My husband and I made a trip to Paris and when we came home, we both felt like seasoned travelers. So, the following summer, when I followed my heart and made a decision to do a faith-based trip to Poland, I was comfortable doing the trip on my own.

I attended all the meetings and training sessions and was excited to make the trip. My heritage is German and although born and raised in the U.S., I learned to speak German. As an adult, my German was rusty, but I could handle conversational speaking.

My girlfriends were excited for me to do a solo trip and it was the topic of conversation whenever we got together. Two of my girlfriends are world travelers and willingly shared their travel knowledge. Of course, I had my trip to Paris to fall back on and based on my experience, I knew what to do, and what not to do. My visa was current and I was ready to go.

One topic I forgot to discuss with them was water—and while packing for the trip I remembered how expensive it had been to keep purchasing water bottles in Paris and decided to pack some for my trip to Poland.

It was late when we arrived at a tiny sport hotel in Poznan, Poland. It was a new experience to be in a commercial building converted to a hotel with no elevator. But, Hey, I’m a CPA and know how to solve problems. Even though I am only 5’3” I decided to haul my 2-pc set of luggage upstairs by myself. One flight of stairs were two floors each and in the middle floor, one of the guys spotted me struggling and offered to help, “You need a hand?”

At this point, after the long journey to get there, I was exhausted. With sweat pouring down my forehead, I would have paid him cold hard cash to help me. “Would you?” I mumbled.

After he struggled up two more sets of floors, he looked at me with sweat pouring down his forehead and asked, “What the heck do you have in here?” I hesitated to tell him, it didn’t make much sense now. I had packed the extra suitcase full of water bottles. It had been no problem because my husband easily lifted it on the scales for me when I checked in at the airport.

“Water.”

He was noble, he got the suitcase to my door, but avoided me for the rest of the trip. My roommate and I drank all of the water and even if we hadn’t needed it, I would have as there was no way I was lugging it back home.

Maggie W.
Corona, California