We don’t want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos… – that legendary quotation comes from one of my favorite authors, Stanisław Lem, and perfectly mirrors the feeling I have while watching the skies at night. For us, such and such a planet is as arid as the Sahara, another as frozen as the North Pole, yet another as lush as the Amazon basin. Yet we take off into the cosmos, ready for anything: for solitude, for hardship, for exhaustion, death. Modesty forbids us to say so, but there are times when we think pretty well of ourselves. And yet, if we examine it more closely, our enthusiasm turns out to be all a sham.

As of today, I live in the vicinity of Cracow (Southern Poland), a perfect spot to enjoy the stars and planets. I own a telescope and love to read about astronomy. If sky observation is simply made for warm, summertime nights, what could possibly be a better thing to do in a daylight, than playing chess‽ It has been my first and oldest passion – I remember playing chess at club level in high school and during university studies. I also follow online live tournaments and my all-time favorite chess players would be Viswanathan Anand.

I love to relax myself to the sounds of classical music (in particular Artur Rubinstein, Krystian Zimerman and Itzhak Perlman) as well as jazz (mostly John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson and Herbie Hancock). I am also vividly interested in ice hockey; I support the teams of Boston Bruins (ice hockey) and Boston Celtics (basketball).

Thanks to the travel-related specificity of my job, I had an opportunity to visit almost 30 different countries across the world. And while I love to collect the memories from new, fascinating places, it still pales in comparison to the beauty of thinking, reflecting and contemplating – whether it’s a puzzle, a math query or the mysterious beauty of dark skies.