Category: travel

June 1995. Our Trip to Poland. Part 1

Since I am writing my story partially backward, I didn’t write yet how we got to know the Dowgerts family from Pruszcz Gdansky- a small town close to Gdansk. For now, I will say that Boris and I met Dowgerts several years before, and we stayed at their place when we visited Poland in the summer of 1990. Since the www and the internet, in general, were barely emerging, it wasn’t easy to keep track of each other’s lives. The only thing I knew in May 1995 was that they will meet us and will drive us to their vacation home on the Baltic shore. I tried to get an idea of whether there will be warm enough there in mid-June, and they said – yes, it should be fine.
The airfare was expensive, and I decided to take a train to Gdansk. I believe the length of the journey was about 30 hours. The train was leaving in the late morning and arriving in Gdansk at about 6 PM the next day.
The night before our departure Vlad got a high fever, upset stomach, and nausea. And …. I decided we are still going! Yes, I made sure his temperature went down by the time we had to leave, and not just dow, but down without him taking any fever-reducing drugs. He was pretty weak and laid down for most of the first day of travel, but he was fine when we arrived to Gdansk. However, before arrival, there was a night…

I know that what I am going to tell now will sound extremely judgmental, maybe racist, so I will try very hard to stick to the facts.

We were traveling in the sleeping car. The car was almost empty; only one more compartment except ours was occupied. And the car crew was Polish.

Yes, I understand that it is not about nationality; it is about the social norms in a particular society. And I love the Polish part of me, and I love Poland deeply, but by that time I’ve interacted with Poles, male and female, long enough to know about what was considered an appropriate “manly” behavior.
The compartments in the sleeping cars were quite weird from my perspective. In the Soviet sleeping car, each compartment would host four people, two on the bottom bunks, and two on the tops. Here, the were three bunks on one side and none on the other. There were belts to prevent a person who was sleeping on the top from falling. I think that Igor was sleeping on the second bunk, and it would be logical if I would climb on the very top. But I was on the bottom bunk.

And then one of the porters knocked at the door. He said something to the effect that he forgot to give me some toiletries, which he had to provide for the sleeper passengers. I opened the door. He smelled heavily with the cheap perfume. He locked the door and threw his body over me.

I have no idea what he was thinking:). I have two hypotheses. One- that he was sure that I would succumb to his charms, and that no woman can stand them. At least that’s what I could deduce from the fact that he started to kiss me, saying in Polish, that he wants my lips. My other hypothesis is that he thought I would not risk waking up the kids because I would not want to scare them and keep quiet.
Well, it was true – I didn’t want to scare the kids. But, that was not the first rape attempt in my life, and I knew how to stand for myself!

I was turning spinning my head so that he won’t get my lips, I was pushing him away with both hands, and I was (very quietly) screaming at him to get in the hell out of here! He was still trying to talk me into I am not even sure what, saying, “please let me” in Polish, but I kept spinning and keeping whispering-yelling, and I think he finally realized that I would start screaming loudly if he persists. He retreated.

In the morning, he was very official, as if nothing happened. Do I have to say that I didn’t say a word to anybody? Neither to him nor the Dowgerts when they met us at the train station. I think that I told Boris only several weeks after we’ve returned. And you know why? First, because I believed it’s a part of women’s life. Women are getting raped. Because if you are good looking, men would want to rape you. That was a given. And because – yea, because “it was all my fault.” Because I wore a short skirt. Because I was so vivacious and so visibly excited about going to Poland. Because I knew, “how Polish men are,” and still talked friendly with them during the day.

That’s how our two-week trip to Poland started 🙂

My historical posts are being published in random order. Please refer to the page Hettie’s timeline to find where exactly each post belongs and what was before and after.

A Virtual Walk in the Park

The other day, I asked Boris to take a picture of how does the nature in Helsinki looks like now. He said, he already did, and sent me a link to several images of awakening nature. And then the next morning, when I called him at our usual meeting time, he has outside, walking in the Sibelius park (he lives right by it).

He showed me the flowers and the trees in bloom and the bikers and the dogs :). And I didn’t feel sad like “oh, I wish I was there!” On the contrary, it felt so nice and so special, it was really “as if I was there.”

Skating in Helsinki

The weather in Helsinki is extremely mild this winter, and there was barely any snow. Because of that, Boris was still biking almost every day. Before our departure to Cyprus, he asked me how I feel about biking. First, I liked this idea, because it sounded surreal to bike in Helsinki when I was not biking in Palatine for a while. However, although I had proper shoes with me, I lacked other winter-biking equipment, specifically pants, and gloves. My hands are getting frozen even when the temperature is in the 40s, yet along 30s, especially when biking. On Saturday, after we came back, it was sunny and still no snow, but there was a substantial wind. 

I thought that I would be better off going skating in the city center, so when Boris went biking, I got on the train, and in ten minutes, I was by the skating rink. It was minutes past ten, the rink had just opened, and hurray – there was no like! I paid for the skates and skating and hurried up the ice.

It was wonderful! The rink s huge, and ice was perfect; there were very few people, and although I originally planned to skate for just half-an-hour, I ended up skating for the whole hour and could skate more, if I didn’t have to meet Boris for lunch. 

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Traveling Back to Helsinki from Cyprus

The last day of the conference was very busy. There were lots of interesting talks during all the four sessions. I was attending all the SE sessions and had tones of productive conversations. Since we had a very early flight onFriday, we decided against exploring the city one more time and had dinner at the hotel. 

Friday was exhausting. We had to get up at 4 AM, and the cab arrived to pick us up at 5-15. It takes a whole hour to reach the airport, and our flight was at 8 AM. 

An interesting thing happened at the airport. At some point, we heard an announcement that “the accident occured” in the building, and that everybody has to leave immediately. The announcement was repeated multiple times, and … nothing happened!!!

Another funny thing was at the entrance to the passport control lines. Remember I mentioned that there lots of Russian tourists in Cyprus? There were two directions signs, one – “EU ad CH passports” and another – “All other passports.” They were repeated in English, Greek, and Russian, and for the latter one the sing said: “Русские паспорта,” which means “Russian passports.” By the way, in Athens, a tourist from China try to go to the first of these two lines, because she thought that CH means “China.” 🙂 :):)

The flight back was exhausting, we had two connections, in Athens and in Munich. The first one was not bad, we had plenty of time, I even shopped for souvenirs and bought some Greek wine for Vlad.

Actually, after being in Cyprus for five days, I somehow started to miss Greece. We were walking along the aport in search of our gate, and the exits to the city were visible on the left. I asked Boris: can we step outside for just a brief moment? I want to be in Greece! SO we did. It was crisp outside, but sunny, and I saw the mountains :). And I thought I need to come to Greece again :). 

It was 7-30 PM when we came back home in Helsinki, so it was a very long day! 

Dinner Conversations

At the dinner, we sat together with the local organizers. It became very cold while we were walking around the city, so when we reach the tavern, I announced that they made a Chicagoan getting froze in Cyprus! That was a good conversation starter, for sure :).
Then I started my usual prizing Chicago speech, and that everybody should visit. Along the lines, it came that Vlad is a director of a bar (I even remember the context: we talked about the PG Day). I told the local organizer that Vlad makes cocktails inspired by different cultures and that his Greek cocktail has mustika. The gentleman was impressed and told me that Vlad must know his stuff.

Since I knew that Vlad won’t be asleep yet, I texted him right away. For which Vlad replied: We also have tsiopouro in the same cocktail from Argo!

When I presented this text, the gentleman’s brows start to raise and the jar dropped. He was like: this is so local! How does he know?! Did he travel to Greece? I said – yes, and he loved it.

Then the gentleman looked at me and asked how old is my son, and how many children I have. And I proudly told: three children, one grandchild, and one more on the way! And showed a group picture on the phone. And I said that I am 57, and my birthday was on Sunday, And he was: never tell that! You do not look like it! And I was – that’s precisely why I tell that! And he looked at me again and said emphatically: your husband is so lucky!


At that point, I didn’t have other options except to turn to my left and poke Boris into his elbow :). If people do not know us, they can’t tell, because we have different last names and different countries on our badges:). So it was all quite amusing:)

Dining in Cyprus

Back to the conference, back to Cyprus. After the amazing tour of Kurion, we headed back to Limassol. Once again, we learned a lot about Cyprus’ history from our tour guide. In Old Town, we disembarked the bus and had a walking tour. We had one more option to visit Limassol Castle. I posted al the pictures in this post, and I think it was worth visiting the Castle twice, in the daylight and the evening. After walking around and seeing more old streets, we finally arrived at the place of the conference dinner. Mezedopagida tavern.

If you do not know what “meze” means in Cyprus (and in some other countries), let,e tell you! That is a never-ending appearance of amazing dishes, and when you think that’s it, three more appear at the table. You have to sample them all, because it is impossible not to!

I was somewhat prepared by Boris and by hints from the local organizers. so I had a light breakfast and light lunch (both were quite challenging to achieve, having all the buffet options available! 

And then there was meze. We sat at the table with local organizers, which made our navigation through different foods somewhat easier. There was also very nice local wine. And now I will stop talking and start showing 🙂

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A Tour of Kurion

This tour came to the conference schedule almost a last-minute, and I told the organizers that it was a terrific idea. As I said before, just walking around during the after-hours was not an option. When I researched “thins to do at Limassol,” I realized that the interesting stuff is outside the city. Unfortunately, all the tours you could book, even the half-day tours, were starting in the morning.

That tour gave the conference participants an excellent option to see at least some of the history of Cyprus and in a very compact way. I do not appreciate an idea of going to the conference, and then spending three-quarters of the time sightseeing, A professional conference is for your professional development. Yes, it is nice to go on some tours and see a new place, but not at the expense of the main purpose. Scheduling that tour as a separate event was great, a gift from the organizers. If I was traveling for leisure, I would spend more time on each of the sites and would research more of the history in advance.

We started at 4 PM and headed to the archeological site of Kurion. During our ride, our tour guide showed us the refugee villages, which are very well maintained. It is astonishing and sad to learn that there are still hundreds of thousands of refugees in their own country. For such a small country like Cyprus, these numbers are really striking. Once again, I have to admit that we are fast to forget the things which disappear fro the top news headlines – especially if they do not touch us directly.

Passing a stream on the way

We finally arrived at the Archeological site of the ancient state-city of Kurion. There are so many things to see there, but we had limited time, and technically speaking, we were visiting at the after-hours. We had to finish our visit before the sunset, which gave us not more than 40 minutes for everything

House of Eustolios, first private villa, then public baths
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Dessert Optimization

Even if you never being to Cyprus you might have heard about Cyprus food. Although our host characterized the hotel food as “a typical hotel food,” it was delicious! The challenge was to try as many dessert as possible (they would change the main menu and the dessert menu twice a day, and it was impossible to cover even a half of the items. That’s how my typical dessert plate would look:

Limassol: Walking the Old Town and the Seashore

As I’ve mentioned in the previous post, it’s not that much of the old Limassol left, but we still wondered some of the older streets before we headed back to the hotel.

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A Visit to the Limassol Castle

We’ve spent quite a bit of time in Limassol Castle. That is the only ancient building in the city and an old one. FIst, there was an early Christian basilica in the 4-7th centuries A.D. A bigger church was built over it in 10-11th centuries, and then at some point in the 12th century, the castle was built, incorporating different parts of the church.

Now, when you walk in the museum, you see a lot of arrows, indicating the meeting points of different buildings and epochs.


Unfortunately, there are not enough descriptions in the museum, I need to read way more to try to understand what it is all about. Also, there is not enough historical evidence regarding many of the periods. The castle was almost ruined during the first Ottoman invasion (by the city’s Venetian Governor). The Ottomans completely ruined it during recapture, and then id was turned into a prison. We ended up visiting the museum twice – by ourselves on Tuesday and with the organized tour Wednesday night, but there was still not enough information.

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