The Torture Tower, active till the 17th, century houses the new Amber Museum. Many-colored, amazing specimens of Baltic amber, amber sculptures, furniture, jewelry, old and new, are exquisitely displayed in many small brick chambers on several floors of the old tower. The visitors walk up the 6 stories of curving stairs, smoothed out by centuries of prisoners, visitors and tourists. Smallest chambers have lovely displays of old drawings depicting many different ways to skin, flay, chop, break and pierce the bodies of torturees, and discreet speakers emit screams of the victims. Fun! There are some weird tools, iron manacles, and a box into which people were locked in a sitting position and then pierced with iron pokers through cunningly placed holes. The inventiveness of the methods of torture is astonishing.

The photo with the fly in the amber is shot through a magnifying glass, placed over most of the specimens with inclusions. One even had a small lizard. Some pieces are larger that a human head, as you can see in the photo with my face.

No special plans for tomorrow, just visits with family and friends. One of my friends has a trained special-needs dog, who works with disabled children as a form of therapy and I will meet that dog and see how it's done. I hope to learn something about the training methods.

Did I mention the sausages? and hams and patés and bacons and many other cold meats? The stores are packed with beautiful, fragrant, yummy food. Too bad I can't bring it all back. But I have been eating fantastic breakfasts with real bread, real butter and real sausages, and am stuffed to the gills. Probably gained 10 lbs already, but who cares. I can diet when I leave this Sausageland, but for now it's fantastic. See the photo to the right of an average store in this neighborhood.

My cousin Jagoda, who is my Dad's brother's daughter, lives in an area of parks, hills and "strolling woods". Her house used to belong to my paternal grandparents. After their death, during the communist era, a large part of their property was taken away and an ugly, huge multistory building was stuck right in their backyard, a pretty typical event during those times, when personal property became "the property of the people". The part of the land they were allowed to keep is now a tiny front and back garden. After the fall of the Communism, the house has been divided, and totally renovated. Jagoda owns the right-hand side of the house, and lives there with her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend, an Italian sculptor.

It felt strange to walk into the rooms where my grandparents lived, and which I remember so well from 45 years ago. The layout has been changed a bit, but the attic and the basement are still the same and Jagoda and I reminisced about playing hide and seek in the attic and how I fell asleep behind the wardrobe and they couldn't find me for a while. I also found out that a famous, huge copper pan of my Grandmother's, which she used to produce heavenly jams, is still in the family. These trips down memory lane are so intense, we cried and laughed, and hugged.

I took a photo of a photo of my great-grandfather, Marceli Dukland, and of the painting depicting the house during my grandparents' era, when I played there with my cousins.

The plans for tomorrow are to visit the Amber Museum in the old Torture Tower and I'm looking forward to seeing all the torture machines from the 16th century.