Polish holiday

Back from Poland from a twelve day spiritual and nature holiday. The trip home took 28 hours, though we did leave early to get a six hour stopover in Warsaw. We were up in the north eastern corner of the country, a couple of hours drive away from the Lithuanian and Byelorussian borders, not that we had a car. There were storks everywhere, almost every house had a nest close by. We had sighting of cranes, spotted eagles, elk (moose?), beaver (the aquatic variety), and shooting stars. There was a day’s kayaking, an afternoon’s pottery, a dawn walk in which we sacrificed ourselves to mosquitoes to get a sighting of moose (elk?),their droppings and the traces of wild boar. Lots of yoga and massage sessions – what better holiday for a group of stressed out urbanites?
I must confess I don’t take easily to groups or group holidays. It is probably a throwback to being an only child and being bullied at school and in the boy scouts. I find group dynamics particularly difficult to deal with, even in the most “democratic” groups, with sharing sessions, there are complex dynamics going on – dynamics that I find it difficult to deal with. But Arlette was so aglow with the idea of doing this for our holiday that I knew that I would struggle to come up with a better idea and besides I had never been to Poland. For me the dynamics were complicated by the fact that it was (apart from me) a completely native Dutch speaking group which raised issues that I hope to write more about later. It placed me in the position of being an outsider. Dutch peoples’ English ranges from the fluent to the passable. Yet when together around the table and wanting to express themselves comfortably they revert to Dutch. This raises the dilemma for an outsider of not wanting to insist that people speak English (otherwise how am I going to learn Dutch?) but also of missing key elements of a conversation. I can mostly follow a yoga class, or travel instructions in Dutch, but when people start discussing the finer points about how or why something should be done (or not) or how they are feeling today then I tend to lose the plot and – Catch 22- these are precisely the points when Dutch people revert to their native language. So the holiday also turned into a very intensive (and mostly welcome) Dutch course.
But the most significant thing that happened on the holiday was that Arlette, who has been my lover, companion and friend over the past two and half years, and I decided to split up. It was not totally unexpected. We had been aware that the differences between us were becoming harder to reconcile. Yet that didn’t mean that there weren’t a lot of tears. I cried a lot in the privacy of my room, and could not say anything on the final drive home from the railway station. What wanted to say was thank you for a year or so of magic and wonder and for another year or so of being a support for me in getting my feet on the ground in the NL. (Brushing away tears at this point). They say opposites attract and I regarded it as real challenge to overcome superficial differences –like our tastes in music or film or TV- but the deeper differences in how we plan (or not) and approach life were harder to overcome. I’ve learnt a lot from you and you’ve helped me grow - I hope that you feel the same.
For now its back its singlesville. Hope I (we) am (are) strong enough to deal with this positively. Thank you also to all the other group members for being sympathetic to my limited Dutch language skills and our emotional traumas. I hope that neither disturbed your holiday too much. The benefit for me is that I WILL do group holidays again – the experience of getting to meet people and really seeing their barriers break down and getting closer to them, understanding who they are and how they deal with their own lives and realities is enormous: though for a holiday I might choose mixed language (and culture) groups next time!