When conservative politicians started making anti-LGBT+ speeches on the campaign trail, Piotr Kalwaryjski, a gay man from western Poland, decided it was time to pack up and leave. Weeks after a 2019 European parliamentary election, Kalwaryjski and his boyfriend moved from the city of Poznan to Berlin – joining a growing number of LGBT+ Poles who have fled homophobia at home by settling in the German capital. “It was the first time they were so openly using homophobic rhetoric,” said the 27-year-old, who works in tech. “I knew that Poland wasn’t a gay-friendly country, yet you could be gay in bigger cities. But that was too much.”