For us, curiosity has never been a passive interest or a weekend hobby. It's the most active, demanding, and ultimately rewarding force in our lives. It’s the compass we've used to navigate continents, careers, cultures, and the very foundation of our relationship. On Way Storytellers wasn't born from a business plan; it was born from the realization that this quiet, persistent practice of curious engagement is the source of everything meaningful we've built.

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It is the living proof of our core belief: curiosity isn't just about what you want to know; it's about who you are willing to become.

The spark: choosing curiosity over comfort

Our story didn't start with a shared travel plan, but with a shared curiosity that defied the comfort of the familiar. It began on a dating app during an Erasmus exchange – a Turkish student new to Poland, a Polish student intrigued by a world beyond her own. The "comfortable bubble," the path of least resistance, would have been to remain in our respective cultural circles.

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Instead, we chose the train ride between Lublin and Warsaw. We chose the uncertainty. That initial spark – "I wonder what their world is like?" – was an act of rebellion against the easy and the known. It was the first time we chose an expansive, curious question over a safe, simple answer, a pattern that would come to define our "On Way."

The deep dive: integration over escape

The travel industry often sells escapism as the ultimate prize. But for us, our first and most profound "deep dive" happened not on an exotic holiday, but during a global lockdown, within the four walls of a Warsaw apartment. It wasn't about exploring a city, but about the slow, often messy, practice of exploring each other's worlds.

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This taught us a foundational truth: genuine cultural understanding is built not on sightseeing, but on the daily act of integration. Our subsequent life together – navigating long-distance between Poland and Turkey, and eventually building a "third culture" home as expats in Ireland – has been a continuous reinforcement of this principle. The richest connections are found not in escaping our realities, but in intentionally weaving them together.

The obstacles: resilience through inquiry

Our journey hasn't been a polished highlight reel. It has been shaped by bureaucratic hurdles and visa refusals that tried to tell us our connection was "too complicated." The easy path would have been to accept this flattened narrative.

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Instead, our curiosity fueled resilience. We had to ask, "How else can this be done? What is the other way?" This forced us to engage with complex systems and refuse a simple "no" as the final answer. We learned that the most meaningful things in life often require navigating complexity, not avoiding it. Our commitment to finding a way through is the same commitment we now bring to unpacking the layered histories we share in our stories.

The synthesis: turning corporate skills into creative fuel

Society often encourages us to silo our lives: "corporate" skills for the 9-to-5, "passion" for the weekend. We've found this to be a false and limiting dichotomy.

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Ola's experience in strategy and analytics at Google and McKinsey, including learning SQL, wasn't left behind at the office. That same logic for structuring information became the engine behind the complex databases that run this entire project in Notion. The discipline from demanding careers provides the very framework that makes this passion project sustainable.

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This is proof of one of our core beliefs: your professional skills are not the enemy of your passion; they are the engine that can give it structure and wings. The ultimate act of integration is using the tools from your "stable" life to build the life that truly feels alive.

The honeymoon as a mission statement

When we got married, our first journey as a couple was not to a relaxing beach resort – the typical reward for navigating personal and professional stress. Instead, we chose Mesopotamia. We journeyed to Göbeklitepe and Nemrut Dağı, immersing ourselves in the cradle of civilization.

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It wasn't just a trip; it was a declaration of what we value most. It proved to us that for a "Curious Explorer," the greatest celebration, the most profound joy, comes from the shared adventure into deeper understanding.

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From a simple "hello" on an app to building a cross-cultural home in Ireland, every significant step in our life together has been the result of choosing the curious, expansive, and often more challenging path. On Way Storytellers is simply the act of making that lifelong, private pattern a public and shared journey. It's our invitation to you to trust your own curiosity, because we know from lived experience that it is the truest compass you will ever have.