To complete this thread for other users:

Each folder in Windows has these 2 virtual folder entries:
.
..

So if you ask for a folderlist through the winapi, you'll get these two at the beginning.
The single dot represents the current folder.

So:
".\MyFile.txt"

is a path to MyFile.txt in the current folder.

The double-dot represents the parentfolder. This one is used(as mentioned before) to step upwards by one level without knowing the name of the parent.

As each Folder contaisn these 2(except the root, like C:\) you can chain relative anonymous pathes.

Like:
"..\..\..\MyFile.txt"
goes 3 levels up and expects a MyFile.txt in this parentfolder.

"..\..\MyFolder\MyFile.txt"

This goes 2 levels up, and within this parent, it enters the folder MyFolder for the file MyFile.txt.

Greetings
Rackscha