Today was a day of remembering and remorse for the horrible living conditions that certain groups of people faced during the holocaust. We took a bus to the Czech town Terezín which used to serve as a Jewish Ghetto for Jews during the “relocation”. The living conditions inside this small fort were unbelievably bad and many Jews died inside this ghetto. Located in Terezín was a prison where many Jewish people and other minorities were sent to “work for their freedom”. Here they were tortured, killed, or transported to other containment camps during the war. This visit was very meaningful and a well needed learning moment than the rest of the trip so far.
After visiting Terezín, we stopped by the Maker Fair. For me, this was one of the coolest things I have seen yet in Prague. The Maker Fair was an open festival that celebrated curious minds and allowed kids to learn and experiment with different machinery, programming, and other technical skills. As an engineer, I love to tinker and build things and seeing a place dedicated with so many people interested was amazing. One particularly cool creation I saw was an optical light theremin. In a dark room, there was a couple laser beams pointed up that when blocked would reflect back into a sensor. Based on this reflected light it would play a specific note.
After the Maker Fair, a group of us went to watch a highly anticipated soccer match between the two teams in Prague. As we didn’t speak Czech (most of us), we weren’t able to understand chants but it was very fun trying to follow the actions of the home crowd. The game ended in a 89th minute game winner from the home team making the entire mood uplifting.
Swanson School of Engineering 