Auschwitz

It took me some time of hesitation (exactly 2 months) whether I should make this post or not...
I suppose everybody knows what used to be hidden under the name Auschwitz.
I've been to that place for the first time as a 13 year old girl. I remember that it was a very hot and sunny day. The area of the former concentration camp was filled with people, not much older than me at that time, wearing blue and white hoodies. All of them were Jewish teenagers from different countries, who made all the way to Poland to participate in the March of the Living, which takes place in Auschwitz every year. Despite of the young age, most of them seemed to be aware of the tragic history of the place. They were moving from one building to another and discovering over and over again what happened there not such a long time ago, putting candles in some places in memory of the victims, crying...
In the afternoon, people who gathered in Auchwitz marched all together to Birkenau, another former concentration camp, located few kilometers away. When everybody got there, it was finally possible to notice with one sight how many people were really there. A lot. Before the sunset, many speeches took place... The aim of all of them was to make all those young people remember what happened there during the World War II.

Last year, I met a girl, living in the opposite side of Europe, who visited Auschwitz during her trip to Poland few years ago. She told me that she doesn't understand making this whole big fuss over visiting the Museum of Auschwitz (yes, nowadays it is called a museum) and that she didn't feel anything at all there. For her, it wasn't shocking, terrifying or even sad visiting those buildings, rooms or showers/gas chambers where people were dying.

Lately, it happened to me to visit Auschwitz once again after 10 years. This time, it wasn't sunny. It was cloudy, cold and everything was covered with snow. It was also crowded, I believe it's always crowded there, but with many different kinds of tourists: Polish, Chinese, German, Russian, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Dutch, French, British, American, Jewish, Catholic, Buddhist and so on... Each huge, medium or even tiny group had their own guide who seemed to be doing their best while telling all of the unbelievable stories.

I don't want to point at any specific group that I've mentioned (although I could), however, I started asking myself a question: Does everybody have to visit Auschwitz during their trip to Cracow/Poland/Middle-Eastern Europe? And does it really make people remember about the World War II crimes?
I have a sad feeling that for many people it's just a tick on their list of places to visit, not a place where they learn something. Nobody should consider going to Auschwitz as a trip to the museum. It is not a touristic sight. It is a very important lesson.

I've found this worth reading article after writing my post:
"The lesson I learnt at Auschwitz"
British Prime Minister - Gordon Brown

Olympus Trip 35

Let me introduce you a new member of my family - Olympus Trip 35 - made in Japan. As its name suggests, it loves travelling. A trip from Japan to Poland in Daniel's hand luggage wasn't a big deal for it and arrived at my home 2 days before Christmas.

Trying to be more serious, Olympus Trip 35 is a camera introduced for the first time in the late 60's and includes all that is necessary for street photography. The camera that I own was produced in 1978 and below are the prooves, pictures taken by Daniel and me, of the fact that it works reaaaallllyyy good!

Olympus Trip 35 - street photography camera
Vintage Camera Museum

Christmas - how to not get bored

Christmas 2009 passed without getting bored thanks to the board games!

Just before the Christmas Eve dinner, together with Ela, Ula and Daniel, we've played the game called Shogun, which I was looking forward to since last January.
Generally speaking, Shogun is about scoring the biggest number of points by possessing as many prefectures of Japan as possible, fighting with enemies, making rice supplies so that people won't die of hunger in winter, building castles, temples and Noh theatres.

While playing we all had different strategies, but the ones of Ula and Daniel deserve to be described here. Ula's aim was buying loads of rice, while Daniel's main objective was making Nagoya a powerful city with a beautiful castle and attacking all his neighbours without caring about rice supplies. It's also worth mentioning that each player represented different famous shogun, for example I had a card of Ieyasu Tokugawa. Shogun is probably my no. 1 board game of all we've played.

Another 2 board games were this year's presents from Santa Claus - I've received Ticket to Ride - Europe and Ela got Small World.

Ticket to Ride - Europe is all about constructing railways around Europe's map from 1912. At first, the rules seem to be a bit complicated but it is a truly family game and each of my family members played it at least once during Christmas and enjoyed it.

Concerning Small World, it is a board game about possessing lands and scoring points for that by the use of supernatural powers - the players are representing different creatures - dwarfs, tritons, elves, giants and so on. Personally, I'm not a big fan of monsters and fairytale creatures, however, my second impression on Small World was much better than the first one.

Another game we've tried playing 2 times was Mystery of the Abbey, which I already knew before. In my opinion Mystery is a very interesting game and what makes it even more cool is being based on the book "The Name of Rose" by Umberto Eco. At the beginning each player receives a bunch of cards with names of different monks, while one of the cards remains hidden.
During the game the players are trying to find out which of the monks is the murderer, for example by asking questions to other players. The necessary thing during the game is taking notes about the facts that are already known.
In our case, Daniel didn't take any notes and then kept on refusing to answer questions (yes, it is allowed) or he gave Ela and me some fake answers, which finally lead to getting lost in our investigations. When we've played Mystery of the Abbey for the 2nd time, Daniel was trying to cheat, but luckily, thanks to the special card, Ula got a possibility to exchange cards with him.
Obviously it was annoying to have such a rebel player among us but in the 2nd game somehow it made it more funny and interesting.

Except the board games we've also played 2 games that might be considered as card games. The first game MahJong, is a kind of an Asian equivalent to European cards, was brought to us by Japanese Santa Claus. As I've attended a workshop dedicated to this game few days before Christmas, I already knew what is it all about and after watching 2 videos on youtube we were ready to play. Well, I still need to learn more about MahJong so I'll explain the rules of the game some other time.

Last but definitely not least game was the one widely known as Bohnanza, in Poland named Fasolki (pol. beans). The aim of the game is exchanging cards in all possible ways with other players to be able to plant as many beans as possible and receive the coins for that. There are few kinds of beans, in polish version of the game they are named in polish so I recommend the foreigners eager to learn polish to play Fasolki at least once to learn few useful words. In our case, the winner of the game was Daniel - the only non-Polish speaker.

Amarante - study trip

During the semester I've spent on Erasmus in Portugal, one of the classes that I've attended was Planeamento e Gestão de Projectos Turisticos (Planning and Managing Tourism Products).
The main task was to create our own business plans but meanwhile we had a chance to learn how one of the already existing Tourism Products really works.

"Welcome who comes for good"

Right at the begging of the semester the professor told us to keep one day of May free for a study trip. The place where we were supposed to go to was Casa da Calçada in Amarante.

Daniela Patricia Natalina Nuno Angela

Armando Simon Nelson

Amarante is famous for São Gonçalo who had unique abilities of miraculous healing. The most significant pieces of architecture in the city - the chapel and the former monastery were named after him.

The hotel which our professor was so eager to show us, turned out to be a very luxurious one with rich history of the building and its surroundings. My Portuguese classmates told me that the uniqueness of this place is even greater because of its history. Once upon a time, one Portuguese guy, who came back from France, brought the new techniques of wine production and became successful together with the whole wide Douro region. He was considered to be very poor before so his achievement is considered to be very spectacular. After one century or so, the family decided to keep the legend alive and developed a tourism product based on the vineyard and it's renovated buildings. That's how the yellow hotel of Casa da Calçada was born. According to the hotel's representative who gave a speech about this story, the moral is, that everybody may reach for the stars.

Casa da Calçada is a good example of a boutique hotel, which means it's not only luxurious but also has an intimate, magical atmosphere and rich history. Hotels of this kind are also known as design hotels and include extraordinary cuisine, stylish furnishings, as well as additional, unique facilities.

After seeing a couple of rooms, watching a movie about boutique hotels, listening and discussing the topic, we also met a person who is some kind of Big Fish for Portuguese Tourism. He told us that the most important is the idea and if we come up with a good one, we should keep it and protect it. At least that's how I understood it in Portuguese.

We've drank our glasses of juice which had the same color as the hotel's walls and some of us went to have churro, which originated in Spain. It's a kind of pastry with different fillings - we all chose chocolate. Delicious!

On the way back, Simon's car was fully packed with people - Patricia, Armando, Nelson and me. Guys told me that the road between Amarante and Vila Real is one of the most dangerous ones in Portugal. Beware!

All of the pictures in this post were taken with Nelson's camera. I'm glad I was finally able to make this post. By chance, I've found all of the pictures sent by Nelson to the mailbox, which I hardly ever check. Better late than never, as we say in Poland.

Kyiv - golden leaves and golden domes

Autumn is the time of falling leaves and rainy days that are getting shorter one by one but not only. It's also time of the Autumn AEGEE Agora, where 700 AEGEE members from all around Europe meet. This year we met in Kiev, which is one of the oldest eastern European cities.

The Agora took place in the buildings of Kiev Polytechnic Institute, including its gyms and a canteen.

Before the Agora started we had the whooole Thursday free to hang around the city. On that day, Cigdem, Sveta, Magda and I went to see the place that Kiev is the most famous for - the Pechersk Lavra.

After leaving the metro at the Arsenalna station we kept on asking people on the street, which is the right way to get to the nearby Pechersk Lavra. The funny thing was that before even asking a question, people were answering "I don't know". Obviously, we didn't try it in English but in Russian. As soon as,Sveta got discouraged, I've tried few more times and one man finally answered our simple question. We took a nice walk along the Dnieper river and finally found what we were looking for!

Pechersk Lavra, also known as the Monastery of the Caves, shines above Kiev with it's golden domes and bright colors. Its beginnings reach the early XIth century when the first cave monastery was founded. In the XVIIth century first constructions representing the Ukrainian baroque were brought up and remain there as the symbols of Kiev until now.

The other day, Joanna, Magda and I skipped the plenary to visit the oldest part of the city. While getting a bit lost we came across some more or less fascinating things and places.

Finally, we've found ourselves in the middle of the Bohdan Chmielnicki square (sorry for the Polish spelling of his name but "Khmelnytsky" doesn't appeal to me!) located just between Sofiys’kyi sobor and Mikhaylovsky zlatoverkhy monastyr.

Sofiys’kyi sobor was not only named after but also designed to rival the Hagia Sofia of Istanbul - Saint Sophia/Holy Wisdom Cathedral. It belongs to the Seven Wonders of the Ukraine, together with the Pechersk Lavra.

Mikhaylovsky zlatoverkhy monastyr or simply St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery, is actually a reconstruction of the cathedral complex demolished by the Soviet authorities in the 1930's. Sad but true.

Last but not least, place which I wanted to visit in Kiev was the Andriyivs’kyi uzviz (eng. St Andrew's descent), a pretty long street going down around the hill. This street is also known as the Montmartre of Kiev because of its artistic character. The place is usually full of street painters and what's more, by the street may be found its own museum - "One Street Museum" and Mikhail Bulgakov's house.

On the last evening we had a nice surprise. There was a huge concert in the Maidan Nezalezhnosti (eng. Independence Square) - main square of Kiev, because of the upcoming elections. The whole square was filled with music and blue and yellow Ukrainian flags.

Even though I'm not a smoker, for me the smell of Kiev is the smell of the Kiss cigarettes... usually it's the smell of apples but eventually of strawberries.

Tabemono (jap. food)

All of the meals I had in Japan were quite a big adventure. In most of the cases I didn't know what the thing I was looking at consist of. What's more, all of the names were written with kanjis, which I wasn't able to decipher. Even though, on the first day I've told Daniel that KFC and so on will be allowed after the first week, during the rest of my stay I didn't feel like giving up amazing Japanese restaurants for occidental junk food. I'm not going to present here Japanese cuisine theoretically but practically from my subjective point of view.

Kyoku no Fukushimakensan momo jamu & kuriimu pan (jap. Delicious peach jam produced in Fukushima prefecture & cream bread) is a kind of peach jam flavoured donut, which I've picked for my first breakfast in Japan. Extremely artificial and funny looking!

Matcha aisu kurīmu (jap. green tea ice-cream) was on my top 10 list of things to try in Japan. It turned out that those ice-cream don't taste exactly like the green tea but much more sweet. Obviously the color is so strong that after a while of eating my pinky tongue turned into green.
The funny thing about Japanese vocabulary, as you see above, is that they convert typical English words in the way that still sounds familiar.

Daifuku (jap. great luck) might be considered a typical Japanese sweet. It's a kind of cake made of glutinous rice and filled usually with very sweet red bean filling. Those little cakes are usually covered with corn starch to make them less sticky.
For the first time, I've tired daifuku on the train from Kyoto and I thought that was a kind of green tea flavoured jelly. I loved the green part but I couldn't bear the sweetness of red beans. I took some daifuku to Poland and my family said that it was very funny to touch it - it's very soft outside but the filling makes it hard inside. In reality, what it reminds me of the most is Turkish Lokum.

Bentō is a take away meal, always packed in a box. It always includes rice, meat and some vegetables. One of the features of good Japanese mother is ability of preparing awesome looking bentō for her child. I've picked the one below at Himeji train station but I didn't have a chance to eat it immediately. After 1,5h Daniel was sure that it was not eatable anymore but it turned out to be still fresh and tasty.

Sakura Ebi (jap. cherry blossom shrimp) is a tiny shrimp typical for Shizuoka Prefecture. Daniel made me eat some of them in one of Shizuoka's sushi restaurants.
Unforgettable but terrible experience!!!

Black sepia spaghetti was probably the weirdest dish in Japan for me, even though it's not Japanese but Italian! I've seen it for the first time in my life. Before Daniel started his meal I asked him with disguise: 'Are you really going to eat this?'
Melon soda/Melon Fanta - absolutely love it!

Gyōza are the Japanese equivalent of Polish pierogi.

Udon a type of thick noodles served with a vegetable soup. This was the meal that I used to order most often. It is always served warm and in big portions so there is no risk of being hungry after eating. Udon should be grabbed with sticks and the soup is usually eaten afterwards with a spoon or drank as if it was a cup.
When I order a soup in Poland I usually say the name of soup, for example Tomato Soup and I don't care much if it is served with rice or noodles. Meanwhile, Japanese soups are actually more about noodles than about the liquid that is around them. The other popular Japanese noodles are ramen and soba.

Shokudo at the Nagoya University is a place where Daniel eats most of his daily meals. I envy him! Before ordering the dish, students are not only able to choose among many dishes but they can also see them in 'real' plastic version! On that day, I've picked fish and aubergine tempura with rice and miso soup.
Tempura is a name for deep fried battered meats or vegetables. It is believed to have been brought to Japan by Portuguese missionaries. What a pity that they have introduced tempura to Japanese but seem to have forgotten about it in their homeland.

KitKat is probably world's most famous chocolate bar. For me Japan seemed to be a KitKat paradise because they have so many different kinds of it. I had no idea what flavour should I actually expect, while buying each box. I loved those sweet surprises!

Despite of being scared of dying of hunger in Japan I'm still alive and I really miss most of the food I ate there. I'll be back soon!

(This is one of over 30 posts, which I accidentally deleted one day in January. Luckily, I was able to recover them thanks to the backup done by DanielSan! It's a pity that the comments are gone but someting is better than nothing.)