I'm recording this from Gliwice — a quiet town in southern Poland where my sister lives, and a place that feels both deeply familiar and strangely distant at the same time.

Getting here was an eight-hour bus ride from Berlin. I used most of it for work, which says something about where my head is at. But arriving here, walking these streets, something shifts. There's a weight to coming back — not a bad weight, just the kind that makes you slow down and ask questions you usually avoid.

This episode is about that feeling. The strange arithmetic of expat life, where you're close enough to visit family but far enough that the distance has quietly changed you. The nostalgia that hits harder than expected. The guilt of mobility — of having the choice to leave in the first place. And the question I keep circling back to: after ten years in Berlin, a chapter in Southeast Asia, and a life built between countries — where do I actually belong?

No clean answers. Just an honest walk through a town I grew up near, thinking out loud.

Contact me at cmonkxxx@gmail.com

I'm recording today from location different than the one you're used to, maybe you're not used to.

I'll just remind you.

I tend to record from Berlin in Germany, but today I'm in Gliwice, which is a town in southern Poland.

It's a very charming, beautiful old town where my sister lives.

My sister and her family.

I don't visit them often enough, probably because I don't have a car and it's kind of hard to get in here with other means.

I mean, I do have options.

I can take tram, not train, train that I usually take.

It takes about five hours to get here.

It's not too bad.

But this time around I took a bus and it was a bit of a challenge to drive with a bus.

I kind of imagined that it would be less intrusive in terms of, you know, interaction with other passengers, but wasn't too bad.

But I would say trip was more exhausting and challenging.

What saved me was my laptop.

I was able to do quite a lot of work.

I ended up spending almost eight hours on that bus.

So effectively, I spent full day of work, you could say.

Yeah, I've been working my website, a website that is supposed to help me with my next professional move.

I am putting a lot of effort to establish my freelance business.

It all starts this month.

I would say I hope that my website will go live within next couple of days and I'll start outreach to my customers within a week or two.

But I don't want to think about work.

I want to think about this experience.

I thought I will record it for my own sake, but also I want to share it.

I feel many of us live with this weight on our shoulders where we're separated, permanently separated from our family.

Family might be living somewhere else, maybe in different country, as it is the case with me.

Even though in my case these are neighboring countries, Germany and Poland.

It always feels kind of far.

It always does.

The best case scenario, five hours.

The worst case scenario, seven or eight.

And it's always using those public means like train or a bus or a plane.

When it comes to driving, I don't have a car.

But maybe if I'm lucky with my freelancing, I will be able to get a car.

I guess I could buy a car right now, but I always consider it to be such a stupid, stupid expense.

But I cannot put this thought to rest because having a car gives you this unprecedented control of your limitations when it comes to free movement.

Right?

You can just leave the house and you can Go wherever you want.

It's incredible.

I feel like many people take it for granted.

Many people always had a car and they never relied on public transport, but many people have not.

I did enjoy both having it and not having it.

And both ways of living have their advantages.

When I had a car, I guess for a couple of years in a row, I remember very well, I was very grateful for this privilege.

For this privilege of getting out of my house into a little private space.

And the idea that I can drive wherever I want was so powerful.

But not having a car gives you this sense of freedom also this sense that you're not liable for this machine and you don't get those extra expenses and responsibilities like technical check and dealing with insurances and gas stations.

I feel like many people get it wrong.

Having a car is not a right, it's a privilege.

Right.

You can.

You're being allowed to drive and you need to afford a car and then you can buy it and you need to comply with all those regulations.

That's fair.

It makes sense that it exists.

But a car does not equal freedom.

And I try to remind myself of that.

I just left a tropical.

Tropical.

What is it like a garden?

Indoor garden.

I forgot an English name for it, but it's a huge glass house with palm trees, microclimate that you would experience in a tropical land.

And this experience made me very nostalgic.

It reminded me of all the time I spent in Southeast Asia, mostly in Indonesia, but also Malaysia and a little bit, little bit in Thailand.

These were good old days when those places were starting to explode with tourism.

But it didn't get to the point where things are now.

I think I recorded a bunch of footage while I was there and this helped me to kick start my YouTube channel that eventually got monetized and then demonetized.

It was all a really incredible series of events.

You know, that sense of travel, ability to create unique content, and undeniably great privilege of getting paid for doing things you love.

I had that briefly.

I guess it just left a taste that I want to bring back.

I often think about re establishing my YouTube channel.

But on the other hand, I feel like I'm not living life that's worth sharing with video.

I feel like I'm already doing stuff with audio.

Let's not get into this topic.

I. I'm so little away from geeking out about cameras and technology and projects.

I'm really happy with audio only at this point.

But I would like to travel.

And as I was sitting in this botanic garden, I Was imagining going again to Southeast Asia and having a stroll through that easily accessible jungle forest without paying a ticket, without all the conveniences.

But you know, driving there with a little scooter and.

Feeling into normality of the situation.

I've lived there for over a year and yeah, I was grateful every day for the baseline that this lifestyle created.

You know, the ability to, to wake up into this climate, into those views.

I was a long term tourist, I was never a local.

It was all an illusion.

But yeah, it was beautiful.

It really was.

I think at the time I was thinking of finding my home there.

But then I realized that I really just don't belong there.

I need to go to more familiar land where there are people that I can resonate with.

Well, now I live in Germany and I still don't feel that.

And I lost some of those beautiful conveniences.

And now as I'm walking through those streets of Polish charming town Gliwice, I'm asking myself, is this my place?

Is this my land?

And I really don't know.

I really don't.

I'm not under any delusion that I'm returning to Poland right now.

I'm visiting entirely new country that I know very little about.

We have things in common like family and my roots are here, but I'm not really in touch with this society or culture or pop culture in particular.

Those nuances that I find charming or silly sometimes they're quite entertaining.

And I'm navigating this space just as I did in Southeast Asia.

You know, it's kind of exotic to me.

Something that's definitely new and different and unique to this place is I can understand all the conversations.

I can understand what people are talking about.

There is no language barrier.

And it's kind of beautiful.

You know, I'm hearing those conversations and I, I get to get a.

A glimpse of what people are up to.

You know, I'm so not used to this that I'm easily getting overwhelmed by sheer amount of information that gets to my ears involuntarily.

It's.

It's a lot.

Maybe it's something I would need to get used to if I lived here.

Okay, it's gonna be short episode at this point.

I gotta go.

I have to do stuff that I will later tell you about.

I'll meet my sister shortly and we'll go for lunch.

We'll do more talking and catching up and then I'll return for another segment.

I really cannot plan anything right now.

It's.

It's kind of crazy how Unscripted those visits are.

You know, I'm here, but I'm still a guest.

I'm surrounded by people I know and places I'm unfamiliar with.

I'm strolling today on my second day of.

Of my short stay in the city of Kilivice, walking with quite empty battery on my phone, so I won't be able to record for a lot longer than this.

Honestly, I never know what's coming during those trips.

They are kind of planned, but it's really hard to stick to the plan.

Anyway, the day is just wonderful today, and I'm closing circles in different areas of the city center and just really lovely here, especially on a day like this.

Today I'll do a bit more of talking with my sister.

It always fascinates me a lot when people open up about, like, how is it like to live in this particular country?

Like, what are the hardships, what are the good things, bad things?

And I often find they're all very familiar hurdles and frustrations.

And.

I'm.

I've experienced a lot in my life and I should know better.

And somehow I always look for.

Naively I look for an idea that there is somewhere, there is a.

An ideal place to live and this place exists.

Just need to keep on looking.

But the reality is it's not.

It's.

It's kind of the same mix of good and bad things.

You know, Somehow the older I get, I'm realizing that Poland might be something I will need to face at some point.

I don't know if I.

If I've talked about it yesterday or not, but I feel like out of necessity or maybe situation in the world, I'll need to consider seriously moving back here.

And if that happens, I feel like it's a great country for anyone who earns a lot.

And that might be true about many places in the world, isn't it?

You get to be disconnected from inconvenient and ugly and unkind experiences, and you get to get the special treatment everywhere.

It's a tricky game.

On the other hand, I feel like when you have this privilege, you get sheltered from real experience.

You're maybe surrounding yourself with something fake.

You know, this moment that I'm sharing with you now, I mean, this little green square in front of possibly fancy hotel.

It looks like a decent hotel.

Hotel Silvia Gold in Gliwica.

There's this little patch of grass.

It's quite rough as far as grass growth concerned.

But I'm sipping the rest of my second coffee and, you know, I don't really indulge in much.

I'd say 70% of my happiness is now the clear sky and the coffee I'm holding and this moment of stillness.

And there isn't really much more that I would need.

Honestly, there's nothing more that I need right now.

Isn't that great?

It's a perfect little moment.

Moment in life, moment in time.

Practically unemployed since yesterday and the job center agency in Germany have already sent me a job offer that I should apply for.

It brought me quite a lot of anxiety.

It's an interesting job, an art director.

When I look deeper through the job offer, I got even more excited.

You know, all those free creative responsibilities, all of these exciting new tasks to the point where oh my gosh, am I, do I have energy for that right now.

And then I looked at the company and the company was kind of boring.

They were just making signs and vinyl stickers on cars.

It really baffled me.

Job description was indicating something really, really creative while the the company was doing something really mundane.

So strange.

I was talking to my brother in law yesterday about business, about my business venture and you know, whenever you confront yourself with those.

Ideas that are brewing in your head like new business venture or.

Yeah, I mean exactly that.

That's what I'm talking about.

When you brew it in your head, you.

It's easy to lose line of sight.

It's easy, it's really easy to fall into bias.

But when we had this conversation with him, I quickly was able to narrow down aspects that I maybe didn't really think that much about.

It's so important to talk to people, confront your imagination with reality.

Ultimately I still think quite strongly about what I came up with and I really feel like this might be a hit.

This might be a hit.

My coffee is getting cold.

Yeah, but it's still nice.

I want to also talk about a little story about my daughter.

My daughter is 7.

She's staying with my ex.

We're co parenting, you see.

I think I mentioned that before and she really wanted to come with me but I knew it was a bad idea because even though it's Easter, it's a perfect time to bring daughter over.

But she was sick for quite some time and she's also allergic and everyone here has a dog or a cat or both.

And I just didn't feel like this would be a good idea to bring her into this environment right now.

And she's still kind of recovering.

Anyway, I told her quite openly that I'm not taking her because she's not ready right now she cannot fall back sick again.

She has been sick for many weeks now.

It was a major issue for every single person involved in her well being.

So yesterday, apparently she, she was making up the story how I didn't tell her where I'm going.

And she found out only yesterday when I called or she, when she called me.

We spoke over the video and she saw my sister with me.

She got really hurt and really disappointed and really angry with me.

And I thought it was so interesting because she knew.

But then she, because she was so frustrated, she made up the story where I didn't tell her so she could blame me, so she could exhale this anger and react on that frustration.

So my ex obviously tried to support her and she took her side and she had just complaining to me about how I handled this.

But then I explained to her that it's very different from the truth.

It's not how things went.

And it was to me a very sobering realization.

How kids can manipulate the truth.

And parents and everyone evolved not because they are evil, just because they look for.

They have different priorities, they try to soothe themselves, they seek for confidence or safety and they may change reality just to meet those needs.

I found it to be fascinating.

You know, she made me, she turned me into a villain because she couldn't handle her own sorrow and frustration.

And I was thinking, how often do I do that?

You know, it's this mechanism that I'm familiar with, I think.

So I can sometimes flip things around to be in that bias for a little bit.

Now I'm an adult, so at some point I need to bring myself back into reality.

But I feel like it's a very soothing situation where you push yourself into a lie to seek comfort.

So that was interesting.

I went really for just one week.

And it's a normal time frame in which I take her with me somewhere to stay with me or I hand her over to my ex.

So it's not like I left for longer than usual, just one week away.

But just the fact I'm having a good time became a reason to be sad.

That's also quite interesting.

You know, I look at my daughter as this developing human being still unequipped with mechanisms that we need in adult life.

And whenever this shortcoming is very visible, it's.

It just fascinates me.

Me, you know.

Fascinates me how?

Even.

Let's just say that if we are adults, we're expected to have all those mechanisms they're developing through our childhood.

And if they don't, we, we end up being adults without those mechanisms because you can be an adult and you can still act childish.

And it's.

It's quite common, I would say.

So I think my role as a parent is to give her those opportunities where she can face those life principles and she can make sense out of it and she can implement those lessons in her life.

Anyway, I don't know if you are a parent or not.

I don't know.

I feel like I've lost half of my audience just now.

Maybe not, but I am thinking about parenting podcast.

Yeah, this is coming.

Maybe once I get back to Berlin I will start something up.

I have this vision of multiple podcasts and I really don't see this being a big deal because I don't post or pre produce any of my stuff.

I just record.

Right.

As an experiment, I've launched one podcast in Polish and it's just.

It's stuck.

There is no, no traffic there whatsoever.

There's one download which I think is accidental, made by someone in the US and it kind of confirms what I always thought that this audience here is so small an actual audience.

My target audience is so tiny in Poland.

It really makes me question why would I want to record in Polish?

Anyway, that's all I wanted to talk about.

I know I'm here, but I'm not really talking much about here.

Really being thrown to those different corners of my mind and I talk about random stuff, but that's what it is.

I don't really know how to call this episode but AI will come to the rescue and it will come up with a title.

I'm going now to meet my sister and I'll probably record next episode from my parents house.

Probably tomorrow.

I hope you're having good time.

Good day and everything and I will talk to you very soon.

Take care.