war story
Holland, Zoetermeer - Oct 26, 2022
Arriving in Poland
Arriving in Poland
By Olena Skala Skaletska
Holland, Zoetermeer, Oct 26, 2022
aiI, like many Ukrainians arriving in Poland couldn't speak the language. But thank heavens Polish is close enough to Ukrainian that I could understand quite a lot. But first...
aiI was going to Poland. It was a long and difficult road. We spent six days covering 1000 km, before the war it took about 12 hours. The track is jammed, thousands of cars ahead and just as many behind. When they did not have time to enter the city before the curfew, they simply stayed on the highway. We spent the night in the car, the nights in March are cold, the dog is a good heater, it's a pity that Scottish terriers are small.
aiIt took ten hours to cross the border with Poland. I was sitting in a warm bus, and outside the window hundreds of Ukrainians were in line at the checkpoint. Small children with backpacks on their backs, women with strollers, dogs, cats and bags. I've been on my feet for several hours. It's close to zero on the street, steam is coming out of the mouth, it's getting dark quickly, are they really going to spend the night like this?
"I understand everything, but I can't say it." This is how many Ukrainians in Poland felt.
aiThey were waiting for me in Poland. My friends from the "House of Polonia in the East" Tamara Voytenko and Oleksandr Gedroits helped many people with housing and finding host families in Poland. "I understand everything, but I can't say it." This is how many Ukrainians in Poland felt. But your languages are similar, the Dutch asked me. Well, how to say, roughly like German and Dutch.
aiI didn't experience any communication problems there in Poland. I understood everything and most importantly I could speak Polish. After all, she taught him. And on February 24, 2022, she had to take the exam. My teacher was proud of me. I passed it already in Poland, when I went to work in a Polish kindergarten as a teacher's assistant.
ai10 days after arriving in Vengorzew, a small town on the Masurian Lakes. It was here that I was able to meet living, that is, real Poles. The first week, living in the apartment of Mariola Milevska, a primary school teacher, I simply melted. She cooked Ukrainian borscht specially for me, which was not Ukrainian at all, but was it important. We cried together when we watched the news on TV about the bombing of Kharkiv and Mariupol.
