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Published: December 7th 2008
Karolina
This was the last time we saw Karolina and how we'll always remember her - she had a regal bearingHello Everybody,
We hope you had a fun New Year’s Eve celebration and weren’t in bed by eleven as Bernie and I were. Actually we had driven back the final leg of our trip from Croatia* that day through snow, icy roads, and lots of traffic, so could hardly keep our eyes open until eleven. Vaguely remember hearing fire crackers - big in Germany - but even explosions right outside our window didn’t faze us champion sleepers. We always say that
Bernie with Jan, Teresa & Marysia
They live on the edge of town (Krakow) which is lovely - this field was very close to their home our “gift” from living in
Ecuador (1996 - 97) was being able to sleep through
anything. *Route back from Croatia: From Dubrovnik through Mostar into Bosnia; through the Republic of Serbska, which is part of Bosnia and where all the road signs were written in Cyrillic (think Russian) script - we had to yell to people the name of the town we were trying to find. Worked pretty well, but they always answered in German because of our German license plates, which made me get REALLY good at understanding directions in German - hand signals worked great too. Into Croatia - again (hurray, we could read the road signs again), then into Slovenia, into Austria and finally Germany. And what were we doing in
Croatia again when we were supposed to be going to
France and Spain, you ask. The night before we were leaving to drive through
Belgium, down the coast of France and into Spain on our planned Christmas trip we called to Bernie's family in
Poland to say Merry Christmas and got the news that
Karolina had died in the wee hours of that morning. (Karolina was Bernie’s cousin on his mother’s side with whom
Marysia & Teresa
Inside Jan & Teresa's new, beautiful home on the outskirts of Krakow. We were mostly in the garden on this warm summer day he was very close; she lived with him in Alaska on and off before and after we were married; she was in her 80s.)
POLAND
(Backing up just a little, we were actually in Poland in the summer of 2003 for a family visit - the photos herein are from that happier visit, not the funeral visit described below. Many, many of you know some/all of the family members and that is why I'm including so many photos. I want to apologize to our dear Polish family for any misspelling of names, please forgive me in advance.) That dark December evening we quickly changed plans and drove east to
Krakow, Poland for the funeral. They do not embalm there; we got the news Sunday evening and the funeral was set for Tuesday. This was Christmas week, and by tradition no funerals can take place Christmas Eve day, or Christmas day
or the day after. So, that left Tuesday. Another detail was that three of Karolina’s children and their families now live in Chicago - you can imagine how hard it was for them to get airplane seats at the height of holiday travel, but they and one
Marysia & Blazej
Brother & sister granddaughter managed it. There was a flight to
Warsaw (not Krakow, so they had a two-hour train ride tacked on the end of an exhausting trip), but since there were only five seats left on the plane at the last minute and they got four of them, they were
not complaining.
We started early Monday morning, drove 13 hours through dark, fog, snow, rain, sleet and sun, then dark again, arriving just minutes after the Chicago contingent made it to Krakow.
Karolina lived, and two of her six children,
Beata & Marlena and their families, still live in
Andrychow, a village not too far from Krakow where
Jan, Karolina's oldest child (
Marysia’s* father) lives with his wife,
Teresa. Marysia has an apartment in Krakow, and one in Warsaw where she mostly works. So early the next morning after picking up Marysia from the airport in Krakow, we drove on snowy, icy roads to Andrychow - about an hour. Marysia's brother
Blazej, his wife
Kasia and daughter
Sofia live in Krakow also.
*Marysia is one of our five foreign-exchange-student-daughters - she lived with us in Alaska for a year (1991 - 92) and went to the University of
Kasia & Sofia
Blazej's wife Kasia and daughter Sofia Alaska at that time.
We gathered at Karolina’s house where daughter
Beata and her family, husband
Zbiszek, children
Kasia & Martin,) who live in the upstairs apartment, were the hosts. They had hired several women from the village to cook and serve tea before the funeral and meals after.
Everyone was there. The children from Chicago:
Bogusia, and one of her daughters,
Ania;
Ella and Bartek. From Poland,
Marlena, Beata & Jan, with their families. As is usual at these gatherings, it was laughter, tears, more laughter, and more tears. Plus fun stories of growing up in the village. Ania, whose English is excellent, took it upon herself to translate every statement, every joke - such a wonderful young lady and because of her we were able to enjoy the gathering even more. Many of the Polish family speak excellent English, but most of the them had duties to perform, so Ania got the translation job.
Unlike most funeral services in the U.S., which are held indoors, funerals in Andrychow are held at the cemetery chapel. The temperature was about 0 to -1 F. (-18 C.) in the chapel and was indeed a freezer. After the rosary
Marysia & Bernie in Tatra Mtns.
Marysia took us hiking in the mountains; we stayed at a magical little B & B, ate at wonderful restaurants - the Tatra's have become quite the tourist destination was done, which took about an hour, a chanter began and continued to chant for another hour.
Then we went into the main chapel, colder if anything, (body, flowers had to be moved along with hundreds of people) where they did a full mass complete with communion. So then we had to wait until everybody took communion, which took a long time because people kept kneeling in the middle of the church (can you imagine how cold their knees must have been - yikes!) and thereby stopping traffic completely or causing a different flow pattern to emerge. People kept giving Bernie dirty looks because he wouldn’t take off his hat all the time - his poor bald head was extremely cold and he kept putting his hat on when he couldn't stand the cold anymore. The sermon, which the family said was very nice, was all in Polish, naturally. I was busy flexing my toes to keep them unfrozen - not “warm” mind you.
Next stop was the actual grave-site, moving body, flowers and hundreds of people again. The cemetery in Andrychow was so tightly packed (talking about the grave-sites) that you had to walk over graves to get
to Karolina’s, where, you guessed it, another ceremony took place. By this time Bernard was beginning to shake uncontrollably. I kept saying, five more minutes, five more minutes, but at one point he said no way, he had to get warm - his core temperature was dangerously low. We made a not-so-surreptitious exit (I knocked over a vase of flowers on a tombstone) and made it to the car and its, eventually, warm heater. It was only a few more minutes before we saw everybody sprinting for their cars, so we hadn’t missed much and from our viewpoint couldn’t have seen them placing her in the grave anyway.
Now mind you, everybody thought it was
me who had gotten cold because, naturally, I had on stupid clothes and Bernie appeared to be properly dressed in a nice long, warm coat. Since I had on warm boots and my feet were at least not frozen, I’d been able to handle the cold better, even though I had a skirt on under my long coat, it had a cozy hood - that saved me!
The number of people at the funeral, of which there were hundreds, was a tribute to
Krakow, Poland
The main plaza in Krakow - spent lots of time here at the many wonderful sidewalk cafes and shops what a well-loved lady Karolina was. She was a very strong personality with many quirks, but was funny, smart and above all generous, not only with her family, but with the whole community of Andrychow. It was a lovely showing of affection and respect by all.
Back at Karolina’s house the ladies had made tons of warm, hearty soup, followed by a meat dish, lots of little, tasty side dishes that warmed us up pretty fast. Or was it the many bottles of vodka that were being passed around?
Marysia had to fly out of Krakow at 5 a.m. the next morning, so we stayed in Andrychow until about 9 p.m. talking, laughing, crying with all the family before heading back to Krakow - just Marysia, Bernie and I. The immediate family in Andrychow stayed up all night reminiscing and ended up in the basement digging up the dirt floor looking for
buried treasure - long story, but I guess it was a most hysterical night.
Next morning, back in Karkow at Marysia's parent's house, Bernie got up at 3 a.m. and took Marysia to the airport for her flight back to Warsaw, came back for a
Split street
When in medieval cities, my imagination goes wild wondering about the times and what sorts of people walked on these very stones hundreds of years ago few more hours sleep, then we got up, left the keys with the neighbors and drove to Croatia.
CROATIA
Route: South in Poland; Slovakia; Austria; Slovenia into Croatia.
It was well below freezing in Slovakia and through the mountains in Austria, but we knew the weather would improve drastically once we crested the mountains. There is a mountain range that separates Croatia from the rest of the Balkan states (the Dinaric Alps) but it is very close to the coast. So the weather stays cold until you are very near the ocean, but then you drop down onto palm-tree-lined beaches of the Dalmatian Coast - literally one side of the range has snow, and the ocean side is sand and sunshine.
Christmas day we were in a fancy hotel right on the water in
Split. We spent the day walking around this still partially walled Roman town - along the waterfront crowded with people out enjoying the sunny, warm day - drinking coffee in sidewalk cafes. A
very civilized way to spend Christmas day.
Not too far from Split is the town of
Trogir, also walled, medieval and charming. We walked for hours around the
Trogir, Croatia
Spent a most enjoyable afternoon at a cafe just behind the palm trees, the view was stunning, the weather mild, and the people friendly. old part of the city, never really figuring out our bearings, ending up at dead-ends that had Egyptian statues, for example, or parts of Roman columns. Ate at a pizza place that had to be 1000 years old - not the restaurant (although the bread sticks WERE a bit stale. . .) but the building.
Dubrovnik is south of Split, but still on the
Adriatic Sea and has to be the most incredibly well-preserved, walled, medieval city in the world, not kidding here, it is amazing Our walking tour took two days to complete - all within the walled area. It also has the added attraction of being as yet “undiscovered” by too many tourists, so the people are friendly, the service good, although the prices are not in the “bargain” range anymore.
And as all good things must end (I’ve been meaning to ask WHY?), we had to return to Germany. We were planning on visiting a picturesque town in Germany for New Year’s Eve, but the driving was so bad we decided to take a more direct route and ended up back in Bochum Dec. 31. We both had to be back at work January 2,
Dubrovnik, Croatia
Enlarge this and look closely at the medieval walls, both on the ocean side and inland. This historic town is in amazingly pristine condition. so spent the weekend catching up on all of our magazine and newspaper reading*, most of our correspondence and all the little chores (button sewing, oven cleaning) one tends to neglect. It snowed New Year's Day and that was nice - everything looks so wintry and pretty.
*The only English-language TV we had in Germany was CNN, which you can only watch so much. We became news junkies those two years. It also freed us to read more, which we both enjoy immensely. On weekends we'd rent a DVD. We have plans to go to
Paris for a long weekend,
Ireland in April, want to do a long weekend in
London too and might do that in conjunction with Ireland. This coming weekend we are going to
Munich to visit friends for a long weekend. The following weekend we head south again to the
Swiss border to meet our
Israeli friends, Ofer & Tamar and two of their three sons, who will be there learning to ski. We are trying to take maximum advantage of being in Europe, so I think my job as travel agent will be a busy one these next 3 - 4 months.**
Cousins
Zbiszek, 2nd from right, Beata's husband with their two children, Katia & Martin (on either end), and two of their cousins - children of Zbiszek's sister Gotta run, dinner is about ready (roasting some pork, what else, "Schweinefleisch" - sound it out - is very popular here).
We hope 2004 brings fun, robust health, adventures and wondrous things to all of you.
**We did indeed do all the trips mentioned above, plus drove through
Spain - Bilbao, Santiago de Compostela, Madrid, Seville, Granada; another time flew to
Malaga, Spain for a long weekend with Bernie's cousin
Frank Woods and wife Dottie; another time we spent several days, including New Year's eve, in
Barcelona, Spain; drove to
Portugal - Elvora, Lisbon, Algarve Coast; through the Baltic states of
Lithuania, Latvia & Estonia; took a ferry to
Finland, drove back to Germany through
Denmark - what a GREAT time we had while living four years in Europe!!! We visited friends,
Emil and Renate in
Switzerland twice, of which one was a very special Christmas complete with candles on the live tree and fondu for dinner, hiking through knee-deep snow into the mountains. One summer we drove down through
Belgium to the beaches in
Normandy, France - they were getting ready for the 60th anniversary of D-Day so we missed our president by a couple of hours.
We visited our friends
Louis and Maryse in their lovely town of
Massongy, France, just across the border from
Geneva, Switzerland. We actually went to
Ireland twice that year - one time our English friends
Joanne and Robert joined us, and we visited them at their home near
Cambridge, England. Another time we went to a wedding (
Meredith, a classmate of Bernie's from
Leiden, the Netherlands) in another part of England. We visited
Bruges and Gent in Belgium several times. Bernie had to teach in
Venice, Italy, so we had a lovely week there. Bernie went to
Prague, the Czech Republic to teach a class, but I didn't go with him for that short gig. I'm not mentioning
the Netherlands or much of
Germany here because I'll be doing blogs on both of them. Since we lived in each place for two years, we traveled extensively in those countries.
IF YOU GO BACK TO THE START OF THIS BLOG, YOU'll SEE ABOVE THE TITLE IT SAYS "Travel Blogs by Kathy Bernie - Previous Entry." IF YOU CLICK ON Previous Entry IT WILL TAKE YOU BACK, ONE AT A TIME (JUST KEEP CLICKING), CHRONOLOGICALLY THROUGH OUR OTHER BLOGS
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