northwestern siberia, russia. small khanty girl katerina observes and understands the outer world. she learns the voices of people, animals and other beings. gradually she approaches the unknown and the unknown comes closer - not far from katerina's nomad camp an oil rig appears.
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this week i saw this documentary produced by bbc "gypsy child thieves". it was quite new to me. not the phenomenon but the machine behind it. while i was commenting the documentary i was told that this as well happens in lisbon, but i had no idea of the size of it.
ever since romania entered the european union, this problem started to get sharper and sharper and now it is a very well establish cycle. the theft made by gypsy children is not as simple as it may look. sometimes these children are stolen from their own parents in romania, in order to steal in countries like spain, italy or france. they are kept in horrible conditions by their "controllers" who threaten them with things like "if you don't bring me 400€ today i will break both of your arms". later the children give all the money to the controller who then sends it to the big, main controller in romania. normaly the heads of these nets are rich as one can be. of course it is not as simple. the problem is that, because they are children, they are taught and forced to steal by their own parents. they bring home a lot of money each day, and if they are caught, nothing happens: they are minors. quite an issue here. very nice documentary. this weekend i had my visit from my family. my cousin is currently doing eramus in budapest, so why not come if we're only 3 hours appart? so in a very sunny bratislava, we walked a bit in the castle, ate halusky, ice cream, hot chocolate...yes, we know. i finally bought an umbrella in a fair and filipa's hat matched the blue church and on saturday we decided to visit a new city. we chose brno in the czech republic, because it's only one hour away and the pictures looked very nice. the weather was very windy! first shock: "oy, there are no euros here??". the centre of the city was very pleasant with a big pedestrian area. the buildings were colorful and beautiful. all in all it is a very nice city. the cathedral of st. peter and st. paul had very impressive vitrals! and it was beautiful on the outside as well. "don't park here" wc in heights super cute litte bunny the view from the castle. the castle was as well very well preserved and clean and quiet. it's in a park so it is quite a pleasant spot. already with the autumn colors this sign was incredibly detailed! the old woman in the bycicle had a big nose and the man in the segway looks like a wooden toy! and the city was in a wine party, selling "burcak" in every corner. the ethnography museum (closed) had these wonderful artists playing "realejo" (don't know the english name). it was a great weekend. it's really easy to go and stroll around a new city each weekend, no?
fotomaratons are the best things to get to know a city, to get to re-know the places of everyday theme: shout theme: in a mirror theme: she danced theme: voyeur
yes, we went to switzerland to see their 72 hours! 72 hodín bez kompromisu is a project done in 7 other countries and has now an international website. switzerland was the first, and we went there with colleagues from austria and hungary to get inspiration and motivation from a swiss style mega project: flawless and super organized. more info on their 72 here: www.72h.ch the inauguration on the 8th of september set the beggining of all the projects all over the country. this time - they've made the project before in 2005 - they gathered around 300 000 volunteers all over the country. here are the international guests: hungary, slovakia and austria. and this is the 3 language call center. 72h there is a bit different. the volunteers apply for something but only on the first day - the 8th - do they know where will they work. so, in a new place, without materials, without anything, just a project in hands, what to do? the 72h has it's own call center connected to the internet and to the radio! the groups that needed, for example, a vagon to put bycicles and send them to africa, could call the call centre with this request. after, the call center will inform the radio that would mention this need in it's normal broadcasting! luckily, a listener will help and everything ends ok. exciting, hu? this was the "crisis department" that, fortunately, never had a crisis! this was our first visit to a project, this group had to organize a neighbourhood party for circa 300 people. at the time they had the soundsystem and were a bit worried about the food. they were very organized. on the second day of the 72h we went to the french part of switzerland. there we visited my favourite project. a group of minor refugees, all with 18 or under, were doing a dictionary in 7 languages. coming from paquistan, afghanistan, eritreia, sudan and other countries, these kids decided which words or sentences could be useful for the next refugees. they are involved in a very interesting project called speak out, that intends to get attention to the problems of the minor refugees. more info here. then we had lunch in the park and visited two other projects. this one was made by scouts and they had to build 5 circuits with recycled material. they were as well gathering money for handicaped scouts. then the last project was a kind of bycicle fair/hospital. first they were trying to get as much bycicles as possible to send to africa. then they had mechanincs, paints, "pimp my bike" studios and so they were repairing bycicles. it was an amazing four days, full of ideas, sun and inspiration!
wouldn't it be great to have an european 72h? in portugal as well, hu? next is already in slovakia! so, we went to switzerland, in a study visit for the 72 hours they hold there. but that will have a post of it's own. now: bern! the capital of switzerland is very cute and clean and small. it's an unesco site and strolling along the streets, it is quite obvious why. on our second day there, we made an ipod tour! it was really fun, it even said the pace we should walk and we had pictures to compare if we were on the right place! so we walked among the pretty streets, saw the buildings, the colorful markets, the colorful people... watched the incredibly high tech supa dupa clock walked trough little alleys watched the bears and the beauuutilful view on rosengarten bern's buildings are full of wonderful paintures on the walls. this was my favourite, of course. and by night we went to this very nice place. slept in a scout's house ate wonderful food group pic! the bernese know they live in a wonderful city, but are aware of the hard job it is to maintain it wonderful! for example, the town hall gives red flowers to all people who live or work in some centre streets. they HAVE to water them and keep them good looking, if not, they will get a fine! on our way to the airport we stopped a bit in zurich (not as nice, more of a people's city) contacted with the international institute of handanalysis and accepted the providence's signs, sending us to gate...72!
lisboa bude.
all pictures from an interesting series called "random lisa", about street art. hope to inspire some "random bratislava"! |
i don't understandnerozumiem ti means "i don't understand you" in slovak. a tradition, let's say. after not understanding anything in granada, now i don't understand anything in bratislava. Archives
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