It’s always a long journey to get here. We have the hour and a half drive to the airport in Charlotte for the long obligatory wait after arriving well before our flight and even before the recommended time to arrive for an international flight. Then we have the flight itself: Charlotte to Munich is about 7 1/2 hours in the best case scenario. Then we have to wait in Munich for a flight to Cracow. The layover has been as long as six hours; it’s been as brief is 90 minutes. Once we land in Cracow we have to drive to D’s house. Of course we spend a few hours there visiting with D and his family. Finally there’s the hour and 15 minute drive from D’s house to Babcia’s house. All told it is 18 to 24 hours door-to-door.

We all agreed though that this trip was our fastest yet. The flight to Munich seemed to go by in a blink. The layover in Munich was just a touch over two hours, which is just long enough to get through customs determine the gate, and find a nice place to have a coffee and pastry. Relax for a few minutes, and then head on to the gate. Traffic was mercifully light and we made it to Babcia’s just after six in the evening.

At D's, we spent a fair amount of time discussing what we might do together during our time here. Because of the way Babcia's birthday party falls, we really only have one full week here for tourism. The birthday party solves one problem: we get all our visiting done in one shot, so we won’t feel obligated to spend an afternoon with this family in the afternoon with those cousins and another afternoon here and get another afternoon there. Those visits are lovely, but when you really only have one solid week it’s nice to be able to have more options on the table. We made some plans and then some backup plans in case the weather does not cooperate and then some other backup plans. In case the weather turns vindictive. Starting next week, there was a high probability of storms, so that makes it difficult to plan with any accuracy.

All right our arrival at mom’s follow the usual patterns: lots of hugs, lots of sitting at the table chatting, lots of exchanging gifts, big and small, and lots of Babcia should just being Babcia.

I’m always talking about the changes I see when we arrive back in Poland, especially the changes in a small village like Jablonka. Here, there were only fields that are now houses; rutted dirt paths have been replaced with new paved roads. The traditional ladders for drying hey have disappeared and in their place squat, white cylinders of rolled and wrapped hay. Evening walks that used to have lowing cows as a soundtrack have grown almost silent. And yet some things have not changed: as I headed out for a walk this evening, my first on our return, I heard a tractor behind me. It was pulling a large tank trailer. I knew what was happening immediately. It was about to go out into the fields to pour the byproducts of cows and horses on the fields is natural fertilizer. So while many things have changed, some of the smells are still the same.