Travel /
Do I need an invitation to enter Poland as a tourist? [53]
@Ray20607
Really, your options are severely limited, and they are all going to take way more than a month. You can try to get a tourist visa, but that is going to be hard from someone from SA unless you are an ideal candidate, and from what you have written, you do not seem to be anywhere close. That would give you the right to be in Poland for a maximum of three months, and you would not be able to work or seek work, nor can a tourist visa be "upgraded" to a work visa. There's really no point in going that route.
Your best chance is to find a job in Poland while you are still in South Africa with a company that is willing to apply for a work permit to hire you. Chances are slim to none, but you have nothing to lose except time and energy. Your chances are best with schools in small towns off the beaten track, especially in the Far East of Poland, where native English speakers are rare as hen's teeth and schools just might be desperate enough to hire a greenie without any special qualifications or skills. Places like Augustów, Łomża, Chełm or Sanok. In popular large cities in western Poland, like Poznań, the odds are stacked against you.
In either case, it is unlikely that you would be able to get a visa to enter the UK. Your chances of doing that are just as poor if you applied in Poland than were you to apply in South Africa.
From what I gather, the situation is this:
Your wife has sole legal custody of your child and has no intention of letting you be part of their life in any form. You have no visitation rights, are not paying any child support, and do not have the wherewithal to obtain any rights from a court in Poland or the UK. Your wife and child have moved on and are apparently living just fine without you. You would be a most unwelcome intruder. Were you to show up and invade their space, it would not end well for you. If you approach this child without the explicit and written permission of the mother, the police and social services may well consider as an attempted abduction or other threat to the child's safety and welfare. There is little chance that they will be sympathetic to what you have to say for yourself. You could end up being arrested, deported and banned from the entire Schengen zone for the rest of your life.
If you had abundant financial resources, you could consult a good family lawyer in South Africa with experience with custody cases in the EU and apply to the court for visitation privileges. But it is going to be hard to find such a lawyer, and lawyers like that don't come cheap. And since the process is long and drawn out, even more so since you are in South Africa, the costs will be extravagant. Hate to say it, but it looks as if you have little option but to accept the situation and carry on with your own life.
