Re|Moved

Spaces
are dimensionless, structureless, a void
– and less.

You fill them, with
presence
steps, ways, and traces
returns, come backs, routines
familiarity and the unexpected
that unexpected familiarity
which appeared distant first,
but is long part of yourself.

Those ties attach and wind,
trap and weave
you
into their tight tissue of memories
that is invisibly clutched
and catches you ever subtle.

A gentle cloak won’t squeeze
as it be widened.
But it tightens and chokes you in detachment.

Soundtrack III

Obviously, from the musical point of view, my memories are divided into three parts. The first part was mainly influenced by tracks which I had been listening to while still in Germany. It was in a way the start of a journey to find the unique ‚Debreceni Soundscape‘.
The following two parts appear to me like a balanced and interconnected mix of sounds, voices and memories which are going to end up in my mind as the collection of songs which will put me back here, back in the same time and constellations as they do exist now.

Of course, the last part is not just a mere sequel to the second, but also influenced by my sudden and really frightening realisation that the time is running out here. In this sense, some of the enlisted songs have a rather sad or pensive twist to me. On the other hand, it is a collage which will make up the spring and rising summer of this year. Especially one song (This Love) accompanied me throughout the whole two hours that I passed in the sunny streets of Debrecen, putting me in a creative and inspired mood while I took the photos of the Spring entry (s. below).
Let these be my own associations, dear reader/s, and make up your own mindset to these sounds.

Popcultural Overdose

As student of Literature and Cultural Studies, you are mostly busy reading books, theoretical texts, watching movies or critically reading the news. Here in Debrecen, I got the chance to read a lot of books and learn the basics of film studies. The biggest accomplishment in this time of book piles and screening schedules is that I now can truly see the endless artistic potential in both the forms of art and the ones who mastered it. With every semester I feel more and better prepared to answer the inevitable question on the difference between Art and „art“.

This fact makes up – at least a bit – for the time I spent reading all of this material and preparing for weekly plot tests instead of travelling e.g. to such irrelevant places as Budapest.
With the most challenging of all exams being written now, I want to look back and determine how much books and films I consumed.

Written words first:

Geoffrey Chaucer – The Canterbury Tales (Prologue)
William Shakespeare – HamletTibor Fischer – I Like Being Killed
Ernest Hemingway – The Snows of Kilimanjaro
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The Sign of Four
Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe
William Faulkner – The Sound and the Fury (at least it was scheduled..)
Buchi Emecheta – Second-Class Citizen
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – A Scandal in Bohemia, The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier
Monica Ali – Brick Lane
F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby (scheduled)
John Steinbeck – Of Mice and Men
Emily Brontё – Wuthering Heights
Henry James – The Turn of the Screw
Monica Ali – In the Kitchen (excerpts)
Thomas Hardy – Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Kate Chopin – The Awakening
+ poetry by John Donne, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning and T.S. Eliot
+ short stories by Doris Lessing

Motion pictures:

The Invisible Woman (2013)
The Wolf Man (1941), The Wolfman (2010)
My Fair Lady (1964)
Dracula (1931), Dracula (1992)
The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952)
Double Indemnity (1944)
Frankenstein (1931), Frankenstein (1994)
Vertigo (1958)
The Sound and the Fury (1959)
The Night of the Living Dead (1968), 28 Days Later (2002)
The Birds (1958)
The Great Gatsby (1974)
Brick Lane (2007)
Dead Ringers (1988)
Of Mice and Men (1992)
The Excorcist (1968), The Omen (1976)
The Secretary (2002)
The Turn of the Screw (1974), The Turn of the Screw (BBC 2009)
The Fly (1986), The Thing (1982)
Bound (1996)
Grand Isle (1991)
Portrait of a Lady (1996)
Halloween (1978), Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
+ Episodes of Sherlock (BBC), Dr. House, The Finder, Elementary

32 films, 17 (at times partial) books/short stories.
I wonder which part of me really thought to have a rather relaxing semester with loads of time for other things than studying.
However, I’m glad to have had the chance to get the insights into film adaptations, Horror films and learned lots on poetry.

Vienna (April 9-11)

Diese Diashow benötigt JavaScript.

 

Blooming Debrecen

This city might look a bit spooky in Winter, and yet I have to admit that – obviously – that color did not just suddenly appear yesterday on the flowers and trees. To give an overview of how Debrecen started to bloom, whizz and whirr in the past weeks, the photos are presented in chronological order.

The way it all turned out and looks like now can easily be called a metamorphosis. Spring brings that vivacity and ease to every corner.

Diese Diashow benötigt JavaScript.

Krakow Beats

In Krakow, it seems, things continue beyond the pavement and shops, go on upstairs as well as downstairs. Throughout the day, pedestrian’s steps echo through the hostel window, occasionally accompanied by more or less entertaining street music. Nighttime, on the other hand, passes by humming against the ground from numerous basement clubs, the beats amplified between the stonewalls inside and sent upstairs to spread the word. The number of clubs seems to compete with that of the churches, they set themselves apart among the rows of houses, like pillars to weave the thread around. The most famous one can not only send its rings across the Market Square at least once an hour, but plays a trumpet clarion call out to the city whatever the time or day.

Some places, however, are being closed at some point. And so sounds a piano tune through the window of a market restaurant as a waiter plays the keys while his colleagues dust the tables. Outside, the homeless moves the chairs and tables into their right position before he pushes his few belongings through that small corridor underneath the arches. The pianist delivered the nightshift over to the pounding beats spilling out of the basements, his steps merge with 120 beats per minute, out into Krakow Night.

Diese Diashow benötigt JavaScript.

Beyond the Schedule | Soundtrack II

After all, Erasmus is about new experiences and the joy of meeting new people. Moving to a different dorm room resolved my trouble to find time for these fun things, and these days I’m having trouble dealing with business.

A lot of come-togethers helped me create this „problem“,  and two of them spared me the trouble to create dinner in the war kitchen of this floor. On Tuesday there was an International Dinner organized by the Erasmus Student Network, a huge gathering of all kinds of food contributed by the students. Everyone put a lot of effort into the dishes, and soon the tables and plates were empty, and Kliniká was transformed back into the night club. It used to be a small theater or concert hall close to the medical department of Debreceni Egyetem and is nowadays the university’s small and fancy dancing site.

The Potluck Party organized by the Institute of English and American Studies was – a second kind of International Dinner, this time among the students and teachers of the institute. We had the opportunity to get in touch with Debrecen’s English students, and to talk with the teachers. The fifth edition of this party had Ireland as its motto, and a small band and green shirts and trousers evoked this theme.
Later on, as we returned to our dormitory, we wondered at the sight of it sitting there in complete darkness. The (absolutely utopic) thought occurred to me that – for no rational some reason – everyone went asleep. Since this is a student’s dormitory at 9 p.m. on a Wednesday, this idea became rather absurd, and as we moved towards it (hardly seeing the path in front of us), we noticed people standing on the square in the middle of the Kossuth Dormitories I-III.It was the Earth Hour in action, and the scenario was very nice. All lights and power shut down in the buildings around us, a group of fire artists performing, there was a bonfire, and it became obvious how many people actually live in these three buildings.

Unexpected (or rather: forgotten) occasions like these are the ones most fun, and I tend to like to see familiar spaces and places in a completely different scenario.

As part of the Soundtrack-episodes, this event gave me new material: The following tracks were being played as we waited for the power to return to the almost empty dormitories.

Traces of Eclipse in Debrecen

This week’s Friday started out similar to Monday: with a lot of sunshine and a reading outside the Main Building, slowly getting ready for a presentation later that day.

However, I was also out to document some traces of the eclipse, which was actually not more than slight traces and the hunch of dim light. Compared to Germany, Debrecen in eastern Hungary could witness the eclipse about an hour later, starting at about 10.30 a.m.

If it weren’t for the camera and the maintained settings throughout the partial eclipse, taking notice of the event would rather have been a coincidence. Nevertheless, there was a difference, and I also felt slightly dizzy sitting in the rather weird light.

10:49 a.m.

10:59 a.m.

11:49 a.m.

With the camera settings being the same throughout the entire time these pictures were taken, it is visible how slightly dim it got before it all went back to the usual brightness. Take notice of the shadows to keep track of the order of the pictures.

 

What’s even more interesting about this is the fact that the last time there was a total eclipse I was 7 years old, a primary school kid and not even fantasizing about experiencing the next eclipse in Debrecen. Kinder, wie die Zeit vergeht…

Nagyerdő & Nagyerdei Stadion

Going out for a walk on Sunday, it seemed decent after 5 weeks to explore an area right next to the Main Building, opposite the tram station: Nagyerdő (that is: nagy- = big, main, great; erdő = wood) and Naygerdei Stadium.

Although the weather was not too good, rather grey, a lot of people were walking around, playing games, sitting at the lake. See below for more information..

There are a lot of nicely designed sculptures in the Park which actually serve as part of a scattered playground for children. A slide – who would’ve known?

Presumably a swan made of a canvas..kind of scary when it suddenly floats above the head.

A hotel & restaurant/étterem. It will surely look more colorful in spring’s sunshine.

The park’s lake. Small, but neat, and the bridge feels actually like a pier connecting both shores.

Nagyerdei Stadion, home of the local football club, Debreceni VSC. About 20,000 people can watch matches in there..that is roughly a fourth of the capacity of Dortmund’s Westfalenstadion/Signal Iduna Park.

Badass architecture shot. Actually, nice architecture. In contrast to Germany, this building was very effective concerning the costs and the time of construction. There are airports, opera houses and train stations (if ever finished)…and there’s a neat stadium built within one year.

Get the camera through the gate’s bars and you can take a nice shot of the interior.

Debrecen’s soccer team has frequently been playing in the Champions League and/or Europa League. That banner should be turned when the time comes, though.

This elevated walkway runs around the entire stadium, combined with a running track accessible for everyone, and even information on the down-grade for wheelchair users.

Monday Morning Spring

When I arrived in Debrecen in the beginning of February, it seemed to me as if the leafless trees looked more dead than in my hometown in Germany. This is, of course, a very subjective perspective, kind of insulting and surely not true, but rather due to the different kind of trees that grow in this city – of course they look different in winter.

As dark as these trees might have seemed until now, today’s morning rather promised the start of spring, and made me very curious about how the area around the university, including the neatly cut trees and the fountain right in front of the Main Building, will look like in full bloom.

Up until now, I can only serve with the first picture from outside the Main Building, and a random shot before class. However, I will report on the color change in Debrecen, also in the park that the following entry will shortly deal with.

Lifestyle shot… although I actually use/read these things, not just for staging. Reading Coffee and drinking Gatsby…or so.

Monday morning in front of the Main Building. The temperatures would later reach 18°C, raising hopes for the start of a colorful and warm spring.