Tuesday 1 May 2012

HALONG BAY MAGIC

One of the most magical paces you'll ever see. Visit Halong Bay



Tuesday 7 February 2012

ONE MINUTE BERLIN

Brief Journey through Berlin

Monday 6 February 2012

CRISIS - Nothing New




Being in Berlin I had a chance to visit the Jewish Museum, hosted inside the wonderful building designed by Daniel Liebeskind like an open wound in the soil and in the soul of a city made of scars and cuts that could never be healed. While in there I had a strange feeling of déjà-vu.

The museum seeks to tell the story of the people of Abraham since the very beginning, following their continuous migration until reaching what we today call Germany.

The most interesting section of this historic path is the one that's closer to us chronologically. The one that tells of the last century and of the attempts of the Jewish people to seek integration and acceptance in German society until National Socialism took control and led to the bursting of WWII. Narration in the museum does not stop there but goes on with describing new attempts to integration, to a new life after the Holocaust.

It seems that general conditions in Germany, in Europe and in the whole Western World, right before WWII, were not at their highest point (especially since the 1929 crisis had left deep wounds in those countries' economies) generating the obvious search for the responsible ones for such drop.

When things go wrong we have the tendency to easily point our finger, we need to identify the causes or, better said, blame someone. The simplest path in the process of distributing responsibility is always the witch hunt, that seems to repeatedly find new life in history, only through different forms or shapes. Witches this time would be the Jews, considered the cause of Germany's poverty and lack of jobs.

The different, the immigrant, the one who steals from the local, a global economic crisis, general unhappiness and fear of the future. To top all this a spreading ignorance and the consequent rising of extreme right wing political parties.

I am positive I am not the first one to think of this nor say anything about it but I believe it's not a bad idea to be repetitive when it comes to it.

My question is one and simple: does it ring a bell?