[ Peace ]

Some years back I was flying from Barcelona back to Portugal and I met a guy in the airplane that was just fascinated by the journal I was carelessly writing during the flight. He was spanish, 64 years old and a top executive in a wood transformation plant.

We talked about traveling, about cities we had both seen and how to know them, and we shared the same view of it: "I just love sitting outside a coffee house, having a drink, and watching the shoes of the beautiful ladies going by..." he said with a smile, "... and luckily I don't suffer from museitys...". When I asked him, he let out a loud laugh and explained "You know, that disease that makes you spend all your time abroad looking at things that dead people did a long time ago!"...

I was getting to know a bit more of Krakow last October, walking through the jewish neighborhood, stopping in the garden benches and looking at so many different people, and then I saw a little jewish graveyard that was vandalized during the Second World War, and that was rebuilt like a giant jigsaw. All the noises from the people walking on the street just next to it became suddenly silent when I went inside, like the sounds wouldn't dare to go in there...

Most people don't like graveyards, but there's no better place to get your ideas in order, and Peace was what I found when I was leaning against the wall covered in broken head stones pieced back together, peace brought from the silence, the smells, the colors of Fall settling in, with the sun peaking between the clouds... The atmosphere was so intense I still get goose bumps just by thinking of it...