Poland Is Coming Up

I woke up this morning from a dream about my coming trip to Poland.

I was at the airport, when I noticed that my ticket showed an earlier departure time than I remembered, and I had missed my flight. I talked to the ticket agent, and she told me that if I drove overnight to Cleveland (I was no longer in California but in Chicago missing my connecting flight to Warsaw), I could catch a plane that would get me there in time.

But then I realized I didn't have my luggage. It was still sitting on my bedroom floor, empty.

I know where this dream came from. Last night I got an email with our detailed itinerary for our trip to Poland. The son of the minister my church supports, put the itinerary together. It has some of our must-see places on it, but not a couple others, so I'm a little concerned.

When I was in Poland in 1997, we saw a couple monuments in Warsaw that I need to see again, because we saw them at night, and the pictures didn't turn out well. One of them was a monument like railroad tracks with a flatbed rail car filled with crosses and Stars of David. On each railroad tie is the name and date of a Soviet atrocity committed against Poles. The other is the monument to the resistance against the Nazi invasion of Warsaw in 1939. It has statues of soldiers, farmers, workers, and other ordinary people armed with whatever weapons they could fashion, and over them is a giant concrete slab at an angle that looks like it's about to crush the defenders. My co-travelers from that trip want better pictures as much as I do.

The other thing missing from the itinerary is a visit to a concentration camp. It's not the kind of place you actually want to see, but it's the kind of place you must see if you're near one.

So I'll reply to the email and see if those three places will be possible for us.

This weekend will be a whirlwind of Poland preparation activity. I need to buy ChapStick® for starters, because they don't allow gel-style lip stuff on planes, the last I heard. If I do happen to miss my plane, I plan on doing it with all my luggage packed and with me.