Dzien Dobry -- 

Many apologies for the delay in sending this update.  We have been very, very busy.

On Tuesday morning, we awoke in our own private bedrooms (we sleep on couches) at Irena and Zdlislaw's house.  We took a shower/bath in their one bathroom.  They have a bathtub and a hand shower. Whenever you turn on the hot water faucet, you can hear the wall-mounted water heater light and start to heat the water.  Everything is so different here, especially the toilets, which have taken me 3 days to figure out. The toilets do not have tanks, but rather a pipe in the back with a lever. You hold down the lever and water goes into the toilet bowl. They don’t quite flush all the way. Let’s just say it makes for some nervous moments in the bathroom.  The shower was interesting, as of course there is no shower curtain, so I had to kneel in the bathtub.  Also, since they keep their houses so cold, I was freezing.  But hey, at least there was a bathtub available to us.

We were greeted in the kitchen by Irena, who was serving us breakfast.  She gets up at 5:00a to help get her 3 boys out the door.  For breakfast, we enjoyed a wonderful barsch (sour soup), that had vegetables, kielbasa (lots of it!) and hard-boiled eggs, along with some tea.  This was definitely one of the more interesting breakfasts I have ever had.

After breakfast, Lukasz, his sister Barbara, and his father Stanislaw met us at the house.  We went for a drive to a neighboring town to visit a Skaansen (an outdoor museum).  The drive, which was probably 15 miles or so, took just under 1 hour.  The roads here are in pretty bad shape, and I have yet to see a 4 lane highway (just 1 lane each way).  Also, it was rainy and windy (not a very good day to visit a Skaansen). Along the way, we passed a large forest where Stanislaw told us that many Poles hid during the war. There was a monument on the side of the road dedicated to Polish officers assassinated by the Nazis.

On the way, we stopped at a gas station. Gas cost 3.33 zloty per liter. This works out to over US$3 per gallon. After stopping several times for directions, we arrived at the Skaansen and proceeded to the main entrance to find that we were the only visitors (who else comes to a Skaansen on a day like this?). 

We walked through open fields and saw many old cottages, barns, houses, etc. that have been moved to this museum.  The buildings were all about 100 years old, made of logs, had dirt floors and thatched roofs.  We joked that Dad's grandmother was probably born in one of them. There were several windmills, a school, a restaurant/pub, and a very small wood hut that contained a religious statue. There was a man putting a new roof on one of the buildings – pretty miserable work in this weather.  It was an interesting museum and a great way to get a sense of Poland's rather recent history.

On the way back to the house, we stopped at the markets in the town of Mielec, the next nearest town to their village, which has approximately 10,000 people.  There is an indoor and outdoor market.  The outdoor market was basically a flea market, with people selling their wares (old used stuff) under tarps to protect themselves from the rain.  The indoor market was more permanent, in a concrete structure, with bakeries, clothing shops, pharmacy goods, and about every third shop was a meat shop.  Poles love meat!  None of the shops were more than 300 square feet total. 

After visiting this market, we proceeded to the Mielec shopping mall, which was a three level building with many shops and outdoor corridors.  We stopped in a couple of them and saw some interesting 'stuff'.

We drove to Lukasz house, where Halina and Anna had been cooking all morning.  There were plates on the table just waiting for us.  We sat down to some wonderful homemade soup with hand-cut noodles.  Then came the good stuff -- golumpki the size of your fist!  It was awesome.  The golumpkis had a mushroom gravy over them, and in no time, I had polished off two of them.  They kept offering me more, but I could not take it! If there was a way to preserve them so that I could take home, I would have paid them to keep cooking golumpkis for the next three days straight!

After dinner (they have dinner in Poland at 1:00p), we went for a drive to the church and cemetery in Wadowice Gorne.  We visited the cemetery first, where we saw some graves of different family members.  The cemeteries here in Poland are serious -- huge monuments and enormous grave markers.  They even plant perennial flowers within the monuments.

Barbara ran ahead and found the priest, who was nice enough to open the church for us.  The priest gave us a tour of their beautiful church. (At first, I thought he was the church caretaker – hey, he wasn’t dressed like a priest!)  First stop was the photo of what the church looked like after the war.  It was pretty much destroyed.  The roof was gone, the spires were damaged, there were holes in the walls, bullet marks everywhere, etc.  Today, the church is stunning.  It is very bright inside, with beautiful stained glass windows and chandeliers.  The walls are plaster and have paintings of Polish saints. The altars are large and ornate.  The priest showed us around and gave us some history of the church.  We inquired as to baptismal records, but he said most, if not all, were lost in the war.

Upon returning to Lukasz house, we were greeted with, you guessed it, more golumpkis!  Nothing like eating yourself silly.

We sat, talked, and shared stories.  Irena and Halina have a cousin named Zbigniew who lives in Mielec who wanted to see us, so we drove approx. 20 minutes to his apartment.

The apartment complex was enormous, with quite a few 6-story buildings that were obviously constructed during the communist regime, as they are rectangular, concrete, and pretty depressing.

Zbigniew and his family live on the top floor of one of the buildings.  Of course there is no elevator . . .

We were greeted by Zbigniew and his wife Zofia, and their 8 year old son Mateuz (they have 2 older sons as well).  We sat in their living room, on the couch, next to a table with -- you guessed it again -- more food (finger sandwiches, cakes, cookies, coffee, etc).  

Their apartment is quite nice. Zbigniew spent two years in Chicago, so he spoke a little English (very little). He and his wife Zofia work in factories in Mielec.  He and Dad spoke to each other (in Polish), while I sat on the couch with Mateuz and read his English language school book with him.  He was a very cute little boy. At one point, he ran over to the television and turned on cartoons. His father turned the station to CNN for us.  It was a very nice visit.

Upon arriving back at Irena's house, we were very happy to see that she turned on the heat.  Yeah!  This made it much more comfortable, as the cold, rainy weather really gets to you after a while.  When we arrived, the first thing she offered us was more food!  We settled for a cup of tea (Poles are big tea drinkers).

Halina wanted us to watch the video of Barbara's first communion.  She was obviously very proud of this video and was very excited to show it to us.  We sat and watched the video of about 50 kids celebrating their first communion, which in Poland is a very big deal.  It was cute.

Well, that is all for Tuesday's events.  Again, I can not stress enough that these are wonderful people.  Believe it or not, not once have I seen anyone drink alcohol, heard any curse words (although they certainly may be cursing in Polish for all I know), or witnessed any rude behavior.  They have very willingly opened their modest homes to us and have offered us all of their conveniences.  What a great experience!