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given country and region, as well as the aims and
course of the visit. After the presentation, there is
of course an open discussion, talking about personal
impressions and a multitude of questions
from other senior members. An opportunity to
learn about ‘hands-on’ experiences from those
who have been abroad is extremely important not
only for those who are getting prepared for the
next trip.
Those meetings have made it evident that senior
citizens’ attitudes towards European integration,
and not only of those who directly participated
in the project, have changed with time. At the
beginning of international cooperation of such
organisations as ours, they were utterly different
from these observed at the moment of Poland
joining the European Union. This transformation
is best illustrated by what three participants of the
trips have said, which in a way summarises each
year of project implementation.
They are just like us! - noted Maryla (67) after
an international meeting, which we organised in
Kraków during the first year of the project. We
have to remember that elderly people belong to
the generation that did not have any chance to
travel abroad and among whom the knowledge
of foreign languages or a reliable knowledge of
what was going on in other countries of Europe,
particularly in the west, was quite limited. The political
transformation and the opening of the borders
did not change a great deal in the case of this
generation. In fact, an average Pole could travel
freely across Europe and the world, but he did
not have the money to do that and did not know
how to organise a trip - lack of knowledge of a
western language (Russian is not enough) and a
complete lack of experience in travelling around
the world held back the middle-aged and older
generations of Poles from travelling abroad. And
where knowledge is scarce, preconceptions and
fears are formulated. And so from the snatches of
information, a picture of a western pensioner was
formed: well-off, self-confident, going abroad on
holiday, not too much engaged in the life of family
and grandchildren - a person who greatly differs
from a Polish senior citizen. And thanks to face to
face meetings, one could learn that peers from
Denmark or Finland also have a backache and
problems with grandchildren and sometimes even
with paying their electricity bills, and although
now they cope with computers quite well, at the
beginning they were as frightened as us. It simply
turned out that we share much more common
features than those differentiating ones. Europe
ceased to be an unfamiliar and scary place, and
senior citizens started to look ahead with more
curiosity and courage.
In the second year of the project, after a visit to
Finland, where we stayed in a beautiful hotel and
were received at banquets by city’s authorities, I
heard from Zofia (70): I did not think I would live to
see this moment! And again we have to remember
that in the majority of cases elderly people live
with the strong belief that they are not important
any more, that it is not worth doing anything for
them and that everything is already past them.
Additionally, their modest financial resources, sufficient
only to make ends meet, make them stick
firmly to their convictions. How often it was that
at the beginning of our activity, while signing up
for an IT course, we heard: well, perhaps I am not
worth attending the course, maybe it will be more
useful for someone younger. Unfortunately, it
happens so that the family and everybody around
us confirm this opinion – after all, everything is
for the young. And suddenly such a person, first,
goes abroad, which in itself is already a considerable
social event, especially in the eyes of the fam-
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