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.