Bus Éireann has begun a daily Dublin-Warsaw route to cater to the State's growing Polish population. This week Carl O'Brien joins the passengers at Busáras on their two-day journey back home.
Busáras, Dublin, Wednesday, 7.55pm
As she waits in the queue with her friend for the bus to Warsaw , 27-year-old Eva Robaszkiewicz says she's the happiest she's ever been since leaving Poland two years ago.
"I'm not thinking of leaving," says Eva enthusiastically, who is working as a hotel receptionist in Dublin. "It feels more and more like a second home. I came here to experience what you might call 'the Irish dream': to live life here and earn money. People are so friendly, the taxi drivers are great, people smile a lot. I haven't met rude people. Everyone I know, they've had a very positive experience."
Marta Kus, who has been over to visit Eva for the last 10 days, says she'll think about moving. But she's happy teaching English to students in her home town, close to the German border, even if the wages are miserable.
"I know the money is good here, but I was trained as an English teacher and I enjoy teaching at Ostrow Wielkopolski [ her home town]." The young women are like many of the 40 or so Poles boarding Bus Éireann's new 42-hour route from Dublin to Warsaw, which plans to draw its business from the estimated 50,000 Polish people working in Ireland.
Talk among the group, aged mostly in their 20s and 30s, is mainly about how much money can be made here, how far it will stretch back home, and how long they plan to stay.
The coach journey, which costs around €199, is cheaper than most flights and makes a two-day journey by road more appealing than a two-hour flight. Most of the Poles are heading back for a brief holiday, some have
been visiting family or friends in Ireland, while a few have earned enough to return home and start up a business or buy a house.
The Poles arriving here are escaping a country with an unemployment rate of 18 per cent and where emigration is considered a way of life for both younger and older generations. Most are highly educated with university degrees, but are happy to work in lower-end jobs and earn wages between four and fives times greater than back home.
The queue of young people, laden with bulging rucksacks and suitcases, is a striking tableau: it's an image eerily similar to the 1980s, when thousands of the pre-Ryanair Irish generation made their way from this same building to England and Germany in search of work.
Dublin Port, Wednesday, 9.30pm
The car ferry pulls out of Dublin harbour, behind a darkening sky with strange swirls of pink and orange on the horizon. The Poles stay away from the expensive bar and canteen, preferring to eat their packed lunches of rolls and fruit.
Employers in Ireland often gasp at the work rate of Poles, making sometimes glib comparisons that one Polish worker is the equivalent of two-and-a-half Irish. But their appetite for work is undeniable and it's one of the reasons they are among the most populous nationalities working in the catering, cleaning, hospitality, construction and security industries. The reputation for hard work has also added to the stereotype of Poles as dour Eastern Europeans, hungry for overtime with little time to socialise or relax.
"It's not like that," says Marta Kus (27), a soft-spoken teacher who is returning to Poland after her 10-day visit. "Most of the Poles I met here are planning to stay for a short time, maybe one or two years. They work hard, but when they have free time they enjoy themselves. I think Poles are a lot like the Irish - they like to meet with friends and go to the pub."
The hard work ethic and thrifty nature of Poles working in Ireland can be a lonely existence, though.
"I went to a disco once while I was here," says Hubert (24), a shyly-spoken engineering student who has been working as a mechanic in Co Kilkenny. "That was it. I didn't mind much, because I didn't have time to go out a lot."
Manchester, Thursday, 3.15am
"Shoes!" laughs Paulina Golinska (19), a blonde-haired student from southern Poland, when asked what the big difference between Ireland and Poland is. "They are very, very cheap in Ireland. I bought three pairs!"
"And clothes," says her younger sister, Karolina (17), who, along with Paulina, has been working as an au pair in Cork. "They are cheap. Penney's is very good. And there are always sales on."
Apart from the odd quiet conversation, the bus makes its way quietly along the dark, empty motorways, picking up a few more passengers in Manchester and Birmingham.
"The worst thing about the journey is that you can't change your clothes. It's tiring and uncomfortable and impossible to get to sleep," says Paulina.
"But you can see parts of Europe along the way," adds Karolina, looking out the window. "Manchester looks beautiful. I'd like to come back and see it sometime."
Victoria Coach Station, London, Thursday, 9.35am
Jozef Swiellak, wearing a cheap patterned jumper and black slip-on shoes, is sucking on the remnants of a cigarette. He has been working in Sligo as a welder for the last year. He's now making his way to his home town, near Krakow, for a two-week holiday and to see his wife.
"Do you ever feel homesick?" I ask him.
He shrugs his shoulders. "Yes, sometimes. A little."
"And your wife. It must be difficult being away for up to a year at a time?"
Again, he gives a non-committal shrug of his shoulders.
"And how long have you been married?"
"Twelve years," he says, grimly, as his two friends burst into laughter beside him.
Victoria Coach Station, London, Thursday, 11am
A Polish man with bulging arms, wearing a green vest, is hugging his young girlfriend for what seems like an eternity. As she boards the departing bus, he stays at the side of the road for a while, trying to catch a final glimpse of her.
The girl opens up a small letter, written in an untidy scrawl with words crossed out and rewritten. When she finishes reading, she stands up in the bus, trying to find her boyfriend amid the throngs of people in the station. She can't find him.
When she re-takes her seat, she hugs a stuffed tiger between her arms and re-reads the creased letter at least a dozen times as the bus makes its way towards Dover.
Near Eindhoven, The Netherlands, Thursday, 3.30pm
The television aboard the bus is blaring out an endless series of low-budget Polish films. A comedy draws howls of laughter from the passengers who are still awake, as the coach trundles across the flatlands of Belgium and The Netherlands.
For the workers responsible for staffing the route, life on a 42-hour bus route can be difficult enough at the best of times. To make matters worse, there are regular problems with drunken passengers.
"It can get difficult," says one. "They get loud, start shouting, and then we have to threaten to call the police. It happens quite a lot, unfortunately, but then you can have a lovely group who are polite and say 'please' and 'thank you'."
Outside Hannover, Germany, Thursday 7.15pm
Journeys to Ireland in search of work aren't always successful. Karolina (21), a quiet and hesitant student from outside Warsaw, arrived in the country with two other friends five weeks ago.
The group had nothing, except for some small savings and the address of a friend. After a few weeks looking for jobs, their money ran out and they had no choice except to return home.
"We heard from our friends that it was easy to get a job in Dublin," she says. "But there were Polish everywhere! On the streets, in the shops. My friends couldn't find anything."
Poznan, Poland, Friday, 7.30am
Lidia Maria (26) is unloading her baggage from the bus at Poznan bus station with mixed feelings. She has just returned from a three-month stint picking strawberries on a farm in southern England with about 300 other Poles, Slovaks and Lithuanians.
While she has earned enough to live for almost a year, she says, she is worried about the lack of work in her home town of Bydgoszcz, an industrial town where unemployment is high.
"I am trained as a teacher and qualified last year," says Lidia, rubbing her tired eyes. "But I still haven't had a chance to work as a teacher. There is nothing available."
Lodz, Poland. Friday, 10.45am
"It's always grey here," says Marcin Rutkowski (21), as the bus pulls into the dreary industrial city of Lodz, in the centre of Poland. He is travelling with his mother, Toenia (49), brother Kamil (19) and sister Krystyna (18). They left Poland well over a decade ago and now live in Canada.
"We're selling some property here. We have a house here and over in Bialystok, but we figure there's no future here," says Marcin, in a drawl that sounds half-Canadian, half-Polish. "You have kids coming out of high school and university who end up selling kebabs. It's a joke. People say things will get better, but I can't see anything happening in the next 20 years. The government is a joke too."
His mother says that even though she has many friends at home in Poland, she is not enthusiastic about returning.
"There are too many bad memories," she says, in broken English.
The family disappears into a taxi, which takes them down a grubby street and out towards the edge of the sprawling city.
Warsaw, Poland, Friday, 1.35pm
As the 42-hour journey draws to a close, Michael Nawacki (20) is in upbeat mood. He has spent a few months in London working on building sites during the week and in a pub in Acton on weekends. After a frenetic, work-filled period, he's glad to be returning home.
"What I'm really looking forward to is some mielone schabowy [ fried pork] and pluki ziemmiac [ fried potatoes]. The food in England isn't good. I ate sandwiches all the time. I didn't have time to eat anything else," he says.
The 20-year-old says his earnings should tide him over the coming months as he continues studying for a degree in European affairs at a university in Warsaw, although he'll need
a part-time job as well to make ends meet. While times have been tough in the past, he's also upbeat about the future.
"Look at the houses, the office blocks and the roads," he says, pointing about him. "Things have changed a lot. People are getting richer. There is more of everything."
The bus passes a giant Ikea store on the fringes of the city, while a gigantic steel-and-glass office tower is being constructed in a business park a little further down the road.
Not everything has changed. The bus station, in the southwest of the city, is as you'd imagine an eastern European bus station to be: a grimy concrete building straight out of the brutalist school of architecture.
"There is a lot of change happening around us," says Michael. "Ireland, I think, is an example for Poland. And Spain too, which has a similar population to ours.
"They show how there can be very quick and very successful changes, if it is done correctly."