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| Wawel Castle, Krakow, Poland. The city's main attraction and Poland's most important venue for national events. |
May 2013:
I'm particularly blessed being married to a wonderful spouse of Polish descent. I may have never gotten the inclination or the opportunity to visit that great country - not just once, but a number of times. We just completed our third visit and spent ten days living with Connie's cousin in a little village named Siedlec, near the larger town of Krzeszowice ("Chair-sha-veetza"). Forgive me while I mangle pronunciations. I only wish I had about six solid months to stay in Poland and learn the language. I'm fascinated by language - the more difficult the more fascinating for this inveterate student of all things interesting. I'll set the stage by mentioning that Krzeszowice is located about 20-some kilometers west of Krakow in a beautiful section of Poland known as Malopolska, or 'Little Poland.' Poland can be divided into several different geographical sections and after this journey, Connie and I have two more to explore before we can claim any expertise in knowing the country. Being outside Krakow, in a country village, afforded us the opportunity to see Krakow and much, much more. Malopolska has it all, as it says in the travel guides but it isn't all of Poland. Traveling is my profession. I am not your average jaded or rose-colored-glasses vacationer. Staying cooped up in a 5-star hotel or with 5,000 other people on a cruise ship is not my idea of having fun or relaxing. All I need is a good compass and a passport and a few Zloty in my pocket. If I get lost it's my own fault. I'd rather do all my exploring and sightseeing on-foot and that upsets a lot of people. I don't really ever take a vacation. Because of my profession every trip for me is just setting the stage and doing some groundwork for the endless possibilities of helping to promote the travel business. I always carry with me an attitude of total objectivity. That way, you learn more. You experience more. Loving history and a country's culture helps, too. And people are always more appreciative that you're making a concerted effort to learn a few words of the language. I've found this to be true in every part of the world. The attitude of complete objectivity assures that you'll never be disappointed when situations seem to be going south. I've traveled a lot - but this particular trip into Poland was one of my best adventures. One of our best adventures - It never would have happened if I hadn't married Connie!
Years ago, Adam Konieczny and his wife Irena visited us here in Vienna, Virginia. Poland was still under communist control so their trip outside of Poland was something we Americans could hardly imagine. We had a great time together, even though every situation (due to the language barrier) had to be handled through sign language. The Church and Connie's family relationship were the common bond. After that visit we stayed in close touch and promised to return the visit to Poland. We made the trip and then had an opportunity to make another one, an unusual one, in which we got a river cruise down 600 kilometers of the Oder River into Silesia, on the western border of Poland and Germany. My Asian travel experiences came in handy. Just as Viet Nam is a continuing, emerging, country, so is Poland after the Fall of the Iron Curtain. It helps to remember this while traveling through the former Soviet Bloc countries. It's been a while and Poland is doing well. Every five years we've witnessed massive changes in the peoples' lives and their economic status. Each trip has been very different because of this. The old Soviet drabness is fast disappearing, and as in every other country around the world, the internet is changing whole societies. Sometimes everything works out just right. European airfares which have been high lately, came down suitably just at the right time. Watching the weather daily, it looked like we were in for the best spring weather ever. Looking at our schedules, we were under no duress to make any drastic changes in our planning. We would just go and have a relaxing time.
Adam and Irena had different plans when we got there. They had mapped out nine solid days of different places to go and things to do. I was a little mystified, but the master-plan couldn't have been handled better by a professional travel agency. We settled in at Siedlec and then took day-trips to nearly every portion of Malopolska, from the mountains to the beautiful fields and limestone valleys of the area north of Krakow. One particular highlight was Auschwitz-Birkenau. I had wanted to visit these sites before, but it never seemed to work out. There is even this human hesitancy you have to deal with in making the decision to visit. What happened there and at all the other camps dedicated to Nazi death machinery remains incomprehensible to the normal, moral-thinking, human being. But it did happen. It was a fact of our human failure. Pitted against the back-drop of Poland's total history, it's just another part of the sad story of conquest, abuse, and Poland's role as European Whipping-Boy. The great open space between Germany and Russia. Prussians, Tartars, Nazi's, Russians, Swedes, whatever the horde, they all wanted a piece of Poland and now in post-Soviet terms, Poland is beginning to gain self-governance and national pride. It's a process I find fascinating considering the sad history. We've already made our plans to go back again in two years. I can't wait.
