Just a very short ((okay, this was my starting assumption ) introduction at this late time. I’ve come across the concept of TCK by chance doing research in political philosophy and recognized many features of my internal world, as well as nicely logical explanations for most of my quirks (again, I guess the sentiment “so I am not nuts!” has already been expressed by people on the forum).

I was born in Poland to Polish parents. At the age of 4, they managed to flee the communist regime — in 1989, a few months before the revolution / transformation. I have spent lots of nights wondering what my life would have been like if they had waited just a little longer. And not left, or still left. Who would I be?

I am not sure if it is 100% correct to define myself as a TCK, or as some kind of hybrid between that and an unassimilated immigrant. Until the age of 21, I lived between (Western) Germany and Poland. Reading all your people’s forum posts, I admit I envy some of you for experiencing two or more different continents. My primary experience was of two neighboring countries, which — seem close now, but at the time when I left were still separated by the iron curtain. (I’d say that during my school time, most (West) Germans I met seemed to regard Poland as lying somewhere in the heart of the Russian taiga

Like most emigrant kids, I went to a local German school with some Turkish minority. A Pole here, a Hungarian there. Living in housing provided by the welfare system with other Poles, Russians, Germans from the lowest working class or on state welfare. My first and closest friends were other Polish emigrant kids.

I’m wondering why I didn’t become like many other emigrant kids — most of them barely speak their first language. I’ve always wondered about this. Initially I tried to decide whether I was Polish (for sure I wasn’t German). Then I tried to define myself as an emigrant (not immigrant, for some reason). But then I seem different from most immigrants.

Basically since I started consciously thinking about these things (age 12?), my fundamental desire was to get out of Germany. Sometimes it was to return to Poland, sometimes just a seething “out of here and as far away as possible”. We returned to my grandmother’s village in Poland each summer. Maybe this is why Poland remained “home”, at least symbolically. The scenes of crossing the border several times a year (at times when this involved travel all night and hours of border controls) are deeply ingrained into my “personal mythology”, they have something archetypical for me, I’d say now. Travelling all night and meeting the rising sun near Babcia’s village.

At the end of the summer leaving, me always frozen, I never felt anything. Only once as a child I cried the moment we crossed the border posts. My father noticed, commented. But it had no consequences. …

(ok, drifted)

Weirdly, at some point I developed an obsession about going to Russia. At age 15, I took the opportunity of going on a student exchange to St. Petersburg and literally felt “this is my air” (I don’t know why air not earth — maybe because Russia is spacious? the moment I landed at Pulkovo Airport. I felt weirdly and intensely “at home” in Leningrad despite my limited self-taught Russian. Then a general obsession about going “east”.

I still have it. Is there a “promised land” for me in Eurasia, or is this some kind of optical / emotional illusion?

Anyways, the moment I reunited with my parents after this trip I told them “I want back east”. The next school year I moved to my other “urban” grandma’s house (in Szczecin) to attend my father’s former high school. It didn’t work out very well. I couldn’t “fit in” either, and nobody (I realize now) realized my intercultural difficulties and mentored me or even gave me basic information about the differences to expect. I returned after Christmas, more confused than before and that year started cutting myself and doing other things that were a waste.

I joined an international study program in cognitive science in a bigger German town. I felt better. I stayed in an international students’ dorm. I studied my flatmates’ languages. (advanced Russian, basic Spanish, French … tried Chinese but gave up

When the first opportunity presented itself, I went for a year abroad in Sofia, Bulgaria. Learned basic Bulgarian. I largely wasted this year due to social anxieties and lack of orientation, but still love the Balkans. Met “someone” in Bucharest while traveling; spent a lot of time in Romania — because of the closeness between me, that person, and his family and world, the intensity of the immersion into their present, past, the tiny details of daily lives in the devastated department block jungles of suburban Bucharest, knowing the life stories of the local market gypsies, I sometimes consider it one of my homes. An adoptive home; I was lost then; an “orphan” longing for geographical adoption.

The next year I moved to Dublin. Traveled. Moldova, Ukraine, Istanbul (the latter another strangely “homy” place).

Now I’m digging for a PhD in Durham, UK. I came here for the scholarship money. I don’t know what to do next. I’d either like to go to Poland or … Teheran, Zanzibar, Turkmenistan. Out of Europe.

I’ve learned Arabic, Hindi, Japanese alphabets and some Chinese when bored with German high school What for? What a nerd? Now I hope to use them all some day. But it’s more than just curiosity to travel. It actually is some kind of anxiety, as if I’m walking on hot asphalt and staying in a place for too long — or even in too similar places — will burn my feet. Also anxiety that the moment I stay long enough to “fit in” somehwere, I will (somehow) disappear (“die” — as the person I am now). I guess my only identity is that of a “stranger” or “traveler”. (And when I can’t travel, at least I can read foreign literature and listen to radio stations from other continents.)

This intro got pretty lengthy. It’s also rambling. If anyone has made it to the end, I’m curious if any of you have thought about the borderline between TCKs and “ordinary” emigrants or refugees. Any experiences? (for my own part, I think that regular travel “home” and my parents hardcore anti-assimilation attitude has made a difference)

I’m also curious of any feedback at all, as I rarely got a chance to tell this story (actually, surface fragments of a story).

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