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Arrival 2013

Thursday 13 June 2013

After two flights, a moderate layover, a couple of car rides — it all seems to have gone by in a flash when L showing her youngest cousin, D, the treasures she brought with her. Of course she kept calling her by her older sister’s name, but little D didn’t mind.

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She had someone to swing with, to pick berries and snack on cherries with,

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to play hide and seek with

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to hide obsessively in the same spot with.

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There was someone to climb the back fence with, or at least to try scaling with.

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Each arrival has been somewhat different, and this time began with a visit to wojek D’s house. Met us at the airport, and after bit of time at his place, we took Dziadek’s car and headed south. So for the first time, we arrived with me at the wheel.

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Babcia of course had treats and treasures for us: a big lunch, strawberry compote, and a dog who was so excited to see L that they both couldn’t contain the excitement.

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Yet after so long sitting — ten hours in the plane to Frankfurt including two hours on the runway in Charlotte, a two hour layover, an hour-and-a-half flight to Krakow, and a twenty-five minute drive to D’s house followed by another hour-and-a-half drive to babcia’s — there was only one thing to do: go for a walk.

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Everywhere there was someone working: kids who’d ridden their bikes out ot the fields to help with raking the hay.

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And there I was, camera in hand, tromping along the rutted road that generally leads people to the fields to work,

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and I was just taking pictures of my shadow and worrying about taking pictures of strangers, wondering whether I should ask permission, wondering what that might look like,

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a grown man wandering around the fields he should be working in.

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And at the end of the walk, the river, a babcia with her two grandchildren played at the water’s edge, with the boy begging over and over for a picture.

“Honey, I left my camera at home,” babcia answered.

“I’ve got a camera,” I offered, which led to a long conversation about the weather, about moving here and there, about vacation — a wandering conversation that seems like it could have only happened outside the States. But perhaps that’s just me projecting.

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Once we’ve met our goal, though, we turned to return. Everyone else, though contiued working. As long as there’s sun to illuminate the task at hand, they continued working.

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As I neared home, the tractor rattled up behind us, passangers hanging on the back, other helpers coasting along behind.

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Perhaps though not in the same way, we might very well have been thinking, “A good day — a good day.”

Arrival 2000

Thursday 13 June 2013

“So what’s new in Lipnica?” I asked as we bounced and bumped along the rough roads of southern Poland. It was June 2000, and I’d been gone from Poland for a year. A number of unexpected developments led me back much sooner than I expected, and I was in the car with two of the first guys I met in Lipnica, two guys I’d consider my best friends of my time in Poland, K and J.

What could have possibly changed in a year, I wondered. Lipnica is the end of the trail: it is on a road that literally led to the base of a mountain and nowhere else. No one passes through Lipnica; one can only go to Lipnica.

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“So what’s new in Lipnica?” I’d only meant it metaphorically. What could be new in a village that sustains itself through a bit of logging and a lot of working abroad? One could pass by house after shuttered house in the village, its occupants in Germany, Austria, or even America, working to earn money to finish the house, to improve the house, perhaps even to forget about the house. Lipnica is not a village on the rise, I thought.

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All images via Google Street View in anticipation.

“So what’s new in Lipnica?” Perhaps I was asking about gossip, for everything I saw out the car window as we neared the village looked essentially the same. Fields and forests, forests and fields. Probably the same view for generations.

“So what’s new in Lipnica?” I asked as we came out of the last forested area before the village.

“You’re about to see,” came the reply.

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I probably cursed at the surprise of seeing a gas station in the pristine fields leading to the village of my dreams and often frustrating reality for three years. A travesty; a sacrilege; a profanation.

I’m told the changes in Jabłonka are even more shocking. “You won’t recognize it,” I’m told. “You won’t believe it,” I hear.

And Lipnica?

Charlotte to Frankfurt

Thursday 13 June 2013

The post I thought about writing: how was this a disaster? Let me count the ways. It began with the simple fact that the owners and operators of Charlotte airport thought it would be a good idea to renovate the parking, but this meant demolishing completely the existing parking facilities, putting everyone in long-term parking, and busing them to and from the facility itself. This means long lines to get to the terminals, long lines to get to the parking, long lines to get from the parking to the buses–long lines everywhere. The next disaster took a while to strike. We checked in without problems; we got through security with no issues whatsoever; we found our gate quickly.

And then the problems started again.

There appeared to be a line, so we stood in it. Only to find it wasn’t the line to check in. Check in? Who needs to check in again at the gate? Everyone.

“Are you in line?”

“Yes.”

Five minutes later, I ask again. “Are you in line to check in?”

“No.”

Where is the line for checking in? There is none. There’s a mass of people, a gaggle of travelers, bunched up around the check-in desk, but there’s no line. And once we wade through this mass, we learn that the gentleman whom we were waiting to speak with now has to do the boarding procedures, thank you, and we’ll have to wait for that gentleman, over there. We finally get to the gentleman in question, who makes two pink marks on our boarding passes and hands them back to us, sending us to another mass of people were we’ll wait to board the plane.

Once on the plane, the next adventure: a poor child who is in complete panic, screaming, screaming, screaming endlessly. As a parent, I completely understand, and more than anything, I feel sympathy for the child and the parents. But that sound does grate, even when it’s your own child. And then the second child, in a different part of the plane. And then the third, in yet another. What I’m really expecting at this point is to hear and endure the complaints of the passengers around me, but thankfully, either they all think the same thing that’s running through my head, or they’re just keeping their comments to themselves. It’s a nice unexpected development nonetheless.

We’re about to pull away from the gate when the next adventure strikes: a fault in the electronics of the plane is indicating that a door is open when it clearly isn’t.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the captain begins. “We’ve got a little malfunction here that is going to require some time to fix. We’ll have to wait a few minutes as the maintenance crew performs some checks and diagnostics.” Fifteen minutes later, we receive the all-clear and begin taxiing out.

At which time the next adventure begins: the air conditioning ceases working. And in a plane of that size, it means instant heat, instant high humidity–instant everything unpleasant. A few minutes pass.

“Ladies and gentlemen, as you’ve probably noticed, we are experiencing some difficulties with the air conditioning. We’ll have to return to the gate to have the maintenance crew look at this new issue,” crackles the pilot over the PA system. The diagnostics are estimated to take half an hour; the fix ends up taking another hour or so. All told, by the time we are taxiing back to the runway, we’re two hours behind schedule.

The next challenge is only a mild inconvenience, but irritating nonetheless. The audio system for one of our seats doesn’t work, and so movies are out of the question one of us–there’s little doubt who that “one” is. And of course the airline-provided headphones won’t stay in L’s ears, so I give her the ones I brought and take hers. Which have terrible sound and are inaudible even at the highest volumes when I plug it into the iPod.

It’s easy to complain — too easy. There are other inconveniences, but there are blessings as well. The flight is without incident. L is able to curl up into her seat and fall asleep. The entertainment selections for L are suitable and enjoyable. I manage to get a touch of rest. Still, on the balance sheet, this airline comes out far behind Lufthansa. The moral: be more flexible with your dates and fly the airline you trust.

Now we sit in Frankfurt airport, waiting for our connecting flight. L plays Angry Birds on the Nexus and I sit wondering if I’ll be able to make the drive from Krakow to Jablonka or if we’ll end up staying at the brother’s-in-law place. The hardest part is behind us, I like to think; the most tiring anyway.