The City of a Hundred Spires

Prague is, in a word, incredible. The hotel we are staying in is literally 30 feet from the Charles Bridge, so we're really close to both Old Town and New Town, and its wonderful. I don't feel like we've done a whole lot in our couple of days here, but that may be because we have our first test tomorrow morning, so most of our free time has (unfortunately) been spent studying.

Yesterday we were supposed to have a walking tour of the city, but we waited at the meeting point for 20 minutes, and our guide never showed up. One guy said that it was just because we blend in so well that the guide didn't know we were the group of American tourists ;). Personally, I think its more likely that he saw us and bolted in the other direction! Anyway, we ended up having a less-orthodox tour led by our trusty professors and their guide books. We got to see the changing of the guard at the Presidential Palace. It was no Buckingham, but it was still pretty cool.

Today we spent most of the day in Terezin, a small city outside of Prague. It was a city transformed into a ghetto/concentration camp during the Holocaust. We went into the Ghetto museum there, which really got to me. They had drawings and poems done by the children living in the ghetto, and under most of them was listed their date of birth and death, and most of them were killed before the age of 10. It was really hard to look at those drawings, which remind me so much of the masterpieces created for me by the kids I work with, and know that those little artists were killed shortly after that. We then got a tour of the fortress at the edge of town which was transformed into the political prision (aka concentration camp) during the war. It was not an extermination center, although some people were executed there, but a holding center for people about to be transported East into Poland. Most of the prisoners there were eventually sent to Auschwitz, and most died there. The conditions were unbelievable - there were rooms slightly bigger than my living room that were used to house hundreds of men. One room we went into was used to hold 600 men, and there were only 2 toilets. Our group of not even 50 took up a good amount of space in that room, so I could only imagine what it would be like to have 600 in there.

I think the only way I can describe how today left me feeling is horrified. I have read and studied a lot about the Holocaust, I have visited museums and seen so many films, but none of that prepared me for seeing the actual thing. Its hard to know how to handle it. I guess the only thing to do is remember and mourn and learn. We go to Poland at the end of this week, which will be much more of this intense kind of learning like we had today. I know that it is absolutely essential to see and learn about and feel these painful things, but I would appreciate prayers for all of us - for our sensitivity and open hearts towards the things we are about to experience.

Missing and loving you all from the other side of the ocean...