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9512 Morning class with professor Holub from Charles University. this was a very interesting guy, started his schooling during the Prague Spring, so he remember all that stuff, became a full on professor under communism, and was eventually appointed as ambassador to Malta and Italy. Poli Sci prof with lots of hands on life experience, both professionally, academically, and incidentally. he gave a brief history of the Czech lands, definitions and labels, talking about the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Czechoslovak republic, the transition to communism, life under communism, and the transition towards liberal democracy. while i didnt pick up too much novel information due to my capstone being this very subject, it was very interesting for his personal anecdotes, talking about his memories of the student discussions prior to the Prague Spring, and being an academic during the Soviet crackdown. He spoke a lot about collective memory, and how far it stretches back, in that he knows his parents were born as Austro-Hungarian subjects, and lived through the empire’s collapse, the establishment of a soverign republic, the occupation by the nazi’s and the communist takeover. I certainly agree with his assertions on collective memory, I don’t think for the most of us it runs that far back, my grandparents were born at the very beginning of the interwar period, and my parents during the post-war period, so I, and those of my generation lack any connection to the time of empires. on a side note, the classroom was quite warm, it reminded me very much of the HELL that was many of the classes on the Balkans Dialogue. We also had our first lessons in Czech, that was cool, my Russian certainly helped with identifying vocabulary, but I still get confused, in that Czech uses the latin script with extra squiggles and accents, but makes Russian sounds, so letters like “Y” are misleading, in Russian “Y” is an “uuu” sound, while in Czech it is more like the Spanish “eee” sound. But I noticed my Spanish helped too, as I can more easily pronounce the vowels, and get the rolling “R”s and soften consonants. I didn’t do all that much at night, got to sleep early, read my book, im writing this a day late, so there is likely details im missing, and no pictures, tomorrows post, (which I will write later tonight) will include some pictures that I shouldn’t have taken, and more history type stuff.