I was in Rzeszow (pronounced Jeh-shuff) Poland at the end of December 2018. While staying at the Hilton Garden Inn I met an American man who told me about his escape from traditional working life the year before. He spent the previous year traveling Mexico with his nine children, wife and German Shepherd. He was in Poland with a newly acquired full time contract to consult an American manufacturing company in Rzeszow. In the following week he would spend Christmas with family in Virginia. Then after the holidays he would pack everyone up and move them into their new home in Rzeszow on New Year’s Day.
The Hilton Garden Rzeszow is a fantastic hotel. They have wonderful staff and an award-winning restaurant with some of the most amazing perogies options I’ve ever had: cod, goose with pickled red onion and poppy seed perogies with cream and spices. The mall next to the hotel has two local cafeterias with even more traditional delicious perogies options.
I’m a fan of Polish food, lots of vegetables, great meats and terrific accompaniments.
One night while eating perogies in the hotel restaurant the American man came back with his family to say hello to the bartenders. I had the pleasure of meeting his family, all ten of them. They invited me to dinner later that week. Onawa and I took a taxi to a southern part of town which is more residential with big houses and huge yards. After dinner I was sitting in the kitchen at the island talking with his wife when one of their girls asked if I knew about the enneagram. I surprisingly didn’t which peaked curiosity in me because I’m obsessed with personality science.
There are nine Enneagram personality types. Each person can have a mixture of two, or three, but they all have one main personality. According to Eclectic Energies’ site:
The nine types (or “enneatypes”, “ennea” means “nine”) are universally identified by the numbers 1 to 9. These numbers have a standard way of being placed around the Enneagram symbol. Enneagram authors have attached their own individual names to these numbers. On this site the type names by authors Riso and Hudson are used.
They are:
People of a particular type have several characteristics in common, but they can be quite different nevertheless. It depends among other things on their level of mental health. Unhealthy (neurotic) people from a particular type can look quite different from healthy ones. Riso and Hudson distinguished 9 levels of mental health (see their book Personality Types) and have type descriptions for each level of each enneagram type.
After going through this site and the books they had on hand we discovered that I’m a classic 7. The 7 personality is eager, excited, loves to make plans, multi-talented, open minded- this site was describing me. The negatives, a high ego and introspectiveness also cover my personality. The Eclectic Energies website clearly demonstrates the different aspects of the personalities while differentiating them to diminish mistyping.
I was newly single and on a self-relearning adventure while in another new city. The winter cold kept me inside my hotel room introspecting more than I usually would. I took time to plan that my 2019 goals would include more self-improvement than the years before. When the sun rarely come out I would go exploring along the river and walk in the charming city center. I spent almost two months in Rzeszow then went to Łodz Poland in February. I wrote about my weird trip to Rzeszow and my stay in Łodz.
