A collection

of short

stories from

my trip

to Poland ...

2009

We have been flying for over 12 hours now. Its the first time my mom and I are travel-ling together– flying together. When we moved to USA my dad and I came first and then a month later my mom and my sister Klaudia joined us, so I never really got a chance to travel with her. Poland is the destination we are travelling to. About three months ago we decided to buy tickets and surprise our family who lives there (most of them are my mom’s family, hence I am travelling with her and not my dad (they are also the family I was raised by). The tickets at the time were at a reasonable price seven hundred a piece, only because it was winter and nobody wants to travel during winter. We didn’t want to travel during winter as well, but there was no other way around it. My mom is con-stantly working, I am in school and tickets in the summer are far too expansive. We were stuck on the airplane for quite a while on top of a four hour delay. My bones were aching the moment we took off, so the flight was quite exhausting. I am not sure who designed the seats for LOT Polish airlines but they are the most uncomfortable seats I’ve ever sat on. The pas-senger was forced to crunch in this small space, with barely any room for legs (which was hor-ribly inconvenient on my part since the majority of my 6 ft tall body is my legs) and you couldn’t even lay your head down, without startling your neighbour. We flew over Greenland, the Atlan-

tic ocean and some other countries. When small green fields, painted with colored squares began to emerge underneath I knew right away that we had entered the Polish land. I knew that regardless that the information about the flight was displayed on a big screen adhered to the central dividing wall of the airplane. Recognizing my country was not difficult, Poland is still a very rural country, filled with farmers and fields. As a child, I visited my great grandparents frequently who lived in a small suburban village surround by tall grass, rivers and forests. And every time when I saw the landscape change before my eyes from a small bus window, I never understood why Polish fields had so many colors. The way they appear underneath, thousands of miles below, looked as if somebody took a ginor-mous brush and painted them on the bare grounds of the land. Every square had a place, every color fit nicely with the one next to it. Its was like art. Later in life, I realized of course that each of these squares represents a different plantation. Polish fields look so beautiful because of the emotional attachment Polish people have for their land. “Poles are attached to their land. Directly or indirectly, more than a quarter of them still earn their living from it. Repeated invasions have made Poles jittery about anything to do with borders and territory. To Polish patriots, land is not so much as good as a heritage never to be betrayed.” (The Economist).When you get to the heart of any city or when you leave the that city’s border, Polish land has always been stunning and rich in its architecture, history and land. It had a personality I have not yet found any where else. Every region, city, suburb or village speaks for itself. Every single place has it own char-

I am going to Poland!

acteristics, history and legends. The stories of the royal kings and queens and their massive castles, the legends and the myths, the traditions and the foods were the things I wanted to experience once more when I decided to go on this trip. Eight years had passed since I moved to United States and since then this was the first visit I was paying to my birth country. My expectations were high. I have had generated a specific image of Poland in my head, the same one I had when I left and moved to USA. With certainty I knew that my expectations were going to be met, but I was soon to find out that life in Poland had changed. Some aspects of living remained the same but the rest triggered a reaction I never thought I would had felt coming back to what I always known to be home. During my first visit in Poland I went from being the resi-dent to being a foreigner. My aunt and uncle picked us from the air port. Our visit was suppose to be a surprise for my uncle ( my mom’s brother) but unfortunately my aunt could no longer keep the secret or live in “a lie” as she referred to, so the night before she decided to spill the beans. My uncle Jacek and my aunt Gosia are quite a comical couple. My aunt is a little petite fashionable women with a slight at-

titude and strong will. My uncle whose double the height of my aunt is a hard working, loving men who would do everything for his family. They both looked so happy to see us, and both looked much older then I remembered. My aunt got shorter on top of being super short already (or maybe I grew so much I couldn’t even tell) and my uncle’s bold scalp was now peaking through. Everything was going well, until we found out that our luggage has gone MIA. Simply put, Polish airline are a big fat joke, they were, they are and they always will. Irritated and tired from the long trip and horrible costumer service, all I wanted to do is sleep. Final-ly, we piled any remains of our belongings in to my uncle’s manual stick car and headed for his newly build house. The only thought still keeping me in a positive and awakened momentum was seeing my grandma. /

She was laying in her bed looking older and weaker. Her hair whiter and thinner, her hands wrinkled, her body smaller-she lost weight. Two years ago she lost her husband too and right after she had a stroke. One after the other. Her body was so weak she no longer was able to move as swiftly as she use to. Her days were short and consisted of sitting in a chair before a TV and lay-ing down in her bed. She rested from resting. She lacked self motivation to fully recover. She used to be an active person, every morning she was up early walking to the local Bazaar ( farmer’s market ) to buy fresh food for the day so later she could cook and bake for her three grandchildren. That is how I remembered her. When I saw my grandma for the first time since I left, it was as if somebody had dumped a large bucket of cold water on my head. She no longer nagged me to be a good girl, to eat the food that she cooked, she didn’t even joke

around anymore calling me a dziolcha (a funny nickname that originated from the Slask dialect, one of the bigger region in Poland and which is the same as dziewczyna and that translated to a girl) as she use to only four years ago. I could not have a conversations with her longer then five minutes, she didn’t talk much and was not that responsive. Spending my time with her I realized how much I miss her old self. As any child at a young age I took everything she did for granted without showing any appreciation. Seeing her for the first time after such a long time was like one of those moments where you wish you could reverse time. And if I had that ability I would do nothing but show her much I love her for always being there and supporting me and my family whenever we needed help.

Babcia (Grandma)

Stasia

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Today my mom, my aunt and I decided to go to Galeria Krakowska - one of the biggest shop-ping malls in Krakow located near the downtown area. My first initial thought was, I am going to look fabulous, probably better then everyone in this mall- I am from America. It wasn’t exactly as I planned. As you walk in to the gallery you are sur-rounded by the lightness and the glamour of every store and boutique. People look as if they were taken out of a fashion magazine, everyone dressed so fashionable. The European style is definitely up in the air. Almost half of the women are wearing straight short bangs, their hair shinning, barely

any make up yet their skin still looks flawless and beautiful. Man–some dressed better then others, I pass by one wearing one of those bulky, long scarfs, which you would wear with a nice v-neck sweater and a pair of dark washed out jeans. As we travel from store to store, I am mesmerized by the variety of clothes showcased on almost every store display. How come we don’t have such great selection in the States, or do we? or is it only because its Europe, the center of the fashion world, so they get the best stuff. We walk in to a coffee shop to grab a cup of coffee. I examine the menu board, my jaw drops when I see the prices similarly. A cup of coffee costs

A trip to the mall

15zl!!! How is this even possible? I can stop but think how do these people live like this and still look so damn good. There is no comparison, yes, we can convert the Polish money to dollars and it is mostly likely to come out to an even amount, but the difference between Poland and the States is that the amount of money Poles make monthly in many cases is three times less then a salary of an average American. To avoid the stares and to calmed down all the thoughts circling in my head at the moment, I step forward, take out 15zl from my wallet and buy the cup of coffee. Living in Poland was certainly not easy. There were times we barely made it through the month. My mom would always buy second hand clothes and sometimes we had scrambled eggs for dinner. We never went out to eat, every meal was cooked. Today on the other hand, if I have money I spent them. I go out to eat, get a cup of coffee almost everyday or go shopping when ever I want to. Appreciating every little things is what I admire Poland for. I will always appreciate the respect Pol-ish people have for materiality, the food and other necessary means of living. The term lets swipe it as credit does not exists there. Poland is not a con-sumerist country like America. In America as long as you make some money even when you shouldn’t spenf them. there is always a comfort of “you can pay it off ”. In Poland people save money, and do not spend money recklessly. If there is something they really want or need, they save the money and buy that particular item. When I moved to the States, I slowly began to loose appreciation and respect for materialism. Not that materialism is a good thing, but when acquired in small doses it

makes one appreciate the little things. A sim-ple example is, when in Poland I did not even have a computer now I am operating a Mac Book Pro and going to college that is costing me 30,000 a year, money which I do not have. Life became easier after the move, less stress-ful, but the consequences of this new life style are becoming clearer as the years progress. One of these consequences is that there is never enough time to do everything. The con-stant state of being tired from work and school and no time for your own family turned out to be the so called American Dream for me. What this busy and time limited style of living did essentially is that it paid off the luxury and the materialism. There was never a moment I did not longed to move back to Poland and feel the time slow down again. The past seven years had flew by twice as fast as the years I lived in Poland. The pace has sped up drastically and today I am still adapting, accepting and learn-ing how to maneuver my life through it. /

The longing to move back to Poland and once again feel the sense of time had slowly diminished as I continued to stay at my families house. Looking at my uncle I realized that life in Poland has changed, its become as intensive as it is in America. I have not seem much of my uncle during my stay, and when I did it was for a brief moment before he went to bed to rest for another night shift. I found my uncle always working, obviously for the common reason of sup-porting his family and the new house he just build but as I travel back in time I do not remember him working so much in the past. The one job he always had as a security officer turned into two jobs. He now works during the day and a lot of times during the night and he still finds some time for his family. In my eyes he has always been a good father figure, seeing him work so hard is quite inspiring but what wor-ries me is the lives Polish people are now leading. I still can not help it but wonder how did life in Poland become so work intensive. Certainly there is nothing wrong with working, but similarly to how life goes on in the States, the lack of time seems to be emerging in Poland as well. It scares me to think that the country I once lived in and where time had always paced for me slowly has created the same issue I find my self facing living in America.

my Uncle

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My family gathered around the big table to celebrate the most important holiday of the year, Christmas. There were a few instances in the past when my whole family gathered for this beauti-ful event, and this was one of them. Including my uncle, my aunt, my cousin Sebestian, my grandma, my mom’s sister and her husband, there were many guests I was not very close to. They were my aunt Gosia’s family. Therefore, I did not really know them as well as the rest of my family. This Christ-mas Eve was all I was looking for during my visit, but it felt not nearly as memorable and as comfort-able as a Christmas Eve with my close family. We still shared the bread and wished each others the best, but it was not as genuine as I always remem-bered it to be, instead it was simply pretentious, done out of plain curtsey to fulfil the tradition. I felt like a stranger in the midst of all these unfa-miliar faces, and even though Christmas Eve was meant to bring everyone together it was certainly not doing it for me. This was the first time I felt like an outsider spending time with my own family. /

Christmas at last!

Zakopane was one of the places I decided to visit during my trip to Poland. The first Friday of the two week stay, my uncle, my cousin and I hopped on the seats of my uncles car and drove to Zako-pane. A place I fell in love with when I visited it multiple of times while at camp or on the school‘s field trips. Zakopane is one the most magical treas-ures of Poland, or at least I think so. The name of this city originated from the verb “zakopac” which translated to buried and of course its geographic location. Buried within the Polish mountains Tatry, Zakopane transforms its beauty every season, and every season it brings a new set of outdoor activi-ties for the visiting tourists. Winter is the season for skiing, site seeing and souvenir shopping. As you merge into this small city all you can see are little black figures zigzagging through the moun-tains like little ants. You pass house after house, all beautifully designed. The houses there are built out of intricate curved wood panels decorated with ornate patterns embedded inside their entrance’s columns and inside the house’s exterior walls. The half circled wood panels are stacked one on top of the other to create the exterior surface of the house. They look like mountains hut, but their size and artistically carved motifs make them extravagant and expansive. The houses are owned by the local villagers known as Gorals. These house and the beautiful mountains are what creates and makes up the scenery of the city of Zakopane.

Zakopanethe buried city

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It was one of the coldest nights so far. I could feel my toes slowly freezing underneath my thin black boots walking arm to arm with my cousin Daniel. The excitement I was feeling inside was helping and making me forget about the pain I was experi-encing. That night was my first real night out in the city. The best part of it I was now eighteen, mak-ing me eligible not to only enter night clubs but to drink. The best thing any teenager my age could wish for. The freedom of being and adult and the

A night in the city

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energy of people who filled the city that night made me fall in love with it instantly. Almost every club we entered was underground. The atmosphere was amazing. The brick walls mixed with the mod-ern furniture created a blend between history and modern European style. This was one of the aspects of Poland I missed living in America. The selec-tion of music clubs was infinite, you could choose and pick. There were jazz clubs, rock clubs, techno clubs anything you could ask for was there in front of you like an ultimate juke box machine. I have never experienced such atmosphere simply because I was still not of legal age in America.

I finally met up with my friend from grade school, Ania. At first, I had a sceptic mindset going into this reunion, since we have not seen each other for about four years. We kept in touch through the internet, but everyone knows how these online connections work, they are quite deceiving. All I could picture was how awkward and... awkward the whole meeting would be. I got off the bus with my cousin who decided to safely drop me off at the destination, or let just say my mom nagged him to do so, scared that something would happen to me, as she usually is. As I saw Ania approaching the bus to greet me, smiling from ear to ear and yell-ing “Dziedzicu moj” (my Dziedzic), I knew right away she had not changed a bit, she was still the same Ania I knew. There was no awkwardness, we were chatting like the old times, as if I never left. We decided to visit Galleria Krakowska once more, and stop by to see one of my other friends Agnieszka. Ania mentioned she works at one of the kiosk at this mall. Approaching my other grade school friend I saw that she has also not changed a bit. She greeted me and expressed how happy she is to see me, and a minute after that (which has always been her way of being) she went on ignor-ing me and continued chatting with Ania. I did go on and said a couple of words attempting to make a conversation, but as soon I spoke, Agnes began to

my old friend

smirk and then said “ You sound funny, I think you have an accent”. I was instantly offended, how in the world was it possible for me to have an accent only four years after? Yes, I have been constantly surrounded by English in school or anywhere I went but I was still using Polish at home when talking to my family. I later asked Ania what did Agnes mean by this comment. Ania explained that some of the words I pronounce sometimes sound funny and that I probably missed on a lot of the Polish slang that has developed after I left. I realized than that I might have been born and raised in Poland but these four years I spent living on the other side of the ocean took away a crucial part of what growing up in Poland might have been. And what it meant was that I would never have a problem living in Poland and understanding the language but I might find some difficulty connecting with people. For the second time during my visit in Poland, I felt like an outsider. I became frustrated and angry with the fact that I will never again feel fully com-fortable nor compatible neither living in Poland nor in the States, and that I will always feel out of place struggling to understand and fill that chunk of cultural information and identity that I have missed while being away.

BibliographyPolish Land: A Most Emotional Issue | The Econo-mist.” The Economist - World News, Politics, Eco-nomics, Business & Finance. Web. 19 Nov. 2011. <http://www.economist.com/node/1046773>

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