Laptop!

From a journal entry on 3 July 2007.

On a night train from Gdynia, Poland to Berlin. Waved from an old moving train--goodbye to Woitek and Marlena, with a grateful, but heavy heart at sunset. My last two days at Kormoran were at turns long, slow, and filled with great joy. Seven years since my first visit with the family in Poland. Woitek, Monika, Marlena (14), Kuba (the newest addition to the family who is 6) and their well-loved chow-chow, Sonja. Lots of sweets, coffee, soda, juice (no water). Many hours not saying much. Marlena did a wonderful job attempting translation, but is new in this role and found it frustrating most of the time. Whenever any of us became very stuck (which was often), someone called out "laptop!" and we exchanged questions by typing into the grammatically creative Polski-Angielski program on Woitek´s laptop. All in two days, we visited the gulf, the open sea (I had to be snuck through the army checkpoint as the beach was only for Polish citizens), ate lody (ice cream) in the city of Hel, played billiards (Woitek and Marlena´s first time), played guitar and snacked and snacked and snacked (cookies, blueberries, cherries, cookies, chips, raspberries, cake, pretzels, cookies, apples, cookies) and two times a day ate meal food (bread, cheese, sausage, Polish spaghetti, borscht, mushroom soup, pickles, beets).