Portrait by Nino Bektashashvili
Parallel Story #11
Maria & Tea
USA & Slovenia
This parallel story was put forward by APIS Institute (Slovenia) for Movement
Maria Jan is an American woman with Slovenian and Macedonian roots. She grew up in New York, and after high school she continued her studies in London, where she settled as a musician (pianist). In 2018 she met her life partner who was from Slovenia. Love brought her back to her roots, to Slovenia, where she lives with her husband and two children. Tea is a dancer who was born and raised in Slovenia. She used to travel a lot, but now she lives in London with her Nigerian partner and two daughters. Tea's father also followed his love abroad. He came to Slovenia from Bosnia to be with Tea's mother and have a family.
Maria’s Story
Maria Jan grew up in New York, Long Island, where she had a wonderful childhood. Her experience of America is a feeling of an open place where everyone can be accepted. “It gives you a feeling of bigness; and it’s really in the culture that you can achieve anything if you work hard, no matter where you come from”. She understands that not everyone might have this feeling, but she does, because she grew up with it. In her opinion this very aspect of American culture is wonderful.
In New York, her family was perceived as Eastern European. Her mother is half Macedonian with Jewish heritage, and her maternal grandfather was Slovenian. Culturally, her family was not Slovene. When she was younger, they came to Slovenia to holiday and there is a picture of her from Kranjska Gora when she was about seven years old. Later they stopped coming, as it was much easier to go on a holiday somewhere around New York.
Going to school was a defining moment for her. She finished high school in New York, but for college, she decided to go to Europe. England was an obvious choice because of the language. She moved to London when she was 17 years old and was one of the youngest at the College. She obtained an undergrad degree, got a job and lived in London. Maria Jan never went back to New York to live full time. She is not only a New Yorker and US citizen, but also British. Culturally she considers herself British.
Maria Jan was very happy in London as an independent person who enjoyed museums and concerts and her social life but once she had children things changed completely. London, for her, as one of the nicest cities, quickly became one of the most complicated and expensive places to live.
Maria Jan met Igor, her partner, when she was on holiday in Slovenia with her mother. After some time of dating, each of them in their own country, he was about to join her in the UK, when they discovered that his job change would be a huge step back in his career, so it made more sense that she joined him in Slovenia. This was also something that they both wished for their family. They wanted their children to grow up in a clean and safe country. And as Slovenia is one of the safest countries in Europe, the new change seemed very appealing to them. She arrived in Slovenia in 2018.
Maria believed London would be a harsher environment for families. Maternity leave there is not a year like it is in Slovenia and lots of people rely on grandparents for childcare. In Slovenia, Maria Jan and Igor are on their own, but they manage even without it pretty well. In England, it would be different. They would have had to have an au-pair, who was supposed to live with them.
In Slovenia, Maria Jan feels at home. People are supportive and the natural landscape is amazing. Slovenians speak English so well that she feels she almost doesn’t need to learn Slovene. The conditions for kids are fantastic, parks are so close; kids are all around… In London, it was a 30 minutes' walk to the park/playground. You are tired when you get there!
About her immigration experience to Slovenia, Maria can’t say that much yet. For half of the time that she’s been in Slovenia she was pregnant, and the other half she was, like everyone else, living through a global pandemic. However, when she arrived in Slovenia first she had quite a cultural shock. She is perceived as a foreigner and that is how she feels herself as well. She lives in the centre of Ljubljana with many other foreigners around. She formed a lovely international mummy circle and this is now a part of her new identity. Being a mum is the most important thing to her.
Maria Jan’s first identity is as a New Yorker with eastern European roots, but later she adopted a new identity as a Londoner. She considers herself British; her adult life began in Britain, and for most of her life she was British. For her, her life began when she became more independent and that was in Britain. Now, in Slovenia, expats see her as culturally British with a slight American accent. She feels a Yugoslav identity as well, which might sound strange today, but because her mother is half Macedonian/Slovene, this is an important part of her heritage and many identities she carries. She feels all those identities are of great importance to her.
In her opinion the world nowadays is more accessible especially in the EU. Some people can choose their identity and this is exactly what she did. She chose to come to Slovenia for her children, that they can have a better childhood.
Maria Jan thinks that Slovene women are professional, hardworking and very family-oriented. She finds many similarities with British women. Being a mother changed her perspective on humanity. Before she was free, she went wherever she wanted to go, now her time is mostly dedicated to her children. As a musician, her inspirations are music and art in general. Her job also inspires her. During the pandemic, she started teaching at a school in Austria where she teaches piano to some thirty students. In her family, you may not find musicians, but they are all very supportive of education.
Tea’s Story
As a child growing up in Slovenia, Tea liked to be the centre of attention. She will never forget the day she started to dance and her teacher recognized her talent. She got a chance to join the group she was dancing with for 15 years. Dance, music, and traveling are her red thread and inspiration. When she dances, she transforms into another person. On the stage, she forgets everything around her; she can be anything she wants to be.
Tea always had a sense of curiosity about her, a trait that brought her to many countries and different adventures, and finally to interracial marriage. She loves exploring new cultures, meeting local people, talking and hanging around with them, seeing how they live, how they think, and what they do. Her perspective on humanity changed through traveling and life abroad. What counts for her, is being a human. She saw humanity wherever she went and traveling changed and widened her perception more than her own personal experience of migration.
Tea met her present partner in London in 2014. Having gone through a divorce the year before, she was planning just to enjoy life, to breathe, and be on her own for a while… but as soon as she closed one door, new doors opened. On the last day of a 4-day trip to London, Tea was wandering the Tate Gallery when she met someone. They were both enjoying the Picasso exhibition. Having experienced long distance relationships before, she was hesitant to pursue anything with him, but as he was very persistent she gave him a chance. After a little more than a year together, she moved to London permanently to be with him. Four months later she got a job, and very soon after, two kids came along, one after another.
Tea and her partner are both passionate travellers and dancers. Even though her partner came to Europe very young, there are still huge cultural differences between them and sometimes, as she says, you have to swallow your ego to be able to find a common solution.
She believes she was always meant to live abroad but as a child, she could have never imagined ending up in the UK. In her family, her father was the first who migrated from Bosnia to Slovenia, and like Tea, he did it for love. Tea was 35 when she migrated and in her opinion it is much harder to move to another country in your thirties as you already know exactly what you want and that makes adjusting so difficult. While she is trying to adopt as much as possible, she says that she is a grown-up person and she feels she will never become British.
Personally, Tea doesn’t feel as though she has had any negative experiences as an immigrant. She was working for just six months when she gave birth and then a pandemic happened which meant, like everyone, she was confined to her own home. She couldn’t socialize much. In general, she thinks people are good and open-minded, she has never got negative comments about her background or how she speaks and dresses. As an emigrant, returning home doesn’t give her the complete feeling of ‘home’ anymore. It bothers her the way people think in Slovenia. In her opinion, she feels that they are stuck in their patterns. In London, she doesn’t feel like this. Otherwise, she loves Slovenia and she misses it a lot. She would love to go back permanently, but she knows it would be really hard for her partner to find a proper job, to learn the language, and to arrange all the bureaucracy that makes Slovenia so much more complicated than the UK. Migration changed her in a way that she appreciates her own country more than she used to. Time that she spends with her friends and family now feel very precious and much appreciated. She wants her daughters to visit their grandparents as often as possible. At this preschool age, she feels Slovenia is a much better environment for raising kids than the UK. Despite having lived in London for more than 5 years, she doesn’t feel at home there. She misses her family, friends, nature, air, food… She misses four seasons and hot sunny summers as she remembers them from home.
She thinks in EU countries women are more and more emancipated and differences are not that big. Though she is more in the expats and international community, she thinks British women could learn from Slovenian women how to prepare a proper meal, which is not just bought ready and frozen in the supermarket. In her opinion, Slovenians are active people and there are many nature lovers and eco-friendly-oriented people among them.
Her life is definitely what she always wanted to have. She is proud of herself and she would never change anything. In five years, she mentioned, we might find her back in Slovenia. She feels very sorry that her parents can’t follow her daughters’ growth on a daily basis. Right now, family takes up much of her time, but she believes in five years things will be different for her and she is looking forward to having more time for herself. In any case, her home will always be the people she loves, her family, and her friends in Slovenia and the UK.
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