Someone to watch over me. And it's not the Border Agency.

My childhood was split up between 2 completely different environments. One was Krakow, a fairly big city in which you could to some extent revel in anonymity. Until, obviously, you found yourself in a situation when knowing someone was quite handy, like applying for a job or needing urgent treatment.
The other was my dad's home village, a small place where everyone knew everything about everyone else to the point that you had to fake ignorance just to have a conversation. "Is this Antek's daughter?" my aunt's distant neighbour would ask pointing at me and referring to my uncle and my 10 years senior cousin. "No, Ginek's" my aunt would reply, and that would give her and the said neighbour an opportunity to run through my family tree and current geographical locations of my various family members. Again.


As you may suspect I am fairly used to being a stranger. Firstly, by my city upbringing, secondly by my experience of being a visitor in a closely knit community.  Just to make it a bit more obvious they used to call me "the Krakow girl". Or, in case of my first serious crush, "the laughing Krakow girl". (He impressed me with the ability to drive a huge Massey Ferguson tractor at the tender age of 12. I was never allowed anywhere near a tractor.)

Being a stranger also runs in the family. My parents were strangers in Krakow when they moved there, something the "n-generations Krakow born and bred" would be more than happy to remind them of.

So really the experience of being an immigrant is just an extension of what I experienced before. What's the difference between being "the Krakow girl" and "the Polish girl"? Maybe the scale of things people assume you can't do? It's not about being unable to operate a tractor, it's about being unable to observe the Highway Code. After all, everyone heard horror stories about Polish drivers.

Being a stranger can also be comforting. As long as I don't open my mouth I can be anyone, and because I have the benefit of being white, I can escape some very obvious prejudices. Looking at me nobody knows any better. I can escape judgements. I can be free.

The feeling occasionally gets punctured by the sound of religious pamphlets landing on my doormat. Pamphlets, may I add, in Polish, something that scared the bejesus out of me when it happened the first time, right before making me incredibly angry. They might have as well marked my door with a  symbol and paint of their choice.
One recent visit, when upon answering the door I was greeted in Polish by 2 girls, also made me reflect on the UK's budget. I dare say that outsourcing the Border Agency's work to Jehova Witnesses would save the Government some pennies and the embarrassment of "Go Home" vans.

Which leads to another question: where is home? Is it where other people tell you it is?
There is a huge difference between being a stranger - a stranger to idioms, habits, social conventions - and being repeatedly looked down on as a stranger. To bring the example of Krakow again, I always find it fascinating how people moan about students there.

Krakow was the capital of Poland between 1038 and 1569. The Jagiellonian University was founded in 1364, so students have been in the fabric of Krakow's life since, like, forever. Yet the same people who boast about Krakow's heritage can also bemoan the presence of students, because students drive  prices of accommodation up, they drink lots of beer and misbehave, they clog up public transport, and they're mainly from places smaller than Krakow, which inevitably have to be labelled as the sticks.
What's even more interesting is that the same people who were strangers to the city 20 or 30 years ago, can bemoan the presence of the students the most. Which can probably serve as some sort of explanation why some old-date immigrants and the children of the immigrants can be found amongst the most vocal critics of the immigration.

The bright side of being an immigrant is the adventure, the challenge, the freedom, the promise. The dark sides are all too many, and one of them is you can never be too sure who is watching over you,  why and what it is that they want to tell you.

Sod Krakow. Go to Sanok and visit the museum of Zbigniew Beksinski.