A Jack and Patricia Kuehn Story

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Table Of Contents

The Following Are Letters Received From Jack and Pat Kuehn


Moving To Warsaw, Poland
A Walk Around Warsaw
Getting Settled In Warsaw
The Polish Connection
> (TOC)

Moving To Warsaw, Poland

Dear Family, July 20, 1999

I’ve been in Warsaw a week and Jack arrived last Friday. He stayed in Korea a week longer to deal with his business there. I arrived last Sunday night and didn’t do much besides work during the week. The job is going well.

I now know where my love of pickled northern comes from. On the breakfast buffet here at the Holiday Inn where we’re staying are three different kinds of pickled herring. All in all, the food is good and we won’t starve. Of course, that hasn’t been a problem for us anywhere else in the world so expecting that we might lose even a pound of weight would only be wishful thinking.

Yesterday we walked around looking for areas we might like to live. We looked at one apartment we decided wasn’t big enough but fits out budget so we’ll see how that turns out. We need lots of room for visitors. We would like to be in an older building with lots of character, but with and least some new modern conveniences. There are all types of housing here, new, old, renovated, and many in work. It will be great when we finally find a place, it’s been a long time (over 6 months) since we have really had our own place. Jack started looking for an apartment in earnest Monday and has about 3 good prospects so far. We’re pretty sure we want to find something in the city center. My building is on the northwest side of City Center and my office is on the southeast side. Would be good to find some place to live right in-between.

Sunday we went to a Mozart ballet performance in one of the biggest city parks and looked around some more. All in all, Warsaw is like a larger, more modern, Tver. There are more shops with more products available, but most of the city is 5 to 6 story neoclassical buildings like those built in the Soviet Union. There’s even one Stalin building, like the seven sisters in Moscow.

The weather here has been nothing short of fantastic. It’s been in the 70 to low 80’s, clear and fresh. It has been a great introduction to Poland. We can hardly wait to get settled in and start exploring the countryside. All of the people we’ve encountered in Warsaw have been so friendly.

We miss you all. Pat & Jack
(TOC)

A Walk Around Warsaw

Hi ya'all:August 3, 1999

Thought I'd fill you all in on our latest adventure.

Last weekend Pat and I went on a self guided walking tour of Warsaw. It only lasted about 4 hours, but it was very interesting. And the weather was great, which it has been since we got here.

This whole city was leveled - leveled I say - in 1945. We saw pictures of Warsaw that showed the city looking like Wichita Falls or Oklahoma City after a tornado, except there were more bricks left.

In the late 40s they started a major rebuilding effort and EVERY building in Warsaw was rebuilt. Most were rebuilt to look just like the ones that were leveled. Can’t quite figure out why they did that, but then it was under Russian rule at the time.

Any way, it was quite an interesting walk. We did have one really strange occurrence, which is not THAT unusual for Pat and I, I guess. And, I thought you might get a kick out of hearing about it.

I have been on the lookout for my “ideal” painting for the last 10 years or so. It has to be real (not a print), by an artist who does good work (famous is not a requirement). I think that, to paint a good abstract, an artist should first be able to paint a rose I can smell, or a crashing wave I can hear. The Painting also has to be something I think I can live with hanging on my wall for the next hundred years, which is how long I expect to live (making me 139 a hundred years from now, for you that are counting - but not counting well).

We walked around a corner in the “Old Town” part of Warsaw, and there it was!

Old Town, by the way, is a fantastic collection of the best reconstruction I have seen in a long while. It is like a collection of buildings from old streets in Venice, Paris, Frankfurt, and Geneva. There are street performers, artists, and merchants salted in with a just right sized crowd of people out to enjoy the bright summer day.

Back to “my painting”.

We walked around a corner, and there it was!

I said “Pat, look at that!”

It was about 36” tall by 48” wide, beautifully framed, and just remarkably intriguing to look at. It had a blue gray background with swirls of light and dark grays and blues. It had whites and silvers and tans splashing and twisting together with sprays of gold laced through the canvas.

I said, “I think that’s it, Pat. What is it look like to you?”

Pat said “It looks like a sail boat plowing it’s way through the sea in a fierce storm, searching for new and exciting places it has never been before. What do you see?”

“I see waves crashing against a foreign shore, a shore of unexplored lands we have yet to visit”, I said.

Pat said “my, you sure can get poetic when confronted with true works of art”.
I said “Yah, sure, youbetcha”.

Pat said that we should talk to the artist, who had now noted our interest and was walking toward us. He was a younger guy, maybe 25 or so, surrounded by very, very good paintings of the Polish countryside. That would fulfill my desire to have a painting by an artist that does good work.

I asked “how much”?
“485 Zloties” he replied.

“De odder paintinks you zee are mine too, but I paint dem for de local peoples. Dis kind of paintink you looking at, dis is my love!” he said, with a sigh, referring of course to the one we were admiring.

(485 Zloties, I am computing, is about 125 US dollars, a do-able deal, AND I can probably talk him down to 75 or 100 bucks. I WANT THAT PAINTING!)

While I’m doing my calculating, Pat asks the artist “what is it a picture of, what were you trying to portray in this painting?”

“Des painting” he said, “des painting ees of a beautiful voman. Eet ees a beautiful voman laying in zee bathtub vith zee vodder in zee tub surrounding her, and zee shower, et ees coming down on her. Her legs are oop in zee air and she ees peeing strait up at the vodder coming down. I call it zee Golden Shower. Ees erotic, no?”

Welllllllllll……………………………..
That pretty much took the wind out of Pat’s “sail boat plowing it’s way through the sea” and put a little potty on my “shore of unexplored lands we have yet to visit”.

I said, “OoooKay. We’ll think it over and get back to you.”

As much as I loved the painting, and as much as I would have loved to have it forever on a major wall of whatever house we are living in, I could just never get over the real meaning of the painting. We didn’t buy it. The meaning he described, by the way, you really could see when you looked at it, knowing what it was.

That was about it for that weekend’s adventure. We do hope to get out a lot, and we will keep you posted, especially if I find another work of art.

Love,
Jack (& Pat)
(TOC)

Getting Settled In Warsaw

Jack(&Pat)December 15, 1999
Merry Christmas and Happy New Millennium!
(Wow, you don’t get to say THAT every day!)

We have always enjoyed traveling, but as we toasted to the new 1999 last year in Bali, little did we know that we would cover so much ground in just one incredible year. In a nutshell our route took us to Austria, Belarus, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Poland, Spain, and in the USA, Arkansas, Hawaii, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Texas.

The best part has been the friends and relatives we have gotten to visit with, including the new ones we found in Poland. And, we have even started getting visitors at our new place in Warsaw. Pat’s folks George and Ellen, and Pat's sister Mary with her son Chauncey were here in October. A friend, Slava from our Russian project, also visited in October and Tom and Penny Posedly will be spending this New Years with us.

For those who didn’t even know we were in Poland, it came up suddenly this summer. After we finished our projects in Korea we went to Texas and rebuilt the house that burned down last year. We also tried real hard to completely spoil Billy, Michele, and Lisa for Brian & Dawn before we left Texas. During the rebuilding Pat sent out a ton of resumes, and while we were visiting Aaron, Toni, and spoiling Amy in Minnesota a few weeks later, Pat got a call. “Can you move to Poland in two weeks?” they said. No problem, the grandkids were getting too spoiled to live with anymore anyway, so off we went.

Pat is now the project manager for the interior finish-out of a 32-story office building in the center of Warsaw. I am chasing potential construction contracts and getting our household paperwork in order. (Goofing Off??? - Nah.) Mostly I’ve been trying to get our “stuff” out of customs. It all shipped in July from Korea and the USA, and did not finish clearing customs in Warsaw until early November. Customs officials kept asking for “one more thing”, we would get that and they would say, “great, now all we need is one more thing and you can have your stuff”. They even charged me 60% of the original value of my old used underwear because I didn’t have a “certificate of origin” for them for Pete’s sake! I offered a bribe, but they wouldn’t take it. Wouldn’t you know I would get honest customs officials? (Dumb, ruthless, obstinate, heartless turkeys, but honest.)

We had been in Warsaw only a few weeks when we had to go back to Chicago to take care of some visa processing for the customs Gestapo mentioned above. We had a free weekend while there, so we flew Brian, Dawn, Billy, Michele, & Lisa from Texas, and Aaron, Toni, and Amy from Minnesota, all to Chicago. What a great time! We had an indoor pool, and found out that all of the grandkids are part fish. Picture our herd, little ones in life jackets bobbing in the pool like little corks, while us big ones floated around like basking whales, sipping mint juleps, and taking turns in the Jacuzzi. Ahh - what a life. The kids all had the run of the hotel, and the hotel is still standing (most parts anyway). We celebrated New Years Eve with them a bit early because we will be on opposite sides of the world on December 31st. Some of the pictures on the front of this letter were taken during that mini reunion. It was the first time we had all been together since before Lisa was born.

During George and Ellen’s visit in October we had the opportunity to spend the weekend with some Polish relatives who live about 200 miles south of Warsaw. What an experience, to be able to visit with aunts, uncles, and cousins that not long ago we never even knew existed. Seems that the custom in Poland is to feed your relatives, and our Polish relatives truly believed in that custom. We were served ALL of the food in southern Poland and did our best to eat most of it. We stayed with the aunts, uncles, and cousins in Lubachov for the weekend and were really made to feel at home. We even saw a house that Pat’s great grandfather built and lived in. We have been invited for Christmas so we head that way again on the 23rd of December.

We wish you the very best year 2000 possible and really hope we will have the chance to see you before 2001.

Pat & Jack Kuehn
(TOC)

The Polish Connection

Hi Mom:
Wow ? wonders never cease.
Pat and I have just discovered the most amazing thing.

But first, a little history ? some of which you know from “The Kuehn Clan Cookbook” which contains a history of the Kuehn family since my great grandparents’ days. According to my aunt Bertha, my grandpa Kuehn came from the province of Posen, Germany. She didn’t list a town, but did mention that he attended school with the Evangelical Primary School in the province of Posen, Germany. My grandma Kuehn (Wolff) came from Stargard, Germany, moving to North Dakota in 1894, and her parents (my great grandparents) followed in 1931.

Here comes the kicker, something that aunt Bertha most likely didn’t know, and I don’t think anyone has thought of. Although the province of Posen and the city of Stargard were in fact a part of Prussian Germany in the 1800’s, (the government was headed by the famous German General, Otto Von Bismark from 1861to about 1875), the area reverted BACK TO POLAND in the early 1900’s. Except for a couple of hundred years, ever since the 6th century the area has been, as it is now, a part of Poland. I guess the bottom line is that my heritage is at least as much Polish as it is German.

The province at the time Grandpa Kuehn was there evidently was named after the Polish city of Poznan, which was known as Posen at that time. Pat and I are going to take a weekend sometime in the next few months and go to Stargard to see if we can track any of the relatives. We are especially going to see if we can find the grave of “Tante Yetti”, who is Henrietta Grieger. She raised My grandpa Kuehn because grandpa Kuehn’s mother died when he was very young. The family had tried to talk her into coming to the US, but she said she was to old to make the change.

My dad, Walt, and his brothers and sisters never got to meet “Tante Yetti”, but Grandpa Kuehn talked about her a lot.

If you know of anyone who may have additional information or would like to read what we have discovered so far, please send it to the editor of the web site. We will keep you posted as we look deeper into the Polish connection.

The strangest part is, I have been teasing Pat about being a quarter Pollack for the last 35 years, and it looks like I am more Pollack than she is. Wild.

This letter was written by Jack Kuehn,in Poland, where he and his wife are working for a time.

PS - to our kids, sorry about that, I guess grandma Geiszler didn't check your grandpa Kuehn's pedigree before she got married. So now I'm German/Polish/Norwegian? or just Polish/Norwegian? and is this important?
Dan Kuehn