Prague's National Theatre. Courtesy photo.

Never think you’d become an opera buff? It’s possible in Prague. Students can see the opera for only CZK 50 — about $2.75. Simply show up at the box office of any of Prague’s three opera houses with your student ID half an hour before the performance begins. The seats are excellent and extremely cheap, costing adults around $50 or more. Locations, schedules and other information can be found at www.czechopera.cz.

Candy Shop, an installment by street artist Pasta Oner, part of the Metropolis exhibit at the DOX Center for Contemporary Arts.

By Nancy Ryerson

The walls of the metro station are covered with graffiti. A barbershop offers “soul cutting,” and a doughnut shop gives a complementary weight loss pill with each pastry.

No ordinary metro stop, Metropolis is an exhibit of graffiti and street art at the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in the Holešovice borough of Prague. The exhibit features artists Cryptic 257, Masker, Pasta, Point, Skarf and Tron, all of whom seek to capture city life and street art within a re-imagined gallery setting.

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Na zdraví!

Desítka (noun) DEH-seet-kah

Dvanáctka (noun) DVAH-nahts-kah

You’ll commonly encounter these words in pubs and restaurants when ordering beer. Desítka is a 10° beer, which has slightly less alcohol than a dvanáctka, or 12° beer. You may also frequently encounter 11° and 13° beer.

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Slavia fans cheer on their team.

By Nancy Ryerson

A Czech hockey game is easy to get swept up in — the fast moving puck, the unintelligible Czech chants, and of course the free-flowing pivo make for an enjoyable, very Czech evening. Regardless of whether you’re a long time hockey fan or just associate the game with Canada and wild post-game brawls, a Czech hockey game is an experience everyone should enjoy before leaving Prague.

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Cyril Svoboda. Courtesy photo.

By Cassidy Havens

Cyril Svoboda insists that cooperation and cohesion within the European Union is necessary if Europe is to thrive. It’s a view that puts the chairman of the Czech Christian Democratic Party at odds with his country’s president.

“Europe is to stay together, but splitting is going on,” said Svoboda. “The Czechs not ratifying the Lisbon Treaty is an example.”

Svoboda gave a lecture entitled Implications of European Union Lisbon Treaty for the Czech Republic on NYU’s Prague campus October 20.

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Appalachian State student Harden Kernodle, NYU student Kayla Harrington, and the author with couch-surfing host Abdou Leqdeh and his son Yahi Yah Leqdeh in Fes.

By Nicole Torres

“Would you like some tea? My mother will make it for you,” Abdelilah Leqdeh, a 31-year-old Moroccan English teacher, asked my two friends and I as we sat on his couch. We nodded and smiled, awkwardly, unsure of how to abide by foreign etiquette codes. The whole idea seemed a little strange; we were taken in for the night by Abdelilah— virtually a total stranger who I had “met” on the internet a week before— and were given three couches to sleep on and a home-cooked Moroccan dinner to look forward to. For free. In Fes.

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Prague Wanderer reporter Modupe Akinnawonu recently completed an internship with the annual Forum 2000 international conference in Prague, where she prepared summaries of some of the events. She co-wrote the summary below with Sarah Schoengold.

José Casanova began with a “bird’s eye view of global processes” regarding religion, globalization, and secularization. Social and political scientists were wrong in thinking that religion was a thing of the past and that the rest of the world would follow the modern process. Instead, the world is becoming simultaneously more religious and more secular. “All world religions are being transformed radically today in diverse and manifold ways,” said Casanova.

Read the complete summary at the Forum 2000 web site.

Hiroshima–Nagasaki runs until November 14

By Cassidy Havens

A new exhibit at Prague’s New Town Hall pays tribute to the victims of the 1945 bombings of Japan that brought the world into the age of nuclear war.

The exhibit Hiroshima–Nagasaki 1945–2010 includes a printed excerpt from U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech in Prague on April 2009: “As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act.”

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Prague Wanderer reporter Modupe Akinnawonu recently completed an internship with the annual Forum 2000 international conference in Prague, where she prepared summaries of some of the events. She co-wrote the summary below with Julie Raisch.

Keynote speaker and renowned philosopher, Roger Scruton, posited Prague as the ‘we’ of the ‘world we live in’. Prague, like other European cities, is a synthesis of traditions and influences including Judeo-Christian beliefs, the Greek city-state, and Roman law. He applied the second law of thermodynamics to the city: “unless energy is injected into a system, it tends to disorder” and cited the advent of Christianity, the scientific revolution, and the rise of democracy in Europe as such injections. Scruton applied Hegel’s spheres of influence and lamented Europe’s declining separation of these three, and the increase of state control.

Read the complete summary at the Forum 2000 web site.

Taken, no reservations

Obsazeno (adjective) OB-sah-zen-o
Meaning busy, full, or occupied. Generally, you’ll see this on bathroom doors when someone is inside. If that’s the case, don’t obnoxiously try to open the door repeatedly, or you may have an annoyed Czech on your hands.

Rezervovaný / -á (adjective) REZ-er-vo-vah-nee / -nah
Reserved or booked, as a table in a restaurant.

Vyhrazeno (adjective) VEE-hrah-zeh-no
Vyhrazeno means much the same as rezervovaný except it’s used more for parking places and other spaces.

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