Prague- Day 2

I loved being in Prague!

After a tiring first day we woke up in the Hotel Musketyr and headed down to breakfast which was in the restaurant downstairs. It was a nice restaurant in what looked like a cellar. It had a pretty good selection so we filled up before our big day. Stacy, unfortunately, was very sick so it was best for her to just take it easy so she could be in great health for the rest of the trip.

After breakfast we decided to go and take pictures at all the beautiful places that we saw yesterday. It was a sunny day and we exchanged cameras so we would actually have pictures of ourselves. Our first stop was Old Town Square and then we made our way over to Charles Bridge. We were in great moods just loving life and frequently bursting out into song. Life is good.

Once we got to Charles Bridge we headed over to the statue of St. Vitus, a unfortunate priest who got pushed off Charles Bridge. It is good luck to rub the eching of St. Vitus, but the locals also played a prank on every tourist because one night they came and polished off the picture of a dog as well so it looks like it has been rubbed for centuries too. James told us that rubbing the dog was bad luck, but, sure enough, every person we saw on the bridge first went up and rubbed St. Vitus, then immediately rubbed the dog. Guess the bad luck will cancel out the good.

Charles Bridge

Brittany rubbing St.Vitus

(By the way that is Jen's hat that she wore the entire trip)

After playing around on the bridge we headed to a small cafe to get some hot chocolate, and then divided and conquered. I have been talking about getting Czech garnets for the longest time now and Brittany, Laura, and I used the time before our trip to Terezin concentration camp to look over the merchandise. I love jewelry shopping and we had a lot of fun playing with all the garnets.

Before meeting up with the tour guide for Terezin we got home sausages in Wenceslas Square. I personally like the Wenceslas sausage but I also tried the Prague sausage and that was delicious as well. We then headed over to the Grey Line Tours kiosk to catch the bus to Terezin, the only concentration camp in the Czech Republic.

We took the bus to the Small Fortress of Terezin and on the way I bonded with our Czech tour guide. It started when she talked about how the locals go looking for mushrooms in that area but the tourists think it is weird and I let her know that I go mushroom hunting as well and that I am Bohemian. She was beyond excited to hear this and wanted to know all about my family, including my family name, which is Nejedly. She asked if any of my family spoke Czech but I told her that the only words I knew were the ones for butt and bellybutton, and she acted as though the word for butt was a dirty word, and for all I know it is. It was an exciting time because I was actually in the homeland talking with the locals about my roots and mushrooms.

The concentration camp itself was not so fun. It was located in what used to be a fortress and near a ghetto. It was everything that you would expect from a concentration camp and hearing about the living conditions and the prisoners' treatment was heartbreaking. Our tour guide's father had even lived and died in the ghetto.

After getting the full tour we headed over to what used to be the boys' dormitory which has been turned into a museum. There we watched movies on Nazi propaganda whcih depicted the ghetto as a great place to live. Against these idyllic scenes were voice-overs of how many were transported out of Terezin and executed. They also showed drawings that were made by the prisoners that depicted the far less than ideal conditions.

The most heartbreaking part of the day when we saw the pictures that the children drew while in Terezin. During their stay the teachers gave them art therapy and they were allowed to draw whatever they felt. There are pictures of their homes as well as scenes from the concentration camp. They also had their dates of death and the one silver lining is that some of them survived. If you have ever met me you can probably guessed that I began to cry.

The next stop was the women’s dorms which had displays of drawings created by prisoners there as well as information about the operas that were put on by the children. Boys in one of the dorms also put out their own magazine. It’s very inspiring that these people chose to go on living their lives and making the best of it even though they were in the worst conditions imaginable. There was also a recreation of a dormitory which used all authentic “props” that were actually brought by the prisoners.

It was a tough and unforgettable afternoon. Even after seeing these places in person it is hard to believe something this awful could have happened.