Gdansk, Henryk and Irene

One afternoon in 1985, in Warsaw, Poland, in the adjacent campsite we saw a young boy wearing what looked like an official Indiana University sweatshirt — young people all over Europe wear USA college, and sports team shirts. This young boy and his grandparents, Henryk and Irene, were from Gdansk, Poland. I loaned Henryk the book we had bought in Vienna, that contained beautiful pictures of our country. When he returned the book the next morning, with a beautiful smile Henryk said, “You did all this in only 200 years!”

Their daughter Vicky, who then lived in London, was moving to the Los Angeles area. Henryk sent her our address, in hopes we could meet her some day. She called a few months later, came for a visit, and has visited in the years since.

Henryk told me an interesting story. A genie gave a man three wishes. The man’s first wish: “I wish that 10,000,000 members of the Chinese Army would march to Poland, then return home.” His second wish: “I wish that 10,000,000 members of the Chinese Army would march to Poland, then return home.” His third wish: again “I wish that 10,000,000 members of the Chinese Army would march to Poland, then return home.”

The Genie was puzzled and said that after all that, Poland would be a mess. The man said, “Yes, but after 10,000,000 members of the Chinese Army march to and from Poland six times, the Soviet Union will be in a much worse shape.”

Another story: What do you call the Moscow Symphony after a concert tour in the United States? Answer: “The Moscow Quartet.” (After all the defections.) Well, isn’t it nice that they can get some humor from their political predicament.

We had purchased a lot of extra food items before we left Vienna and had given a bag of food to the people in Wroclaw, and now gave a variety of grocery items to Henryk and Irena. That night Emmy made some peanut-butter fudge which we shared with our new Polish friends.

In the next few years, Henryk and Irene, and Andrew and Grace, their son and his wife from near Gdansk, visited in our home in the California desert, and in 1991 we visited in their homes in Gdansk. When we first met in Warsaw’s campsite, the odds must have been 10,000,000 to 1 against that.