“I genuinely cannot think of anything negative to say about our trip. Lucjan and Jakub were both kind, knowledgeable, and helpful. They were a great resource – the trip would not have been possible without their knowledge and translation – but they were also fun to have on the trip. They were nice people and fit right in!”
“Lucjan was great!! He was always available for questions, solving issues, and keeping in touch with other guides, restaurants, priests and family with needed information (meal requests, etc.) and informing them if we were not on schedule. He took care of everything for us. And was constantly counting to 8 (or 12 once the rest of the girls joined our tour) to make sure that everyone was there. Also took great pictures which I hope we will be able to access from him. He was great with the 9 year olds as well as the 93 year old! And also was great in translating the many times we needed him to —– restaurants, family dinner party, with priests, etc. So much that would not have happened if it weren’t for him! Loved how he didn’t hesitate to knock on someone’s door to try to locate some family links! And contacting the parish priests so that we could go in to visit family churches. We would have never been invited by Father Adam to the Mass/Corpus Christi procession (I am sure a hightlight for Mom!) if it weren’t for him. Lucjan was the best!”
“Both Lucjan and Kuba were AMAZING. It was nice, and also funny, that after I had accidentally left my medicine behind at one of our stops, Lucjan then checked with me about my medicine every time I got on the bus again!”
“I really loved this trip and getting to take my young daughter on it! The most amazing parts (like being honored to be on the alter during mass in a church so important to my grandma and her ancestors!) could not have happened without Lucjan.”
“The PolishOrigins tour was excellent. Our guide Lucjan Cichocki did a great job. He knew his job and his field. He kept us together and on time. He jumped in to address and solve problems. He established a good rapport with our family and was more a friend then a guide.”
“The tour was amazing and Polish Origins and our guides did a fantastic job.”
“Lucjan was beyond amazing in his attentiveness to managing not only our very packed tour schedule, but his attentiveness to each of us on a very personal level. As two examples, he often shared the “hotspot” on his personal cellphone so we could access the internet on the bus, and he always checked whether my mother wanted her walker or her cane at any given location. He even helped us with our luggage. Lucjan and our driver Kuba became honorary members of our family because they really just fit in with us.”
“The sights we saw were the perfect mix of Polish and personal history. The familial locations they discovered were a treasure trove; I can finally start to picture what their life was like and imagine how we got from there to here. “
“We had already done extensive prior genealogical work before the trip, including in a scouting trip with PolishOrigins two years earlier. So we already knew a lot in advance. Yet, to our amazement, with the help of PolishOrigins, so MANY more living relatives were found that we were able to have a remarkable and truly memorable family reunion in one town with 42 relatives, most whom we never had known from earlier research! Our only disappointment was that we could not find any living relatives on my mother’s side (would have been nice because she was with us, but this also was difficult because emigration of her grandparents to America happened too far back in time) – and yet, she still had extremely meaningful and memorable experiences visiting the towns and churches of her ancestors.”
“We had a very detailed schedule by the time we left for Poland. Magdalena knows that as the family lead for our group, I was very detailed focused, perhaps annoyingly so! I am appreciative that she put up with my steady stream of questions.”
“IT WAS A GREAT TRIP!! I WOULD DEFINITELY RECOMMEND POLISH ORIGINS TO OTHERS, AND WOULD USE THEM AGAIN SHOULD I GET THE OPPORTUNITY TO TRAVEL TO POLAND AGAIN 🙂 “
“I really loved this trip and getting to take my young daughter on it! The most amazing parts (like being honored to be on the alter during mass in a church so important to my grandma and her ancestors!) could not have happened without Lucjan. It was amazing to see both our personal history and the history of the country as a whole. I knew very little about Polish history before this trip. I still have a lot to learn, but I got a great jump start. The guides they chose for our walking tour of places like Warsaw and Gdansk were so knowledgeable and personable. Everything was amazing! Thanks so much for putting this together and putting up with me and my 9 year old. 🙂 ”
“This big, 12-person family trip, which I had been planning with PolishOrigins for several years (due to delays from Covid), could not have come off any better. It far exceeded my hopes in being fun and memorable for every member of our group, from 9 year old children to my 93 year old mother. Each restaurant was special and every city tour guide was knowledgeable and personable – clearly the restaurants and guides had been carefully vetted in advance. The driver and main guide selected for our tour could not have been better matched in personality to that of our family, and ensured the success of the trip. We consider them both honorary members of our family!
There were a number of “special touches” that PolishOrigins pulled off. It was fun to eat lunches inside Malbork Castle and inside the Wieliczka Salt Mine. Sanok Ethnographic Park was a real treat, and timed well in our trip — the morning of the day we were going to see the same kind of country/peasant cottage where my grandfather was born and lived. Another nice touch was our lunch in Sopot, where we had gotten a special outside table looking out over the boardwalk and environs. Our tour organizers also made sure we had entry into several family churches at times they would normally be closed, and got us entry into the Zabinski vlla in the Warsaw Zoo. And the piece de resistance was helping to arrange an unexpectedly huge (50 person!) family reunion in one town, which occurred right after a mass in the intention of our ancestors and living family members, a large number who were in attendance at the mass.
We also appreciated the flexibility given to us so that some of our group (e.g., the children) could split off a few times to do something more interesting for them.
I knew going into the trip that we had a very heavy schedule packed with many things we wanted to do, and I was sure we would need to sacrifice some of them because I anticipated problems keeping to the tight program; to my amazement, we did everything on our schedule! [We did not get to see Bałucianka, but we were only blocked from doing that when a few miles away because of a technical issue with the size of our bus and the passability of the road.] And while at first it was thought that we might have some additional inconveniences given that our trip overlapped with the many day Corpus Christi celebrations, in the end this became one of the highlights of our trip, and we greatly enjoyed participating in Corpus Christi events throughout our trip. One of the most touching moments was my mother getting to participate in the Corpus Christi procession and to see the little girls throwing the flowers in the procession, because it brought back her own memories of doing that when she was a little girl.
My 93 year old mother said: “I was moved to tears so many times. I cannot imagine how the trip could have been any better or more special”. For the rest of us on the trip, that is the most significant sign of your success!”