Starting the Journey

The flight is booked.  The leave taken from work and the intention is set.  As a friend said to me last night - the worst that can happen is that I sit in a hotel room watching TV for 9 days and come back.  

What? Well as Odyssey once sang I'm 'going back to my roots' man.  Well sort of, it's my parents' roots.  But if it wasn't for what happened to them, or rather what didn't happen, well I wouldn't be here, and my little world wouldn't exist.

So I'm off to brave the stags and hens, the eastern european mafiosos, and the collapsed economy and enter the pastel world I shook hands with in my youth fed to me in bite size chunks by my mother at bedtimes, rose tinted.  

In amongst it all was the experience of a grand salvation that is one of the most heartwarming but surprisingly little known secrets of the second world war.  The fact that 50,000 jews were saved from the Nazi death camps and the worst excesses of fascism by a combination of heroic men and women, history, a willing populace, a compassionate priesthood, and an incredible, amazing degree of luck.

I'm going to find out more.  Here goes.  Let's see what I find.  I'm nervous, scared and excited.  This is my record.