Because this blog is dedicated to things worth writing about, such as serendipitous events and unexpected encounters, I figured this story from my Poland trip merited its own brief, special mention.
One night, two of my francophone friends (Estelle from France and Camille from Belgium) went out to the old town to meet up with a French boy who would be in Krakow for around two months interning for a French company that helps other French companies establish themselves in Poland. They knew about him because his mom was in our Polish language program in Estelle's class.
We met up with him at the fountain and I introduced myself in French. As it's established whenever I meet French people, we spoke to each other in French and I told the story of how I learned to speak the language. I told him I was an exchange student in France for a year, and he asked where. Usually when French people ask me I first say "Poitou-Charentes," the region. It's really rural, so people don't usually go there. But the French boy was interested, so I told him it was a town near Poitiers. Then I asked if he knew about Niort, the capital of the Deux-Sèvres department within Poitou-Charentes. He said something like, "Of course I know that city!" And then I dared to say, "Well, I lived in Parthenay. Do you know where that is?" and he excitedly replied, "Yes, I do know exactly where that is!"
I was stunned. He became the second French person I've met (outside the Rotary circle) outside France who knew about Parthenay. My obscure medieval town in the middle of nowhere.
I had to know the story.
It turns out that his grandpa, who was from Poland, fought in World War II. It just so happened that there was a regiment of Poles that fought for France in Parthenay, and his grandfather was part of it. I later found out from his mother (Polish grandpa's daughter) that he never met his grandfather, but knows so much about him from stories she would tell. She told me he absorbed the stories so much to the point he remembered them better than she did.
What a funny world. And here I thought Parthenay's only connection to Poland was the fact that the local high school has a bilingual French-Polish sister high school in Katowice, with which it does annual exchanges.
Either way, it was a chance encounter, and I loved the connection. It's definitely one that I'm going to remember.
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