“The TV is acting up again!” Matthias, eight years old, bangs on the top of the set, hard!

That’s where the picture usually comes out. The sound coming from the bottom of the set is telling him that he’s missing something exciting.

Three years ago, they set off for Germany. His father had gone ahead, tired of constantly commuting between their homeland and the prosperous neighboring country where he always found work.

He had left it up to the mother of his children to follow with them.

In 1989, Matthias is five years old and doesn’t really understand what is happening around him at the bus stop, why tears of farewell are flowing.

His mother has instructed him to say that they are only visiting West Germany; no one must find out during a check that they want to leave Poland permanently.

They meet his father in the Ruhr area and go through the normal stages together, from the reception center in Unna to their first small apartment.

Matthias is still small, his memories fragmentary, and he sees much through childlike, soft-focus glasses.

For him, everything is a great adventure, especially the bulk waste collection days. It borders on a miracle for him to see what the Germans throw away! So it doesn’t even occur to him to question why their family television consists of two sets, often with slightly asynchronous picture and sound.

Critical thoughts only come later, as he grows older and experiences exclusion.

Today, it happens from time to time that foreigners are disparaged and gossiped about in his presence. His first name and appearance give no indication of his homeland, and his Polish surname is as common in the Ruhr region as the bright red night sky after a tapping at the Duisburg steelworks. He doesn’t always protest; it just happens too often.

Matthias is in the prime of his life, has found professional fulfillment, started a family, built a house in his hometown on the Lower Rhine, and even run for mayor. He has arrived, he is content.

But from time to time, he thinks about what it would be like to return to Poland. His homeland is catching up economically. So far, he has rejected the idea; for him, it is now just a foreign country, his language skills as faded as his childhood memories.