I couldn't help but stop by Beslan. The school where hostages were taken in 2004 has been turned into a memorial of those events. It's impossible not to feel a piece of the pain and grief of the local residents here, not to be horrified by the conditions people had to endure for those terrible dozens of hours (seeing it in person is so different from pictures on the internet and TV), and just not to wonder how something like this is possible in the 21st century.

It would be better if such places never existed in the first place.