“To forget one's ancestors is to be a brook without a source, a tree without a root.”

- Chinese Proverb.

My husband's parents were born in Poland.  He learned Polish before English, and went to a Polish-American elementary school, but had never visited Poland himself.

In 1980, we were living in Italy, where he had taken a job for his American company, and we decided to spend a two-week summer vacation driving to Poland to find his roots..  With our two young children in an orange Fiat with Italian plates, we drove north from Napoli into Austria and then West Germany.  We skirted still-segregated East Germany and headed for still-united Czechoslovakia.

Upon arrival at the Czech border, our papers were carefully scrutinized and we were informed that our visas were only one-way - a scary thought in the Eastern European political climate of those days.  To reenter the country from the east, after our visit to Poland, we would need to fill out applications in Prague.   We spent a good part of a day in an upstairs government office applying for visas that would assure our later return home.  With much relief, they were granted and we headed for the Polish border.

Passage through Polish customs seemed much easier except for the fact that we were told to account for our whereabouts for every day of our visit.  Aware that "Big Brother" would be watching, we ventured into the land of my husband's forebears.

Our first impressions were disappointing because the approaching evening forced us to find rooms in the bleak industrial town of Katowice.  The only available hotel was far from western standards in both amenities and cleanliness but we had a roof for the night and we were feeling adventurous.

The next morning, we drove through miles of farmland dotted with artfully shaped haystacks and made the capital city of Warsaw our goal.  The first impression we had was of a city of wide boulevards dominated by monstrous Stalinesque architecture.  We drove past once-fashionable shops that seemed to have little in the way of consumer goods.  Occasionally, there was a line that began inside a shop and wound its way down the block.  We later learned that shops often received scarce supplies only once a week.  If one wished to purchase meat or chocolate or some other "luxury" item, it was costly and required waiting in line.

Our Warsaw hotel was a large plain building that had a sliding scale payment system.  Eastern Europeans paid the lowest rates and Americans the highest.  Western European rates fell somewhere in between.

Exploring the boulevards on foot made their hardships even more evident.  On a street that, in another time would have rivaled Fifth Avenue, canned food, instead of stylish clothing, was stacked attractively in shop windows.  Textile goods in a major department store were of poor quality.  Entrance into each department for browsing among the racks was limited and monitored by security matrons.

Crossing a bridge on foot over the Vistula River, we were approached by someone wanting to discreetly exchange money, despite the strict laws against it.  The best goods available in the city were available only to those possessing foreign currency.

We were pleasantly surprised then to come upon a picturesque section of the city that had quaint cobble-stoned streets and charming restaurants.  We were also struck by its upkeep.  It looked almost brand new, like a Disney replica of someplace ancient.  Later that evening when we returned there for dinner, we found out that it was, in fact, not old.  It was the completely reconstructed former Jewish ghetto that had been destroyed along with many of its inhabitants during World War II.  It made for a dinner filled with unease. Our discomfort was increased by our encounter with a young East German student also having dinner.  We struck up a conversation and found that he was very bitter.  He grilled us about why we had chosen to visit Eastern Europe when we had the freedom to travel almost anywhere else.  He said that he was there only because his options were limited.

After Warsaw, we headed to the southeast, first stopping in Rzeschow, a university town.  No hotels were available but we found lodging in a university dorm.  Like dorm rooms in most countries, it was not your mother's décor but it was funky and we endured.

The bathroom was a triangular-shaped room down the hall, and it was so small that you had to squeeze in.   If someone had tried to open the door while you sat on the toilet, the door would have banged into your knees.

The next few days consisted of visits to the small country towns of my husband's family members.  We were welcomed warmly and they shared what little they had.  He had a chance to see where both of his parents were from and to meet elderly aunts and uncles he had only heard about previously. For my six and seven-year-old children, it was eye-opening and they learned much. They saw that warmth and humanity overcome language barriers and watched as their Dad resurrected a language from his childhood and acted as translator. They rode a tractor for the first time with a teenage cousin and each took turns shooing the chickens away as the other used the outhouse.  They began to realize that American prosperity doesn't exist in many places.

As our trip wound down, we stopped in Krakow, my favorite Polish city.  Another university town, it has a medieval look to it with nice squares and interesting architecture.  We had almost forgotten the poverty and restrictions encountered elsewhere until we dined in a lovely restaurant there.  The menu was like a book with perhaps a dozen pages but many items were unavailable.  The only entrees not crossed out contained variations of chicken or eggs.

As our vacation neared its end, we headed west for the border.  We arrived in the evening and our children had fallen asleep in the back seat.  Polish customs agents who searched our car with flashlights awakened them.  We worried that the agents would confiscate a painting that we had purchased from a student instead of from the government store.  The painting was safe, however.  They were looking for crystal items that were being smuggled to avoid export taxes.  We didn't have any and we proceeded through the barricades.

We worried about entering and exiting Czechoslovakia but our newly acquired return visas did the trick.  When we finally crossed the border back into the West, the contrast was immediate.  Gone were the small, slow-moving Lada autos and gray buildings.  All around us zoomed high-speed, German-made luxury cars and colorful advertisements abounded. It was like moving from black and white to Technicolor. 

After crossing the border back into Italy, we stopped for something to eat. The noise level was notable. The buzz of conversations and the warmth of the laughter wrapped around us like a security blanket. It was good to be back in our temporary (and free) home.