Zamosc, Poland…early riser today in order to get the bus from Krakow to Zamosc. A six hour journey on a mini bus is not a fun way to start the day, but I made the best of it with an IPad full of videos!

Zamosc is the gateway to my father’s childhood home of Kolonia Rogozno. My father fled from here in WW II and has never been back! I was anxious to see it. Even though my cousin lives here and will show us around this weekend, I couldn’t wait…I was so close, I needed to get a glimpse! So I hired a taxi and my sister and I headed out to explore…this is a remote farming area of Poland and English is scarce, so my sister was going to have to rise to the occasion and channel her best childhood spoken Polish! She shined! When forced she was rolling that Polish vocabulary as if she never stopped speaking it. The taxi driver was impressed as I sat there like a big dummy not understanding a word!

After a few wrong turns we found the tiny hamlet of Kol. Rogozno within the larger area of Tomaszow Lubelski. Looking around at farm animals and old barns, it really seemed as if time stood still…our driver became as excited and motivated as we were to find a relative or someone who knew my family. He pulled over to ask a simple gentleman if he knew anyone with my grandfather’s last name…next thing we know, this man is in the car with us directing our driver to some distant cousin’s house. We go from house to house unannounced gathering clues until we found my grandfather’s goddaughter who is now 86! Jackpot!

This woman starts crying, I start crying, and she starts telling us stories of my grandfather, his farm, and the farms of all my Great Aunts and Uncles on the block! This is unbelievable that we can plop down in this tiny place as strangers and barge in on people’s homes and suddenly connect to my entire ancestry…

I am totally shocked and I am pinching myself at today’s events…but it was the most exhilarating moment of this trip! Tomorrow we go digging further into my family history…