Jozefow and Zamosc part 1

Today was difficult but not in the ways i imagined it would be. A is an absolute wonder for going with me on this crazy journey because honestly this was not a great experience but not in how i would have thought rather in ways i didn't expect. 

I don't even know how to begin this post. maybe i should just get to the point and that is that this whole trip has been so strange and surreal and today, instead of being the intensely sad experience i had anticipated and have been avoiding, it was just another confirmation of what i've been feeling all along only this time it was in an ancestral town where so many of my own relatives had once lived for over 300 years as opposed to the abstract idea of the jews of "The Pale". But instead of feeling a deeper sadness and apprehension than i've already been experiencing, i was surprised to find that i didn't feel a connection to jozefow at all. This may be because it was so horribly difficult to get to. 

I don't have many pictures of the ride there, but it was very long. It started awkwardly because A wanted to buy tickets back to Warsaw for Sunday but those were all was sold out except for the 7 am train. the ticket woman wasn't very friendly and we weren't sure what to do because it would mean getting into Warsaw around 9 am and we would be stuck dragging out suitcases around for hours before we could check into our last apartment. but out of desperation we decided to buy them... anyways that was a stressful disappointment and annoying because in addition to lugging our luggage around we'll have to get up at five to be at the train on time. so with all that hanging over our heads we also purchased todays tickets to jozefow but still had over an hour to kill before we got that train. long story short there is no where to eat with in walking distance to the lublin train station...whaaaat?! listen closely lubliners, if you want to have a successful capitalist business in this town all you have to do is open a decent cafe over by the train station. i can't see how it could possibly fail because there is no competition. anyways, we got some pastries from a bakery counter and some juice and water at crazy busy little market and caught the train for a two plus hour ride to jozefow.

on the train we struck up s conversation with two students from Łodz who had a cat in a backpack carrier and were really friendly. when they heard where we were going they looked horrified and asked if someone was going yo meet us at the station. at the time i don't think we understood their concern. now that i'm writing this i can see they were wondering how we were going to get from the train "station" into the village. and they were right to be worried. this is where we detrained:

I'm not going to sugarcoat this. from this "platform" that is about two feet lower than the train steps, we had to walk three miles into town on a terrifying two lane highway with no shoulder and with woods on both sides of the road but no trails and what plowed up path that was there was like this ashy soil that was impossible to walk on. we survived to tell the tale but this road was marked for 40mph and every vehicle that used it was going at least double that speed. you might be relieved to know people were biking in this road so we were in goodish company but it was no less terrifying. 

yes, this town is in the middle of nowhere, in the woods with nothing around for miles. all i could think of was my grandparents who i knew in philadelphia had lived out here in this remote little village that had no electricity or running water before the second world war. i just couldn't reconcile this in my mind as we trudged along with cars and trucks whizzing by:

the first bend in the road we came to is the outskirts and once called Borowina, but it's basically a long street into town. everyone has a dog in their yard with warning signs but mostly the dogs are small and the ones that were wandering around seemed sublimely uninterested in us. the first thing i noticed on this long stretch into town was how affluent these houses were. freshly painted with pretty gardens and some with working fields behind them. 

Because it was a hot day, we thought it would be nice to walk on the shady side of the street even though the sidewalk was on the sunny side. No sooner had we crossed over than a little helmeted man on a stinky old scooter skidded up to us and started yelling to get back on the sidewalk. Luckily he went away after we obeyed him and very shortly thereafter A found a cut through into town along a creek:

as we wended our way around the creek  and its attached lake we came upon a boy and his father who were fishing. we sat down on a bench in the shade and ate one of our pastries. we still had a far way to walk into town. after that short rest we continued into town to look for the market square and a recent monument A had read about. the first thing you notice are very expensive modern large houses and gated communities that are under construction along these newer streets approaching the old part of town. my cousin had made this trip seven years before and i didn't remember him saying anything about these and in fact they were all still actively being built as we passed them on our way into jozefow.