A rental car was dropped off at the hotel today. We'll have it for the weekend, and we took the first out-of-town excursion for this trip today. We went to the small town of Borzecin, a little over an hour from Krakow. It might have been less than an hour if we had taken the major highway, but we took a more scenic back road. I was amazed to see the many wooden low-slung homes with undulating roofs and chimneys that look as if they will collapse in the next strong wind. In some areas of Poland these are all gone.
Borzecin stretches out along a river, but as usual, the church is easy to find as the steeples rise over the fields and small houses. Robert remarked that in every town, no matter how small, the parish church is elaborately decorated and painted, and is spotless. Clearly the church is still the heart of the towns in Poland. The architecture starts to reflect that we are going east in Poland, with the steeples being moderated onion domes.
I was hoping to make a family connection in Borzecin. Before the trip, I printed a list of people with the last name of Badowski from an online Polish white pages web site. Unfortunately, there were only phone numbers - no addresses. I don't trust my meager Polish to carry on a complicated conversation. So I waited until we got to Poland and then asked my cousin to call the only Badowski listed as living in Borzecin. He graciously agreed to meet with us.
We first stopped at the church for photos. Pan Badowski's home was just a few doors down a street that traced the curve of the river. We compared notes, but he could really only recall his ancestry back to his grandmother, and had no knowledge of any of her siblings. I have a feeling that when I get serious about doing the Badowski branch of my tree I will find that we are distant cousins.
Although we returned to Krakow with just pictures of the church, it made me determined to spend more of my research time on my other families. We stopped to take our cousin Krystyna home, but she invited us in for tea, and we ended up spending a couple of hours looking at each others photographs and showing Krystyna our house on Google maps. That put us returning to the hotel in the middle of rush hour - and it is every bit as bad as downtown Chicago. I'm glad I've driven in Poland several times before, so just relaxed as we inched our way back to the hotel.
For dinner we decided to try Wesele, a newer and well rated restaurant on the Rynek. In other words, a little more expensive than an average place, but still inexpensive compared to Chicago or other major cities. Wesele is the Polish word for a wedding reception, and is reflected in the colorful floral decorations hung in a replica of a wooden cottage. It is a very pretty restaurant, and the food was worth every penny. Robert had red borscht and bigos. I had golabki and a beet salad. We shared a traditional Krakow cheesecake that was embellished with a warm bitter chocolate sauce. Yumm!
Do zobaczenia!
No comments:
Post a Comment