Tuesday, May 26
So, for some reason, my computer doesn’t like the internet at my host student’s apartment so this blog will be posted later.
Christine and I finished up our time in Prague this weekend. Sunday we went to the old Jewish quarter and walked through the old Jewish cemetery and all of the old synagogues. One of the synagogues, the Pinkas Synagogue, has an alphabetical listing of the 80.000 Jews from Prague that were deported to and killed in the concentration camps handwritten all over the walls. It’s pretty intense because it takes up every wall in the temple. The Jewish cemetery is pretty neat too. There are thousands of people buried in this relatively small area and the graves are 12 deep so all of the grave stones are crammed into the space. It’s kind of haunting. My favorite was the Spanish Synagogue. The entire inside is painted with these incredibly elaborate patterns. It looks like a fabriche egg. Everything was so symmetrical and detailed that it looked like wall paper but it was actually all hand-painted.
So, for some reason, my computer doesn’t like the internet at my host student’s apartment so this blog will be posted later.
Christine and I finished up our time in Prague this weekend. Sunday we went to the old Jewish quarter and walked through the old Jewish cemetery and all of the old synagogues. One of the synagogues, the Pinkas Synagogue, has an alphabetical listing of the 80.000 Jews from Prague that were deported to and killed in the concentration camps handwritten all over the walls. It’s pretty intense because it takes up every wall in the temple. The Jewish cemetery is pretty neat too. There are thousands of people buried in this relatively small area and the graves are 12 deep so all of the grave stones are crammed into the space. It’s kind of haunting. My favorite was the Spanish Synagogue. The entire inside is painted with these incredibly elaborate patterns. It looks like a fabriche egg. Everything was so symmetrical and detailed that it looked like wall paper but it was actually all hand-painted.
After we got through all of the buildings, we went on a hunt for a kosher restaurant to eat lunch. We ended up asking this Chassidic Jewish guy if he knew of any kosher restaurants in the area. He pointed us in the direction of a very tasty Kosher deli where I got a fabulous salami sandwich. It was quite tasty, especially since I’ve been missing out on all of the traditional meat dishes since we’ve been here.
Sunday evening we went to a traditional Czech theater performance. It was billed as a jazz opera called “A Walk Worthwhile.” But really it was a musical, a very strange musical. We’re guessing that some of the script was lost in translation because we had no idea what the heck was going on. Just an example of our understanding…after it was over, I asked Christine if she knew what happened at the end because I didn’t get it and I felt like it just kinda ended abruptly. She said that she thought the postman (a random character) died. I said, “Oh, I thought the main character realized she was in love with him.” That pretty much says it all. It was completely worth the $7 tickets just to see the craziness.
We woke up crazy early on Monday to catch a flight back to Hannover and then spent the day hanging around the city waiting for everyone else to come in from Amsterdam. Once everyone else joined us, we met our host students for the week. Hannover is home to the oldest vet school in Germany and we are spending the week staying with host vet students. My host is Sandra and she’s very sweet.
Tuesday (today) was a very good day. We spent the morning in a small town called Celle. The State Stud training facility is located here. We got a tour of the facility and got to meet some of their top ranked stallions. We also took a look at the labs where they do a lot of reproduction research. Then one of us had the opportunity to try collecting a semen sample that they sell for artificial insemination. Sierra, one of our equine girls, took on the challenge. It was quite an experience even just watching.
After Celle, we went to Bergen Belsen concentration camp. This was something I had been looking forward to since I found out we were going. I think it’s a really important experience and I knew it would hold a lot of meaning for me. Bergen Belsen is now mainly a memorial site. They have a great Holocaust/Bergen Belsen museum that was very interesting. But the really impressive part was the grounds where the camp used to be. In the front, they have these gates that mark the actual entrance into the old camp. When you walk along the paths, there are tons of these hills all around the grounds. These hills are mass graves and in front of each grave is a stone that says (in German) “Here rests number dead. April 1945.” Some of the graves have 800 people, some had more than 5000.
It was a very interesting experience for me because I felt like there were a lot of conflicting thoughts and emotions. All of the buildings are gone now and the entire place is just green and lush with tall grass and flowers and trees. It’s actually quite pretty which I thought was kind of a strange thing. But at the same time, it’s almost comforting to think that after everything that these people went through, they are buried and resting in a beautiful place. One of the other things that kind of struck me was that in some way, it seemed like such a peaceful place. Very serene. But clearly there is still a lot of tension and emotion that you feel walking around. It was incredibly emotional and difficult for me in a lot of ways. Rachel, one of my Jewish friends on the trip, and I walked around the grounds together and it was nice to have someone there who could really understand how I felt and what it was like.
All in all, it was a very intense, but good, day. I’m really glad that I got to experience this.
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