Hey all,

Just found this forum and thought i might try and assuage myself that my train trip to szczecin tonight will not be in vain.

I was born in poland in the mid 70s to polish parents with at least 2 generations of poles going back. We left in '82 and moved to australia. We then came back here in '89 for a year, and I attended school. That trip I traveled on a polish passport (konsularny), after which we returned to australia where I have lived since then. I've been here a couple of times but only for short trips on my australian passport.

I have now been here for a couple of months and kind of like the place and would like to stay a bit longer, so I am trying to get my polish passport sorted. I have had some conversations over the phone with various local authorities and to my understanding it's as simple as walking into szczecin urzd wojewodzki (my place of birth), asking for a copy of my birth certificate, for which I only need photo id, like my current australian passport, and then going next door to start the process of verifying/reclaiming my citizenship. As far as I know, I have never renounced it. I did take australian citizenship, but from what ive read, both countries recognise, or at least allow dual citizenship.

Considering I currently have no polish documents, what sort of hurdles am i likely to face and how long is it likely to be till I have my polish passport ? I know I am at least somewhere in the system because the polsih embasy in australia knows of me, but couldnt simply reissue me a passport because my last one expired 12 years ago, and I had to fill out a bit of an essay of a questionaire and wait 3 months. Now that I've had some experience with polish beauracracy, that might not have been so terrible. Also, I believe I came up on some local database when I enquired about a PESEL, but I obviously didnt have one.


Any advice greatly appreciated

Thanks!