Wroclaw in Pictures.

Me with Ania and Bolek, in their living room.



Ania and Bolek's night stand: Pictures of family and the Polish pope.



Ania making borscht.


The apple juice project.



Making fresh apple sauce.

Wroclaw: The Youth Edition

My father's old apartment building.


On my second day in Wroclaw, Ciocia Janka took me to the city's most famous sight: the Raclawice Panorama. Basically, you go into this room that is in the shape of circle, and there is a giant continuous painting wrapped inside of it, depicting a historical battle between Russians and Polish peasants, led by the famous Polish general, Tadeusz Kasciuszko. You have to walk around a circular balcony to view it all, and it looks so realistic that it is almost three-dimensional.

Janka also took me to another famous sight in Wroclaw--well, at least, according to my family--the building where my father used to live. It was grey and square and run down, with no balcony to stand on or lines to get in, but I found it more interesting than a big famous painting.

From that point on, my tour guide changed hands and I was now being led around the city by the younger generation, starting with my forty-something cousin Jarek. There was something about Jarek that I liked right away. He didn't have a lot to say, sometimes he just wore a bemused smile, but to me, he looked like my family. He had the same chocolate brown eyes as my dad with small crinkles around them that gave me the impression he wore that smile often. His wife Jola and nearly 3-year-old daughter Justyna accompanied us on the tour.

Jarek drove really fast. After the light, he would switch the gears on his manual car quicker than I have ever seen anyone do so. From the driver's seat, he would point out the other relevant sights of town: "This is where your aunt lived." "This is where your father went to school." This is where Bolek worked." I would crane my neck to look at these places of history but they went by my window in a blur.

We went to this restaurant the couple frequented often. Inside looked both like an office building and a florist. The ceilings were syrofoamy and white, with bad lighting, and then there were plastic flowers everywhere. Jarek joked with the hostess and the waiter; they knew him. He told me that he and Jola had their wedding reception at this place. We all ordered salmon smothered in yellow cheese. It tasted better than it sounds.

Since it was a beautiful day, we went to a Japanese garden and walked around. Most of the flowers were no longer in bloom, so instead I observed 3-year-old Justyna. Like me, she was also learning how to speak Polish. She knew her stuff. If we were walking on sand, she would point to the ground and shrill, "SAND!" Her other strategy was to restate everything we had just said.

"Look at the fish!" her father would say as we walked by a pond.

"There is a fish!" she would answer.

I felt as if I followed her masterful language techniques, I could perhaps speak as well as she can.

Next, I was dropped into the hands of Dorota. My second cousin, Dorota is the daughter of Henryk, who is Ania and Bolek's son and Jarek's brother. She is one year younger than me, so Ania and Bolek thought we could enjoy Wroclaw at night together, as young people do. They encouraged it and fretted about it. I wasn't exactly sure why, but then I met her.

Oh Dorota. She is one year younger than me, but we couldn't be more different. She has yet to finish her studies at the university and is currently unemployed so she borrows money from her grandparents. But she isn't dumb. She speaks German fluently and is interested in politics, history and David Lynch films.

Dorota ended up taking me to a little pub that absolutely charmed me. I bought the first round (naturally) and we sat drinking wine, speaking Polish and listening to an energetic piano player. Here I learned not only that she is fast-talking and chain-smoking woman, she has an internet boyfriend and is an absolute Wroclaw loyalist: she can't imagine living anywhere else.

When we were finished with our drinks, she suggested we walk around the city, but we made a stop at a liquor store to get a beer.

It was an interesting scene. First of all, it was packed for a Sunday night. The tall, skeletal man behind the counter had dark circles under his eyes and had greasy hair that looked like he hadn't showered in a week. The place sold all kinds of alcohol but mostly rows and rows of single cans of beer which people were buying by the handful. Dorota bought a beer to walk around with, and I bought a candy bar. After I paid, a dirty man behind me, who I had seen collecting money at the front of the door, dropped a handful of change onto the counter to get one beer. It was one of the most depressing sights I have ever seen.

Dorota and I walked to the beautifully illuminated cathedral, she with beer in hand, me with my Kit Kat. I kind of felt like I was 18 years old again. Nowhere to go because we (well, one of us) had no money and drinking beer like we weren't supposed to. I didn't say anything because I really wanted an authentic experience, and here I was getting it. This was Dorota's Wroclaw: the city that she loved.

We spoke a lot in Polish. I told Dorota about my workaholic ways in New York. She said that she didn't like to work. I said that there has to be some kind of balance. We came back to the apartment around 10:30, and Dorota got yelled at for bringing me home so late. Oh, Dorota. Oh, old people.

The next day, I was back on the train back to Krakow. An entire city, three generations of family, I could barely wrap my mind around it. Arriving at Krakow Glowny, I felt a sense of relief. I was lighter, better. The drawer of my family past was open. I was letting people in.

Justyna: Masterful Polish linguist.



Jarek, Justyna and Jola at the Japanese garden.



Lively Dorota.



Bolek, Janka and Ania wave good-bye at the train station.

Wroclaw: Family Style

My tour guides: Ciocia Janka and Wujek Bolek on the tram.

I had read the Wroclaw section in my Lonely Planet "Poland" guidebook, but as soon as I got there, I tossed it into my backpack and forgot about it. Here, I would be getting a tour of the city that wouldn't be explained in a book.

On the first day, Ciocia Janka, Wujek Bolek and I took the tram into the center of town. We started by walking around the famous Rynek filled with the old-style, rainbow of houses and the magnificent town hall plopped in the center. We ventured into the Museum Narodowe to look at Polish fine art, but we only glanced around one wing. Sometimes our tour ventured off course and we would end up walking through giant shopping malls.

"Poland has everything," Bolek bragged, pointing to the stores, "just like America."

We walked slowly, deliberately; I the only one with young legs. (Though Bolek would beg to differ. At one point of the weekend, he lifted up his pants to show me his still shapely 75-year-old calves.) Conversations were quaint. As we walked by a government building, Bolek explained to me that in these offices, no one wrote by hand anymore. All work was done on the computer. I wanted to hug him right there.

While we were in the second mall of the day, with Bolek pointing out the architecture, the three levels of stores, the elevator, the parking garage--I realized the malls weren't a detour. They were part of the tour. Bolek seemed genuinely proud how modern this mall was and for him, it was something to show off. Throughout my stay, I had noticed that much of Wroclaw is under construction, with thanks to new development and Poland's recent inclusion the European Union. This mall was just a small part of the new Poland. We didn't go into any stores, rather we just walked by them as if we were still in the museum, pausing to stop and look as if they were works of art to be admired themselves.

As for me, hanging out in Ania and Bolek's tiny apartment offered more of a glimpse of the way they live than walking through a mall. The apartment was of New York City proportions, very neat, styled in the typical Polish fashion--filled with dark brown furniture, frilly white curtains and not one, but two places to store bottles of vodka. Some items in the apartment utterly perplexed and amused me: the frayed Mickey Mouse sticker pasted on the hand towel hook, the collection of soda-themed shot glasses, the radio that looked like it came straight from 1980.

Ania is the type of woman who can't sit still for a second. Running to the kitchen and back again, she is always cooking, cleaning, fixing, talking, doing something. In addition to cooking us a delicious assortment of meals--such as red borsct, chicken cutlets and potatoes sprinkled with dill, pancakes (from America!) topped with homemade jam)--her project this weekend was creating apple sauces and juices out of giant barrels of apples they had picked before I had gotten there.

"See," she said to me, "nothing here is ever wasted." She opened up her cabinet to reveal about three dozen jars of jams and pickles and fruits and other concoctions she had created. I was charmed by the idea, but most of the contents looked a little scary to me.

Bolek is a little more laid-back. He would sort of drift around the apartment, disappearing once in a while. I would find him observing me, and so I would smile and he would smile back. He has a great, warm smile. Sometimes he could come over to me to sit on the couch and discuss Poland, their life, his memories. He often did not understand what I was saying, so I tried to have simple conversations with him.

"How did you sleep?" I once asked, in Polish.

"Pretty good," he answered. "I woke up."

He and his son Jarek can sure drink a lot of vodka. The first evening, everyone came to the apartment to see me and have dinner. We ate Polish ham and watched a badly dubbed version of Legally Blonde 2 on the television. I am not one to do shots, so during dinner I nursed a little glass of blackberry flavored vodka. In utter amazement, I watched father and son down one drink after another--while still managing to act completely sober.

For two days, I lived like an old person. Waking up at 7 and going to bed at 9:30 or 10. We spoke Polish slowly. We walked slowly. We ate slowly. I listened to them fret about things only old people fret about. But after two weeks of go-go-go, there was something relaxing about this way of life and I was happy to sink right in.


Colorful Wroclaw.


Bolek: A man of the mall.


Dinner and vodka. (From left to right) Ania (my aunt), Janka (my aunt), Jola (my cousin Jarek's wife), Justyna (Jarek and Jola's daughter), Jarek (my cousin) and Bolek (my uncle).

Out in the open

Ciocia Janka and Ciocia Ania greeting me at the train station.

This weekend, I packed my bag and went to visit my Ciocia (Aunt) Ania and Wujek (Uncle) Bolek who live in Wroclaw. Sitting on train on the way there, I tried to remember the last time I had seen them. I could not. So then I tried to think about everything I knew about them. I knew that Ania is my dad's older sister. I knew that Ania and Bolek were in their 70's and have been married and living in Wroclaw for a long time. Multiple people have told me that Bolek is a "good man." I also knew that Wroclaw is a city entrenched with my family history because my dad, aunts and grandmother lived there for a long time before coming to the United States.

The truth is, I don't know much about my father's family. My parents divorced when I was young, and I am not very close with my father. This makes my vision of him, his family and our history something of a fuzzy picture for me. There are bits and pieces, places and faces that I know. But often times I am unsure whether my knowledge is based on fact, or just some memory based on folklore or a dream. Often times, it is a picture that I avoid and ignore; as if it is something I have shoved inside a drawer to be lost and forgotten.

I was nervous about the trip. I was nervous because I haven't seen these people in years. I was nervous because these relatives only spoke Polish which meant that I had to communicate with them in my broken Polish. And most of all I was nervous because I knew my visit would open up that drawer.

It was Ciocia Ania who opened it.

She, her son (my cousin) Jarek and my other Ciocia Janka, who currently lives in the United States and also visiting Poland, greeted me at the train station. Ania hugged me so tightly, I thought I would break.

"I wouldn't have recognized you," she said, with a big smile and watery eyes, "You have grown up so much since I last saw you. Yvonne in Wroclaw. I can't believe it."

When I got to the apartment, I met Bolek and we had lunch and all spoke in Polish rather awkwardly about my trip thus far, my plans and circumstances. And that is when Ciocia Ania literally opened a drawer and pulled out a stack of letters. She pulled one out and handed it to me. It was a happy birthday card with a picture of Strawberry Shortcake. Inside in curly cursive was written in Polish, "We have a girl. She was born October 5, 11:45pm." It was dated 1978.

The letter was about me, and it was written by my grandma. I was so touched that Ania had saved the card, I started to cry. As much as I had always tried keep the drawer shut, I couldn't deny it. This was my family.

I wanted to know more, but it was so hard with the language barrier. I spoke Polish the entire time, not well, but better than I ever did. I would ask questions about my family and point to pictures in the albums we looked through. The photo albums, like my memories, were filled with a disorderly mixture of images old and new. Pictures taken decades apart would inexplicably sit next to each other. I hoped that my questions and pictures would provoke long in-depth discussions about my family history, but usually they only brought simple explanations. Once in a while, someone would go off an a tangent and say something--like when Ania mentioned that my grandmother always wore the same shirt or when Bolek remarked that my father was a good boy when he was young. I would grab a hold of these comments as if I were an archaeologist looking anything tangible, even a sentence, to prove some kind of fact or figure in my memory. I wanted to know everything, anything.

At one point I asked Ciocia Janka why my family decided to move to Wroclaw from Ukraine. And she told me that after their father died, it was incredibly hard in Ukraine. They had no money and were hungry all the time, so they decided to move. She started to tear up. "Even just remembering it now makes me sad" she said, pointing to her eyes.

With her words, for a brief moment, the picture I have of my dad and my family past came into a crisp focus, so bright and vivid was it that it also brought tears to my eyes. I already knew that my family was poor, and I knew that they had gone hungry, however, to see her pain about it all these years later, out in the open, surprised me. I wanted to know more about it. I wanted to know what it felt like, what their days were like, how they managed. However, the barrier in telling me went beyond the language. Janka perhaps had a drawer of her own.

"Ciocia, I am sad," I said, in Polish. "Because I know nothing and that is why I cry." She hugged me.

"How could you know? No one has told you." But she didn't tell me more, and I didn't expect her to.

My birth announcement.