"Krakow, Poland," I replied.

His eyes widened with shock. "Alone?" he asked, his voice betraying a sense of incredulity that I would do such a thing.

"Yes," I said. "Why?"

"No one travels to Poland alone," he replied, shaking his head.

"Oh," I said "Well, I left on the midnight train Thursday night..." As I briefly described my trip, I realized that my desire to return to Poland was showing through my words.

Even so, he felt he needed to explain to me just how lucky I was to return to Vienna in one piece that morning - and it really wasn't necessary. I'd only spent three days in Poland, and two nights on the trains running between Austria and Poland, but I'd encountered small snippets of the best and the worst of what the country had to offer.

There was a tour guide who left me (and the rest of our tour) stranded in the middle of Krakow ("Tour ends now. Meet my friend - he drives a taxi!"), a drunken man on the train back to Vienna who felt obliged to run his hands over whatever portion of my body he could reach, a brief scare when I realized I'd lost my passport (luckily, I found it again!), and even a few run-ins with fellow Americans (including one U.S. government official who was in Poland working on environmental issues, and far too eager to discuss his experiences with Polish Prostitutes).

My favorite memory, however, is of one young woman who I met at the Krakow train station. Her name was Grazyna and our meeting is described in my journal thus:

"There's a huge number of soldiers in various uniforms at this station - God only knows why...A French girl has offered me a spot on her mat. I think it's a combination of a kind gesture and a form of self defense - women still aren't safe travelling alone...The girl at the train station was Polish, not French. She was a girl scout troop leader. We exchanged addresses..."

The dots between the sentences cover a lot of unexplained territory in my journal. I was so intent on trying to record all of my experiences with tour guides, and visits to historical (if not pleasant) places like Auschwitz, that the descriptions of this chance meeting were left out of the journal entirely. But, my memories of the few moments and conversations shared with Grazyna have remained with me over time.

Our meeting was simple - she and I both sat against a wall at the train station. We were each minding our own business, reading or writing, until a group of soldiers walked by and made loud comments to us. Since I speak no Polish whatsoever, I can't tell you what these uniformed men actually said, but their tone of voice and their body language made me uncomfortable. Language barrier or no, I was instinctively placed on my guard. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that the young woman sitting a few yards away from me was tensing up also.

When the soldiers were gone, she and I glanced at each other. She smiled, and jerked her head as if to say "Hey, join me over here." So I did. Clearing a place on her long foam mat (the kind you roll up and tie to the bottom of backpacking gear for camping trips), she made a place for me to sit and we started trying to communicate. As luck would have it, she was an 18 year old high school student who'd been studying English for a while. In fact, she'd brought along a copy of her Polish-English dictionary in order to study over the weekend. And, while she was far from fluent, she spoke enough for us to get a few basics across.

Then the soldiers passed us by again - and they left us alone! Our solidarity and increase in confidence due to our impromptu companionship must have been obvious because they merely glanced at us and kept right on going.

That was a kind of victory for both of us, and we enjoyed our attempts to speak via broken English or words pointed out in a dictionary. In between chatting about her weekend with the girl scouts (that was the weekend her troop had gone camping in the Krakow area), helping her family business, and preparing for college where she would study accounting, despite the fact that the word she chose to describe the subject (by pointing to it in her dictionary) was the polish term for "to vomit." Grazyna shared a couple of apples with me and even gave me a small purple mat as a gift. It was just a little square of foam, but she said I could keep it to use after she'd left for the train which would take her home.

At one point, the girl Scout troop she worked with stopped by to say goodbye (Grazyna couldn't stay for the entire camping trip) and she introduced me to the youngsters she'd been working with. I smiled and tried to figure out what to do or say - unfortunately, none of the scouts spoke English. It was something of a relief when the youngsters turned their whole attention to Grazyna and the fond farewell they'd come to give her - it gave me a few moments to take in the scene and I was intrigued by their uniforms: long black skirts, with matching sweaters, pressed shirts, and sturdy hiking boots. It was a far cry from the brown uniforms with shiny black shoes I wore in Elementary School, or the green sashes over blue jeans and t-shirts which we used in Junior High.

Our trains were leaving at different times, and I rather dreaded being left along for the few hours between Grazyna's departure and mine. She may have sensed this because, before she left to get onto her train, she walked me to the platform where my train would be stopping to pick up passengers, just to make sure I knew how to get from the general area to the proper platform.

Such simple, friendly things.

Despite the jolt of fear which brought us together, whenever I think of Poland, I think of apples, purple foam mats, and girl scouts in long black skirts. I think of a young woman from Olsztyn, Poland who joined forces with me, in a subtle and friendly way, and helped to pass the time in a train station which was both boring and frightening.

To me, Poland is a symbol of woman-to-woman kindness, and that's why I have always longed to return.



About the Author:
Adora Pozolinski has previously written "Women In Black Panties" for the October, 1997 issue of Grrowl! You can visit her homepage, All Adora for more of her writing.