Gdansk #2of2

With Henryk driving, we went north to Gdynia, and saw what had been the home port for the TSS Stefan Batory, the ship we sailed on, from Rotterdam to Montreal, a few years earlier. It no longer sails from anywhere, that we know of.

Emmy asked Henryk if there was anything, food or otherwise, that he missed since he returned to Poland from America. With a big smile he said, “Oh yes, Mexican food.” Well, Emmy still had tortillas left from what she brought from the US, so later that day she fixed them for Henryk and Irena, their daughter Maria and her three sons — but only a bite or two for each. One son was the one wearing the Indiana University shirt in Warsaw. He started all this.

At Christmas time Emmy packed a large box of Mexican food items to mail to Gdansk. Including postage it will be one of the most expensive dinners they ever ate. Henryk said that if a package looks interesting, it will most likely be stolen before it can be delivered, and a large package from the US certainly fits the pattern. But the package was received and enjoyed, only a little mold had to be removed from a few things.

The three Baltic countries, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, had recently declared they were free countries, and no longer part of the USSR. We thought of trying to visit there, but the Polish newspapers report that Soviet Border Control people are still on the job, and that it was difficult, or impossible, to cross the border from Poland to Lithuania. That was disappointing.

On our last morning we drove to Henryk and Irene’s apartment, then followed them as they drove to their son Andrew’s home, in Pruszcz Gd, just south of Gdansk. His home is in an apartment building, set among a large group of buildings, much like in other cities all over Eastern Europe.

Andrew and Grace (English versions of their names, not their Polish names), had visited our home in California a few years earlier while they spent several months visiting his sister. While in the US, Andrew had a job as a chauffeur and drove a Lincoln Continental limousine. A few weeks before our visit in his home, there had been an advertisement for a driver for a 1991 Lincoln limousine in this part of Poland. Andrew applied for the job, and since he was the only person who had ever seen, let along driven such a vehicle, he got the job.