The next morning, we were off to Gostynin.
Originally, Daniel's partner, Grzegorz, had planned to drive us there. Life, however, had other ideas.
While Daniel was away attending a conference in Italy the previous week, one of their cavies gave birth. Tragically, the mother died, leaving the newborns orphaned. Grzegorz became their surrogate parent, carefully feeding them milk from a dropper every few hours until they were strong enough to survive on their own.
Needless to say, those babies weren't quite ready to be left alone for an entire day.
Fatherhood, cavy-style has its responsibilities.
So instead, we would travel by train.
That turned out to be an adventure in itself. Daniel would board at Warszawa Zachodnia (Warsaw West), while Simon and I would take a train from Warszawa Centralna, change trains at Warsaw West, and then somehow find Daniel aboard a crowded regional train with no assigned seating.
Thankfully, Daniel had already thought of everything. The evening before, he had quietly purchased every ticket we would need for the day's journey.
Looking back at the little stack of tickets now, they seem almost symbolic. They weren't simply train tickets. They were tickets into our family's past. Before the day was over, they would carry us to Gostynin, the village our ancestors had once called home, and to Włocławek, where Brygida's brother—and Adam's second great-grandfather—had spent much of his adult life.
As we passed through Sochaczew, I smiled and snapped a photograph of the station to send to my mom. We had both read James Conroyd Martin's Push Not the River, in which Sochaczew plays an important role. It felt strangely satisfying to see a place that had lived in our imaginations suddenly become real. Each photograph I sent home brought my mom a little farther along on the journey with me.
Beyond the train windows stretched mile after mile of farmland.
My thoughts drifted to my great-grandmother, Józefa Dalecka. My mom often told me how Brygida had remembered her mother returning to work in the fields almost immediately after giving birth. Looking out across those fields, I found myself picturing scenes from Władysław Reymont's Nobel Prize-winning novel The Peasants. Women bent over their work while babies lay nearby in makeshift hammocks, gently swaying as their mothers labored from sunrise to sunset.
For the first time, those stories no longer felt distant. The landscape outside the train window gave them a place to live.
Daniel, Simon, and I took the train from Warsaw to Gostynin. It's hard to explain the feeling of walking on the ground that your ancestors walked. As far as I know, I am the first person in my direct line to return to Poland since Brygida and Marianna left. Standing in Gostynin, I could not help wondering what they would have thought if they had known that one of their descendants would someday come back.
As our train pulled into Gostynin, the first thing I noticed was the station itself. It stood boarded up, protected from the elements beneath a newly restored roof. Like so much of Poland, it seemed to be in the process of being carefully brought back to life.
Standing there, I couldn't help wondering how many times Brygida and Marianna had walked through that station. It was almost certainly from here that they began their journey to America.
They left behind parents, siblings, familiar streets, and everything they had ever known. In return, they embraced uncertainty. They crossed an ocean bound for New York in the early twentieth century—a city that was crowded, dirty, dangerous, and utterly foreign.
What courage that must have taken.
Looking down the tracks, I thought of the families who had stood on that platform saying goodbye, knowing they might never see one another again. Some boarded trains and ships bound for an uncertain future. Others remained behind. None of them could have imagined that more than a century later, one of their descendants would return to walk those same streets.
Their decision shaped the lives of every generation that followed, including my own.
As I stepped onto the platform, I found myself wondering if journeys have a way of restoring us, just as they restore our understanding of those who came before us.
As we walked through the town, I couldn't help but think about all those who came before us. One of the most moving moments for me was standing in front of a house built in 1927. Suddenly it struck me that Józefa and Leonard would almost certainly have seen it when it was new. They were living in Gostynin then, marrying there in 1931, just a month after Adam Palczewski, Józefa's grandson, had married.
For a few moments, the years seemed to disappear. I could almost picture them walking past that very house on their way to church or while visiting family. The building itself was unremarkable. It was the realization that we were standing in the same place, separated only by time, that made the moment so profound.
We walked into the center of Gostynin, passing buildings that almost certainly would have been there when Brygida was a teenager, before she left for New York.
One building in particular caught my attention. Its storefront had clearly been renovated, yet above it the weathered clapboards and old side window spoke of another era. Modern "No Parking" signs stood beside wood that had likely witnessed generations come and go.
It seemed to embody everything I had been feeling throughout the journey: the old and the new, the present and the past, the remembered and the forgotten, all existing together in the same place.
Standing there, I found myself thinking once again about Brygida's journey.
Did she travel alone? Or was she accompanied by friends or relatives? Did someone meet her when she arrived in New York, or did she step into that immense city with no familiar face waiting on the dock?
We've searched for her immigration record for years but have never been able to find it. Those questions remain unanswered.
Perhaps they always will.
Yet somehow, standing in Gostynin, they felt more real than ever.
From the center of town, we wandered through the market square with its tree-lined paths. It was a warm afternoon, and Simon decided to take a well-earned break, joining the other townspeople sitting quietly on benches beneath the shade of the trees.
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| Monument to Duke Siemowit IV (1353-1428) |
Daniel and I continued on to see Gostynin's castle.
I have to admit, I remember very little about its history. It wasn't the sort of grand castle one imagines when thinking of medieval Europe. But then I wasn't expecting a castle surrounded by moats and massive iron gates. Now it serves as a hotel and restaurant, though on that afternoon it seemed quiet, almost forgotten.
Then we paused for a selfie, a simple photograph marking our journey from the present to the past and back again.
Our original plan had been to visit the grave of Adam Palczewski before leaving Gostynin.
Unable to find an Uber at the train station, we realized that reaching the cemetery on foot would require nearly forty minutes of walking, in addition to the time we wanted to spend there. With another train to catch for Włocławek, we reluctantly accepted that there simply wasn't enough time.
Instead, Daniel and I turned back toward the center of town, following the path along the lake to meet Simon.
We passed the town hall, which was built between 1821-1824, and the Monument to Duke Siemowit IV.
Once we met up with Simon, Daniel reached into his backpack and produced a treasure that Grzegorz had picked up at the market earlier that morning.
Blueberry buns.
Dziękuję bardzo, Grzegorz!
Oh my.
They were absolutely amazing. The sweet cream filling was impossibly light, and the blueberries tasted as though they had been picked that very morning. After an emotionally exhausting day, sitting together in the shade and sharing those buns felt like one more act of quiet generosity.
After thoroughly enjoying the blueberry buns, we took a few more photos in the square and then wandered over to the parish church.
Sadly, it was not the church Brygida would have known. The original church had been demolished by the Nazis during the occupation. Although the war eventually ended, it would take decades before a new church could be built. Delays in obtaining permission from the communist government meant that the present church was not consecrated until 1978.
Like so many churches we had visited throughout Poland, this one too was protected by gates. A kneeler had been placed outside for those wishing to pray when the church was closed.
Then I noticed a woman inside.
For a brief moment, hope rose within me. Perhaps she would unlock the doors.
Instead, she finished what she was doing and quietly walked away.
I had hoped to step inside, light a candle, and offer a prayer for Brygida and her siblings. This was not the church where they had worshipped. That church had long since been destroyed. But this church stood on the same sacred ground, and somehow that felt important.
So I stood outside the gates instead and quietly remembered my great grandmother, her siblings, and those that have gone before me.
The afternoon had grown warm as we slowly made our way back toward the train station.
At one point I turned to make sure Simon was still with us. Watching him quietly following along, I found myself saying to Daniel how incredibly blessed I was to have someone willing to accompany me on these adventures. Someone who has patiently supported my endless search for family connections, no matter how many churches, museums, cemeteries, or old family stories it involved.
Daniel smiled.
We both found ourselves quietly grateful for partners willing to walk beside us, even when the path wasn't one they would have chosen for themselves.
That, too, felt like a gift.
We made our way back to the train station with plenty of time to spare, found the correct platform, and soon settled into our seats on the train to Kutno. From there, we would continue on to Włocławek.Włocławek was a much larger city than Gostynin, and this time Daniel had no trouble finding an Uber to take us to the cemetery.
Outside the entrance, a row of small booths sold flowers and lanterns for those coming to visit their loved ones. Some flowers were fresh, others carefully crafted from silk and plastic. The lanterns, in every shape and color imaginable, waited to be carried to graves throughout the cemetery.
Daniel selected several lanterns.
I chose a bouquet of white chrysanthemums.
As I have written on the opening page of this blog, white chrysanthemums symbolize immortality. They remind me that those we love continue to live in our memories and in the lives they have shaped.
Together we made our way through the cemetery to the graves of Adam Palczewski and his wife, Stanisława. Nearby rested their children: Irena—the daughter who bears such a striking resemblance to my mom—Izabela, and Oskar.
Daniel quietly lit each of the lanterns and placed them on the graves.
I laid a white chrysanthemum on each one.
As we walked through the cemetery, we met a man sitting quietly beside the grave of one of his loved ones. Somehow, in that unexpected conversation, we learned that he had known Irena personally.
The world suddenly felt very small.
Once again, I found myself reflecting on how deeply our lives are intertwined, often in ways we never see until our paths unexpectedly cross.
We took an Uber back into town. As we walked through the streets of Włocławek, Daniel began telling me stories about Adam, Stanisława, Irena, Izabela, and Oskar.
Not how they died.
How they lived.
He spoke of their personalities, their conversations, their relationships with one another, and the ordinary moments that made them a family. For years I had known them through dates, records, and photographs. Daniel knew them through personally and through stories that had been relayed to him.
Although the original church in Gostynin had been destroyed, walking into the cathedral at Włocławek gave me a sense of what Brygida and her family might have experienced each Sunday. The architecture, the brick, the soaring space, and the play of light all felt familiar. It wasn't the same church, but it belonged to the same tradition.
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| Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Bazylika Katedralna Wniebowzięcia Najświętszej Maryi Panny) |
We crossed a small canal and wandered down a side street to the restaurant Daniel had chosen for lunch. It was a lovely place, and on such a warm afternoon the pitcher of homemade lemonade was especially refreshing.
This time, however, we strayed from traditional Polish cuisine.
I couldn't resist ordering fish and chips, which brought back memories of our visit to Wales just a few weeks earlier. After hearing Daniel explain that the chef was Italian, Simon opted for pizza. Daniel joined me in ordering the fish and chips.
Even that somehow seemed fitting.
By now I had come to realize that modern Poland, like the rest of Europe, is a tapestry woven from many cultures and traditions. The Poland my ancestors had known continues to live, but it also continues to grow and change.
From our seats we could see the Vistula River.
The Vistula. The one companion never left us through our journey
It flowed through Kraków, through Warsaw, through Włocławek, quietly connecting places that at first seemed separate. Only later did I realize that it had become a metaphor for the pilgrimage itself. Like the blood that flows through our veins, it connected generations, families, memories, and lives that had long seemed divided by time and distance.
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