Susan Dalgety and her husband have given up their jobs, let their heavily mortgaged house and headed off to travel the world in a camper van. SW is following her experiences and you can also read her blog, The Road To Dot, onlineTHE baby's pink dress behind the display case had clearly been knitted with love, probably by a grandmother.
That is what grannies do: they knit their grandchildren love tokens.
Or buy them from John Lewis, if like me you still haven't finished your son's first school jumper and he will be 32 in July.
But the grandmother who knitted that pink dress probably didn't live to see her granddaughter grow up.
Her granddaughter probably didn't grow up, because the dress is on display in the Auschwitz State Museum, in a room where 60 years ago men, women and babies died the most horrible death imaginable at the hands of fellow human beings.
I grew up in the shadow of the Second World War. Born only 11 years after its end, I absorbed the terrible details of the Holocaust almost without realising it.
I do remember being haunted by the grainy black-and-white images of living skeletons in those awful striped pyjamas staring, not into an Allied camera, but the abyss. And I remember clearly thinking, even as a child, how could it happen, how could it happen?
So when we were planning our trip I insisted that we visited Auschwitz. It was a pilgrimage of sorts, if that doesn't sound too pious.
I wanted to try and understand, as if I ever could.
I am not sure now if I was right to go. Walking through the entrance, under the infamous slogan "Arbeit Macht Frei" – work makes you free – I felt like the most prurient of voyeurs.
I was irritated, angered even, by the hordes of visitors taking pictures of their companions posing next to a relic of the slaughter.
I was annoyed at myself for wanting to see the wall where prisoners were executed for crimes such as fainting through hunger.
And I refused to go to Birkenau, Auschwitz's deadly annexe that was built for the sole reason of murdering as many Jews as possible in as efficient a manner as Nazi officials could organise.
Instead we left the museum after less than an hour, silent in our impotent misery.
Everywhere you go in central Europe you are reminded of our continent's bloody history, a history I don't think we fully appreciate from the comfort of our relatively peaceful island.
During the 20th century millions of European grannies lost grandchildren, sons and daughters, husbands, brothers and sisters in bloody conflicts – senseless wars were fought over meaningless borders, millions slaughtered by evil men and women who justified their bloodlust by claiming patriotism.
As I wander from country to country, past the ubiquitous Lidl and Tesco hypermarket signs and EU flags, I delight in their banal familiarity.
I am amused that every young woman from Edinburgh to Budapest appears to have stepped out of the front page of Heat magazine, with long blonde hair, too much mascara, and orange, very orange skin.
And let's rejoice that the only conflict in Serbia in recent days has been over the judging of the Eurovision song contest.
It doesn't matter if Europe is becoming one big pot of gold for global brands, or that the European Union is a playground for bureaucrats.
What matters is that grannies are not weeping over the deaths of their grandchildren today.
Talking of grandchildren, we will be meeting up with our one and only Kyle in a few days' time in sunny Crete.
Believe every besotted granny who tells you that the love she feels for her grandchild is beyond words, it really is. I can't wait.
The full article contains 649 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
