Beata Iwona Wojnarowska

"For the longest time, I was with the ensemble in America and Canada. I spent over half a year there, so imagine when you miss so much school. At that time, I had very difficult exams at the end of the school year. Despite this, I was always happy when I was on the road with the ensemble. We even received allowances and, like good children, we tried to help our parents - we either brought home the money we had saved or bought them some kind of gift. I remember how I once brought a big carpet home to them, I was 13 years old at the time. I traveled by bus with that carpet for three whole months. At that time, we did not know what to do with so much earnings, and we did not even know how to calculate the value of that money. We had all the goods on tickets, there were few goods and everything seemed so gray. There, on the other hand, they had a varied menu and everything was colorful. It often happened that if someone was not used to it and went to a department store for the first time, where, unlike Poland or Czechoslovakia, there was also a self-service, they left with the goods without paying. People just brought things out because they thought it was okay. Unpleasant situations then arose, because when passing through the security devices, the goods whistled, to which the security asked where they had gone with it. As if those people don't know how to find themselves in that world."

"I was already going to school then, and I liked it a lot as a child. And you know why I liked it? Because thanks to that I didn't have to go to school. There was a shortage of food in Poland at that time, and if we wanted to get to it, we had to stand in long lines. We usually stood in line all day and night, sometimes two, sometimes even three days. We waited in front of the store to see if they would bring in some meat or other goods. We never knew in advance what goods would be brought into the store, so we always had grocery lists and lists handy just in case. In addition, everyone brought a chair to sit on or a blanket, just everything they needed. The whole family always took turns in the rows. Since the parents had to go to work during the day, they stood in lines at night. We kids stood in line during the day so we could skip school, which of course I liked as a kid. Along with waiting in line, friendships were born - some of which I still maintain today. You could say that a lively social life developed there, because we supported and helped each other in moments when one of us had to run away from the council and represented each other. And so, in addition to standing in line in front of a closed shop, strong friendships were born on the sidewalk."