Prague (part I)

The week of my 23rd birthday, i headed to Prague in the Czech Republic for a four day trip. This voyage was organized by one of the geography teachers at the high school, Catherine, and consisted of 45 students and 4 adults. We left on Feb 12, a Sunday afternoon, by bus that would cross Switzerland, then Germany, before entering the Czech Republic. A total of 16 hours would be spent in that bus just to get there! Fortunately for me I can sleep through anything and thats what i did. Switzerland countryside reminded me a lot of Colorado. Winding through hilly/mountainous terrain, surrounded by houses and snow high up in altitude, we passed Geneva and Lausanne which is on Lake Leman and continued to Basel where we crossed into Germany. German frontiere patrol are not the nicest bunch ive met. One of the students had gotten car sick and so entered the shelter at the border with one of the teachers. During that time, a german security man approached the bus and demanded to know in german why we were still there. None of us spoke german, but then he tried broken english and i was called to explain the hold up. Thankfully, i was able to get the message across and we were on our way across Germany. This was my first time in Switzerland and Germany and i must say i hope not to go back to Germany anytime soon. Somewhere around 11pm, the chauffeur stopped the bus on the highway saying, minor technical problem give me 10 to fix it. Well it was rather serious problem, one of the belts for the motor was shredded and despite the fact he had a new belt he didnt have the correct tool for removing the old one! There was a SOS box nearby that we tried to call for assistance but once again, none of us spoke german; her english was terrible; all she said was 'credit card number please'. A real nightmare, late at night, freezing on the side of the highway somewhere in the middle of Germany. A truck stopped, but they didnt have the right tool either and didnt know a word of english or french. It was kinda comical now that i think about it, trying to communicate with gestures and any words we thought might be international. In any event, the profs decided to walk to a service station and find help. We were back on the road two hours later.
We arrived in Prague about 11am monday morning and didnt waste anytime to explore. We took a tour of the Jewish neighborhood included a few synagogues and the Jewish cemetary and museum dedicated to those lost during Hitlers rule. The museum consists of a section of childrens artwork from those who stayed in concentration camps as well as a list of peoples names painted on the walls who had perished. It was a difficult sight to take in and extremely interesting to think about how the children were effected. Also we toured the oldest part of the Prague that day known for a large cuckoo clock and the bridge of Saint Charles. Prague has remained virtually unchanged since World War II in comparison to other cities in eastern europe. So after probably Paris, Prague still has that ancient feel to it and you can find interesing facades and buildings at every corner. I fell in love with the city, its super romantic and a photographers dream.
The following morning, so the morning of my birthday, we went outside of Prague to the former concentration camp of Terezin. If any of you have seen 'Life is Beautiful' it reminded me a lot of the movie. The living conditions of the camp were of course atrocious and unsanitary but even as awful as it was it made me think about people in rural senegal. In the beginning, camps such as these held traitors to the government, criminals and prisoners of war. Later, it started filling up with Jews and those discriminated against by Hitlers regime. These people did not deserve such cruel treatment, but people today still live like that and for them sometimes its all they have ever experienced. What are we doing for those dying from unclean water in sub saharan africa today?