At last, the day I had been waiting for arrived: Late in the evening of August 25, 2022, I boarded LOT Polish Airlines Flight 16 from Newark International Airport, bound for Warsaw. After an 8-hour red-eye, we arrived at Warsaw Chopin International Airport at 2:30 p.m. local time, August 26, 2022.
On the ground in Poland for the first time in my life, it was truly a “you’re not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy” moment for me. Signage and notices were all written in what appeared to be crazy strings of English letters that was simply “alphabet spaghetti” as far as I could tell.

I had been studying some Polish during the few weeks prior to flying, but had never spoken a word in “live action”. I quickly got my “baptism of fire” when a stepped out of the airport shuttle train and began asking people for directions to my hostel address:

“Przepraszam, czy movisz po angielsku (‘pardon me, do you speak English’)?

“Niie, niie! (‘no, no’)!”

But never mind, even though I couldn’t understand a word of the conversations going on around me in Polish, nothing will be too difficult where there are plenty of friendly people . . . I soon found my way to the flat, thanks to a fellow traveller who kindly purchased a shuttle train ticket for me at the airport, and lot’s of helpful hand gestures and pointing from folks I met as I groped my way across town.

The landlady Paulina is an excellent AirBNB host, and was busy making up the room when I arrived. She had just finished her “day job” (she is a project administrator at a research institute) and had hurried over to clean up after her previous guests who had checked out earlier in the day.

My biggest challenge of the day was charging my phone. By the time I stepped off the airplane, I was at 2% barttery. I toyed with the idea of pausing at the airport long enough to charge up the battery before venturing out into the city, but decided instead just to jot down the address of my hostel on a piece of paper and rely on local people to point me in the right direction. That worked out fine, thanks to the good will of the people I met along the way. Comically, most of them had to consult their own phones before they could give me directions — it’s amazing how invidious the “smartphone” has become throughout human civilization.

The situation took on a more dire aspect once I arrived at the hostel. Of course, the first thing I wanted to do was charge the phone so I could report home. Although I knew that housing in Europe is supplied with 220 volt power rather than the 110 volt power that is used in the United States, I had naively assumed that my Apple phone charger and compter power block would both plug in directly, as they do in China (which also uses 220 volt household wiring). But to my chagrin, the outlets here in Poland are all completely different than any I had ever seen before. Zounds! And the landlady didn’t have a converter, either. Although she speaks fluent English, I guess she doesn’t have a great number of guests from the United States, or they are all savvy enough to bring their own converters!

Fortunately, I was able to easily find the appropriate converter at a local consumer electronics store, and I am now blithely back in touch with the world on my phone and computer.