The People of Poland

It’s already been almost two weeks since I went to Poland, so I’d better write about it before I start losing track of the stories that I took from there.

I arrived in Poland on Thursday, November 7 quite late at night—late for me, anyway, because I’ve been going to bed at 11:00 or 12:00 at night like an old man for the last month or two. Once I reached Norway and started posting pictures and statuses on Facebook about being here, my Polish friend, Marta, invited me to come to Poland, and we planned my trip for the beginning of November. Marta and I worked together at a bible camp outside my hometown called Upper Missouri Ministries in 2007; she was the international counselor for the summer, but after the summer was finished, I figured I’d never get to see her again, what with the distance and all. Lo and behold, though, here I am on her doorstep. She was waiting there at the Krakow airport for me with her brother, Jakub, and we took her parents’ car back to her hometown of Katowice.

For years and years, I’ve thought that Katowice was this sweet little Polish town of a few thousand people, like a close-knit community where the old lady next door makes delicious baked goods and brings them over to your house. Again—Kirby was wrong. Katowice actually has a couple hundred thousand people, and the city of Katowice is quite the bustling place, as cars rush past at all hours. Poland is divided into several smaller pieces, much like the United States, but Katowice is one of the main industrial hubs in its “state.” This particular part of Poland is well known for its coal mining operations and industry, and Marta explained that her area of the country makes a good amount of money for the country as a whole.

I caught up as much as I could with Marta on Thursday night, and we said Friday would be the hard day of the vacation: the tour of Auschwitz. We had breakfast at her apartment and drove to Auschwitz, taking back-roads to see the countryside of Poland where we did, in fact, run across of those few little villages that I thought Katowice was. Friday was not an enjoyable day—interesting, but not enjoyable. I’ll do a separate post about this, I think.

After I had toured Auschwitz, we went back to Katowice and stopped at her father’s company. Her dad works in metal fabrication, it looks like, and he’s the main owner of a company that fabricates machine parts by cutting metal using high-powered water-jets. The operation is really interesting, and I’d have loved to have asked questions, but her dad didn’t speak English—I felt a little guilty about asking Marta to translate every single sentence for me, as I’m sure that got very exhausting.

It turns out, though, that Marta’s parents invited us to dinner with them for a real Polish meal. Getting to her parents’ apartment, we started playing with Bobek, Marta’s adorable, whiny cat. Everyone was rushing around the apartment—bringing plates, bringing silverware, bringing glasses—and I volunteered to help, but they kept saying, “Nie nie nie nie nie” (“No no no no no”).

The dinner was really nice, and it wasn’t outside of my comfort zone, by any means. They had skinned potatoes and boiled them, and a side of sauerkraut with bacon mixed into it; the main course, however, was the most foreign to me: a flattened pork chop rolled into a burrito shape with all sorts of fixings rolled into it. It was really very good, especially after walking through Auschwitz for the day.

To the Wagner family: Dziękuję za piękny czas w Polsce.