What it was all leading to

It all happened too fast and was all too brief.


I know this year abroad has changed my life, even though I am not sure in what concrete way(s) yet. A big part of why I was looking forward to Poland was to try and reconnect in some small way with the Polish ancestors. I purposely waited until the end of the year to take my trip to Kaszuby (northwestern Poland, all along the Baltic coast) because 1. the weather would be better and 2. my Polish would be better. Good decisions x2.

It still hasn't fully sunk in that I was walking on the ground where they lived and looking at the records where they were hand-documented in nineteenth-century script. There are around 2,000 in still living Poland to whom I might be related. If the circumstances in the chain of history were different, I myself might still be living in that beautiful country.

I laid out an ambition plan: Kraków to Toruń, Toruń to the villages and pure Kashubian countryside, on to nearby Bytów (Winona's "Sister City"), Bytów to Gdańsk, Gdańsk to Malbork, and home again home again jiggety jig. Of course I was slightly nervous about all the aspects of traveling alone - would I be lonely, would I be safe? But I didn't have time for such thoughts! Aside from the hours of travel, which I am used to by now, I kept finding myself in excellent company: Gabriella in Toruń, Stanley -my Kashubian guide- the town authorities of Bytów, who treated me like a celebrity, and Paweł and Madga, a fantastic couple in Gdańsk. (Aside from searching family history, this trip could be a ringing endorsement for Hospitality Club - haha.)

The weight of what I had been doing and where I was finally clicked for me while I was walking along the seashore between Gdańsk and Sopot. My thoughts were accompanied by the sound of the waves and the sight of a few souls braving a venture into the Baltic. I realized I do like to travel alone for the sake of taking my own pace. However, recounting all I did and saw to family and friends after the fact further solidified this week's significance.

The sightseeing in the cities was unparalleled. Of course I marveled at the architecture and ate my fill of piernik in Toruń, was even more astounded by the beauty of Gdańsk and feeling the presence of revolution at the shipyard. But I am unsatisfied with how I left the place of my roots. Maybe I feel like I didn't give it the proper reverence it deserved. Obviously the pace of the villages is much more relaxed than the constant motion of a city or of the whirlwind tour I made of the countryside. I know I need to go back, but I don't know exactly for what. My name has been changed around, and there are no existing tombstones bearing my family's name, so there is no immediate connection to that land. Maybe that is specifically what I feel: no direct connection to the land. I know I am not inventing my affection for the land; it did have a profound impact on me, but it's like an exquisitely carved box to which I have opened the lock but have yet to open it and look at the secrets that lay inside.

I know more now than I did before I went. I know more about my family, and I'd like to think I know more about myself and my inner life, about all the parts that make me.



To think that I could also have such experiences in Switzerland and Germany...