Poland has changed beyond recognition – and so has its place in Europe's pecking order | Anna Gromada

Since 1989 my family has gone from farm labourers to high achievers. Something similar has happened to my country

When the iron curtain was swept away on that miraculous night of 9 November 1989, it exposed some of the deepest differences between geographical neighbours the world has ever recorded. The 13:1 GDP per capita gap between Poland and soon-to-be united Germany was twice that between the US and Mexico.

That same night, my pregnant mother and her brothers were workers in the shadow economy on an eco-farm near Frankfurt, helping to meet the needs of a newly minted class of environmentally aware Germans. My family admired that country where you never got lost on a highway". People in Germany drove immaculately clean cars and manual labourers could play Stille Nacht on several instruments - which they did at the farm for Christmas 1989 - leading my mother to marvel at an education system that could so universally equip people not just with marketable skills but also with an ingrained sense of beauty.

Anna Gromada is a social scientist and co-founder of the Warsaw-based Kalecki Foundation