Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast
In the summer of 1998 my girlfriend and I loaded our little Nissan and left Krakow for a road trip to Spain with a dog-eared Lonely Planet in Polish and a map, which we first consulted on the side of a silent Carpathian road in Slovakia. Just an hour from home and already lost. On the other side of our turnout there was a baby blue Skoda, an elderly couple inside. The woman with a kerchief over a pink beehive stayed in the passenger seat while her husband in a pancake cap got out of his jalopy, shuffled up to us and leaned deeply into my open window. The waft of onions, garlic, and sweat filled the car.
“Where are you from?” he asked in Slovakian.
“Krakow.”