We are taking my 87 year old mother in law to Poland in July. We want to explore the Carpathian Mountain area by car and are looking for small villages to stay in. Her father immigrated from this area (Galicia) in the early 1900s. Any advice?
Posted by
San Francisco
15320 posts
Hi,
From where in Galicia? Near Lemberg, which was the 4 largest city in Austria-Hungary at the time her father left? That was the time of massive immigration from central Europe
Posted by
OP
2 posts
Thank you for the advice! We will certainly visit the wooden churches after hearing from you. Unfortunately, we do not have any information on our polish immigrant other than he was from Galicia. Still searching!
Posted by
The Heartland USA
9223 posts
mm much of Galicia is now in Ukraine. That part was part of Poland before WWII and had a lot of ethnic Poles living there, although predominately Ukrainian. That makes it hard to trace place and family names. The very southeastern tip of Poland is supposed to be beautiful and much of it a large national park.
Posted by
San Francisco
15320 posts
That was Poland east of the Curzon Line. Lemberg as province capital goes to Lwow to Lvov now to Lviv.
Posted by
Westerville
242 posts
I was just visiting in that region in May, 2016. I would work very hard to find the village your great grandparents came from. Go to the Ellis Island site which is free or find out from a genealogist where this man came from. Ancestry.com or familysearch, which is free might help. Galicia was a very large region!
I managed to find long last relatives and was treated like a major dignitary. That experience was priceless. We went to Poland the first time not doing our research and that inspired me to search. I found relatives for both my husband's side and myself.
BTW- some might disagree, but the Polish relatives said that Lviv was a beautiful region and they had been there years ago but would not consider it safe and hassle free now, especially for uninformed Americans who didn't speak fluent Polish (that's us). They said they would not even travel there. The police seem to have a practice of pulling you over on trumped up charges to pay fines (bribes).
I felt very safe in Poland, but we had a Polish person driving us around.
Might I suggest you check into a company named Polishorigins? They have tours of old Galicia. We might go on one of their tours next year. They sound like just the kind of experience you are looking for. They were very helpful in my research and gave great advice for this trip.
Posted by
The Heartland USA
9223 posts
"... there is a long history of neighbors trash talking in E Europe."
A couple of thousand years of invasions, wars, mongol hordes and blitzkrieg, will do that to you, I imagine. : )
Posted by
San Francisco
15320 posts
and the invasions by the Turks, twice to Vienna. Keep in mind the Mongols destroyed in the Middle Ages in eastern and east central Europe any army arrayed against them, Russians, Poles, Hungarians, Teutonic Knights..