Habemus Papum....I mean Lithuanarum Dux!!

Excuse my Latin. That's right, you read correctly (perhaps). Today's update is that we now have a Lithuanian guide to accompany us on our travels. We will be using Ancestral Attic to organize our days and guide us through Lithuania. Now that one more detail is taken care of, I can concentrate on getting copies of records to our guides for their preliminary work. This means that we now have tickets, guides, and some semblance of an itinerary. That's a good start!

A bit of interesting information: you can now use the Street View (little orange guy) on Google maps for Lithuania. For example, if you go to this link (http://goo.gl/maps/SvfcI), you'll be standing in front of one of the churches that I will be visiting in Nemunaitis, Lithuania. Then, through Google, you can walk down the dirt roads in the countryside, stroll through town, or explore other places thousands of miles away right from the comfort of your own home. Poland is also coming around to this, but mostly just the main roads. 

Thanks to everyone for all the emails and additional pieces of information that have been sent in the last week. My pile of things to research and work on before I leave keeps growing, but as Martha Stewart would say, "It's a good thing!" The more information I have, the better prepared I'll be.

I'm glad that so many of you are interested in this trip and want to help and follow along. It should be quite a journey.

One Step Closer

Well, it's official now. We have a guide for the Polish portion of our trip - Mr. Zenon Znamirowski! I have been filling his email with family trees and copies of more records that he probably cares to see at this point. Once he receives all of my information (which has to be organized by location - Ugh!), he can begin his preliminary work. He'll review the information that I have, research the villages, search for additional information, and try to find additional relatives still in the area.

The search continues for a guide for the Lithuanian portion of our trip. I have narrowed it down, but still have to pull the trigger.

Just under 3 months now....

In the Beginning....

After talking about this for a long time (begging Amy to let me use our vacation on this), in June, Amy and I finally took the leap and bought tickets for us to travel to Poland and Lithuania this fall. This is not going to be like any other vacation/sightseeing trip we've taken before. This trip is centered around my ongoing genealogical research. We will be visiting villages where my ancestors once lived, churches where they worshiped, and cemeteries where generations of family members are buried. Of course we will do some site seeing, but we'll also visit cold, dusty archives in order to research my family history in centuries old books and visit with distant relatives who I have connected with. 

 

Unfortunately, I think that buying the tickets will be the easiest part of this trip. I quickly realized that I still have a lot of work to do when my first stab at plotting our travels required approximately 40 hours in a car! Not including travel days, we are only there for 8 full days. This equated to about 5 hours in a car each day which hardly left me the time required to visit AND research - back to the drawing board. I ended up on this preliminary itinerary:

http://goo.gl/maps/A1Ek2

Among others, our stops include the following places to perform research:

Bolesław, Poland - Janik Family

Odrzykoń, Poland - Danek Family

Leżajsk, Poland - Ozga Family

Kopczany, Poland - Guzewicz/Danilczyk Family

Vabaliai, Lithuania - Maslauskas Family

Currently, I'm discussing my itinerary (and budget) with local guides in both countries. Because we will not be limiting our travels to big cities and tourist attractions, we'll need to have a translator/guide with us during most of our trip. I've been told that finding someone who speaks English in these small villages is nearly impossible so having a translator at your disposal is like gold. Plus, these guides have connections with priests, archive directors, and locals which can always come in handy. Good thing the exchange rates are favorable at the moment!

The preparation continues...