In Austria we stayed in a Gasthoff (this was January) that was very happy to have the income (from the Austrian government). Many countries took the asylum seekers from Poland that were engineers and scientists like my father from Austria, cheif among them Canada, the US, UK, and Australia. For some reason you needed to get directly to West Germany, Norwaym and Sweden to apply for asylum successfully there and if you had already been in Austria before being granted asylum, you were unable to, but the Austrians assisted you by finding a place for you to live and helping to get you out to one of the other countries (there were and are to this day some nationalistic and xenophobic parts of the political spectrum and population).

When we made it to the US we were sent to a city in IL soon after being in a hotel in NY for one night. There wee slept on cots in the gym of a school. Then we were sent to a family was paid to be our sponsors. This family was terrible and stole all of our money and the sponsor money and put us in an attic above some drug makers that they rented to below. On day my father, knowing only German and Polish, walked-out, picked a direction, and made his way through a large forest until he located a road. Then he followed the road and made his way to a McDonald's parking lot. There he stopped everyone and tried to find someone that spoke Polish or German. It is amazing he was not arrested, but eventually he met an older woman that was German. We stayed at her son's house for a night and then we were sent to another camp.

Eventually a Catholic parish sponsored us. By that point the borders were no longer as porous and the families that they were supposed to sponsor never made it to the US. The parish found us a Czech/Slovak couple to stay with and things were largely great from that point on. When we moved into our first place the landlady was terrible though and we needed to heat the apartment with the stove open in the kitchen, that was probably the last of the crummy occurances though.

The pastor bought my father a huge Buick Electra. That was my first American car experience. It was wonderful, though my father only had experience with air cooled engines before that and suffered terrible burns when he tried to fill the radiator. The next car was a Ford Grand Torrino station wagon, followed by a Chevy Impala, all cars that my father was exceptionally proud of.

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This Omega might be a V8, but more likely an I-6 or V6. Most cars then still came with steel wheels, so it's really hard to tell. These must be super-rare by now.

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As long as those V8's don't make 190 hp.

PS That elegy says exactly how cars should be in my wildest dreams. My vision of Utopia. What a beautiful world.

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even in the 80's we were buying foreign! the proof is all over that first picture!!

luv for the V dub >_<

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