They joined a ‘foreign’ association
A Turk walks into a Polish club
Door Jacques Malherbe
By Jacques Malherbe
Jacques Malherbe
Platefuls of stuffed pierogi dumplings are spread out on tables around the small hall. A circle of dancers has formed and they move around the room, which is decorated with intricate Slavic hangings. There are women in colourful headscarves, one carrying a tall statue of a white stork, a symbol of Poland. Many others are dressed in costumes representing centuries of Polish folklore. A chimney sweep, dressed in all black with a bowler hat, dabs soot on the faces of passersby. Priests dressed in black robes with wooden crosses dance energetically with old maids in kitschy, patterned outfits.
At first glance you’d think this traditional celebration for Zapusty, or Polish carnival, is taking place in Warsaw or Krakow. However, on closer inspection you can hear a lot of English being spoken between the up-tempo, violin-heavy Polish folk music. Stepping outside of the room you would find yourself in Groningen rather than Eastern Europe. And speaking to the attendees, you would be struck by their cosmopolitan backgrounds, with roots in countries across the world.
Diverse membership
Groningen is home to more than a dozen student associations which centre around a particular country or culture. However, the members of those organisations are more diverse than you’d think. The Polish Student Association of Groningen (PSAG), for example, estimates that approximately 15 percent of their 150 members are non-Polish.
It was a strange and fun experience to be the first outsider
Mustafa Yildiz, a Turkish student of international relations, has been a committed member of the Polish association since he spotted a flyer in the Harmonie building advertising an event. He can’t even remember why he was drawn by the announcement. ‘It just seemed like fun’, he says now.
As soon as he arrived, he was hooked. ‘It was a strange and fun experience to be the first outsider’, he recounts. ‘I was the only one who had no cultural or other ties to Poland.’
The Polish students have welcomed him with open arms. And ever since that day, more non-Polish students have been trickling in. ‘Being at a PSAG event is gezellig, as the Dutch say’, he explains. ‘You feel welcomed into the culture. It’s like being in the Netherlands and in Poland at the same time.’
Frisian
For British Emma Smith, the first encounter with her student association was less random. She grew up in the UK, but her mother came from Fryslân and she was actively searching for a way to connect with her mother’s culture. ‘Growing up, I felt something was missing’, she says.
So when she joined Bernlef, when she started studying multilingualism eight years ago, Frisian culture was completely alien to her. ‘I knew about the Alvestêdetocht ice-skating competition and about fierljeppen, Frisian pole vaulting, but not about the everyday culture.’
Her mother had tried to teach her the Frisian language – even when she and her family still lived in the UK. ‘But as a teenager, I had this thing where I didn’t want to speak Frisian anymore’, she remembers. ‘I think that hurt my mum a lot.’
Identity crisis
That also meant that Smith herself experienced an identity crisis when she moved to Groningen. When she’d try to speak to people in her broken Dutch, they would quickly switch to English. ‘They wouldn’t even let me try. And I was like: well, I guess I’m not really Dutch, even though I had always thought of myself as English and Dutch.’
A lot of people assume we’re an exclusive bunch
When she joined Bernlef, Smith was apprehensive about being accepted. She quickly felt right at home, though. ‘Everyone was very excited’, she says. ‘People would be patient and let me work through what I was trying to say in Frisian instead of switching to English. It was a very positive experience.’
For Smith, who now speaks both Frisian and Dutch fluently, Bernlef was the route into feeling at home in her bi-cultural identity. ‘A lot of people assume we’re an exclusive bunch, that we only want Frisians or people who speak Frisian to come here. But that’s absolutely not the case’, she says. ‘There are a lot of people similar to me who reclaim the language and suddenly feel more comfortable speaking it.’
Emigration
Other students feel a cultural link that transcends centuries. Manuel Portillo is a computer science student who was born and raised in northern Mexico, but his great-grandmother emigrated there from Lithuania. He tried to reconnect to his heritage through the Baltic Association.
‘At first, I was a bit afraid and awkward about joining’, he recalls. ‘But I felt it was a great way to keep cultural practices as a group.’
For them it’s a Lithuanian coming home
The Baltics have a long history of emigration, and proved welcoming to him, too. ‘For them it’s a Lithuanian coming home, rather than a person trying to be a Lithuanian’, he says. For him, it’s a way to pay tribute to his ancestors. ‘In a sense, coming here to Europe is the same trip my great-grandmother made, but backwards.’
Fine line
Cultural associations find themselves treading a fine line between providing spaces for students to feel a piece of their home in a foreign country and simultaneously being open to outsiders. Smith, who spent a year on Bernlef’s board, thinks attitude is most important in navigating the situation. ‘At Bernlef, we talk about being Frisian and the language’, she admits. ‘But that’s just something that initially brought us together.’
Everyone is welcome if they’re open to hearing the Frisian language around them, even if they don’t speak it themselves, she says. ‘There are plenty of members who don’t feel comfortable speaking Frisian.’
For Mustafa, taking part in Polish cultural events is as much about embracing the world in general as it is about Poland in particular. ‘The world is bigger than the little village that we grew up in’, he says. There is also the chance to contribute positively to Polish people’s knowledge of their own culture. ‘Where I grew up in Istanbul there is actually a Polish neighbourhood. Not many people knew about that, so it was a fun cultural exchange.’
To Klaudia Zalewska, board member of PSAG, cultural openness has been a learning curve about her own culture. ‘We grew up in Poland, so we see some things only in one set way. These students come in with a completely different perspective. We learn a lot about our own events, our own celebrations, through their eyes.’