Holiday time old-style

Even though there was no GPS or even mobile phones at that time (even landlines back then were a rarity in the region), these meetings would never fail to take place. They always happened, even though I can’t explain exactly how. To this very day, I don’t understand why my (otherwise completely sensible) parents always would so calmly accept me announcing: “I’m off to Bieszczady. I’ll be back in a month or so and send you a postcard if I can.” Of course, we all knew the postcard would turn up only after I’d come back. You had to take your own food, at least at the outset of the trip. The shops in the mountains couldn’t even sell tourists bread because they would order the exact number of loaves they would sell to the locals. We would always end up knocking on someone’s door to ask for a slice or two. Nobody ever refused. After every such excursion (if all went well), there would be a few out-of-focus, black-and-white photos. There w