Andrzej Stasiuk - On the Road to Babadag

U lukomorya … is the opening of Pushkin's Ruslan i Lyudmila, a Russian classic, an epic poem in fairy-tale style.

The creator of Hair was Milos Forman. His Czech first name, Miloš, and the Polish poet- philosopher's last name, Miłosz, are close in sound.

"Dyzio the Dreamer" is a humorous poem for children by Julian Tuwim. Dyzio wishes the whole world were ice cream and cake.

"There was no shade…": A quotation from Miodrag Bulatović's "Red Rooster Flies Straight Up into the Sky." The Serbian original was translated into Polish by Maria Krukowska.

Bohdan Khmelnytsky was a Cossack leader; the seventeenth-century Khmelnytsky Uprising in Ukraine became emblematic in history of savage massacre (Poles and Jews were its victims). Jan Sobieski, a seventeenth-century king of Poland, was famous for a victory over the Ottoman Turks in the Battle of Vienna, which many believed saved Europe.

The Puszta: the Hungarian Plains, an emblem of Hungarian tradition and culture. The Hungarian word puszta, meaning "bare," "uninhabited," derives from the Slavic word for "empty" (e.g., in Polish, pusty ).

"He stood on the edge…": the Kiš passage in Polish is Danuta Cirlic- Straszynska's translation from the Serbian.

"Wars were won…" and "Love is the key…": the Codreanu quotations come from the journal Fronda (6/1996), translated into Polish by Bogdan Koziel.

"They are coming!" and "Their faces, almost all bearded…" are from Peter Esterhá zy's Transporters, translated from the Hungarian into Polish by Elżbieta Sobolewska.