Visiting Poland in 2017

We are off to Poland May 10th thru the 27th. Fred’s four grandparents, when they were just teenagers, emigrated from Poland around the turn of the last century. They meet, married and raised families in the Detroit/Windsor area. Fred’s parents traveled to Poland a few times and had contacts with relatives but unfortunately Fred and his cousins have lost those connections. While in Poland, Fred will see if he can reestablish a family linkage.
We will be doing a small group (12 people) tour with Exciting Poland – Pearls of Poland http://www.excitingpoland.com/en/k1-810/k2-862/index.html for two weeks. We will be traveling throughout the country starting in Warsaw and will arrive a few days early to get over jet lag and spend some time on our own.
Most people from our part of the world still have an image of the Eastern European countries as they were under Soviet oppression; dower, depressed, huge communist era grey cement block apartment complexes, etc. Since the fall of communism in 1989 Poland has grown economically strong especially after joining the European Union in 2004.
When you consider that Poland didn’t exist as a country for 123 years, divided up by Prussia, Russia and Austria, until the end of WWI, was overrun by both Germany and Russia during WWII, oppressed by the Soviets, the last 28 years it has been independent is just a drop in the bucket of time.
We are very much looking forward to our visit to Poland.