The final presentation of Aleš Čermák in Halle 14 took place on the 4th of February and the OPEN A.i.R team didn’t want to miss it. Once decided that we were going to Leipzig, we took the car at 2 p.m. and drove for almost 4.5 hours away from Pilsen. We had enough time to talk about what our expectations were concerning the performance. We had already read about the project and we knew that it was surrounded by a controversial and hard theme: one of the most extreme ways of transportation used by migrants to cross the border, as the artist explains in his Vimeo account. When watching the video trailer, we can see a woman showing photographs of damaged bodies, people traveling by cars, images accompanied by questions such as "how long can catastrophe exist without new stimuli?; "we oscillate while waiting for the next big thing. How long has it been since something like that happened and how big was it actually?” or "what happens if nobody comes up with anything surprising anymore?". The intrigue is built in.
We arrived to Spinnerei and we were tired but amazed; what an impressive and inspiring place. Aleš Čermák was outside Halle 14, we wished him luck and got into the non-for-profit art space. Claudia, the coordinator of the artist in residence, kindly showed us the building and took us to the set. The show started.
Video. Sound. Light. Text. Body. Action.
The actress in front of us, Jindřiška Křivánková, is now staring at us with a penetrating and incisive expression. Her silhouette mixtures and changes with the different sounds and video behind her. She speaks "first, it is necessary to choose a suitable car. Not every car has the ideal proportions and not all of them can comfortably fit a body. It is important to pick the right car, because the journey tends to be extremely long and exhausting and one often has to wait inside for a long time in conditions which are far from ideal for human beings". While she says the last sentence her finger and eyes are pointing to the man standing up in the right side of the set, Abdirezak Yusuf. He has a big, yellow and direct spotlight in front of him. She approaches him and the public starts thinking "is he a refugee? Has he arrived by car in these inhuman conditions? Has he gone through all of this situation?”
Now the big screen catches all of our attention. We watch videos recorded by the police in the borders. Hard images to assimilate: hidden bodies inside cars, car crashes in the attempt to escape detention, and so on. The performance is arriving to its end, and we can feel our bodies tense up. Applause. More applause. We can firmly vouch for this performance; it won’t leave you indifferent.
After the discussion forum we went to a bar and had the chance to talk with Aleš and we could even better understand his performance. Polo Shirt (discipline) is the second piece of his project called The Premonition of the Oncoming Failure.
"I defined the project as a 'social choreography' - a movement. The project consists of several disjointed episodes and is intentionally presented in different parts of Europe. It draws links among contemporary social issues – processes associated with bodily movements (vectors) and it attempts to analyse in broad, kinetic, philosophical, and geopolitical context the co-called topic of our time: The Migrant.
When I had been preparing the work-in-progress presentation in Wien in March 2015, a physical aspect of movement was a starting point. During the following year, according to a complementary thinking, I came out with an idea which could be defined as a transcendental disposition of an object. For example the 3rd episode is created through the text called: Movement instead of a stagnation – movement of a vector, http://predobraz.blogspot.cz/p/episoda-3.html. It is a general view point on a mobility, which is consolidated in a wider context. This is presented on a Migrant-figure, who becomes so-called 'Representative of our time' ('Object of our time'). According to the 3rd episode I have made a research in North Africa to gather new material for to 4th episode, which is going to be presented during the year 2016".
When asking about the questions we can read on the videos, Aleš keeps explaining "each epoch needs new impulses. What had been considered as a commonplace for years, doesn't exist anymore. The borders are expanding (in a geopolitical sense). Depending on this expansion, people are on move. The movement doesn't have to be only about war and conflicts. The movement from one place to another place allows a change, it allows to think differently. We are condemned to repetition, until one will come out with something new".
To sum up, we asked more about the theme of this second piece "everybody knows, that this way of migration is physically and mentally difficult. What is important for me is that the body is not an obstacle”.
It was a pleasure. And this November 2016 you will have a chance to see this performance in DEPO2015, within the frame of the OPEN A.i.R Festival, and of course, you are very invited!
MICHAL CÁB: Small in Japan / Poème électronique pour le monde
Extract from A.I.R.report for Youkobo Gallery
To describe my residency at Youkobo gallery which lasted for two and a half of month is not a piece of cake. It was always an unspoken notion for me to visit Japan and to be faced to the Otherness (E. Levinas) – in any possible meaning – artistic, cultural, ethical, scientific, and religious. One old friend right after I come back to Prague in January told me this first sentence: “Yeah, I heard about one architect who visited Tokyo and afterwards gone out of his mind. How do you feel?”
It is true, that I was partially blasted off with certain experiences (Pachinko slots, Kabukicho and Nakano district, Electric city at Akihabara, non-presence for noise limit at places as Shibuya, Hokusai original shunga woodblock prints (ukiyo-e), gamification and commercialization of society, Onsen, and so on, and so on) but I have to confess that Japanese culture is very plausible to me. Although I got realized that Japanese way of doing things is about kind of obeying to given orders (i.e. there is kind of totality) I found many examples which stress an importance of individuality. This is how I interpreted my first impression with local unique architecture. Second: Japan (or maybe I should say only Tokyo because in fact I did not leave a city much) is for me a culture of extreme poles – on one side there is noise-color-chaotic life all around stations and on the other side you can just make few steps aside and find yourself in a tranquility of shinto or buddhistic temple. This mixture and extremes are somehow present also in daily culture where Shichi-Go-San traditional celebration is shaking hand with KFC celebration of Christmas. List of examples could continue…
Well but besides this many other events happened. Of course I tried to get know and comprehend Tokyo and Japanese culture which is completely impossible. Maybe this was subconscious feeling and motive why I made short performance called “Small I Japan”... Well – I get touched with local noise musicians as Hakobune (Takahiro Yorifuji) or LZ129 (Ryota Okazaki) and we organised some gigs around Shinjuku (Buena Art Space, Rental Space). In gallery we had a jam-session with Satoshi Ikeda and Yoko Arai. I visited all main national galleries and scientific museums and checked out also some smaller events (home based projects, some performances which were part of Tokyo experimental festival).
Whatever – let me say something about my “artistic mission”. In proposal I suggested that I – as a sound-artist – can work and develop multichannel sound system. That sound-system is to be open-source based on Raspberry Pi2 microcomputer and programmed in Pure Data. It is supposed to be modular – as number of sound channels is derived from number of Raspberry Pi clients – and it is supposed to be also variable – as system is using wireless WiFi network so it can be adjusted in any way to various spaces. This was defined as a “main goal” of residency and this work was presented at my final exhibition. I composed short electro-acustic composition Poème électronique pour le monde as a tribute to E. Varese. There is still a lot of issues to upgrade and solve which I am going to deal with during a spring 2016. There will be an exhibition in gallery Školská28 with title Nástrojáři (Instrument makers) where my sound-system will be presented. I am also give it a chance in theatre sound design as I will prepare a new piece with scenographer Kristýna Taübelová. After some upgrades and cleanup I will publish the whole project and code at GitHub as open-source.
Somehow important was meeting with philosopher and radio-artist Tetsuo Kogawa. We had long and intense discussion about livecoding, Prague, Franz Kafka, broadcasting and FM transmitters. Tetsuo designed minimal FM transmitter which he was using during his musical improvisations. I also implemented his design into my first exhibition which took place at Youkobo gallery. We are going also to continue in collaboration (which has already happened during a celebration of Art's Birthday event[1] and hopefully it will continue in our future Kafka project). Important was also meeting with feminist artist and performer Ito Tari who I personally visited and made some recordings with her. (Let me add that help of Youkobo team and help of Karin Písaříková was essential in getting in touch with mentioned artists.) Afterwards I implemented Tari's voice into my composition.
So generally I can say that I was very satisfied with my stay at Youkobo. I was faced to brand new and other culture which is always inspiring. And I had also time and space to work and experiment with new issues in my artistic practice – few times I even found myself so deeply sunk into my work that I was thinking to myself: “Hey, you are in Tokyo, you should get out and get some life...” So I followed my inner voices which is usually a good way... Just hope that our collaboration can continue somehow in the future.
Michal Cáb
(If you want to read more about him here you have his blog: http://ticho.multiplace.org)
The thirteenth word: Viszlát (read vislaht). By Kateřina Sachrová.
How else to end the list of Hungarian expressions and images/impressions of the magic city of Pécs than by a good news that the long greeting viszontlátásra, or goodbye, has a shorter version which made things much easier for me when saying goodbye in a shop every day, and not just there. And that is important. After a month spent in a Hungarian city one grasped and observed everyday habits, small nuances that would gradually transform one into a local, maybe a newcomer at first, who can already perceive things differently and who would try and adapt to the city’s pace, integrate in its community, better master the language and maybe even get rooted here with one’s shallow roots so typical for a traveller. And at this moment, I say goodbye because rooting was not my objective this time. I want to keep the image of this small part of Hungary in my mind as a film I saw, as a chapter of a book I read, as a melody I heard. I say my Viszlát to the city and disappear over the horizon with my suitcase.
The twelfth word: Vidámpark. By Kateřina Sachrová.
If someone wants to see the reverse side of Pécs they don’t have to look long and far, they can just take the city bus to the Misina hill for the image of faded fame of old times. This hill hosts another dominant of the city: an imposing TV tower. Just the bus ride is an adventure in itself, a journey to history. The bus is climbing the sharp bends and sometimes gets to a surprising spot. At one point, one can even be worried.
The bus goes over a broken narrow tar road and enters a deep forest, or rather a “jungle”. At the end of this turn is a concrete monster, a former pulmonary sanatorium which is now empty. For some strange reason, the driver pulls up here at a decayed bus stop as if waiting for some ghosts to climb aboard. I, as the only passenger, feel insecure for a while and imagine a scene from a Hitchcock movie. Then the bus goes back and gradually gets to the TV tower. At the sight of the 176m-high tower I think that this part remembers better times. I don’t see any tourists or sightseers here. Just a man with a lawnmower and a bored cashier who collects 900 forints for an elevator ride to the first floor with a view. The tower clings to a graffiti-frescoed building, probably a former pub with a dance hall, or maybe, a hotel. I can see an old and yellowed menu on the receded plaster. A battered billboard with an advert for some music club; the only still legible word is “Hell”. How fitting. I don’t feel like going to the nearby woods with half-broken benches and strange concrete constructions of unknown purpose. The same goes for the tower which does not look so nice and modern at a closer look as it does from far away when I was admiringly looking up every day and waiting for a suitable opportunity to visit. It is true that the promised tourist trails really meet here but the maps and boards describing the location are either half-wrecked or destroyed by weather. I think that it is something the Club of Czech Tourists would not let happen.
Another sad surprise hides in the word vidámpark at a place called Dőmőrkapu where, according to the map, an amusement park should be. I go there hoping for a more lively and a better-kept place. But no! An overgrown parking lot, an overgrown monument and two ruined towers guarding the entrance to an area consisting of many concrete pedestals, dilapidated brick shacks with slightly nostalgic Algida and Bűfé sings and spaces where carousels probably used to stand. The “amusement park” is also guarded by a gatekeeper who sits on a stool by one of the entrance houses and looks into his mobile. It is a mystery to me why is there and what is he watching. Vandals would be bored here these days. Another horror scene is a little train. A children’s train similar to the touristy one in the city centre enters a small railway station with a funny-looking colourful depot. It is adorned by Mickey Mouse pictures which in itself is a sign of how old this attraction is. The creaking train is driven by a disgruntled engine driver (probably the brother of the guard) but is empty otherwise. It rumbles to the station, waits for the invisible children and goes back. I later read in the guidebook that it is the shortest train connection in Hungary. I confusedly start walking along one of the “tourist” trails along the “amusement” park back to the tower. When I pass a defunct ski slope with no proper access road and with a board bearing the name of the ski centre, nothing can surprise me anymore. I remember another area of defunct swimming pools in the southern part of the city and think to myself that life probably concentrates only to the populated districts cramped between architectonic monuments but left the surrounding areas which are so beautifully green but already forgotten by the locals. Maybe it’s ok – nature reclaims what people took from it then. The surroundings of the tower will be eaten up by thicket, the amusement park will drown in moss and the ski slope will become a narrow belt of meadow-weed. And the citizens of Pécs will do with urban parks and restaurant patios.
The eleventh word: Tettye (read tetye). Kateřina Sachrová.
OK. I admit it is not your typical Hungarian word. I hope that the Hungarian reader will forgive my lexical detour. This word bears the bitterness of times based on historical events. But for me, Tettye represents a green oasis, a tree canopy above my head and a calming child’s laughter.
I start at the beginning. Tettye is the name of an old district outside the city ramparts. It does not belong to Pécs but all the more, it is a gate to the green hills which slowly merge into the Mecsek mountain range. Tettye is a park with a nice view over the city dominated by the walls of the old bishop’s palace from the 16th century which was, during the Turkish occupation, used by a certain Islamic order. The word “tettye” comes form the Turkish “tekke” relating to Islam.
But Tettye for me is a park where I hide from the sizzling streets, recent black news and my own, sometimes-gloomy thoughts. The heat does not reach here, neither does the Gaza conflict, the sadness and disillusion of the tragically shot-down Malaysian airplane or moments of homesickness and self-pity caused by the hormonal changes or simply by my "family way". I lay in the grass under a huge plane tree, close my eyes, banish my thoughts and let only the birdsong and the noise from the nearby children’s playground fill my head. I feel good here.
On the way home I admire a small residential area of Tettye along a stream of the same name. Each house is different in look, height, style, size and state! (Like me…) And still, one feels like being in the countryside. A cat sitting on a brick wall, a massive wooden gate above an uneven stone paving, wavy roofs and dilapidated gables, a pear tree with heavy branches reaching over to the street, small windows and, in the middle of all this, probably a former village common with two old poplar trees in the centre. So many worlds in one area!
I have not yet been in a city that could claim to have a “cultural district”. Yes, Pécs has its own cultural district at the premises of a family factory making ceramic crockery bearing proudly the family name of Zsólnay (read zholne). Visiting the premises is as big an adventure as the more than a hundred years old journey of the family business which, despite the adversity of the communist regime, left its imprint in the city until today. I am walking through the complex of buildings some of which have colourful roofs covered in ceramic tiles and at the sight of one of the factory's chimneys, I think that even a chimney can be an architectonic gem. Particularly when it is adorned by glazed pyragranite tableaus.
From an enthusiastic, professional and educated young guide I learn about the multi-functionality of the area. Once ceramic and porcelain workshops, a factory making gloves, tobacco, sweets and champagne, it now comprises a gallery, exhibition halls, puppet theatre, amateur theatre, open-air cinema, Planetarium, Art Faculty of the local university, concert hall, children’s playgrounds, cafés and landscaped gardens… There is a lot to see and the centre’s director, Mr István (that name again…), ensures that everything runs smoothly and that the relatively “young district” attracts more than 200,000 paying visitors each year.
My aesthetic sentiment is aroused during a visit to the exposition of ceramics produced by the Zsólnay family workshop. Under the hands of very talented daughters of the factory’s founder, the most magnificent dishes with oriental and folklore motives were created. As a person not really interested in this kind of museums I have to admit that this really got me. Each piece was a gem, an original, a work of art. The Zsólnay family was clearly not afraid to experiment and they created some very interesting techniques winning awards for the products at prestigious exhibitions abroad at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. The exposition is extremely rich thanks to the collector, Hungarian immigrant László Gyugi, who dedicated his life to a passionate collecting of Zsólnay ceramics.
In one small shop with Hungarian chocolate I find a “gem” to my taste, that is, very artistic chocolate pralines. A miniature music score made of white chocolate the size of three square centimetres. Unfortunately, chocolate does not survive long with me. Aesthetic or not, the praline ends up in my stomach quite quickly.
The Zsólnay Culture Centre which effectively unites most museums and exhibitions in the city has some cultural delicatessen on offer, such as the Bohumil Hrabal Day in October (my heart skips proudly) and a children’s festival during which children in pyjamas run around the night area and there is a programme for them in places to which they can’t usually go.
I am silently smiling and with the chocolate taste still lingering in my mouth, I walk through the sizzling streets back to my temporary home in Felsőmalom street.
The tenth word: Fagylalt (read fadylalt). By Kateřina Sachrová.
Let me sing an ode to Hungarian ice cream.
Hungarian ice cream (fagylalt) is not just some ice cream. You might order three scoops but they are actually hills. You won’t see the small Czech cones unable to hold one Hungarian “scoop” here. It happened for the first time in my life that after fighting with the ice cream I tried to find a bin and, with a bleeding heart, throw away the rest of it in the most inconspicuous way. My stomach, shrunk by morning sickness, could not deal with such portion. That’s enough about size.
In regards to quality, I would like to oppose the fans of Italian ice cream with which I don't have much experience but nevertheless, I think that Hungarian ice cream, not the Italian, should have a special entry in the dictionary of national stereotypes. Well, maybe I am just temporarily bedazzled and I apologize to all Italians. But I am not the only one who consumes the local fagylalt often and in big volumes. The popularity of local ice cream is affirmed by the unusual number of ice cream stalls in such small space (i.e. three stalls on a small square by the theatre with approx. three metres between them). They all make money! Wherever you look, people are holding an ice cream cone. It is shocking.
A scene from a concert on the square: a stage with musicians, audience on benches. Whereas in Pilsen people on benches during hot summer days would be holding pints of drought beer, everyone here is eating ice cream. It is clear to me that if I lived here I would soon be fat as a tick. Ice cream is inseparably connected with the image of Pécs streets.
And I am not even speaking about the many varieties of ice cream on offer! From vanilla and chocolate classics and exotic fruit flavours to experiments such as blue ice cream called “Facebook” (???) or pink “Hello Kitty”.
I have not yet seen the typical Hungarian sausage. But I can see famous Hungarian ice cream everywhere.
The word zene, meaning music, is accompanied by a slightly absurd scene: the Hungarian anthem is playing on the Széchenyi square and a crowd of standing people sings along. A hundred musicians between 10 and 16 are crowded on the stage under a mosque. One part represents a small symphonic orchestra and the other part forms a choir. The choir sings the anthem with the crowd. But the musicians are not only young, but of Asian origin too.
I can feel emotions in the air. The energy produced by the fiddlesticks, by the air emitted from trumpets and clarinets, by the resonant strings and professionally-trained young voices is overflowing from the stage to the audience and spreads among the ceremoniously standing figures.
An explanation now. The musicians are students of a New Zealand grammar school touring Europe and showing off their skill. The evening is gradually filled by the music of a big band, a symphonic orchestra, concert orchestra and a choir. Pécs citizens eagerly listen to the music, little and big, old and young, ordinary people as well as local fools watch the talented young boys and girls masterfully interpret more-or-less-known pieces. The biggest success is the choir performance accompanied by Maori combat “dances” and off course, the composition Túrót eszik a cigány by the Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály with which they “score” with the local audience.
In a New Zealand orchestra I would expect to see pale and blond descendants of the colonising Europeans or wild dark Maori faces. The Asian look of the ensemble has surprised me. Dark-haired and slant-eyed. It proved what I have thought for some time and noticed in my country too. Eastern Asians (Vietnamese, Koreans, Japanese and others) are people who are able to develop their talent to perfection. And I mean talent both artistic and technical. The composition of the children’s choir proves it.
I am sitting on my chair and I feel the tones and variety of the music by every piece of my mind, the music is to my taste. I am moved and I deeply inhale the atmosphere of the crowded square. In recent days, when I experienced solitude I was not used to, I find certain comfort in the crowded environment. I feel happy when the old lady sitting next to me occasionally turns to me with a smile and we silently share these moments when one gets carried away by music and becomes introvert. The lady asks me something in Hungarian and when I explain that „nem beszélek magyarul“ she wants to know where I come from.
„Czech Republic“.
A blank look.
„Czechoslovakia“.
A radiant look.
She speaks a bit of English so I try to tell her that I was not able to sing either anthem (they played the New Zealand one too) but that the Hungarian anthem (it was played twice due to a huge success) is very beautiful.
The lady thanks me with a grateful smile. A wrinkled face with blue lively eyes. An elegant coat, longer grey hair. I am so grateful for this moment of personal contact that I would love to go home with her and there, in a flat full of books, cats and faded photographs of her late husband and with a bottle of wine, I would talk about anything…
I stop dreaming and step into the lit Király lane, now touched by slight alcohol buoyancy of a late summer evening. I don’t let the reproduced music and the noise of debating visitors of pubs, clubs and cafés disturb my inner melodic mood which I want to keep as long as possible, and it works because I go to sleep that night with the Hungarian anthem still sounding in my head.
University. The guide and a local archaeologist in one turns to me after he sees off a Hungarian group and starts his exhausting lecture in English. Exhausting because of his effort (he sweats when he talks, gets out of breath and nervously stutters, he keeps running away from a topic and then finds it difficult to return to it, “where was I?”…) and the amount of detail. I learn details not mentioned in tourist guides. It is probably caused by my involved look, I am all ears, supported by a slight communication frustration (my stay in Hungary is not too chatty). Well, after a week of solitude, I am grateful that someone is talking to me.
With regard to my home country and history he often puts local historical events in an interesting context with Czech history, namely with the beginning of the Czech medieval higher education. I have to help him with some expressions, such as “negotiate” that he can’t remember. Wilhelm, a German bishop living in Pécs, a diplomat and a royal advisor “negotiated”. He negotiated with the king about the founding of the oldest university in the contemporary Hungary. It is surprising that the oldest university was not founded in the capital Buda but in a city with only a few hundred citizens at the time. And even more surprising is the fact that the school had functioned only for three decades.
The guide is eruditely explaining the circumstances surrounding the building of universities in the Middle Ages. The unsettled history of the Hungarian nation is unfortunately full of milestones with a negative effect on the country’s cultural development. Thanks to the Turkish destructive tendencies (the Turks again!) who destroyed everything relating to foreign religions (including the catholic-founded university) Pécs today is missing important evidence for facts regarding academic studies. Because of them, we don’t know how many students studied at the university after it had been founded in 1367 and which professors (except one of an European importance) worked here. One document shows clearly the names of two students but only because one killed the other during their studies. It was the Turks who buried the university in the 16th century and made a hill here on which they placed a cannon. At the time, the nice Turks did not realise that by burying it they greatly preserved the monument which shall be uncovered during archaeological excavations and sensitively exhibited at this honorary place in the shadow of the cathedral, to be admired by fans of medieval buildings.
Nevertheless, I learn at the end of the guide/historian's narrative that it is not for certain whether this uncovered building was the original university... I value the sad frankness of such proclamation and to try and console him, I say that I absolutely believe it. Where else would it be?
And as I have already hinted, the sad demise of the institution thirty years after the Bishop had enabled academicians to affiliate, to study law and art and to replace lectures on the square or in the cathedral by lectures under the "academic" roof between thick stone walls, thirty years after that the Bishop died and with him the hope for keeping the university that had run out of money. A new university was built 200km further to the north, in the capital city of Buda. And as it goes in the ever-changing Hungarian history, this university didn’t stay open for very long either. Difficult have been the ways of education throughout history…
The seventh word: Nemturista (read nemturishta). Kateřina Sachrová.
When I later sit in my favourite restaurant and celebrate a bit with pancakes and a heavenly apricot jam I think about how nice it is to be a “non-tourist” in a foreign city. The definition of a non-tourist could be: Non-tourist (“nemturista” in Hungarian) is a visitor to a foreign country or city who has the chance to experience everyday life of a given location through a long-term stay.
In other words, you become a non-tourist (or a cross between a tourist and a local) when:
- the bakery’s shop assistant already greats you, smiles at you and knows what bread you buy;
- you have met the same people several times;
- you anticipate morning and evening rituals of restaurant and shop owners (taking tables out, locking up shops);
- you don’t get lost around the corner from your house anymore and you leave the city's map at home more often;
- the market vendors call you by your name;
- you know where to find the best ice cream;
- the waitress in your favourite restaurant brings you the menu in English and not in German;
- you can order a taxi in Hungarian.
Being a non-tourist has certain advantages compared to a classical tourist or a classical local:
a) Nothing can surprise you anymore as a local. As a non-tourist, you still find new things and you are often surprised.
b) As a classical tourist, you are an anonymous speck in the city’s life just passing through. As a non-tourist, you often get stuck at a place and can leave an imprint in the locals’ souls.
c) As a tourist, you often feel novelty but also strangeness. As a non-tourist, you have a brief feeling of home and safety.
I am proud of my new word “non-tourist” and its definition. I suggest the Hungarian nemturista (read nemturishta). I hope the local linguists will like my neologism.
The word ultrahang is stormy and euphoric. A tourist who actually isn’t a tourist sees her child on the Hungarian ultrasound screen for the first time. A 2mm-big child whose primitive, a few-days-old heart begins to pump blood around his miniature body… The doctor’s friendly look is supported by his pleasant voice: Everything is ok so far. A yearningly desired sentence. And now the tourist/non-tourist believes that a new life is starting in her body.
The day when I first heard the heartbeat of my child.
What shall I write about the city of Pécs when, through emotional tears and euphoric happiness accompanied by a million of questions in my head, I can hardly see the streets drying up after a short storm. One sees everything as beautiful, the sharp sun and the heavy damp air, even the local “ghost house”, a block of flats standing lonely there, long-devoid of its inhabitants waiting for a demolition to end its suffering. Even this is beautiful. I squeeze the ultrasound photo in my hand and constantly remind myself that I am not dreaming. Homeless people by the bins, people repositioning garden furniture outside a restaurant, children playing in puddles. None of them knows my secret and I walk by with a silly smile. I am not alone I carry something small inside.
The fifth word does not need translation. An aromatic plant typical for all sunny parts of Europe… Lavender calmness is also present on the Havi hill where silence is occasionally broken by cicadas. Lavender wind breezes around Christ immortalised in agony and balancing on a white cliff, overlooking the way up to the church. The view from here of the city sunk in a haze of the hot day does not tell anything about the everyday bustle on the Széchenyi square. Where people occupy ice cream stalls hoping to get temporary refreshment.
Plantain-covered cliff makes a proud host to the modestly looking tabernacle. Every other evening during my “health” walks I am one of a few pilgrims seeking a cooling shade of church walls. The church is sometimes inhabited by singing. A woman’s voice in a heavenly melody. Sitting on the steps outside the church I check that everything is in its place: the four-tower silhouette of St. Peter and Paul’s in the city centre, smokestacks of the ceramic factory on the left, ugly panel blocks on the horizon and a green hill with little villas to the right. Everything is where it should be, even the sternly upright TV tower. The city’s index finger threateningly pointing to the sky… My companions include cicadas, the tired sun, brave joggers in the heat and amorous couples – I envy them the duality, the chance to share a silent moment high above the city.
And behind the church… in a lane lined with old chestnut tress… lives a tourist train which I see on duty during the day. It drives comically cramped visitors around the city’s sightseeing spots. In the evenings, it relaxes in the shade of decorative conifers in one garden in a lane behind the church. A house number 17. The fairy-train and a lavender lullaby.
The fourth word: Vásár (read vashar). By Kateřina Sachrová.
Would you like a gas mask or an inflatable duck? Or what about an old photo album of an unknown family? A bathtub? Or a discarded letter box and a scuba diving wetsuit? A bird box? Let’s see: child’s crib, hourglass, hundred-years-old doll buggy. Non-functional spice mill with a brass handle, a watch with Just wait, Rabbit!, a postcard with a Romanian stamp… No thanks, I’d rather have a langoš (garlic Frisbee). I gorge on the greasy and salty pancake, I barely manage to finish it and then I make space for other eaters. Langoš is a great Hungarian invention. Back in the Czech Republic, only a very few people can make them so puffy and savoury… I still have some space in my stomach for the famous local marzipan. On the verge of overeating, I slowly start exploring other corners of the wide human anthill. Gypsies loudly offer their goods (from raspberries to tyres and dodgy laptops). I hide from them and the sun in a box with old photographs of strangers that will always fascinate me. I get a chilly feeling looking to the next box with dozens of dioptric glasses and, for some reason, I remember images of personal things seized from prisoners at concentration camps.
What has happened to the owners of these glasses? Their relatives, when dealing with the inheritance, just sold them to the collector? Or they left them on a dustbin to be picked by a passer-by who added them to all the other glasses in the box and then tried to get the best price for them? It is strange how the value of things changes over time… The glasses were very valuable to the original owner, an old respectable citizen of Pécs. He would not do without them and when they fell and broke he had to have them mended immediately. Glasses were the first thing he reached for in the morning and the last thing he put aside in the evening (somewhere between he kissed his wife and switched off the lamp). They were so much a part of him that he rarely considered them as something that could be separated form his body. He went through a dilemma in the fall of his life: to buy new, sophisticated and decent glasses with a slim frame or to stay faithful to his big and old-fashioned fellows? In his sweaty hand, he nervously crumpled bank notes, a Christmas present from his family to make him step forward, to progress and to make the grandfather buy something new. “You see, they really suit you. And you have the old ones as a backup.” Grandma promises to subdue his fear from loosing a precious artefact but she knows already that the old glasses will go straight to the bin. Grandpa finally shakes his head, puts the nice modern glasses back and runs out of the shop as if in need of some fresh air. He knows what lecture about dowdiness and time-loss in the shop will follow. But hey, these are his glasses and his money and he would rather buy a new bike for his granddaughter than spend the money on something he doesn't want or need.
He doesn’t know that in exactly 156 days, 5 hours, 28 minutes and 12 seconds he will breathe his last breath and his glasses will start a stressful journey which ends in this box in the middle of a market hall, called vásár in Hungarian, which is situated on Vásártér square on the outskirts of Pécs. Or is their journey not finished yet?
The third word: Találka (read talahlkah). By Kateřina Sachrová.
OK. Back to my linguistic preparation. Another beautiful word which I found in the conversational brochure is so interesting that I would love to integrate it into Czech. We’ll have találka in a café on the square. How nice it would sound! I found the word találka, meaning a date, a rendezvous, when browsing the only Czech publication about Hungarian I found in a bookshop. This fact proves what a “marginal” language Hungarian is. Next to more accessible linguistic books and dictionaries of Hebrew, Serbo-Croatian, Arabic etc., there was this tiny green book published by Lingea. I rejoiced but slowly realised that the authors of the Hungarian conversational book really have a sense of humour. Or they don't have and they just wanted to prepare the reader for all possible situations. I will give you some examples of sentences, i.e. “useful” phrases, that I randomly found (please note that this really is a small pocket publication):
Sport and Leisure section:
Úgy látszik, ráléptem egy tengeri sünre.
I have probably stepped on a sea urchin. (In Hungary???)
Vannak itt érdekes víz alatti zátonyok?
Are there any interesting sea cliffs? (Are they?)
Szabad itt szigonnyal halászni?
Is harpooning allowed here? (for example to catch a Balaton sand-eel…)
Megcsípett egy medúza.
I was stung by a jellyfish. (the Hungarian species is particularly dangerous…)
Tudna biztosítani?
Could you belay me? (a typical Hungarian sport – mountaineering)
Van problémátok a futballhuligánokkal?
Do you have problems with football hooligans here? (probably a suitable chat-up line in a sports bar)
The publication's authors have also thought of the most catastrophic scenarios. Emergency Situations section:
Nem fogyasztok (semmilyen) kábítószert. I don’t take (any) drugs.
Megverték a férjemet. My husband was beaten up.
Kérem, levenné rólam a bilincset? Could you please take off my handcuffs?
Tengeribetegség ellen kérek valamit. I need something for seasickness.
Megtámadtak. Csak védekeztem. I was attacked. I was only defending myself.
Félek./ Tériszonyom van. I am afraid of heights. (I am trying in vain to imagine a situation when I would use this sentence).
A vécén nincs vécépapír. There is no toilet paper on the loo. (I call this an emergency situation!)
And lastly, the spicy On Holiday section:
Fel akarsz szedni? Are you trying to pull me?
Veled szeretném tölteni az éjszakát. I’d like to spend a night with you.
Ne csináld már, vislekedj. Come on, be sensible.
Vidd innen a kezed! Get your hands off me!
Nem vagyok híve az egyéjszakás kalandoknak. One-night stands are not my thing.
Csókolóztatok már? Have you kissed yet?
Nem tudok nélküled élni. I can’t live without you.
Good. If we think about the overall lexical choices in this brochure we conclude that Hungary is a very dangerous country where you can step on a jellyfish, be arrested or bothered by strangers with dubious offers, and not only during találka.
But seriously now. The brochure and dictionary exhaustively provides practical and necessary vocabulary which I sometimes couldn't do without. Let’s hope that I won’t have to use some of the above sentences… Thanks, Lingeo.
The second word: Műemlék (the first syllable is read as German ü, the last "é“ as something between e and i). By Kateřina Sachrová
Welcome to Pécs! Every other house bears a plaque with this word on it. My Hungarian dictionary does not include this expression. So I try the unreliable Google translator and learn what I could have deduced myself: “ a monument”. My first steps take me to the most distinctive monument in Pécs: St Peter and Paul’s Cathedral. I don't’ yet know that a church with a DJ awaits me.
The beauty of the many-times-rebuilt 11th-century cathedral towering over the Dóm Tér square is not tainted even by the ugly scaffolding around one of the four towers. They are building a viewing tower here. Inside the monumental building I find, apart from the beautiful decoration, a DJ apparently looking after the musical background. I sit down so I can see him and I am looking forward to a meditative experience in a church accompanied by sung psalms. I have to wait for a big-bellied Turk in an Adidas tracksuit to stop talking and passionately and loudly edifying his bored son of about eleven with a cap about something important, presumably regarding the cathedral. His annoying Turkish lecture, completely disrespecting the sacred atmosphere of the church, is regularly broken by his son popping chewing gum bubbles. The Turk’s wife comes also dressed in Adidas and they jointly fret over an English text on the board with historical information. I later think that they might have been outraged by the part about the destruction of basilica during Turkish raids. That would be quite fitting…
Back to the DJ. He sits stiffly on one of the benches and watches the screen of his laptop from which he probably plays his mix. There are small speakers on each side emitting quiet church singing. A skinny man with long greyish hair in a ponytail says a payer in a low voice as if reciting the text that was coming from the speakers. All he is missing is the mixing desk and headphones...
I call him Istvan for myself and try to imagine a typical day of a church DJ. Istvan is 40 years old, lives with his mother in a modestly furnished apartment in a block of flats on the outskirts of Pécs and is a Roman catholic. He has never known his father but it is clear from his mother's narrative that if he knew him he would not be proud of him like sons usually are of their fathers. Istvan puts his snack, packed by his mother, in a linen satchel every morning and rides an old, creaking bicycle to work. His role is to oversee order in the most important cathedral in the city, to ensure peace in the church and to play music supporting the atmosphere. Istvan knows by heart the psalms he plays to the tourists. He recites the lyrics and believes that God values his work. He is skinny and pale and cannot imagine living his life differently or at a different place. In time, he will look after his gravely ill mother full-time and will never leave his hometown… He will observe the church visitors every day and will not judge who they are. Decent, noisy, vulgar, on the phone, praying, taking photographs, singing, trying out the acoustics, quiet, silent, pensive, scantily dressed, nuns, workers, pilgrims, children… They are all equal before God. And God shall forgive them.
I stop concentrating on the DJ’s back and look up at the organ. What a beauty.
