When I woke up on our first morning after moving to Poland and looked outside our apartment in Białowieża, I think we’d already fallen a little bit in love with the place.

That wasn’t something either of us had expected.

We’d arrived the night before after flying into Warsaw and then travelling for around three hours to Białowieża, a small village in eastern Poland right next to the Belarusian border.

It was dark by the time we arrived, so we couldn’t really see much of where we were going. We were picked up at the airport by two of Vanesa’s colleagues, and during the drive we chatted about Białowieża, the forest and what life was like here.

We even spotted wildlife along the way, including martens crossing the road.

Eventually, we arrived at the apartment that had been arranged for us. Vanesa’s professor was there to meet us and show us around.

And the apartment was beautiful.

After some of our experiences over the previous year, I don’t think either of us had really known what to expect. The welcome we received immediately made us feel that perhaps this next chapter was going to be different.

Then we woke up the following morning.

We could finally see where we’d landed.

The forest. The quiet. The wildlife. The space.

It felt completely different from where we’d been just a few months earlier.

And strangely enough, Poland hadn’t really been part of the plan at all.

The Amazon was supposed to be home

If you’ve read some of my previous posts, you’ll know that in 2025 we moved to Tefé in Brazil, right in the middle of the Amazon.

The original plan was to stay for around twelve months.

On paper, it sounded incredible.

Living in the Amazon is one of those things you imagine will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Vanesa’s work took us there, and we were both genuinely excited about the opportunity.

Unfortunately, the reality of living in Tefé was very different from what we’d imagined.

You might expect a relatively isolated town in the middle of the Amazon to be quiet.

It wasn’t.

Motorbikes seemed to be going past almost 24 hours a day. There were enormous advertising trucks with speakers on the back that would park in the road blasting out music and adverts.

Sometimes the noise reached the point where it was difficult to think, never mind work.

There were also practical problems.

Our internet connection wasn’t reliable, particularly when the weather was bad, and we regularly had problems with the electricity. For somebody trying to run a business online and work with clients thousands of miles away, that became incredibly frustrating.

More importantly, we never really settled.

When we went out, we often felt on edge. We didn’t feel particularly comfortable being outside later in the day, and eventually we realised that neither of us was happy.

That’s not to say the Amazon itself wasn’t incredible.

It was.

We had experiences there that I’ll probably never have again, and I’m glad we went.

But there’s a big difference between visiting somewhere and trying to build an everyday life there.

Eventually, Vanesa made the decision that it just wasn’t right for us, and we decided to leave.

It was disappointing.

We’d travelled all that way expecting the Amazon to become home for the next year, and just a few months later we were packing everything again.

Back to Bolivia

We left Brazil in November 2025 and returned to Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia, where Vanesa has a house.

And once again, we weren’t completely sure what was going to happen next.

Vanesa started looking for new research positions, and eventually two interesting possibilities appeared.

One was in Poland.

The other was in India.

By the time the opportunity in India came along, Vanesa had already accepted a two-year position in Poland.

So Poland it was.

I can’t pretend we’d spent years dreaming about moving to Poland.

We hadn’t.

I knew quite a few Polish people from living and working in the UK, and my experiences with them had always been really positive. But that was about the extent of my knowledge.

After our experience in Brazil, though, we were ready for something different.

And somewhere along the way, Poland became the next plan.

An unexpected month back in Mumbles

Before Poland, life threw another unexpected event into the mix.

My auntie passed away, so in February 2026 we travelled back to Mumbles for a month for her funeral.

It obviously wasn’t the reason we’d wanted to return home, but it gave us the opportunity to spend some time with family, check on the house and catch up with everything back in Wales.

After being away for so long, it was strange being back.

There were all the familiar things I’d missed. The sea, the coastal walks, the countryside and, most importantly, my family.

My children are adults now and have their own lives, but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss them.

At the end of February, we packed our bags again and flew back to Santa Cruz.

A few weeks later, we were packing them yet again.

This time for Europe.

Moving to Poland

We flew from Santa Cruz to Warsaw before making that nighttime journey across Poland to Białowieża.

And within a remarkably short period, something just clicked.

One of the biggest adjustments for me has been the people.

Growing up in Wales, I’m used to speaking to strangers.

You walk down the road and say good morning. Somebody walks past with a dog and you say hello. If somebody doesn’t acknowledge you, you almost wonder what you’ve done to offend them.

Poland, or at least our little corner of it, initially felt different.

People can seem more reserved.

They won’t necessarily say hello first.

But I’ve discovered something interesting.

Say hello to them, and they’ll usually say hello straight back.

Make an effort with a few words of Polish, and the reaction can completely change.

Polish is incredibly difficult to learn, and I’m certainly not going to claim I can speak it. But we’ve picked up words and phrases that we use every day, and we’ve found that simply making the effort makes an enormous difference.

Our experience with people here has been incredibly positive.

Vanesa’s professor in particular has been fantastic. He’s helped us with practical things, taken us places when we’ve needed help with appointments and vaccinations, invited us to his home for lunch and introduced us to his family.

After arriving somewhere knowing virtually nobody, those things matter.

Getting used to feeling safe again

Another difference has been how relaxed we feel here.

In Tefé, rightly or wrongly, we rarely felt completely relaxed when we were outside.

Here, the contrast has been remarkable.

People leave bicycles outside without locking them. And I’m not talking about old bikes that nobody would want to steal. Some of them are very good bikes.

People walk around without seeming particularly concerned about what’s happening around them.

It took me a while to notice how much I’d changed too.

That feeling of constantly being aware of your surroundings had gradually disappeared.

I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed simply feeling relaxed.

Life beside the forest

Then there’s Białowieża itself.

We’d been warned about the Polish winters, but we arrived during beautiful weather.

And when we woke up that first morning and properly saw the forest around us, I think that was the moment we started falling for the place.

Nature has always been important to me.

For years, I assumed one of the things I loved most about living in Mumbles was being beside the sea.

And I do love the sea. I still miss it.

But living here has made me realise that perhaps what I really need is to feel close to nature.

Mumbles gives me that.

There’s the coastline, woodland, beaches, walking routes and the hills and mountains a short distance away.

Białowieża gives me something similar, but in a completely different way.

Here, it’s the forest.

And there’s a lot of it.

Recently, I bought myself a bike, which has opened up even more of the area. There are trails everywhere, and I can disappear into the forest for a ride whenever I want.

It’s brilliant for keeping fit, but it’s also become thinking time.

I can get away from the computer, ride through the woods and let ideas bounce around in my head.

Quite a few business ideas have probably been born somewhere along those trails.

Work feels possible again

Moving to Poland has also made an enormous difference to my work.

This probably sounds incredibly boring compared with living next to an ancient forest, but we have extremely fast and reliable broadband.

And after months of struggling with unreliable internet and electricity in Brazil, it’s wonderful.

I can actually work without constantly wondering whether the connection is about to disappear.

When we first arrived, I made another decision too.

For around three months, I deliberately stopped taking on new client projects.

I’d spent more than a year talking about developing some of my own ideas but never seemed to have enough time to properly do it.

So I gave myself some.

I’ve been working on my own projects, particularly building the community and developing things I’ve wanted to create for a long time.

I’ve recently started taking on client work again, and that’s building up nicely too.

For the first time in quite a while, I’ve found a balance that seems to work.

I can do client work, build my own projects and still have a life outside the laptop.

I’m not sure I’ve always been particularly good at that last bit.

Five months later

We’ve now been in Poland for nearly five months.

And it has exceeded almost every expectation we had.

Vanesa works at the institute about five minutes’ walk from our apartment. She can even come home for lunch every day.

At weekends, we explore.

We’ve been back to Warsaw for a long weekend, but there’s still an enormous amount of Poland we want to see.

People here sometimes tell us that not much happens in Białowieża.

Perhaps they’re right.

But I’m increasingly convinced that I don’t need that much to happen.

Give me somewhere beautiful to walk or cycle, good internet, interesting work, nice people and somewhere to get a decent coffee, and I’m surprisingly easy to please.

Most importantly, this place already feels like home.

Vanesa’s position is for two years, although we’re already several months into that now.

And we’ve started having conversations neither of us expected to have so soon.

What happens when the two years are up?

Because at the moment, neither of us particularly wants to leave.

Things rarely go according to plan

When I left Mumbles in January 2025, I genuinely had no idea what the next couple of years would look like. Moving to Poland certainly wasn’t part of the plan.

There was Bolivia.

Then Brazil.

The Amazon was supposed to be home for a year.

It wasn’t.

We went back to Bolivia.

Then unexpectedly back to Wales.

Then Bolivia again.

And somehow, a couple of months later, we found ourselves living beside a forest in eastern Poland.

If you’d shown me this version of my life when I first packed my bags, I wouldn’t have believed you.

But perhaps that’s one of the biggest things I’ve learned over the last eighteen months.

Making plans is useful.

Getting too attached to them isn’t.

We’ve had to change direction several times. Sometimes because an opportunity appeared and sometimes because something simply wasn’t working.

I’m a strong believer that things happen for a reason, although sometimes you don’t see that reason until much later.

Leaving the Amazon felt like something had gone wrong.

Looking out of the window here in Białowieża, I’m not so sure anymore.

Perhaps the plan didn’t fail.

Perhaps it just changed.

And sometimes going a little off-piste turns out to be exactly what you needed.