It was on one of the few snowy and freezing days in Prague this winter when the Erasmus Club of the Faculty of Arts paid a special visit to the German Embassy in Prague, located in Lobkowicz Palace near Malostranské náměstí (Malostranské Square).

The topic of the Lecture was 'Protection of Personality in the UK: The Development of Privacy from the 1960's to the Present Scandals', and as an ex-journalist, barrister, judge and teacher, Professor Smith was in an excellent position to lecture on the topic.

It’s the end of the winter semester at Charles University in Prague and whether you’re heading home or pitching up for another semester, I’m sure you’ve all achieved something: a love for Prague, a slight photography and cheap beer obsession, and dumpling-induced weight gain (this includes myself, as I arrived the biggest beer hater walking the Earth and have left a serial chugger).

We gathered. It was one of those random evenings where nothing special happened, a random evening you used to take for granted and now you would give everything to live one of them again. Someone, I do not remember who, came up with an idea: “Guys, we could spend the next New Year’s Eve together!” And we could only reply: “Of course, all together, for the good old times.”

For probably the first time ever, a double amputee has been able to ski on two skis. Tests on the newly developed hydraulic prostheses was carried by the in the Italian resort of Passo Tonale in the second half of December.

On Wednesday, 11^th December, the K4 student club changed into one of the 25 places in the Czech Republic where you could have participated in a Letter Writing Marathon “Write for Rights”– one of the world’s biggest human rights event organised yearly by Amnesty International to mark International Human Rights Day (10^th December).

On the evening of 5th December the Faculty of Science of Charles University in Prague held a special event to celebrate St. Nicholas Eve. The evening was aimed at families with young children, and planned give them a fun night whilst encouraging them to take an interest in science. The students and staff of the faculty ran the stalls which each had a different activity.

Erasmus has its fifteen minutes of fame in the award-winning Czech film Revival, starring two ex-Charles University students from Finland, Siiri Lehtonen and Aleksi Korpijaakko. Given an official rating of 7/10 on the accredited IMDB film reviewing site and labeled the “Czech comedy of the summer” by Cineuropa, I was expecting some good stuff and was not disappointed.

To celebrate Christmas, the Erasmus students gathered at Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Arts building for the special Christmas themed evening prepared by the Erasmus Club of Faculty of Arts. The event started by decorating gingerbread biscuits with white icing, whilst listening to traditional Czech Christmas carols.

On Thursday 27th February 2014, Charles University students stepped back in time at the Faculty of Art’s annual ball, which was held in celebration and commemoration of the First Republic of Czechoslovakia, covering the period of 1918-1938. Complete with a swing and jazz band and a dance floor ready to be filled, we headed out to the fancy dress shops and slipped on the suits and flapper dresses…

As the shortest month of the year was drawing to a close, I had the pleasure of attending the seminar “Your Successful International Career” in the Faculty of Law on February 26th, held by Stephen Denyer, Global Markets partner at the illustrious international law firm Allen and Overy and senior officer with the IBA and ABA. The Englishman, who joined the firm over 35 years ago, outlined that his talk would concern his own experience as well as how budding lawyers could establish and develop a career in legal services.

How do we achieve the most beneficial and educational system for university students? I attended a talk hosted by the Faculty of Education at Charles University in Prague to look in to assessment methods in higher education, specifically focusing on Mathematics, and to find some answers concerning the current state and future of our marking systems, approaches, lecturing styles and learning by framing the state and effectiveness of our current educational models.

Over the weekend of March 22 and March 23, the Faculty of Arts at Charles University was host to the conference ‘English in business and commerce: Interactions and policies’. The conference was part of the English in Europe project, an academic project sponsored by The Leverhulme Trust and coordinated by the Centre for Linguistic Research at the University of Sheffield, which aims to investigate the role of the English language throughout Europe.

“Playing cowboys and Indians may have been one of our childhood games”, said Professor György Tóth, and that’s absolutely true. What we have to ask ourselves is what we know about the Native American traditions and which part of this personal knowledge is based on veritable facts.

On the 23rd and 24th January this year I attended a conference focusing on migration issues in the Czech Republic, organised by the Multicultural Centre in Prague and hosted by the Faculty of Humanities at Charles University. With such an international community at our university, I believe that the event could not have had more of an attentive and keen audience, and it succeeded at raising some very relevant and fiery discussions through a series of talks, presentations and debates.

The Day of Societies which took place last week of February at the Faculty of Law allowed student associations to present themselves in an informal manner. At the same time, it was a great opportunity for students to get to know more about them and decide if they would like to become members and collaborate actively with these organisations in their quest to achieve their objectives.

Farář akademické farnosti a profesor Filozofické fakulty UK Tomáš Halík převzal 14. května prestižní Templetonovu cenu, která se uděluje za výjimečné zásluhy o posilování duchovního rozměru života.

Profesoři Robert Kvaček z Filozofické fakulty UK a Jan Svoboda z Akademie věd ČR převzali dnes Medaili za zásluhy o rozvoj vědy z rukou předsedy Učené společnosti ČR, profesora Petra Pokorného. Zasedání 20. Valného shromáždění ve Velké aule se účastnil také rektor Tomáš Zima, který udělil Zlatou pamětní medaili UK profesoru Jánu Vilčekovi.

Nahrávají, vystupují a úspěšně studují na UK. Tentokrát v rubrice Posluchárna představujeme kapelu Amber Sky, jejíž zpěvačkou a houslistkou je studentka Filozofické fakulty UK Monika Jägerová.

Již tradičně se na konci letního semestru uskutečnil Rektorský sportovní den Univerzity Karlovy – jak už název napovídá, pod záštitou rektora UK, profesora Tomáše Zimy. V rámci dne byla zrušena výuka, aby si studenti Univerzity Karlovy mohli vyzkoušet různé sporty pod vedením učitelů z kateder a ústavů TV na jednotlivých fakultách UK.