It’s been 5 years

Hello everyone! This is one very special blog post because if I remember correctly on this day 5 years ago I was packing my bags to take a one-way ticket to Krakow, Poland. Fast forward to today, I found myself on TV featuring yours truly as a foreign blogger who lives and writes about my life and interests here in Poland. I started to write a while back and today my blog and I were on one of the most popular breakfast TV shows here in Poland. Dzień Dobry TVN (eng. Good Morning TVN). It is a Polish morning show broadcast on TVN (channel) since 2005 every day between 8:30 and 11:00 am. It features celebrity guests, entertainment, cookery, advice on health, and more. It is viewed by over 1 million Poles every single day and I feel truly blessed.

I am beyond grateful for all the blessings in my life and this one is, at the moment, the icing on the cake! I think this is a perfect opportunity to tell a bit more about how I ended up being in Krakow. To begin with, I came here to work. I relocated from the same company I was working back in Bangalore, India. I can remember for the longest time in my working career, while colleagues around me dreamed of promotions and growing higher up within the organization, I was dreaming about the possibility of one day living and working somewhere abroad! Sure when I got promoted it made me happy for a while, but since I travelled to Europe on business trips I grew even more determined to find a job and live here. I remember clearly some nights after work I would go up to the roof and pretend that aeroplanes in the night sky were like shooting stars (if you know the song, yes I put those lyrics to test). I would tell myself- ‘I will work and live abroad one day’. This was way before I knew about the book The Secret and this envisioning worked out in the best way possible; as I approached my management at work, they turned out to be very supportive of my decision to move.

When things started materializing I was beyond excited and continued my spirit of being grateful. I came to Krakow knowing only a handful of people from work and the first lesson I learned, after not recognizing some of my Polish colleagues, was that people here had different ways to say their names, for example, when I was being introduced to people I was not sure at first if they were the same persons. I knew a friend of mine through work, a Polish woman, who opened up her home to me so that I could live for a while till I found a place of my own. I am forever grateful for her kindness. There is a saying here in Poland- a guest at home is like having God himself at your home. It did not take me long to find an apartment for myself just a stone’s throw away from the bustling market centre or as we call it Rynek.

My friends tell me I am brave for moving to a foreign country all by myself. I never felt the need to be brave. On the contrary, I was just happy. I was determined from the beginning that I wanted to live in a flat all by myself and to eventually interact with and make new friends. Since moving here; I have met some fellow Indian’s, but I tend to keep to myself and rather talk or engage with local Polish people as in my opinion it is better to immerse in the culture you are living in, rather than be aloof. I have always been open and friendly with people and I have made many new Polish friends in return.

When I came here I decided not to have a TV as I did not want to spend hours in front of it and ‘waste’ my time. I enjoy going for walks, meeting up with friends, going to the gym, spending time with my boyfriend and his family or just watching something on Netflix. I eventually started watching videos on YouTube and learning about other bloggers and what they write about. Also at the same time, I was starting to wonder about how I simply uploaded photos on Facebook about my life in Krakow and felt it would be better to share photos and write something about it and it made perfect sense to me.

Fast forward to today, blogging has been a wonderful journey. I feel motivated to write and be productive with my site. I have learned how to set up this site and arrange themes and plugins, which to be honest, I am still not sure how to use. It’s a great feeling to get feedback from my friends and readers about my blog posts. Just a couple of months ago in April, my blog was featured in the local newspaper and today I was on television. I would never have imagined this, that 5 years later I would appear on TV! It still amazes me. I don’t feel a sense of ego or pride, but I feel just happy and grateful. I love living in Krakow and sharing my experiences on the blog. I have listed a few points that this journey has taught me and I hope it will inspire you, my readers, to go out there, do your thing and follow your heart <3

Few lessons I have learned on this 5-year journey:

1. Believe in your dreams and yourself.
2. If someone says you can’t, then it means you can!
3. Be open to new opportunities and meeting new people.
4. Learning the Polish language is tough, no surprise. Unless you are born here and speaking it since infancy 😉
5. Polish cuisine is not only just about potatoes, salt and pepper.
6. Vodka is good, till you drink about 15 shots in one go on your birthday! (needless to say, I don’t drink Vodka shots anymore)
7. You can actually count the number of days the sun shines here. On other days it either rains or snows 🙁
8. You can use a couple of Polish words a couple of different ways and it will have a totally different meaning.
9. Find a support system and surround yourself with people who believe in you.
10. Blogging is a lot of hard work fun!

Of course, there are countless more, but more on that some other time. I am happy to share this journey with you and looking forward to sharing more meaningful content here on the blog. I would like to share all the pictures of the stay here in Poland over the last 5 years, but there are far too many. So I will only leave you with the photos from today and some BTS of the making of and the link to today’s feature.

Click here to watch the interview on Dzien Dobry TVN (Second video on the page. Its in Polish, but you can still hear my voice ;))

xoxo
Doreen