**post from 10/4/08

So I’ve just finished my second week of official classes and I’m quite excited to meet my family in Munich for Oktoberfest this weekend. But rather than write about my classes (later, perhaps), my first class field trip yesterday will be much more interesting.

Yesterday’s trip was for my Contemporary Alternative Czech Culture class, most definitely my favorite class. Through a sort of complicated class credit-hour system, my field trip was almost a ten hour affair, so now, our class is meeting just once a week (plus one or two more field trips) because we’ve fulfilled our credit hours.

Anyway, the class is so awesome because our professor is legitimately one of the coolest people ever. She’s scarcely younger than my parents, but she’s in a rock band, dyes her hair, and asks us about our clubbing experiences in class. Alternative culture in the Czech Republic is particularly interesting because of its roots in the revolution 20 years ago. Vaclav Havel, the former Czechoslovakian/Czech Republic president, is/was an incredible playwright and human rights activist. It was Havel and all of his artsy, dissident friends who really brought the revolution forward, and that was how he fell into politics (which he said he never liked anyway).

Anyway, being “alternative” here isn’t just about wearing skinny jeans, listening to obscure music, and going the way of “rebel without a cause.” I thought this class was going to be some BS sociology class about culture (which it kind of is), but I never realized that alternative culture was such a big deal here. It’s hard to explain the gist of the class in a paragraph or two, but while I feel like many people (in the US and the CR) follow alternative subculture as a group to fit in with, for many people here in Prague, it has a more historical context and real purpose.

I digress a bit, but basically, my professor is quite involved with the whole movement. Most of my class admires how “in the know” she is, mostly because she knows all of the hip, dissident cafes/clubs/etc. and the people who frequent them. One of my more cynical classmates though, pointed out the cliché of “aging hipsters and wannabes drinking black coffee and complaining about life in lame, dirty, “obscure” cafes,” which, I guess, is something else to consider.

So the trip… Our class met up yesterday and spent the first two hours examining graffiti at a legal site and other illegal tags around the city. Unfortunately, it was freezing cold, but we managed to sit for awhile and discuss what types of graffiti qualify as art and debates graffiti on private property. We saw some pretty awesome artwork, don’t get me wrong, however, I am intolerant toward illegal graffiti, unlike the majority of my class. My professor is obsessed with it, as an act of rebellion and expression that can’t be communicated in other ways.

Afterwards, we ran into some planning issues because we spent too much time looking at graffiti and eating lunch. We kind of ended up going on an impromptu tour of Staromestska (Old Town Square) and Vaclavski Namesti (Wenceslas Square). It was pretty cool because our professor pointed out (you know) all of these hidden, hip cafes and tea houses that only the “real rebels” know about. We saw a few alternative art exhibits which were hit and miss too. My favorite was one exhibit by a political artist who superimposed different images to communicate different messages. One was an advertisement of a housewife spraying Febreeze juxtaposed with a bombed out, completely destroyed building from the Iraq war.

After dinner, our professor had a bunch of places for us to go and see a show and get a beer, but we kept getting unlucky and a bunch fell through (we were five minutes too late for the show, too crowded, etc.). In the end, we went to The Black Swan. I’m not really sure how to describe what type of place it was, but it was on the top floor of a huge office building. We walked in, and there were two rooms, one with a small wine bar, and another gorgeous room with two walls of windows and a gorgeous view of the Prague skyline. There were small tables with candles lit, a grand piano, and black walls with photos of famous musicians in black and white. We all bought glasses of wine and listened to the band that was playing. It was pretty classy, haha. The band was interesting too. Kind of ambient music; there was a pianist, violinist, drummer, two singers, and an interpretive dancer. Our professor actually knew the violinist randomly, so he kept trying to practice his English on us when they talked about their songs. In the meantime, we joked about how our professor could probably tell us some story and name drop Vaclav Havel, and we wouldn’t even skip a beat anymore.