Monday, August 18, 2008

En Route to Poland!

At 6:20 am Saturday morning, I looked out over an ocean of clouds above Los Angeles on en route to Poland! Sobieski vodka was kind enough to invite me to experience the pleasures of Polish vodka, cocktail bars and gastronomy – and I can’t tell you how excited I am about this opportunity.

Yes – I am a total wanderlust and have roamed the globe as much as possible since I can remember – and it never gets old! Having European parents, I visited Europe three times before age one, and visited French grandparents every summer thereafter – so I guess that kind of set the pace for my insatiable hunger to acquaint myself with people, cultures, food and drink of countries beyond the U.S. In my opinion, in order to be truly inspired, one has to journey outside one’s own quotidian surroundings. Therefore, I am super jazzed for this trip to a new destination.

When I hear “Warsaw,” the first images flickering through my mind are cold weather, WW2 tragedies and a country once ruled with a communist fist. I am curious to see the modern-day city, and I hear that some of the hippest bars and ‘socially upward’ people are grooving and sipping around that city. I imagine it to be something like Sarajevo, which I visited with Jason a couple of years ago. A city ripe with opportunity and hope for the future, despite a somber knowledge that the people my age had lived through hardship Americans in my generation have never known.

I cannot wait to tour the historic distillery where Sobieski vodka is made, and I have no idea what to expect in Gdansk. We are also visiting a castle at some point, which sets my heart a-flutter with romantic flights of aristocratic fancy.

I’ll do my best to blog along the way so you can have a taste of what I discover over the next few days…

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