THE JOURNEY

I’d like to make a very important point here: The title of this huge blog is “Reagan, Gorbachev and Me: The Forrest Gump Adventures of an Ordinary Housewife,” because I am truly just some schmuck, mediocre person that got caught up as a kind of “fly-on-the-wall” of history in the making without really any effort or ambition. I am not some specialized international relationship expert; at the time I had no degree; and I was politically unwise – unspoiled. But I volunteered, showed up, and was willing; and that, I believe is the key to participation in all of life’s adventures.

The day finally arrived when Fred and I embarked on this great journey to Poland. All of us who were participating on this Trade Mission met at the Marriott Hotel in Washington, D.C. Here we registered, were given name tags and served a most delicious lunch. Studibert was there to greet us, along with his right-hand man (or lieutenant as we eventually came to identify him), Frank the Greek (I will withhold his name in this blog because he is another scary individual that I tangled with once too often). Frank was a 25 year old, short-ish slightly balding young man of Greek decent. He had dark eyes and long eyelashes, and a mouth that turned up at the corners in an affect of smiling (which he never did). I gathered his scowl was a result of the strain of being in charge of the whole Mission, but there was more to it than that. Later we learned that there had been an actual fist-fight between Studibert, Frank, and a delegation of Chinese Businessmen that Studibert had made some unfulfilled promises to. Studibert’s incompetence was exposed just before the Mission delegates had arrived, and quite a scuffle had ensued. I noticed the Chinese sitting at a table across the room, but they were too far away for me to have discovered how sullen they were, or how they were only temporarily placated with further promises from Studibert. I only learned about the Chinese fiasco months after the mission.

While we ate, a member of the State Department briefed us on the importance of this mission and the pitfalls of traveling in these Eastern European Countries. I was so busy looking around at everyone, and trying to imagine who they were, and how we’d interface during the next 10 days. I really didn’t pay much attention to who was speaking, or what was being said.