Hank Nuwer’s earlier journeys to Europe hadn’t gone totally to plan.
Once, in Brussels, he’d stayed in a “terrible neighborhood” after which tried to drive, obtained misplaced and struggled navigating a maze of facet streets.
“I got stopped by the police three times,” he recollects.
A separate try to go to Poland, the house of his ancestors, failed earlier than it even started.
“I made a lot of mistakes and I never even got there,” Hank tells NCS Travel at present. “I completely messed up that first planned occasion, lost several non-refundable deposits, and almost gave up that dream due to that fiasco and the not-so-swell Belgium visit.”
But in 2015, in his 50s, Hank nonetheless dreamed of seeing Poland. He figured the reply to his journey misadventures was a tour information who may assist him navigate cultural variations, language obstacles and join him with his household historical past.
“That was the idea — to see my grandfather’s Poland. To be moved by it,” says Hank.
Hank’s grandfather had left for the United States in the early 1900s, when Poland was dominated by Russia.
“All I knew from my grandfather about Poland and the Russian times was that they escaped with bullets all around,” says Hank.
Hank, who was a journalism professor primarily based in Indiana, had been making an attempt to study Polish for a couple of years. Along the best way, he’d expanded his Polish LinkedIn community, connecting with fascinating, like-minded Polish individuals. He determined to look by way of his connections and search Google to see if he may discover somebody who may information him round Warsaw.
He reached out to accountant Małgorzata Wróblewska, often called Gosia, virtually randomly. She turned out to be the right candidate, having lived in the town all her life, like her mom and maternal grandmother earlier than her.
“He wanted somebody who is really involved in the city to show him the city from inside,” Gosia tells NCS Travel at present.
“I just picked her out of the blue,” says Hank. “And if she had said no, I probably would have asked somebody else.”
Gosia didn’t reply straight away. When she first obtained the message, she ignored it. She wasn’t knowledgeable tour information and Hank’s suggestion appeared greater than a bit of unusual.
But the subsequent day, her ideas returned to the message. And the subsequent. Something about this American stranger’s proposition intrigued her.
“I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, maybe I’m just in the habit of doing the same routine every day,’” she recollects.
Gosia, then in her mid-40s, cherished assembly new individuals, however her circle of mates had shrunk as she spent a lot of her spare time caring for her aged, infirm mother and father. This was an opportunity to work together with somebody new and do one thing completely different.
She agreed to present the American professor her metropolis.
“I decided, ‘Okay, okay. Why not?’” she says.
Although Hank was a stranger and his request was uncommon, he had sufficient of an internet footprint to reassure Gosia that he was official.
He’d appeared on American TV quite a few occasions talking about his skilled topic: the difficulty of hazing in US faculties. He’s written three books on the topic, which he’s been exploring because the mid-Nineteen Seventies.
Gosia hit play on a couple of of the interviews and watched Hank communicate, feeling reassured by his authoritative and heat charisma.
She started planning a radical day’s tour of Warsaw, ensuring they’d solely be visiting public locations.
When he walked down the steps into the foyer and noticed Gosia smiling, waving, it took him a second to notice she was his tour information. And then he was struck straight away. It was one thing like love at first sight.
Hank and Gosia met for the primary time in the foyer of Hank’s Warsaw lodge. While Gosia had watched an array of Hank’s tv interviews and acknowledged him immediately, Hank solely had Gosia’s LinkedIn profile image to go off — and it was a bit of out of focus, a bit of unclear.
“I was just blown away, but I was trying not to show it,” he recollects.
The two shook palms, then began strolling round Warsaw. Gosia was pleasant, humorous, charming, informative. The extra she talked, the extra Hank was intrigued by her. He tried to conceal his emotions, involved not to come throughout like “some creepy guy.”
Instead, he centered on the joys of lastly exploring Warsaw and following in the footsteps of his grandfather.
“She took me to all the monuments, we saw everything in the city, we walked everywhere…” Hank recollects. “We went to, what, three different museums? She showed me a map of Poland, how it changed, how it was when my grandfather was there.”
Unlike Hank, Gosia didn’t really feel instantaneous sparks in the lodge foyer. But because the day unfurled, she was struck by how comfy she felt with this American stranger.
“From the beginning, we had very good conversation,” she says. “On the first day, this day we spent in Warsaw, I felt like even silence was not a problem between us.”
She felt an straightforward consolation in Hank’s presence. They appeared to be on the identical wavelength. She didn’t fear about how she got here throughout, or really feel the necessity to fill each quiet second. As they caught trams and walked facet by facet, generally they’d simply take a look at one another and smile. They’d admire views collectively, after which watch each other take in the cityscape in flip.
“Sometimes we saw something, and we’re just looking at each other, at the reaction,” Gosia says. “That was incredible.”
Hank was equally struck by this sense of ease.
“There’s a wall in Warsaw, the old wall, and we both were sitting on that old wall, and I told her some things about myself, my background, and then she did as well … It was a conversation you wouldn’t have with somebody on a first date,” he says.
Hank instructed Gosia he was divorced, with an grownup son. She stated she’d by no means been married however had an grownup daughter who lived in the UK.
“It wasn’t a romantic conversation, it was more who we were at that particular time,” displays Hank.
He was sincere with Gosia in regards to the unglamorous components of his life. The components you couldn’t inform from Googling. The components you wouldn’t naturally relay when attempting to impress somebody.
“I hadn’t dated in a long, long, long time,” Hank says. “I had a crazy dog. We called him Dogzilla. His real name was Casey, and he was my constant companion. I was lifting weights, running with him. And then I would work. That was my life.”
In flip, Gosia confided in Hank about caring for her aged mother and father — and the way her as soon as busy social life had largely fallen by the wayside.
“I was coming, giving them some supper, putting them to the bed, and I was going to the gym. And that was all year, the same thing,” she recollects.
Hank was an empathetic listener, and will relate to Gosia’s struggles.
“My mom had, not too long before, died of Alzheimer’s,” he says. “We really talked, really talked.”
At the tip of their day in Warsaw, Gosia and Hank stated their goodbyes. He was going to be in the town for an additional few days, however Gosia was spending the weekend vacationing in Portugal along with her daughter.
They reconvened on the finish of the weeken and promised to keep mates. They each believed they’d keep true to their phrase. Hank, in any case, was blown away by Gosia. And she was struck by “how even silence was nice” in Hank’s firm.
Once Hank was again in the US, he and Gosia began sending emails forwards and backwards. Then they started to benefit from the occasional telephone name. Before lengthy, the calls grew to become every day.
“We were talking every day,” says Gosia. “It became a routine. It gave us pleasure. We’re both looking forward every day to this conversation.”
A couple of months handed and the communication elevated in frequency and depth. Gosia and Hank grew to become one another’s closest confidant. Hank began occupied with how he’d love to present Gosia a little bit of the American Midwest, given she’d handled him to such an exquisite day in her house metropolis.
“So as a friend, I invited her to come to the United States, to Chicago, for Thanksgiving…” he says.
“… And when I came to Chicago for Thanksgiving, we realized that this is something more than just a friendship,” says Gosia.
Their pleasure and pleasure at seeing one another once more, paired with their fixed communication throughout their time aside, made the romantic potential virtually immediately apparent.
Hank greeted Gosia with a kiss on the cheek and an anklet bracelet he’d picked out for her. She gifted him some postage stamps she’d purchased for him in Greece, to add to his stamp assortment.
“I don’t think you can fall in love from a distance, you can be infatuated with someone. Our meeting in Chicago — that direct contact — made me realize that this person is my match,” says Gosia. “The scent, the touch … That this person’s presence is important to me.”
They spent the day and night in Chicago, each feeling more and more positive of their connection, however neither voicing their emotions. The subsequent day, they traveled to Starved Rock National Park. The connection began to really feel inevitable.
“At Starved Rock, we had a wonderful time and talked and talked as we hiked for miles. I cooked for her at the cabin,” recollects Hank.
They’d booked two cabins, however in the tip canceled one of many two.
“We said, ‘Can we just have one room?’ Things changed.’ So that was funny — embarrassing, but funny,” says Hank. “I couldn’t believe this was happening. In the morning, we went to a restaurant in a log building and held hands waiting for the server to come. I’ll cherish that memory, forever.”
The two returned to Chicago for the ultimate night to have fun Thanksgiving, canceling their second room on the historic Drake Hotel.
“Thanksgiving at the Drake Hotel in Chicago is a lavish, expensive meal and Gosia dressed like a knockout and I wore my best suit,” recollects Hank.
It felt like the beginning of one thing unimaginable.
“But still, I wasn’t sure if it would work, because I was not going to move,” says Gosia. “I had parents, I didn’t want to leave them, I wanted to take care of them … I was thinking, ‘There is too big a distance for this to continue.’”
Gosia’s extra pragmatic perspective was no match for Hank’s romanticism. He knew they had one thing particular, one thing price combating by way of the logistical difficulties to make a actuality. His certainty helped Gosia bat away her considerations.
“He was incredibly determined,” she says. “And so, every two months I was traveling to the United States, and Hank, when he had free time at school, he was coming to Poland.”
One day, Gosia referred to as Hank and he was in the center of sophistication.
“I love my students, I really do, and I love teaching,” Hank says. “So we’re in class, and Gosia got the time wrong, and she calls me, and I tell them, ‘This is a lady that I’m dating…’”
The college students instructed Hank he had to reply the decision. It’d be impolite, they stated, to depart his girlfriend hanging.
“So I put it on, and there she is, in front of 30 students. And they went, ‘Oh my God, she’s beautiful.’ I heard them all say it … That was all over the school.”
Over visits forwards and backwards, Hank and Gosia’s relationship grew. They supported one another, each when they have been collectively and aside, by way of household difficulties, work highs and lows and the whole lot in between.
In 2017, Hank asked Gosia to marry him. But regardless of her certainty that she cherished Hank, Gosia hesitated earlier than saying sure.
“I never wanted to get married, so I was scared,” she says at present.
While Gosia accepted Hank’s proposal, as the marriage date approached, she continued to flip-flop over her choice.
Hank had deliberate a small ceremony on the house of his outdated school good friend. He organized the whole lot, filling in Gosia from afar.
“I had the minister, everything, had the flowers, ordered the cake,” he recollects.
But per week earlier than, Gosia referred to as it off. She nonetheless wished to be with Hank, however she couldn’t reconcile her emotions about marriage as an establishment. And as she’d been impartial for thus lengthy, she was scared to commit.
Hank was heartbroken.
“He didn’t talk to me for two or three days,” Gosia says. “And during those two or three days, I realized, ‘This is over.’ Because I understood, you know, when you hurt somebody so much, this is over.”
Over the times of silence, these phrases “this is over” saved reverberating round Gosia’s head. She felt dread. The concept of Hank not being in her life was gut-renching.
“I realized that I really care about this relationship,” she says at present.
Meanwhile, Hank was experiencing his personal disaster of religion. He was damage by Gosia’s choice, which felt like a rejection of him and the whole lot they’d been working in direction of. It was onerous to think about how they may rebuild.
“I found out that I could be hurt, even at my age, and it was hard,” he says. “I had to call my friends and say, ‘We’re not going to get married. Cancel everything.’”
But it was additionally onerous for Hank to think about life with out Gosia. He didn’t need to lose her totally.
“So after two days, I said, ‘Okay, I want you in my life as a friend,’” he recollects. “We were friends again.”
Hank tried to readjust to a future in which Gosia performed a unique position in his life. Meanwhile, Gosia was contending with the extent of her emotions for Hank. She missed him greater than she’d ever performed earlier than, not figuring out when she’d subsequent see him.
“I found out that I really care about this relationship,” she says. “I felt in love already. But I found out that I love him and I want to be with him in this moment when he didn’t talk to me.”
And so, inside weeks, Gosia contacted Hank and instructed him that she wished to be with him, that they ought to get married in any case.
And a couple of months later, they did, at Hank’s house in Waldron, Indiana.
“The judge was a friend. My students came, and then we threw a small party with the faculty from my school,” says Hank. “My son, Adam, came, and it was a very, very lovely wedding.”
Following the marriage, Gosia included Hank’s final identify into her personal, changing into Malgorzata Wróblewska-Nuwer.
The couple figured, at first, that they’d proceed their cross-continental life. Maybe Hank would transfer to Poland. But then Gosia’s mother and father sadly handed away inside a couple of months of one another. So, she packed up her life in Poland and moved to Indiana to be along with her new husband, completely.
Moving in collectively was a little bit of an adjustment for each Hank and Gosia.
“Each of us was totally independent,” says Gosia. “So we had some habits, and it’s not easy to live together, you know? And so we had arguments.”
“But we wouldn’t go to bed unless we fixed it,” provides Hank.
They selected an argument-ending code phrase: “Penguin.”
“If one person said ‘Penguin’ the argument stopped. No more argument. We haven’t said it in, like, six years — we haven’t had an argument in six years. So, no more ‘penguin,’” says Gosia, laughing.
During the pandemic, Hank left his college job.
“I decided during Covid that teaching by Zoom wasn’t conducive to great teaching,” he explains. “I love educating however I additionally love newspapers.
He began working as an editor at an Ohio-based newspaper, commuting to the town of Celina. Then, in 2022, he took on a brand new position at a newspaper in Alaska. He’d at all times cherished visiting the northern state, and he and Gosia determined to start a brand new chapter collectively in the town of Fairbanks. In time, Hank began educating, half time, on the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. Gosia works as an accountant domestically.
“We like the same things and we are both open to new challenges,” says Gosia. “That’s why we’re in Alaska.”
The couple even have a cabin in Poland, which they go to in the summer season, and spend time with Gosia’s daughter, Natalia. The couple say she had her considerations in regards to the cross-continental relationship at first, however Natalia now has a really shut relationship with Hank. They bonded over their shared educational profession.
“They’re like daughter and father,” says Gosia.
“We’re very close,” agrees Hank.
Gosia additionally grew to become shut with Hank’s son Adam, who transformed her into an avid board sport participant.
It’s now been over a decade since Hank and Gosia spent their first day collectively in Warsaw. Today, Gosia calls their assembly “destiny.”
But she clarifies, “destiny doesn’t mean you can just sit and wait for something. You always have something on your way. It just depends how you will use it. Or what will be your reaction.”
The couple each credit score one another with bringing out the most effective in them.
“I never met a man like Hank before, who I feel so comfortable with,” says Gosia, who nonetheless wears the anklet Hank gifted her on that decisive journey to Chicago.
“He supports me. He’s trying to support me in everything. So this is really incredible … He really is very patient. He changed me.”
“Gosia has given me a lot of confidence,” says Hank. “I went to school, a long time ago, to the Shakespeare Institute to study acting, and I acted for a while, and then I didn’t act for 48 years. And now in Alaska, we’ve been in 10 community plays in less than two years … I wouldn’t have done that without Gosia giving me the courage to try it at this age.”
Gosia sometimes joins her husband on stage, however usually she’s working behind the scenes cheering Hank on.
The couple additionally work collectively on a newspaper column for an Alaskan paper, the Cordova Times. They don’t dwell in Cordova, however get pleasure from working for the paper remotely. Hank writes the phrases and Gosia takes pictures. This, says Hank, is emblematic of their teamwork strategy to life. They additionally get pleasure from planning journeys collectively and are presently wanting ahead to adventures in Hawaii and Belize.
“Our friends refer to us as “GosiaandHank” — one phrase — and collectively we make one lighthouse beacon of pleasure,” says Hank. “We give each other 100% independence, but together she has made me a better person who explores my feelings as I never did before. But despite being one ‘beam,’ I’ve never felt freer, more focused, uninhibited and joyous in my life.”
For each Hank and Gosia, discover love a bit of later in life has been an surprising, completely happy chapter. They recommend their story proves you by no means know what’s across the nook, and when happiness comes your method, it’s best to seize it wholeheartedly.
“I never wanted to get married, because I don’t think I had ever truly been in love before,” says Gosia. “My message to everyone is this: life is unpredictable, and if love is meant to come, it will do so at the right time; you just must be brave and open to new challenges.”
“The message for anyone from me — 60 and over, and divorced — is that the right someone is out there,” says Hank. “Just don’t go looking for love. Look to have adventures in places where you can barely dare to go. Put your fears away, and you just might find a fellow traveler who’s also not looking for love.”