before she moved to Ireland in 2007 with two small children and her husband who transferred within his company. When her husband got a better job in Poland five years later, they moved back. But their daughter, now 16, is still homesick for Ireland.
“She was seven when we went to Ireland and didn’t want to move back,” says Beata, who now works in a Warsaw recruitment company. “She loved Ireland, her friends and school and wants to move back to Ireland to study.”
When all is said and done, most Polish returnees have a hybrid calculation in their heads, setting off lower earnings against lower costs, along with factors that are hard to price, such as family ties.
Lingering value
On one point, all returnees agree: even as Ireland retreats into their past, their Irish experience remains of lingering value.
“Ireland changed me for the better,” says Piotr. “I believe in myself more. Before Ireland I was permanently digging a hole for myself but now I have a whole different perspective. I am a more positive-thinking person.”
Now working in recruiting, Beata is impressed at how young Poles are much less afraid to seize new opportunities – a big difference from older generations reared to be more reserved and cautious. “It was Ireland that taught me to be open and friendly and interested in my local community,” she says.
“When my husband and I came back we had smiles on our faces all the time, people didn’t understand why we were so happy,” says Magda. “But this optimistic attitude has really helped me in work in general.” – Series concluded
