22nd anniversary on the 22nd

For my father!

My father doesn't like the number 22, so here I am today, on the 22nd of July, celebrating the 22nd anniversary when I arrived in Poland to stay. So a bitter-sweet anniversary for my father; bitter in that his son and young family moved a thousand miles away, sweet that they moved to his beloved Warsaw, closing the loop which began with his deportation at the end of the Uprising in October 1944.

It is a day to remember for me, a farewell to the UK, to London where I was born and raised; a hello to a new life in a new country - my fatherland - a country which over those years has seen incredible growth and vast change.

Moving to Poland in 1997 was not as difficult as it had been just five years earlier - back in 1992 there were no cash machines, no mobile phones, hardly any fixed-line phones for that matter, very few supermarkets. And an unwieldy, post-hyperinflation currency where most larger items costs millions of zlotys. By 1997 Poland had settled into its upward trajectory; soon the country would vote to join the European Union. Though by no means perfect, Poland today is a much, much better place to live and work than it was in the 1990s.

The main improvements are the result of better governance - most noticeable at local level; better public transport, hugely improved infrastructure, and the benefits brought by the IT revolution. Retail works much better (however, I still find Sunday close-down irksome), again IT has brought benefits, not least in the form of e-commerce. On Sundays, my 'shopping' ends around 8am when the Auchan Direct delivery man calls and I stow all the ordered goods into the relevant cupboard space. Going to the shop physically required breakfast and around 90 minutes of driving there and back and a lot of trolley-pushing around the aisles buying things we didn't necessarily need.

When we moved to Poland, I dreamt that in time, Poland would become a normal, unremarkable country in which everything worked normally, in which there were few absurdities, a country that others would look to not with fear or loathing but with respect for its achievements. In particular, achieving huge civilisational leap from communist marazm that of a vibrant modern free-market democracy. Obviously, not all is perfect, but in terms of my everyday life, things are better than ever before. There are clouds on the horizon, but there is always hope.

Unlike many Britons of my generation, I cannot bemoan the passing of a bygone age in Poland - it was dire. Going back a further eight years from 1997 to 1989, right at the tail-end of communism in Poland, the country was in a dreadful mess that Britons can scarcely begin to imagine. From 1989, it took just four or five years for Poland to turn itself into a country to which I could countenance emigrating to and building a future life in. But Poland's miraculous turnaround had its losers as well as  winners; the social fractures all too visible in today's Poland are the result of the side-effects of neo-liberal economic reform.

A quick look at the unemployment stats from across Poland shows the geographical unevenness of the benefits of economic growth. There remain massive regional disparities between cities where unemployment is very low (Poznań 1.3%, Warsaw 1.4%, Katowice 1.5%, Wrocław 1.8%, Kraków 2.3%, Gdansk 2.6% in May 2019) while in many small provincial towns it remains stubbornly in double digits. Szydłowiec, some 120km south of Warsaw, also in the Mazowsze province, holds the record at a staggering 23.1%. Nearby Radom, a city of 200,000 people, also has high unemployment at 11.5%. Fruit-growing Grójec powiat (district) south of Warsaw has just 2.1% unemployment. My działka in Jakubowizna is in this district, and as Polish countryside goes, it's well off. New houses growing like mushrooms after rain, to use the Polish expression.

Below: a quick scan of Warsaw's skyline suggests a boom city that has kept on booming for all the time I've lived here.

My first impressions of Poland in the summer of 1997 was that of a country under water; Wrocław had just experience intense flooding, and the area around Pyry (north-east of Jeziorki) had plenty of flooded fields, ul Baletowa and ul. Farbiarska were both cut off by giant puddles, and there were midges everywhere sucking my blood. It was a hot and humid summer; every morning I'd cycle to work in what would later be christened Mordor (ul. Konstruktorska), passing mirabelle trees that deposited their fruit on uneven paving slabs, fermenting in the hot, damp air, releasing an unforgettable aroma. A handful of coins would get me through the day, buying sandwiches from Pan Kanapka; offices would sport signs saying 'akwizytorom dziękujemy' and car number plates were white numbers on black backgrounds, like in Britain until the early-1970s.

Twenty-two years flashed by so quickly; more than one-third of my life spent here in Warsaw. No plans to return to Britain (may Brexit never happen!). May Poland stay safe and happy.

This time last year:
A tale of two orchards

This time two years ago:
My 20 years in Poland

This time three years ago:
PiS, Brexit, Trump and cognitive bias

This time six years ago:
Portmeirion, revisited, again
[My last summer holiday - not had one since!]

This time seven years ago:
Beach day, Llyn Peninsula

This time eight years ago:
Down with cars in city centres!

This time nine years ago:
8am and 26C already