Today I didn't have a tour set when I woke up and I afforded myself an extra half an hour of sleep. After I got cleaned up I headed down to breakfast and mainly had coffee because I wasn't hungry that much for some reason. I did keep the stomach settled with some toast over the coffee. From there I decided I would walk a little bit of the local area until 8am when the tour place opened. It hadn't made sense to keep getting rides for less than a kilometer of walking so I figured that it would be easier to buy a tour right at the starting point. This time I opted for Terezin which was a Nazi concentration camp though not one built for exterminating the Jews. Instead, this one was a staging area where most of the prisoners were eventually shipped off to Auschwitz for extermination.
The tour started at around 9 and there was about an hour drive to the town of Terezin. The guide was Helena, same as the day before. Her voice seemed bit stronger today but she was still struggling a bit with annunciation as I had expected. Nonetheless she seemed more confident in her knowledge about this tour and the material within so probably she had done it more often. She spoke some about the camp on the way in and a little bit about Reinhard Heydrich who was a Nazi official in Prague, the leader of the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia under Hitler, because we passed the monument that marked the location where he was assassinated by the resistance.
Terezin was built in the 18th century as a gun fort to protect the region but it was never attacked and never used. It is a serious multipointed star shaped fortress with many ramparts and at the time a fully floodable moat (that again was never used though it did flood twice in 2002 and this year due to heavy rains). I was actually really interested in the location as a gun fort but obviously the majority of the tour consisted of the explanation of the Nazi concentration camp. The tour started out with a small museum in the center of the large fortress (there were two, the large and the small) where the majority of the Jewish prisoners were kept. The roads there had some great views of the ramparts and other parts of the construction of the fort but unfortunately all of our stops brought us no where near those points so I failed to get any good pictures of the large fortress. I won't take pictures from cars, vans, buses or trains because it just frustrates me. By the time I see it it is already too late to take a picture. The first museum involved some of the culture that the Jews had in their camp. Since this wasn't a death camp they were allowed to sing and have theater and write and paint. Though some of the paintings had to be hidden because they were anti-Nazi. There must have been other stuff as well.
The next stop brought us to the museum that was the house where the Jewish children were kept. We saw a brief movie on the location and saw some of the drawing the Jewish kids made while in the house. It was also a brief stop. After that it was on to the Crematorium. Though the Jews should not be cremated the Nazis had to start burning their bodies because they were dying so fast of disease and starvation. The crematory was an interesting stop and a small cemetery was erected next to it where exhumed bodies were given gravestones though of course they are generally anonymous. This also was a fast stop but probably more interesting than the first two museums to me.
After the Crematorium we made our way to the small fortress which was the prison used for important Nazi prisoners. The political and rich were brought here rather than just to the large fortress. The small fortress was all original as the Nazis left it. As with the large fortress it was all constructed in the 17th century and is part of the same fortifications. The small fortress housed the Germans who ran the town as well as the prisoners. Ironically that bit of World War I history hit here as well as the men who assassinated Franz Ferdinand including the primary Gabrielle Princip were imprisoned here and died before the Nazis took it over. There was a plaque explaining this in the dark solitary cell he was imprisoned in. The small fortress was a tour guided by a local guide named Eva who had a good strong voice and was very interesting. She knew a lot about the camp and the town and we got to see all aspects of the prison from the registration area to the large cells that housed hundreds of people each to the smaller cells that house around 70 each to the solitary cells for prisoners who were to be tortured and sentenced to execution. There was a lot of information packed into the hour long tour. We saw where the 3 men who successfully escaped were able to escape. The base commander had the ledges torn off so no one else could do it again. They did it in winter when they had 2 meters of snow to jump down onto.
We also saw the execution location after we got to walk through some of the original underground tunnels that were sealed up and never used by the Nazis. I liked the tunnels a lot. We did maybe 500 meters or so. The base commander had 3 other like aged prisoners killed in retaliation to the escape. Eventually the Nazis realized they were losing the war and they started to build a gas chamber but in truth just about all the prisoners of Terezin died because of typhoid anyway. Most that should have been freed after the liberation still had to remain quarantined or they could spread the disease. Many also died from eating too much when they were finally allowed to eat again. Their bodies couldn't handle it. It was certainly not a death camp but in many respects it did amount to one. It was the last camp that was liberated and also was used as a propaganda camp for the Red Cross to pretend Jewish prisoners were being treated well.
After the tour we made our way back to the van and the hour long drive back to town. I took a quick run to the hotel and then headed out to find lunch which I had at an Italian restaurant. I had a Pilsner Urquell and lasagna. The food was good but it was a tad late for lunch for me being already past 2pm. I was starved so maybe I liked it more for that (put starved into perspective after visiting a concentration camp I guess). By the way, the tour consisted of 4 Aussies who didn't speak outside their own much, an American couple in their mid to late 40s who did the same and an around 40 year old guy who was an English teacher in Turkey for a very prestigious school there and was in Prague for a course on Czech literature. His name was Andy and I talked to him about literature for the majority of the ride back into Prague.
After lunch I headed towards the new town and found the New Town Hall and the Dancing House and then on to the Vysehrad which is an old cathedral that was built on the grounds where the other castle in Prague was built. That castle was destroyed many centuries ago but the fortifications remain and it was cool to walk through the park where the fortifications were. Well, it would have been if it wasn't over 30C (it was probably near 90F). I enjoyed walking around there though and even visited the cathedral for 30 Czech Crowns. After that I headed back towards the old town and did some souvenir shopping to get it out of the way and then headed to the hotel to drop it off and back out to find dinner.
For dinner I found a place called Vasele Basy not too far from the hotel. I ordered the 1/4 duck which I knew would be leg and hindquarter meat. This was accompanied by Czech dumplings and red and white cabbage. I had a couple Staropramen to round out the meal. The duck was a touch overcooked but tasted good and the skin was crispy. The dumplings were very similar to others I have had in Prague already and were good as was the cabbage. Overall it was a mid-range enjoyment meal that probably cost a bit too much money for what it was worth. Food here is still cheap by European standards but since I have gotten better for cheaper I will have to rate the place lower on the list. When I finished that I found an ice cream place and had a single scoop of coffee ice cream on a cone. It was definitely good.
From there it was back to the hotel and time to crash for the night.
There are a lot of pictures and they are located here.
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