I mentioned my cousin Vicky Podgurski in my first post and wanted to share a story she told me.
Vicky was at school in Geneva, Switzerland in the late 1960’s and her brother Jay was in the Army in Turkey. She wanted to visit him and took the train to Turkey. At some point in the trip she found herself in a rural train station in what was then Yugoslavia, waiting for the next connection. She hadn’t eaten for a while and was very hungry. In the station was an old man (probably younger than I am now!) cooking some stew on a pot-bellied stove. It smelled delicious and she was ravenous. The man noticed her watching him and, with no language in common, pantomimed an offer to share. She accepted a bowl and loved it. After a while she began to wonder what was in it and tried to ask him. You can imagine how hard that was but after a few quizzical moments realization dawned on him.
He just said “Meow.”