TCKs and emigrants | TCKID 2.0

TCKs and emigrants

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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Posted by wizard_of_oz at 4:18 pm on June 2nd, 2009. Comments
Categories: General Forum, Introduction.

  • Hi there,

    Another Polish-born TCK here. Although my parents took me much further than across the border (see my introduction here: http://www.tckid.com/group/out-of-africa/ ).

    That was a great story !

    Oddly enough, although I was able to somehow maintain my Polish, today I am certain that I don't feel Polish at all. Mind you, I still have a Polish passport, which I've never really used. But my general impression, when I travel to Poland, is that I have little in common with this nation. Apart from the food. I love Polish food.

    I can definitely relate to that:

    "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?"

    These are thoughts that I have each time I go to Poland. I guess the answer is that I would be a totally different person. Apart from my parents, most of my family is still in Poland. When I see my cousins, I get a vague idea of what my life would have been, had my parents not decided to emigrate, and that life doesn't look any attractive to me.

    Hey, here's another bit that sounds very familiar:

    "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."

    Same thing here, but this only happened once a year, during the summer, for geographical reasons. For a long time, I considered Germany as that big country full of highways that one would cross to go to Poland ;o). I also remember pretty well the iron curtain, the barbed wire fences, the watchtowers and the mirrors on wheels that they would slide under the cars to check if we were not hiding anything - or anyone. And the highway that went from the border to Berlin, that was prohibited to east Germans. And the highway that became suddenly bumpy as soon as we would leave the Berlin Ring, the horrible smell of the Trabants' exhaust pipes, and the fact that we would suddenly become the fastest car in the whole highway. Then a couple of hours of waiting at the Polish border, a few hours of bumpy highway up to Wroclaw, and then, a slow journey in heavy traffic on small, dangerous roads all the way to the south, where my grand parents (still) live.

    I assume this is part of the personal mythology of all kids with Polish parents who lived in western Europe...

    Where about was you Babcia's village ?

    -J
  • ellen
    Hello, welcome! I enjoyed reading that, you have such an interesting story. I like when you mentioned that feeling you had in Russia during your study abroad. I get it! It feels weird when you have these strong sensations for a place where you just arrived, but it's happened to me too =]
  • aradhana
    I agree with Uncle Dan.... and often the children of immigrants/migrants often end up crossing borders on a daily basis.
    You have to operate in Germany, Bulgaria, Dublin, etc but at home there is a "little Poland" created because you parents are trying to recreate a sense of what they know as "home". Also I think it depends on the parents.. often parents push their children to assimilate while others try as hard as possible to keep their children from assimilating.
  • My great grandparents came from Belarus and due to my mother's job I spent most of my childhood in communist countries in Eastern Europe, Soviet Union included. I've spoken to many people who were either born there or have certain family history with Eastern Europe and I always see this terrible nostalgy in them. In the case of Eastern Europe, that childhood world does not exist any longer, there is no place to return, it's all changed. I haven't been back for 10 years, my last trip was sort of good but also painful and I know by now that the places I could still sometimes miss are in my mind, not a plane ticket away.
  • rafael
    Rozumiem z twojego tekstu, ze dobrze wladasz polskim, wiec odpowiem ci w tym jeyzku - chociaz juz dawno go nie uzywalem... oj, i mecze sie klawiatura. Spróbuje jednak.
    (Robilem mature IB w Gdyni, stad znam Polski)

    Pisalas, ze czujesz taka sklonnosc do wschodnich kultur. Musze potwierdzac, ze jest róznica miedzy slowianskimi kulturami, i zachodnio-eropejskimi. Sam mieszkalem w Rossi i w Polsce, i to w ostatnie 4 lata liceum. To sie skonczylo trzy lata temu, ale nadal czuje sie bardzo zwiazany z tymi kulturami. Jakos mi sie robi cieplo w sercu jak o nich mysle.Mysle, ze moze cie ciagnie do wschodnich kultur, bo sa mniej indiwidualistyczne w porównaniu do zachodnich. Bardziej mysli sie w nich w gruppach.

    To ze ty twoi rodzice nadal chcieli utrzymac polska kulture w tobie mnie nie dziwi. Polacy to dumny naród. Moze to wynika z historii(o lile pamietam, to Polska trzy razy zniknela z map, bo zostala polknieta przez inne kraje), i tez ta ostatnia walka z kommunizmem bardzo wpynela na to jak polacy siebie postrzegaja. Mój ojciec jest polakiem, matka niemka, ale ja wyroslem bardziej po Niemiecku, z powodów praktycznych. Jak robilem mature w Polsce, to mój ojciec sie zmienil, w koncu poczul ze jest polakiem. Jak mieszkalem w Stanach, do szlismy prawie co weekend do Polskiego kosciola, i przez 5 lat chodzilem do takiez szkoly w Sobote zeby sie uczyc polskiej kultury. Nawet tanczylem przez jakis czas Polskie tance narodowe(góralskie, mazowieckie, podhalskie, itd...).
    Nie wiem dokladnie, ale jakos wynika z mojego doswiadczenia, ze Polacy maja szczególnie silne pojecie narodowosci.

    Mój ojciec studiowal Geografie, i wszystko co chcial zanim uciekl z polski bylo wolnosc poruszania sie, poniewaz ona byla tak ograniczona w czasie kommunizmu. Moze to poczucie tez istnieje u duzo innych polaków, i stanowi juz czesc kultury dla niektórych z nich. Moze bylo podobnie z twoimi rodzicami, i ty przejelas jakas wlasna wersje tego.

    Moze czujemy taka mocna potrzebe podrózowania, bo tak bardzo sie boimy gdzies zamieszkac na stale.

    In English: maybe we have such a strong necessity to travel, because we are afraid to settle down somewhere.
  • Uncle Dan
    That's an interesting story. Fascinating, even.

    Personally I think that being a TCK and an emigrant aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, being a TCK is based on the premise of being partially an emigrant: You're leaving the country. The main difference is, I suppose, that you don't necessarily intend to revoke one citizenship for another: by being a child you don't have the option.

    I think being an emigrant is partially what I hope to be. I don't feel I belong here in the US, and it's my passport country. What I hope is to eventually change that.
  • Zoe
    I many times assume I would write much less than I actually do too XD Ja~
  • Zoe
    This simply ISN'T "short"!!!!!!

    XD!!!!!

    Didn't read it, sorry~~~~~

    No offence
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