I have spent the last 6 days of my Holiday Break in a city that feels like a fairytale. After years of occupation, it has broken out of the darkness with magical leaps into cosmopolitan living.

     The gothic and deco architecture of the past thousand years spiral into the sky and wind you through the cobblestone streets and squares. The history of this recent century is blatantly in your face, trying to hide behind the façade of the large Louis Vuitton store in the middle of the old Jewish Ghetto. If you do not look or listen, you can avoid the truth. Dig a little and you will learn what is slightly behind the Nespresso store and the many hip new Asian fusion restaurants. Still, the city has such immense beauty to behold, that only a miracle saved it from enormous physical destruction. Where am I?