I'm going to be doing some retro-blogging over the next day or two before I head out to England. So check back often for more posts.

I just spent 6 days in good old Philadelphia eating Cheesesteaks and Tastycakes and all kinds of other yumminess. Here's me at Rick's Steaks in Reading Terminal Market. I find it a bit amusing that they have an official certificate from the self-proclaimed King of cheesesteaks, Pat's. Somehow this validates the cheesesteaks they make, though I certainly had no complaints. Fill 'er up!

As always I had a wonderful time catching up with friends, seeing new babies and spouses, and distributing chocolate to the masses. The more I go back to Philadelphia the more I miss it, and the more I'm glad I'm back. I spent many an afternoon walking about the city from West Philly, to Center City to Old City seeing what's changed and what remains.

Thanks to all who made this a wonderful trip. I look forward to seeing you all again next year if not sooner.

Just north of Prague is Terezin, or Terezinstadt as it was called by the Germans during WWII. The residents of Terezin were forced to move out of their homes so that the Nazis could set up a Jewish Ghetto. They also made a prison out of a small fortress nearby.

This particular concentration camp holds some special meaning for my family since some members of my family were sent there during the Holocaust. My Great Uncle Dolphie used to tell us stories of life in Czechoslovakia before the war and how he escaped and how he tried to convince his family to come with him.

This is the second concentration camp I've been to(the other being Mauthausen in Austria) and I think I really just don't like concentration camps. Not that anybody really likes concentration camps. I mean I don't like visiting them. It's not that I find them uninteresting, it's that I hate thinking about what happened there.

Whenever I start thinking about the atrocities that happened during the Holocaust I find myself caught between disbelief and horror. It is one thing for the Nazis to believe the things they did, but it is quite another thing to act on them so cruely and mercilessly. The kind of hatred exhibited seems unreal, and the more I think about it, the more I think that this unbelievable thing actually happened, the more I want to fall on my knees and weep.

I spend my time thinking about what actually happened, the abuse and neglect, the utter disregard for the sanctity of human life until my eyes well up with tears and I can barely hold my composure. Then I have to stop thinking about it or I really will lose it.

All the time I wonder how the other people do not see or feel the things I do, and how they walk around as if they were looking at an art exhibit at a museum. Do they not sense the evil there? Is it not permanently embedded in the buildings and rooms, and cloak the whole camp with its residue? I can imagine the screams, the weeping, the despair. The injustice. If these walls could speak…

While my parents were here I took them down to Hallstatt, a small, salt mining village nestled into the side of an Alpine mountain and overlooking a lake surrounded by more mountains. It really is breathtaking.

So my mom finds these swans that swim up to us and almost fills up the camera with pictures of them, even getting me to pose with them once. You'd think she'd never seen a swan before. I think they were expecting food, but all I had was a postcard. So I offer my postcard to the swan, but he just hissed at me. The nerve!