Poland? "God, why?"

Lots of foreign companies have set up shop in Poland in recent years. They arrive on a tide of glossy promotional videos and say: "Hi there, welcome to capitalism! Where do you keep the money?" The offices of these multinational interlopers are the natural habitat of Expat Manager Man. He is difficult to find, unless you know where to look, but is becoming increasingly common in Poland's cities. Expat Manager Man rarely comes to Poland by choice. He is sent by his company, usually for a two-year period to set up a department, and regards the experience as a short, necessary evil on his climb to the top of the corporate ladder. If you ask him about living in Poland he will say things like: "I'm really looking forward to the challenge," or "I love it here, it's such an exciting part of the world," but he is actually thinking: "Oh god, why did they send me here… Brad got to go to New York and I'm in a place I can't even pronounce… what have I done to deserve this…"

Expat Manager Man lives in a hugely expensive flat in the Old Town or a brand new, gated community where lots of other Expat Manager Men live. His kids go to the American International School and he shops through Alma online with Google Translate switched on. When he does go out, he takes his 20-year-old secretary to trendy cocktail bars with names like Manhattan+ or London Pink. When he leaves he will tell his colleagues that he intends to visit every summer, but in fact he will burn his passport as soon as he gets home.

Teaching English is one of the world's largest industries and millions of young Americans, Brits, Australians and Canadians take advantage of this fact to spend a couple of years travelling the world and drinking a lot while pretending to work. Poland has been a major junction on the round-the-world English teaching route for over a decade. The track leads from Poland to China to Japan to Thailand, with minor side roads to Russia, the Czech Republic and Africa. Poland is a good place to start because there is huge demand for 'native speakers' and because it's not as culturally alien as East Asia. The Polish obsession with being taught by native speakers is unique in Europe and results in thousands of highly trained Polish teachers of English working in low-paid jobs while thousands of poorly trained Americans with hangovers get paid twice as much to sit in classrooms and teach teenagers how to swear in English.

Some TEFL teachers are in the job because they are genuinely interested in education as a career, but the great majority are in it for the cheap booze, the adoring teenage girls and because "it's cool man." Their interest in the local culture extends to gaining an encyclopaedic knowledge of vodka brands, visiting pubs with ironic Communist posters on the walls and learning how to say "What's your phone number baby?" in Polish. Ninety percent of them are in a band or claim to be writing a novel and ninety percent of these will eventually go home and become marketing executives.

Increasing numbers of young second, third or even fourth generation Poles who grew up in the US or Canada or Australia are deciding to move to Poland so they can see for themselves if the place is a great as their grandparents have been telling them since they were old enough to sit upright and eat pierogi. As soon as they arrive and find a whole new identity ready for them to adopt, they become fanatical super-Poles. Poles are some of the most patriotic people on Earth, but Polonia Poles make them look like amateurs. If possible, the average Polonia Pole would dress in a coat made entirely of kotlet schabowy, drive a Fiat 125 that runs on pure Wyborowa and get a job that somehow involved singing Sto Lat at the top of their voice while waving a giant red and white flag made of Polish bread. Their fanaticism for all things Polish is their ultimate downfall. The more effort they make to be completely Polish, they more they are treated as weirdos by real Poles, who think they are insane for wanting to come to
live here in the first place.

They say that love makes the world go round, which may be a bit of an exaggeration, but it certainly does make a lot of foreigners move to Poland. Since 2004, hundreds of thousands of young Polish women have gone to work in Britain, Ireland and other European countries. Because Polish women are the most beautiful in the world, a lot of men in these countries suddenly decided that they wanted to move to Poland. Many of them fell in love and followed their Polish princesses home, only to discover that it probably would have been sensible to have done more than five minutes Internet research before getting on the plane. At first they are bursting with enthusiasm for their new life. They immediately sign up for Polish lessons, watch the entire Dekalog series and start eating flaki for breakfast. This doesn't last long. Once it becomes clear that learning Polish is about as easy as walking to the moon and that the only job they can get is teaching English or writing humorous articles on the Internet, they begin
to wonder about the long-term wisdom of their decision. They quickly become bitterly resentful about their lives and spend all their time complaining about the trains, the bureaucracy, the roads and the bad manners of people who work in the Post Office. In other words, they become indistinguishable from Poles.

Jamie Stokes