Anyone who claims to be my friend probably knows about my love of pancakes and my embarrassing fascination with roller derby (which admittedly began after seeing the movie "Whip It." Who wouldn't want to be as cool as Ellen Page in that film?) That being said, this Saturday was one of the best days I have had in Prague. I slept in until 12 then my friends and I hit up Globe for brunch. Although this place is attached to an English bookstore and is pretty Americanized, the atmosphere is perfect for a Saturday afternoon brunch with the girls. The music was the best mix of soul and motown- Aretha Franklin, Mary Wells, Otis Redding and the like- and they had free ice water (!), real filtered coffee (!), and chocolate chip pancakes (!). My weekend could have ended after that meal and I would have been more than content. But that night I put on a sparkly dress and we went to a roller-skating disco party at a big arts complex called the MeetFactory. Two girls known as Poxxoxo DJs provided music as we skated around the warehouse singing and trying not to fall, mostly successfully.
This weekend was characterized by opposites. The Friday before this wonderful Saturday, the USAC group took a trip to Lidice and Terezin. Lidice is, or was, a town systematically destroyed by the Nazis in retaliation to the Czechs' assassination of the Nazi leader ordered to preside over Czechoslovakia. Now all that remains is a park with some memorial statues strewn throughout. Terezin was one of the "nicer" concentration camps, where Jews weren't treated quite as badly. I don't want to spend much time describing either of these places, not because they shouldn't be talked about but because I know I could never describe the things I saw or learned accurately. As much as language is the only medium we have to describe a thing or act as a representation, it does not have the capacity to in some situations. There is no way to explain the sadness and heavy energies in those places, so I will not try. Instead I will leave those moments to my memory in order to commemorate the world's enormous loss, and encourage anyone who has the chance to visit the places of the Holocaust and feel the haunting past.
This weekend was characterized by opposites. The Friday before this wonderful Saturday, the USAC group took a trip to Lidice and Terezin. Lidice is, or was, a town systematically destroyed by the Nazis in retaliation to the Czechs' assassination of the Nazi leader ordered to preside over Czechoslovakia. Now all that remains is a park with some memorial statues strewn throughout. Terezin was one of the "nicer" concentration camps, where Jews weren't treated quite as badly. I don't want to spend much time describing either of these places, not because they shouldn't be talked about but because I know I could never describe the things I saw or learned accurately. As much as language is the only medium we have to describe a thing or act as a representation, it does not have the capacity to in some situations. There is no way to explain the sadness and heavy energies in those places, so I will not try. Instead I will leave those moments to my memory in order to commemorate the world's enormous loss, and encourage anyone who has the chance to visit the places of the Holocaust and feel the haunting past.
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