On the way back from our sunset viewpoint high up in the Tatra Mountains, each of us hoping we managed to capture that magical moment.
Jan had invited us – a small group of photographers who know each other from the forum www.pentaxians.de – to Kraków to show us the city and the surrounding area. He had strongly insisted we bring proper shoes and lamps with fully charged batteries. If you stay up there until sunset, it gets pitch black on the way down.
First we meet a Polish family heading in the opposite direction. Father, mother, four-year-old daughter, walking toward the Eye of the Sea, a mountain lake far away from their car. On foot. No light. No mountain gear. With a four-year-old child?
Jan pleads with the parents in fluent Polish to join us. Continuing would be dangerous. After some hesitation, they follow his advice and start the descent with us.
Shortly after, a very similar situation: two Ukrainian teenage girls. One of them celebrating her birthday that day. They have already had a long and exhausting hike and are happily walking in the wrong direction, unaware that in less than half an hour there will be nothing but darkness, narrow rocky paths and steep drop-offs. Their only light source: half-empty smartphones.
Jan talks to them as well and explains how dangerous that direction is. He manages to convince them too.
Hours later, in complete darkness, we finally reach the parking lot in the valley, and the small birthday cakes are shared among us, brought along by the two Ukrainian girls.
I heard this anecdote from one of the participants of that excursion and spoke to several of them to hear more of the story. One told me how the Polish father was close to tears shortly before they reached the parking lot. He suddenly realized the situation he had brought his family into – and how lucky they were to have met Jan.
Jan himself probably would never have told me this story. He tends to downplay things like that. But I think it tells an important part about him.
Jan grew up in Wiesbaden-Klarenthal, a district where he was surrounded from an early age by an international community – Turks, Italians, Yugoslavs. The great integrator, Jan says, was football. And his heart still beats for Eintracht Frankfurt.
After finishing his studies in Political Science, Ethnology and German as a Foreign Language, he and his Polish girlfriend Magdalena struggle to find their footing in Germany. At the beginning of the 2000s the job market for Poles is still heavily restricted despite EU membership, and the big demand for German teachers in Germany will only come later, with the wars and the refugees.
So the two of them follow their sense of adventure. Scandinavia or Ireland were originally at the top of the list. But it is Jan’s idea to try Poland for one test year. That year has turned into eighteen.
The first version of this chapter was a long list describing all the things Jan has done during that time: working for language schools, private coaching, publishing work, translations and audioguides, guiding tours in Kraków. But one thing kept emerging again and again during our conversation: very few of these jobs last for long. As a freelancer in his chosen home, Jan constantly faces new challenges.
Talking to him, I learn what matters most to him: try, try and try again. If an idea doesn’t work, start over. Not everything worked right away. Almost nothing lasted permanently over those eighteen years in Poland. Relentlessly, Jan takes on new tasks and redefines the focus of his work again and again.
Beyond his professional life, I meet someone deeply interested in politics, someone who follows daily developments in Germany and Poland closely and understands the current conflicts and their consequences. When the full scale war in Ukraine begins, he watches refugees arriving in large numbers in Poland. From the very beginning he is among those helping.
He organizes accommodation, coordinates aid transports with small vans, and makes sure that as many refugees as possible can travel to Poland with those vans to places where they can actually find shelter. This privately organized aid works remarkably well. People are very willing to help, so Kraków only needs to provide two former shopping centers as public accommodation. All other refugees have been housed in private homes since the outbreak of the full-scale war.
We are sitting at the dining table in Jan’s parents’ house. Both pharmacists, both over eighty. A small card in the living room reminds everyone of his mother’s most recent birthday.
Over coffee and marmalade toast they ask me curious questions about myself and my project. Some of the questions from Jan’s father – who now moves slowly through the house with the help of a walker – might almost sound provocative. If it weren’t for that bright, mischievous smile.
They raised their children to be citizens of the world and remain a safe harbor for them.
One of the grandchildren lives in the old children’s room in the basement. He is preparing for his studies in Germany, but currently spending Christmas holidays in America, where his father teaches as a professor at a university. Today that room will become my photo studio.
We head downstairs so I can set up my lights.
Jan’s two nephews stand at the foosball table and cheer with excitement when Jan and I join them for a match. Their family – the family of Jan’s other brother – eventually returned to Wiesbaden after several years in Vienna and now lives close to the grandparents again.
You’ll never walk alone.
Postscript:
Jan wouldn’t be Jan if he hadn’t pointed out while proofreading that his willingness to help the refugees was nothing special. In his Polish community, he says, this kind of commitment is simply taken for granted. Very concrete and very direct: with blankets and clothing, with accommodation, with small vans – and with the courage to drive them into the war zone during their own vacation.