Prague Part V: On Classes

Prague Part V: On Classes
Well, so much for this blog being officially up to date. It’s been a week since I last wrote an update, which seems to be just about the right amount of time for some things to happen. This last week was the first week of classes for all of us here at Charles University.

My first class was a history course focusing on Central Europe and the Czech Republic. The Prof for that is Czech man who clearly knows his stuff, but his delivery could do with a little work. Nevertheless, the class seems will be relatively interesting. That class let out at 10:30, and I immediately hopped onto the metro to get from the Main Building of Charles University to Jindriska, which is located down the street from the AIFS office, and is hope to the Central and Eastern European Studies program. It also houses classrooms for number of classes. One such class was Body and Ideology, a class which at first glance seemed to be rather interesting. After an hour of the professor doing nothing but showing clips of an insane Slovak man talking about ideology and toilets, I decided that the class was simply not for me. I retreated as quickly as humanly possible to The AIFS office on Vodokova St.(about a block from Jindriska) and dropped that class like a hot potato. Instead I picked up a course called MittleEuropa, which focused on Central Europe and its relationship with Germany. As the class had its first meeting at 5 o’clock, I decided to grab some lunch, and head back to my dorm. As I prepared to do so, I noticed that I had received an email from ECES, informing me that at 9pm there would be a meeting for people interested in volunteering to teach English at a Czech High School at Komenskeho Kolej, the other dorm in which ECES students are housed.

At the appointed hour, I headed back to Jindriska. The professor was a French woman, with a sharp wit, and a pace like she was hopped up on speed, after all she has to cover a 1000 years of history in 12 weeks. After about an hour of lecturing, she took us down to the old town square and pointed out some of its significant features, including a statue of Jan Hus, and crosses on the sidewalks were the Habsburg executed 23 Czech Nobles after the Defenestration of Prague, and the Battle of White Mountain (Bila Hora in Czech, it is now the location of Komenskeho Kolej and the Czech Ministry of Defense…more on that later).

Thoroughly convinced that I had made the right choice about which class to take, I left the old town square, grabbed a bit to eat, and prepared to find Komenskeho Kolej. The first part of this voyage provided easy enough. I simply had to cross the bridge from the Main Building of Charles University, across the river, and grab a tram and take it to the end of the line. That was accomplished in about twenty minutes. And then I actually had to find Komenskeho. First, I went down the hill from the station, and found that the only think that way was Prague Castle. So, I went back to the tram station, and took a road that forked off from the one that lead to the Castle. Again, no joy, a little annoyed now I headed back to the tram station, and noticed a sign that said Komenskeho Kolej. I attempted to follow it, only to discover that that lead directly to the highway out of Prague(maybe a sign I though). More than slightly annoyed now, I headed back to the Tram station. This time, I managed to find an ECES student, and with them as a guide managed to find my way to Komenskeho, only about five minutes from the start of the meeting.

The meeting went relatively smoothly, and with the help of some of my fellow AIFSers I managed to find my way back to my dorm, and slept.

The next day was Tuesday, and I had two film classes, one at 10am and one at 2pm. The first was a pretty much generic Central European Film class, that will broadly cover from the 60s, and the Czechoslovak New Wave(more on that later) to more modern fare from the region. This includes one Russian film called Stalker. Surprisingly enough, I have heard the cinematographer of this film talk at William and Mary. The film this week however was The Shop On Main Street (I keep wanting to call it Little Shop On Main Street, but since it doesn’t involve singing and man eating plants, that just doesn’t work). The Shop on Main Street focuses on a small Slovak village during the Second World War. At that point in time, Slovakia was a puppet state of Nazi Germany under Josef Tiso(not the same guy as the Yugoslav communist dictator). Much like Hitler, Tiso was out to get the Jews, indeed according some sources (yes I actually research this blog posts) he had almost 50,000 of them sent to Nazi Germany, and the death camps. The film focuses on a Carpenter, who is named the “Aryan Controller” of an old Jewish Woman’s shop. She doesn’t really understand what is going on, but gradually she grows on the carpenter, until the towns Jews are shipped away. The Carpenter is split between trying to get rid of her, and protect her, and only ends up killing her, before dying himself. (It won an Oscar, so it’s better than it sounds).

After grabbing some lunch, I headed off to Eroticism, Power and Fate in the Cinema of Central Europe. The professor, my only American Professor, is young, and seems very interesting. He was a bit late to class, and so didn’t lecture very much the first day, instead we watch The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Three hours, a couple of brain cells, and a bunch of naked bottoms and a little power and fate later, I was convinced of two things 1)some books should never be made into movies and 2) I think I’m going to like that class.

Not much happened Tuesday night. And then it was Wednesday.

Wednesday was the busiest day of the week. First thing in the morning, was my first day of “teaching” English to a group of Czech kids. To get there, I once again had to find my way to the other dorm. But since I wasn’t actually going to the other dorm, and the high school is literally right next to the tram line, it was a lot easier. Once I got to the high school, I met the woman running the volunteer program, and my two co-participants for this lesson, Ellen, an fellow AIFSer from Minnesota who wants to be a dentist(I’ll try not to hold it against her) and Jerry, an ECES person from New York (lucky fellow doesn’t have to go as far to get the high school, on the other hand, he doesn’t have a bar in the basement). Anyway, we headed into the school, and met the teacher, and then the students. Considering that English is their second language, the students quite frankly amazed me. I took French for five years after all, but I can barely put together a complete thought, these kids (who have admittedly been taking it for a while longer then I took French, some for 8 or 10 years) can not only carry on conversations in English, largely without any sort of grammatical or structural errors (at least not that I noticed), but they can apparently read it as well, at least to some degree. If only my Czech was as good. There was a lot of discussion of American movies (note to self, don’t mention you’re a film minor) and sports (note to self, don’t mention you don’t play sports), and apparently some of the boys tried to convince Ellen to teach them how to swear in English (as funny as that would have been, I don’t think the teacher would have approved).

After that, I headed back to Jindriska to buy a text book for MittleEuropa, and then back to the AIFS office to check my email, and get a ticket to the Ballet Romeo and Juliet (which I had not planned to see, but they had a spare ticket), and then back to the Main Building, for a little more Eroticism Power and Fate. (oh yeah, I’m going to get a lot of mileage out of that course title). From their I headed back to Jindriska for MittleEuropa. This time, we learned about the unifying dynasties of Central Europe, The Arpads in Hungary, the Premyslids in Bohemia (aka Czechia, aka the modern day Czech Republic), and the Piasts and Jagiellon’s in Poland. That lasted up till 6:30, after which I literally had to run to the tram to make it to the theatre in time for the Ballet Romeo and Juliet(yes, its a play too).

The Ballet was held in the Czech National Theatre, which is about a block up from Testco, and is really pretty on the inside. We were pretty high up in the balcony, so we could really see the stage. And it was a good thing too, cause the ballet(as I suppose ballet’s are want to do) had absolutely no dialogue. To be honest, at first I was a little weirded out by this, after all Romeo and Juliet is Shakespeare and 80% of what is awesome about Shakespeare is how he uses the English Language. But then I got into it, and I started to realize that they way they were doing it was really interesting. It definitely helped to have read the play before, and hearing Stef, who is one of our resident Theatre experts who was a seat over from me, explain the plot and characters of the play. After the end of the show, the group kind of split up, Stef and a bunch of others, headed back to the dorm, a small group led by Alex, Walt’s roommate, and Jenny, who was having her 21st birthday headed out to have a wild night on the town, and yours truly and Adrian decided to take a long walk, that ended up back at Mustek, where AIFS and ECES are, and a dinner of sausages and French fries(which were awesome, and only cost $4, yah for a good exchange rate).

Thursday, was one more day of classes. At 9, I had Czech and Central European History. The lecture focused on the pre-historic period of Czech history, and I never thought I would say this about a history lecture, but I really found it kind of boring. Fortunately, my next class, half an hour later, in the same room, was the Czechoslovak New Wave. The CNW as I will call it, as a film movement in the 1960s, led my Czech directors like Milos Forman, that was strongly influenced by Italian Neo-Realism and the French New Wave(Italian Neo-Realism is pretty self explanatory, but the French New Wave was a movement in the early sixties, towards a more cinematic, and realistic form of filmmaking, examples of New Wave films including anything by Jacques Tati, Truffcaut, Goddard, this school of Film making also influenced US films like Bonnie and Clyde). Our first new wave film was called Black Peter(Cerny Petr in Czech) which is about a supermarket assistant who rebels against the oppressive father figures in his life(and it is exactly as bad as it sounds).
We took it pretty easy that night, because early (and I do mean early) the next morning we headed off to Budapest.

Next: Budapest: On Balios, Beauty, Baths, and Brutality.