Giant Dwarf vs Poland, Part II: The Planning Stage

My brother, my mother and I are control freaks.  My mom may know that, I definitely know that, but my brother, the Golden Child, has no insight into this at all.  Which makes it so much worse.  My control issues often manifest in procrastination, which opens the door for the Queen Mother of Control Freaks, the Golden Child, to completely take over any planning for any family activity.  The worst part:  we all let him do it.

So a month or two after our birthdays, and BEFORE my vacation request gets approved, my brother calls me to tell me that there is an unbelievably cheap airfare being offered on the Polish Airlines, LOT (What?  You haven't heard of them?  Neither had we.) and that we needed to act on it now.  My brother books the flights and only then do I notice that we are going to Poland for TWO WEEKS!  Two weeks?!?  What the hell?  I thought we were only going to go to Bialystok, look for our roots and go home.  What are we going to do there for two weeks?!?

Giant Dwarf:  "Why is this trip scheduled for 2 weeks?"

Golden Child:  "Mom said she wanted to go for no less than 2 weeks."

(I know how my mom travels; rarely does she go anywhere for that length of time.  This reasoning is suspect from the beginning.)

My brothers decide that renting a van would be the best way to get around Poland.  I don't like driving in foreign countries and I told them this from the outset:  if they want to rent a van, fine, but I won't be driving.  They were good with that.....at first.

Now, at this point, it is only my parents and my brothers and I who are going on this trip.  Just 5 of us.  The Spazz has school and cannot go; my brothers' wives are busy with work (though it turns out that the Prince's wife is going to Sicily while we go to Poland).

And then I get an email from my brother telling me that his wife and his wife's brother, an airman stationed at Rammstein, are coming in a few days into our trip and that the three of them are going on a via ferrata in the Tatras.  Wait.....What?!?

At this point, I email my parents and they are as surprised as I am to hear about this.  I offer to do a side trip with them during this time to Denmark.  I've never been and one of my coworkers talked up the Tivoli Gardens, so I felt like I had to go.  My parents were not interested, though.

My mom's response:  "Well, why don't we join them on the via ferrata?"

I had to explain to her what a via ferrata was and how she and Dad and I were not in any shape to do that (by this time in our travel plan, the Prince will have already returned back to the States).  Then Mom got mad.  She emailed the Golden Child about how this is a family trip so why is he planning something we all can't participate in?

The Golden Child responds with this:  We can all stay in Zakopane and we'll be together at night.  He instructed me to look up the town, thinking that I would find it charming.

When you look up Zakopane on TripAdvisor, the majority of the photos posted are those of the creepiest wax museum I have ever seen. 

(I think you can see how this was a hard no.  If not, look it up yourself and you'll find a wax figure of Hitler and another of a woman with breasts the size of a small dwarf.  I refuse to post those photos.)

Admittedly, I was already creeped out about going to Poland at all, a place where the remainder of my European family was murdered because they were Jewish, so taking one look at Zakopane and it's rural charm made me fly into a fit of fear and I vetoed the idea on the spot (vindication side note:  my brother and his crew cut Zakopane short by one day when they got there because, after their hike, there was nothing to do).  I talked with my parents and we decided to stay in Krakow while the Golden Child and his crew split off for the White People Excursion.

I tell this to the Golden Child and he seems perturbed.  He threatens me:  "Well, then, you can't have the van in Krakow, because we'll need it."

That's a threat?  No, that's a blessing.  Take the fucking van.

The next controversy (oh, you thought that was the end?  you haven't met my family):  Bialystok.  The Prince, who had been there 20 years ago (yes, you read that right...TWENTY) told us there is nothing there so we shouldn't spend any time there.  The Golden Child schedules us for only one night in Bialystok with that reasoning.  I'll just say this again:  Bialystok is where our family is from.

I remember calling my brother to lobby for more days in Bialystok; the guidebooks talked about the town making strides to be more tourist-friendly and not only was it the birthplace of the founder of Esperanto but it was the BIRTHPLACE AND HOME OF OUR GREAT-GRANDMOTHER AND OUR BELOVED AUNT GERTRUDE.  My brother finally relented, but tried to punish me by telling me I had to book accommodations for all of us there.  Fine.  I can do that.

Do you know how much hotels cost in Bialystok?  $70 a night.  And that was a fancy hotel....with a full breakfast that was off. the. hook.

So by the beginning of summer, we had fully booked and planned the trip:  Fly in to Warsaw, go to Bialystok the next day and stay there 2 nights, go back to Warsaw to pick up the Golden Child's wife and brother-in-law, go all the way down to Krakow, then the Prince leaves us from Krakow to return to the U.S. while the Golden Child's crew goes to Zakopane, we meet back in Krakow, then we go up to Warsaw.  No guide, no tour, all us.

Now the biggest challenge for me would be to check my control freakdom at the door and try not to argue with my brother for two whole weeks.