Yesterday we began our time in Prague with a hilarious group dinner in a cave man restaurant. To be served you need to bang on your table as loud as you can and make grunting noises - well basically as much noise as you can. They even give you rocks to bang on the table to make it all louder! The drinks are served in thick bowl-shaped cups and the food on wooden slabs. The waiters are of course dressed in cave man and woman outfits and speak in grunts and groans. It was all so funny and was topped off when Glen was fed by one of the cave women.

We were then led on a night tour from Wenceslas Square (and yes it is named after "Good King Wenceslas") down through the Old Town over to Charles Bridge. It really is a beautiful city that has managed to retain its old world look and feel. We might have become lost a few times on our way back to the hotel but it only added to the fun and meant that we saw even more of Prague.

This morning Kev and Susan took us to the Terezin/Theresienstadt Concentration Camp just outside Prague that is inside an old Hapsburg fortress. It was famously used as the site of a Red Cross visit, after protests by the Dutch about the whereabouts and treatment of deported Dutch Jews. The Nazis had already murdered this group so they quickly brought a new group of them to the camp for the inspection - who still looked healthy and were yet to experience the true brutality of camp conditions. They were made to write letters and post cards for family with future dates on them, then they Nazis proceeded to create fake rooms such as large clean washrooms to show the Red Cross on arrival. They also made a film that we were able to watch in the old Nazi theatre, "Hitler gives the Jews a village", that shows an idyllic life and safehaven for Jews, including a lighthearted soccer game between Jews and German guards where they even shake hands. In the end the Red Cross just saw only the town/ghetto (not the concentration camp), were there for only 6 hours, then ate lunch with the Nazis, and watched the untrue film that presented Theresienstadt as a "paradise for Jewish children".

This was such a direct contrast to what we saw of the true conditions. We entered rooms that looked like they might fit 20 people when they in fact crammed in 100 men - 45cm of space each and 1 toilet between them. We saw a room originally built by the Hapsburgs as a small prison cell but was used by the Nazis for 60 men who were not allowed to sit or crouch, even when trying to sleep, nor were they fed. Even if they did survive maybe 10 days in there, they would be sent on to Auschwitz anyway. Only a few survived both to give testimony. The rooms for solitary confinement would also hold 5-7 men.

Unfortunately it only gets worse from here so I won't go in to it much further, apart from some facts. In total 160,000 people went through the camp, 40,000 died there, mostly the elderly and young and mostly from starvation and disease. 87,000 were sent on to Auschwitz, where only 3000 survived. Of the 10,000 children sent on to Auschwitz, only less than 200 survived. The conditions only continued to get worse and more crowded. Only 3 men ever successfully escaped. By the end of the war there were rooms with 600 men, two toilets, leaking roofs with a few inches of water covering the floor and disease running rife. It was a sad visit but necessary - it is so important that we never forget what happened in places like this.

We returned to the city centre of Prague for lunch. We spent our afternoon visiting markets and a Belgian chocolate shop. Sadly it was so cold and wet (as were we) that a few of us girls gave up and returned to the warmth of our hotel. We had a great night playing ten pin bowling, even though most of us are terrible players! We even have footage of Glen falling over while bowling and then getting a spare! We've definitely had a great time here.