Jiri Pehe

Jiri Pehe was our lecturer for today, and it was amazing. It was a two hour lecture on the history of Prague from 929 and the death of St. Wenceslas until 1989 and the Velvet Revolution. Next week he will lecture on 1989 to present. I'm not sure if you will be able to translate this article to English, because it appears to be in Czech, but it gives a brief overview of who he is (I didn't know how he was until now), and it's quite fascinating. Apart from participating in the revolution against the communists, he is also the reason we are able to stay in New York University dorms and use the NYU classrooms.  http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ji%C5%99%C3%AD_Pehe
If you cannot read the link, he is a renowned political analyst, and was the political adviser to the 1st Present elected after the Velvet Revolution, Vaclav Havel. He is also NYU's academic director!

So there are just a few neat things to know about the history of Prague (I took several pages of notes, so I'm being brief) :
The Czech part of Czechoslovakia was made up of Bohemia and Moravia, and the Czech people often consider the Slovaks a sub-set of Czech (this applies to the language as well, Czechs believe Slovakian to be like a different dialect of Czech).
The most important leader of Czechoslovakia was Charles IV, he created the Charles University and the Charles Bridge, this was in the mid 1300s.
The Czech Republic is often called "Bohemia" because of the ancient Celtic tribes called "Boii" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boii
WWII led to the Communist occupation of Czechoslovakia, when Khrushchev publicly condemned Stalin in 1956 cultural changes began to occur among the Czech people.
The political changes in Czechoslovakia always came about because of the artists, the writers, the film makers, etc.
In 1968 was the Prague Spring, too much dissent was going on and the Soviets responded with an occupation of Czechoslovakia on August 21, 1968.
The Helskinki Accord in 1975 was another impetus for cultural change because it acknowledged Soviet land but also called for the commitment to respect human rights. Many brave Czechs used the concept of human rights to push forward. This, combined with the new pope in 1979 and the Solidarity movement in Poland in 1980, as well as the election of Mikhail Gorbachev and his concepts (inspired by Prague Spring) for glasnost and peristroika led to the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the Velvet Revolution.
On December 29, 1989 Vaclav Havel was elected president, he was a playwright and a dissident who was arrested several times for subversive-type things.
How cool is that? If we ever elect a playwright in the US I'll be amazed.

So yeah, tomorrow we have a tour of the Jewish Quarter and this afternoon my roommate and I are going to the Tesco EXTRA! It's our favorite store. I also saw shoes for 150 kcz, so I may just need another pair of shoes.

Also, this morning I was planning on making eggs and potatoes, but when I opened the fridge I noticed it was more packed than usual. I tired very carefully to take out my things (that had been pushed to the back) and I knocked over a giant squeeze-bottle of mustard. The cap broke off and the bottom cracked. Mustard does not come off walls very well. Needless to say, that took me 15 minutes to clean up and I did not make my potatoes. I don't know why people are buying such...big food here, it's really not necessary. Oh well! I have no idea whose mustard it is, but I cleaned the bottle and wrapped in in plastic wrap. Good enough.