This tour, culminating our three week Poland escapade, rocked my previous genealogical knowledge straight out of the family history boat! Iwona Dakiniewicz, genealogist and tour guide extraordinaire, led Rebecca and me through the hills and dales of our matrilineal homeland. As a woman, my genetic load tilts more heavily on the mitochondrial line, the lineage of my mother’s mother mother mother etc., so this was a particularly appealing area of research.

We stopped for lunch and gas at a place that might be called a rest stop beside the road. For a ridiculously cheap price,Rebecca and I shared a plate of homemade boiled pierogies and four delicious salads.

We grew closer to Debica, and Iwona suggested we take a little detour through the woods a catch our first glimpse of Bobrowa, the village the Moraniecs resided in for may generations. Bobrowa is only a couple of kilometers from the larger town of Debica  (a major tire producing town for Poland for many years). I did try to act very cool, calm and collected, but was trembling with excitement to see the place I had been researching for more than half a dozen years. We pulled into the convenient store parking lot (it was the ONLY store visible in the area, though I would later find other businesses that operated in Bobrowa) to purchase something for a light dinner, and I was able to snap shot.

Having procured some provisions, we drove over the single lane bridge and into the village. The town was organized as a typical Galician village. Settled down two sides of a main street creating a long, rectangular shape. Farmers’ homes would line the street and each farmer would own the land behind their home.

We wanted to see whether the numbers were chronological or helter skelter. If they were in order, that meant that they had probably all gone through one or more re-organizations since the 19th century. If they were kind of whacky, #5 house being next to #67, that meant that the old house was probably still standing and /or the town officials just added new numbers in-between the old ones.

We continued on to our hotel in Debica, VillaWiluszówka. Rested, enjoyed our dinner of yogurt and those luscious, fresh, first-of-the-season blueberries. Refreshed, we headed to the back garden to enjoy the ambiance and a drink. Surrounded by an apple orchard, fenced vegetable garden, flower border, and sculptures everywhere, we strategized our time together.