The Main Square in Kraków

Pierogi, Trains, Chopin, Repeat

By Nate Jones

I arrived in Poland on Dec. 13, 1993, barely 19 years old, armed with a suitcase full of white shirts and ties, my new black name tag and a two-month crash course in Polish that somehow qualified me to serve as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

My first impression was cold, dark and gray. During the winter months, the sun disappeared before dinner and didn’t bother coming back until after breakfast.

The country was finding its way after the fall of communism just a few years earlier. And I absolutely fell in love with it.

More than 30 years later, I finally returned, this time with my wife, Deng, and our daughters, Roxy and Skai. Roxy is 19 now, almost exactly the age I was when Poland first became part of my life.

We traveled by train through Kraków, Katowice, Chorzów, Wrocław and Warsaw. We hunted for dozens of Wrocław’s little bronze gnomes, ate an irresponsible number of pierogi and discovered that despite my efforts to teach my daughters Polish, the only word they reliably remembered was "lody."

Ice cream. Priorities.

What surprised me was how quickly Poland came back to me.

Walking up Wolności Street in Chorzów, Skai asked how much I actually remembered.

“If we turn left at the next corner, there should be a bakery. We bought fresh bread there every other day.”

We turned left. Before I saw it, I smelled it. The bakery was still there. We bought chleb, Polish bread, and with one bite, I was 19 again.

Maybe memories don’t live only in our heads. Sometimes they’re waiting in a loaf of bread.

Poland has changed. Warsaw has a dramatic new skyline. Kraków bustles with picturesque cafés and tourists from all over the world. The country feels brighter, cleaner and more prosperous. But the Poland I loved was still there, especially in its people.

We had dinner with my dear friend Witold, a man whose personality has always been considerably taller than he is, his beautiful wife, Ola, and their sons, Artur and Iwo. Ola’s mother, whom we affectionately called Mama, fed my mission companion and me every Sunday for the nine and a half months that I lived in Chorzów. Mama has passed, but memories of her table haven’t. Some people quietly become part of who we are.

Poland even gave us a new friend. In Warsaw, we met Grażyna, the mother of a Polish friend back home. By the end of a day spent showing us her city, we had adopted her as our Polish babcia. She invited us into her home, where her hospitality apparently included letting me try on her son’s old winter coat from the communist era. The photographic evidence is unfortunate.

I especially wanted Roxy, a pianist who loves Chopin, to experience his homeland. I planned two Chopin concerts and a visit to his birthplace at Żelazowa Wola. She loved it all so much she requested a third concert. She and I went together.

That concert, in a small neoclassical salon in Warsaw illuminated only by candlelight, became our favorite. As we listened to Maciej Poliszewski play Chopin, everything about our visit to Poland seemed to come together. That evening, I told Roxy how happy I was that we’d come.

“I loved this trip more than you did, Dad. Thank you.”

For 30 years, I never really could explain to my family how much Poland had become a part of me when I was 19. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that it took another 19-year-old to understand.

It turns out I just needed to bring my family back so Poland could become part of them, too.