Where is Home? - A Blogger's Quest to Find a Place of Belonging

Having recently moved from Gdańsk to Łódź at the end of 2024, I’ve recently been pondering over the topic – “Where is home?”

My many moves

Not counting the number of times I have used my family home as a base in between jobs etc., I couldn’t resist the temptation to tot up the number of times I’ve moved house. Alarmingly, the total comes to 19. Admittedly, three of those moves were not of my own doing. Two of the schools I worked for – in Bijeljina, Bosnia, and Płock, Poland – found alternative accommodation for me partway through my contract. The other move, which I didn’t really want, was related to student accommodation in Nottingham back in 2004.

Here we go then:

Nottingham – 2003
Nottingham – 2004 (student accommodation issue)
Dębica, Poland – 2006
Lviv, Ukraine – 2007
Kraków – 2007
Bijeljina, Bosnia – 2008
Bijeljina – 2008 (school’s decision)
Nottingham – 2009 (shared house, master’s degree)
Płock, Poland – 2010
Płock – 2010 (school’s decision)
Łódź – 2012
Łódź – 2013
Novi Sad, Serbia – 2014
Novi Sad – 2014
Novi Sad – 2015
Novi Sad – 2016
Bosnia – 2018
Gdańsk – 2020
Łódź – 2024

Believe me, I don’t see moving as a sport. I’ve had enough of lugging luggage around and the bureaucratic hassles associated with moving. As the years roll by, I seem to be visiting my family home in the UK less and less. Therefore, the question of “Where is home?” has become a rather complex one for me to answer.

The concept of “home” is an extremely slippery one

I was born in Kettering in the English county of Northamptonshire in 1985. My family home is in the nearby town of Wellingborough. That’s where I lived for the first 18 years of my life before I went to university in Nottingham.

Frankly, it’s always been tough to call Wellingborough “home” as I’ve never really developed a strong emotional attachment to the town itself, and indeed “home” as a physical construction and safe haven. My memories of growing up in Wellingborough and the house I lived in are rather painful ones, for reasons I won’t go into right now. Moreover, Wellingborough, like the majority of British towns, is a shadow of its former self. I discussed my observations of how the town has changed in my post on reverse culture shock.

So if one’s memories of their childhood home haunt them or they’re loath to visit “home for the holidays”, where on earth is home for the unfortunate few?

A survey of some significance

It’s quite an old survey, but a rather revealing one I feel. In 2008, The Pew Research Centre asked 2,260 American adults to identify ““the place in your heart you consider to be home.” 23% of those surveyed did not identify the place that they were currently living in to be “home.” Among those who have lived in two or more communities, 38% revealed that they weren’t living in their “heart home” at that time. 26% reported that “home” was where they were born or raised; only 22 percent of respondents said that it was where they were living at the time. Interestingly, 18% identified home as the place that they had lived the longest, and 15% felt that it was where their family had hailed from. 4% said that home was where they had attended high school.

Back to the unfortunate few then

Based on the Pew Research Centre survey, I ask myself what happened to the 74% of people who didn’t consider the place they had been born or raised in to be “home”. Did they not consider the importance of home in maintaining bonds between loved ones? Or perhaps many of the respondents had painful memories of the houses they lived in as children? Is it also possible that some of the 74% of respondents had nice memories of their hometown and childhood home but had simply moved on with their lives and were fully attached to the place they were currently living in?

It’s hard to know. However, whatever their reasons, I still find it rather sad that so many people in today’s world appear to be emotionally detached from the places they were born or raised.

My connection with Poland and Securing Dual Citizenship has left me with further unanswered questions

In June 2005, I embarked on a 30-hour coach journey from Nottingham to Kraków with a friend – Paweł – whom I met at university in Nottingham. It was my first ever visit to Poland. Check out the story behind my first trip to Poland.

Anyway, here’s an excerpt from my memoir:

The bus carried on south to Krakow. Soon after we had got out of the bus, I remember looking up at one brown building, startled at its state of disrepair. But there was little time for sightseeing in this remarkable city, as we were to take another bus to Pawel’s home in Mszana Dolna. Mszana is a quaint and peaceful little town some fifty kilometres away from Krakow, and roughly the same distance north of the resort town of Zakopane at the foot of the Tatra Mountains. I had a sensational feeling inside while travelling to Pawel’s home.
When I stepped out of the bus in Mszana, I was in a different world. There were simple things – cars on the other side of the road, and pretty village houses. Wheeling my suitcase to Pawel’s home, I felt like a real traveller, and I felt alive. Pawel’s home looked amazing from the outside. I was shocked by the size of the house. I cannot remember how many rooms it had, but it had the feel of being a mansion. I also remember a stream running by the front of the house.
I felt at ease with myself for the first time in my life. One of my best memories is sitting on a bench close to a small ice cream shop. It was a warm summer’s day – the kind that I remember as a child in the early 90s. The traffic was light on the main road some twenty metres ahead of me, and some children were playing badminton to my right. My eyes were soon following a nun ambling down the street. I was in another world, a world which I wanted to enter, a world in which I began to feel that my moral and social development would take place. I felt liberated, free, like I was really living.

Back in the UK after my first visit to Poland, I wrote the following in my book:

Back in the UK, I was suffering from terrible withdrawal symptoms from Poland. I wasn’t the same person anymore. I remember walking to the town centre in Wellingborough one day and I started to feel totally detached from my surroundings. An exceptional longing for Poland rushed through my body … Poland had taken over every aspect of my life and there was no looking back. According to my diary, ‘I spent a lot of time looking at my photographs wishing I was still there [in Poland]. My life had changed completely … thanks to Pawel.’

It was clear that there was no turning back. Therefore, I quickly began to put plans into place to return to Poland on a permanent basis. To open the door for me to live in Poland, the only viable solution was for me to teach English there. Therefore, I enrolled on the CELTA Course – the world’s most recognised entry-level English language teaching qualification.

Polish Citizenship Confirmed

Between 2014 and 2018, my wife and I lived in Novi Sad, Serbia. Novi Sad is a wonderful little city but the corruption, lack of law and order and general social disorganisation slowly ate away at us. At the turn of 2017, it dawned on me that I had the right to receive confirmation of Polish citizenship by the right of blood. Everything began to fall into place for my wife and me. We were looking for a fresh start somewhere that wasn’t in the Balkans. That was when Gdańsk came calling.

I’d really had enough of moving. I just wanted to settle down somewhere, for a few years at least.

In terms of being, or feeling, Polish, I’d like to compare my feelings to those of Pico Iyer who, in a most inspiring TED Talk, discussed the topic of “Where is home?”:

People are always asking me where I come from, and they're expecting me to say India, and they're absolutely right insofar as 100 percent of my blood and ancestry does come from India. Except, I've never lived one day of my life there. I can't speak even one word of its more than 22,000 dialects. So I don't think I've really earned the right to call myself an Indian. And if "Where do you come from?" means "Where were you born and raised and educated?" then I'm entirely of that funny little country known as England, except I left England as soon as I completed my undergraduate education

Well, in response to Pico’s thoughts, only 25% of my blood is Polish. However, I’ve lived there for nearly a quarter of my life. I’m nearly 40. Therefore, I think I’m well within my rights to be able to call Poland “home”. Unfortunately, I still need to find a place – be it a village or a city – to call “home”. I’m not yet there, but I feel I’m getting closer to it.

Nothing and nowhere compares to Gdańsk – But it Never Felt Like Home

I have extolled the virtues of living in Gdańsk time and time again on this site.

Parks. Tri-City Landscape Park. Beaches. Gdańsk by night. Mariacka Street. The entire Main Town. There’s nowhere quite like Gdańsk. My wife and I enjoyed our time in the city.

However, there’s a big “but”. We began to feel increasingly isolated in Gdańsk. A kind of “long way from everywhere” feeling. For instance, my wife and I have tried to maintain close bonds with her parents over the years. Between 2021 and 2024, I drove from Gdańsk to Bosnia at least 10 times. That’s 20 journeys in total including the return drives back to Gdańsk To tell the truth, it became financially and emotionally draining to do that 16-hour journey two or three times a year. Now we’re in Łódź, we no longer have to pay to stay the night somewhere as I’m capable of driving for 12 hours in a single day.

I also believe that my wife and I are explorers at heart. We dream about exploring places like Warsaw, Kraków and Wrocław more than we have done already. Living in Łódź will also enable us to explore many new cities and regions in the south and east of Poland more easily and cheaply.

It must sound like a contradiction but the most beautiful city I’ve ever been to simply never felt like “home” to me.

Perhaps I prefer to be surrounded by the beauty in imperfection which Łódź has to offer.

Back in Łódź eleven and a half years later

And so it goes that I’m back in Łódź after an eleven-and-a-half-year hiatus.

Things have changed in Łódź since I left the city in June 2013. First of all, many of the tenement houses in the city centre have been revitalised. Entire streets – once neglected and fear-inducing – now take visitors back to the times of Łódź’s industrial boom. Włókiennicza Street rather proves that point. Piotrkowska Street – the main pedestrianised artery of the city – is bustling again. Even the air quality in Łódź seems to have improved a great deal.

In my quest to find out the answer to the question – Where is home? – I’ve begun to wonder about why I feel more at home in Łódź than I do in Gdańsk. I think we can forget about the significance of stunning buildings and beautiful streets for a moment. Łódź is a city that goes deep inside me, although it’s hard to say now whether it goes, or will go, deepest inside me.

Maybe this “deep” feeling arises because of the memories I have of the 18 months I lived in Łódź. I think it was the first time in my life that I found some stability and sense of purpose. Let’s visit the memoir again:

Life in Lodz was repetitive but I had an active teaching schedule with excellent students, and I liked the routine which I had fostered. I taught Logistics Directors working for well-known companies, such as L’oreal and Raben, and visited one ceramics company to teach several of its employees and directors. I also had a steady stream of private students with whom I made a real effort to work with and develop.
My social life in Lodz was certainly nothing to write home about, but it dawned on me that, after twenty-seven years, I actually began to enjoy my own company. That was a sign of my blossoming self-respect. It was a sign that I’d begun to come to terms with my deficiencies and appreciate that I’m not a machine, but a human being. I also changed my diet, which was strict and consistent, and started running.

Indeed, I always looked forward to visiting Łagiewniki forest at the weekend to go for a run and get away from the laptop. I’m proud to say that my routine was very stable, healthy and non-destructive.

I need to keep my feet on the ground

Back in Łódź again, I do expect exciting things to happen in regard to my teaching and writing careers. Certainly, this move signifies a fresh new start. Paying rent is no bad thing. It’ll inspire me to step out of my comfort zone. However, I need to keep my feet on the ground. I should avoid setting goals which are impossible to achieve. That will only lead to disappointment and depression.

Final Thoughts

From a psychological perspective, I can understand why some psychotherapists claim that those who have a compulsion to move every so often are seeking external change in order to compensate for internal issues or challenges. Some of my past moves were more about escaping negative experiences and bad memories. Rather than handling my emotions and all the disappointment connected with breakups and struggles in the classroom like a man, I packed up my belongings and went to teach in Ukraine and Bosnia.

It’s true that I wanted to teach, to make a difference in some way. However, I felt so isolated in places like Lviv and Bijeljina. Everywhere I went – the surroundings always felt the same because of my emotional state. From Florence to Vienna – I could have lived in any of the supposedly most beautiful places in Europe. However, it wouldn’t have changed a single thing. I always recall what a good friend once wrote on a postcard for me: “It doesn’t matter where you live – if you are happy”.

So far, I’ve only spent around seven nights in my new apartment in Łódź. Each time I gazed out of the living room window of my tenth floor apartment, which looks out over Park Dąbrowskiego, the district of Górniak and city centre of Łódź, it felt like I was home again. I sure hope it stays that way.