Done this before
I said. And it was true. I lived in Denmark for three months, but I'll save that for when I get around to politics.
In '93, my ex, who was finishing a doctorate in German Studies, decided he didn't have to appear anyplace as a set time so he'd go traveling. He called me up from Krakow, Poland a few weeks later and said "I can teach here! What do you think of the idea of moving to Poland?" I said I liked it, and after a year of straightening out our affairs here, we went.
I shouldn't say it was a grand time. Somewhere in my brain, I know it wasn't, a lot of the time. For one thing, what three separate Polish women had told me to watch out for turned out to be perfectly true. It seemed a lot of young Polish women were on the lookout for a Western guy to hook up with so as to gain rights to live and work in the West, and my ex proved woefully vulnerable to them. At which point my home institution, with which I'd worked out an agreement allowing me to go to Poland while maintaining my ties there, declared I had no further reason for being there and I must come back. I was NOT going to lose out on my international experience, so I told them no and walked out on a significant grant and academia.
So there I was in Poland, knowing no one except my ex, with no income, no career, and that's when things began to get better. For one thing, I had a great place to live, a large loft inside the city walls at a price that would make a New Yorker offer to sell his or her soul. For another, I had a "hobby" that had always been more than a hobby to me, that I'd always hoped to make a living out of eventually. So I turned it into one. I'd work madly in Krakow for two months, then take a 27-hour hell-bus to London, do a show in Britain, buy a cheap round-trip ticket to the US, do a show or two there, fly back to Britain and do another show, and take the hell-bus back to Krakow. By the time I was halway through the second year, I knew a few folks, I had my routine worked out, and I was pretty much breaking even. I was staying.
I'll say it. It was a grand time.
But then a house I owe/own in the US lost its renter and needed more repairs than I could fund on what I was making at that point. My choice was to give up the house or come back, and I came back.
What I learned from all this, and what I'll put to good use this time was to put the majority of my immediate efforts on arrival (aside from finding a roof and food, of course) into getting to know people. It's a people network that will sustain you through the bad times, and the bad times will come. Usually folks hit them around the six-month point, when, to give a Polish example, it's no longer an amusing novelty that they organize what's in particular stores differently. In Poland, they were organized by materials. So, toilet paper? The stationary store, of course! Now how was I supposed to guess that until I figured out the system. A people net will clue you in to things like that.
Whoops, lunch is almost over. Time to stop blogging.
In '93, my ex, who was finishing a doctorate in German Studies, decided he didn't have to appear anyplace as a set time so he'd go traveling. He called me up from Krakow, Poland a few weeks later and said "I can teach here! What do you think of the idea of moving to Poland?" I said I liked it, and after a year of straightening out our affairs here, we went.
I shouldn't say it was a grand time. Somewhere in my brain, I know it wasn't, a lot of the time. For one thing, what three separate Polish women had told me to watch out for turned out to be perfectly true. It seemed a lot of young Polish women were on the lookout for a Western guy to hook up with so as to gain rights to live and work in the West, and my ex proved woefully vulnerable to them. At which point my home institution, with which I'd worked out an agreement allowing me to go to Poland while maintaining my ties there, declared I had no further reason for being there and I must come back. I was NOT going to lose out on my international experience, so I told them no and walked out on a significant grant and academia.
So there I was in Poland, knowing no one except my ex, with no income, no career, and that's when things began to get better. For one thing, I had a great place to live, a large loft inside the city walls at a price that would make a New Yorker offer to sell his or her soul. For another, I had a "hobby" that had always been more than a hobby to me, that I'd always hoped to make a living out of eventually. So I turned it into one. I'd work madly in Krakow for two months, then take a 27-hour hell-bus to London, do a show in Britain, buy a cheap round-trip ticket to the US, do a show or two there, fly back to Britain and do another show, and take the hell-bus back to Krakow. By the time I was halway through the second year, I knew a few folks, I had my routine worked out, and I was pretty much breaking even. I was staying.
I'll say it. It was a grand time.
But then a house I owe/own in the US lost its renter and needed more repairs than I could fund on what I was making at that point. My choice was to give up the house or come back, and I came back.
What I learned from all this, and what I'll put to good use this time was to put the majority of my immediate efforts on arrival (aside from finding a roof and food, of course) into getting to know people. It's a people network that will sustain you through the bad times, and the bad times will come. Usually folks hit them around the six-month point, when, to give a Polish example, it's no longer an amusing novelty that they organize what's in particular stores differently. In Poland, they were organized by materials. So, toilet paper? The stationary store, of course! Now how was I supposed to guess that until I figured out the system. A people net will clue you in to things like that.
Whoops, lunch is almost over. Time to stop blogging.
posted by ISAY | 9:33 AM
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