Take, for example, this scene in Vilnius (where I am delighted to be living for the summer), which I photographed while jogging today.

It is a normal scene, a bit of urban decay, some concrete blight. Very common around here. You might think to yourself, “Those poor kids [the ones barely visible at the lower right] grow up playing in such ugly, rundown parks.”

True enough. But I knew, only because I happened to discover it two days ago, that that ugly cement mound is a plinth, upon which used to be this monument to Soviet partisans who terrorized the country with Stalin’s sponsorship:

When Lithuania got its independence in 1991, this statue and dozens like it were dismantled — immediately and with fervour — and a large number wound up in Gruto Parkas in southern Lithuania, where they are now a tourist attraction (and where the above photograph was taken, not by me).

So, yes, this local park is a bit on the ugly side. But those kids are growing up in a free country, as EU citizens.

Typing this now, I remember walking through the Killing Fields in 2002 and seeing Cambodian children splashing happily in the rainwater that had half-filled a pit which used to be a mass open grave. It was a scene of awful poverty — yet so much better than the historical alternative.

I guess my point is that without knowing the fuller context of things, sometimes your eyes play tricks on you, and you don’t really see what you’re looking at. If you’re an innocent kid, that’s so much the better. But if you’re a consultant like me, or an interested traveller, it’s worth bearing in mind.