Monthly Archives: January 2012

Foreign travel is one of those activities that invariably requires new tricks. It’s also said that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. So whatever made my husband and me think it would be a good and fun idea to take his 84 year old arthritic, heavy, walker-and-wheelchair-bound mother to Slovakia in the middle of December?

This seemingly dubious plan was hatched in the spring, when my mother-in-law Dorothy began talking about wanting to see the land of her grandparents. She was born in the US, as were both her parents, but all are 100% Slovakian; she grew up in a Slovakian neighborhood, speaking Slovakian at home. But no one in her family had ever gone back to visit and she decided it was time to go.