Free as a Bird

Some time ago my auntie visited the old prison in my province in Belgium, the prison of Hasselt. She was impressed by what she saw; having to live there a part or some even the rest of their life must be awful. I just finished reading a book about a Belgian girl who ended up in a Brazilian prison, after being caught for smuggling drugs for her bad-influence-boyfriend. Regular girl with a regular life, ending up in there for 3 years by a naive mistake, driven by a love that was not real. Never say never, you dont know what could happen to you, making you end up spending some time in a place like that too. Its a scary thought.
Located a mile offshore from San Fransisco City, there is Alcatraz, one of America’s most famous prisons. The only way to get there is, evidently, by boat. Plenty of tourist boats pass by every hour, so we hopped on one of those. Alcatraz has been empty for a long time now, its buildings fallen apart. However to me thats the beauty of it; most of them only walls, no roof or windows anymore, all the cell walls written full of text by some of the most feared inmates ever. Some tried to get off the island swimming, 2 got ‘rescued’ by the police, the other 3 were never seen or heard off again. Nobody knows whether they died or went on to live the rest of their lives free as swim-champions in a far and secure place...