Today I went to clean up my house and saw this suitcase below which belonged to my great-aunt Odette. I think she must be around 93 years old now. She's still alive and kicking in Paris, living on her own in a small apartment on the 6th floor without a lift (I kid you not!). When I was studying in Paris, I would come over to her place once a month and have lunch with her. Before I left to go back to Jakarta, she asked me what I wanted to take from her belongings since we didn't know when I would be able to come back to Paris. Now, every time I came to visit my great-aunt, after lunch, we would open one of her many photo albums (she's travelled all around the world) and she would tell me stories about her adventures. So naturally, I asked if I could have her albums :)
But besides the albums (I think I have at least 20 of them), she also gave me this suitcase with historic newspaper clipping... If you see the photo below, she has about 3-4 newspapers for the date of May 8th, 1945 when the Germans finally surrendered and World War II ended...
This photo below is also pretty awesome, taken when Paris was still under German occupation. The sign says "Attention, if you go beyond this line, you will be shot"
The 2 photos below are part of her travel albums. My great-aunt studied art at school and was quite talented. She finally got a job making maps but as you can see, she still drew for her albums...
Here are some photos of Tati (as I normally call her) during her youth. She's not a very easy woman to be around and much preferred animals to humans, but deep down she was nice and I really hope she's doing well right now...
