Travel Blog

Wanting ribs but not wanting to go far, we drove to Outback. Our waitress, Olga, was from Crimea.

After we ordered, Hania told me about the book she was reading about the Tarnowski family, which left Poland during World War II and yet managed to land on their feet, through a beneficent chain of similar well-established families, wherever they went.

I said it was like Patrich Leigh Fermor on his walk across Europe: Early on he met one landed family and they gave him introductions to others all along his route.

"In Cairo," Hania said of the Tarnowskis, "they lived in a house with Patrick Leigh Fermor."