Author Archives: mangomanjaro

The Bulgarian dream – Meet Chris and Claire

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The first time we met the British couple Chris and Claire (Wild Thyme) was through a HelpX project in Southern France. In was early spring, and they had recently left England and their jobs as archeologists, happily driving their Ebay catch, an old van turned into a mobile home.

When we heard that Chris and Claire had found their luck in the north of Bulgaria, we were keen to visit them. We stayed for almost a week.

Each day we worked in the garden to the sweet smell of soil. Each
afternoon we had a nice cup of tea. Each evening we ate natural,
organic and locally produced food that we cooked in turns. With
that we drank young, delicious red wine or the local beer. Chris
would sometimes play the fiddle. Clair would give a soothing angel
reading. Or we’d just game a game of Jungle Speed.
Communities like this come and goes with the people that makes them.
Wild Thyme puts Palamartsa on the map by just blogging about it.

Welcome to Wild Thyme!

How We Failed to Arrange the Chicken Dance in Bergama

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Three police men, one promised mayor and a bunch of random men hanging around the public square, all watching the computer screen in confusion, while me and Amanda are trying our best to make them understand one concept: PARTICIPATION!

It’s been easy to arrange the Chicken Dance so far. Easy in the sense that people have been in contact with flash mobs, and art performances before. YouTube has been great at spreading these, but until last week, YouTube was banned in Turkey.
Perhaps that’s why the concept isn’t as well spread here?

I summarized the story (keep on reading) and will now fold it out for you: Last week we tried to arrange the Chicken Dance in Bergama. As you probably can guess, we failed pretty hard.
But not without a fight!

We had gotten a note written in Turkish that told the story and our mission. Now, more confident than ever we handed it over to the men that spent their days in the public square. They looked at it, perplexed and snatched the note from each other. Some of them talked to us, and then after a short while one man claimed that it was in fact illegal to arrange the dance in the public square.

Bergama citizen, Robin and Amanda

– “Problem with Police, girls and boys dancing together, here!”
– “Oh, really? Why is that?”
He didn’t answer “why”. The whole group kind of shrunk as we questioned the idea, the law and his words. We crossed some kind of line here.

– “Where can we find the police station, so that we can ask them for permission?”
He pointed at a building that was very close to the square.

With another man accompanying us, we walked over to the police station. Meanwhile the man (who spoke German) said things like:
– “Das ist sehr gut! Bürgermeister ruft das Volk, alle zusammen und jeder wird dann tanzen!” Meaning that the mayor probably would summon the town for this dance. Our hope was higher than ever!

At the police station we were sent between 4 different inspectors and then after 45 minutes we had our official permission and one inspector that tried his best to help us arrange the Chicken Dance. He tried convincing his co-workers, people on the streets and the men in the square. There was a limitation to this though: He would not dance with us himself.

No one else would either. They started talking about getting a local musician that could play for us (we insisted that we’d just sing instead) and then we showed them the video. On our computer.

– “This is in Brasov, Romania. And Bratislava, Slovakia. Varna, Bulgaristan. Stockholm, Sweden. Visby, Gotland. Warsaw, Poland. And now… Bergama – with you, in Turkey! Come on now, dance with us!”

And then. They all just turned away… and slowly… walked away from us… as if… they didn’t see us anymore.

###

We see four possible solutions to this:

  1. Contact the mayor in each city before trying to arrange it. But that would kind of defeat the liberating feeling of free participation, wouldn’t it?
  2. Change from “random people” to “young people” who got something to win by making weird stuff such as participating in a public dance. Youth is more rebellious by nature. The old men have had their fun and seem rather safe and secure with their lives and positions.
  3. Contact artists who are into doing stuff like this all the time.
  4. Start off the dance with more people that you’ve gathered in advance. This is the approach that we’ll try out in Antalya.

We’ll let you know how it goes.
Do you have any suggestions or feedback on the Chicken Dance?
Write a comment and tell us!

Pulp Szeged

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We sneaked into the cathedral of Szeged in Hungary while some musician was playing the clarinette. Then we sneaked out.

Notice that the woman who walks back and forward almost reminds you of Uma Thurman. And the music? Yes. It was in ‘Kill Bill’, where Uma played the main character. There you have it. Very authentic ;) .

Your Job is Not Your Identity

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Amanda

“Hitchhiking to India? Really?!”

Yes, really!
We have answered this question quite a few times already, and we have seen many playful smiles upon many people’s lips in many countries. Almost every driver, every person we have a quick chat with, anyone who hears about our current mission reacts this way.
It’s like they think to themselves, for a second or two, that “Wow, life can actually be just as good as you make it!”.

Then comes question no. 2: “What do you work with?”

When I had just finished school and I was traveling, it was easy to give people a satisfying answer.
“I have just finished school” was for most people equal to “I’m about to move on to university”, though this was never really outspoken, just a floating assumption.
People liked that idea, anyway. Either that, or that I would go back to a normal, regular job. In that best case, very soon.

But time goes on. It is now 2,5 years since I finished school. I have changed my answers many times, because people keep asking me.

“What is your job?”
Well, we don’t have any jobs at the moment.
“Aha, so you are a students?”
No.
“So you take a year off or something?”
No. We travel, and we work with a website. And we dance The Chicken Dance. We are in the middle of our beautiful lives and we are not sure where our project is going, but it is exciting and we enjoy it very much!

When I can’t seem to calm the boiling frustration of the fact that we actually have no idea how long we are traveling for, I tell people I used to work in service industry, in restaurants and cafés. Because that’s the kind of jobs I’ve always had in between school and adventures around the world. And I am very good at that, but it is not my greatest challenge or my passion.
I try to tell people that it’s just the way I’ve been making money. Because personally I don’t see that as my profession or something that I “am”.
I have other stories to tell, not including a so called normal working career.

“OK, so you are a waitress. Very good.”

Even the people with who we communicate only by body language and drawings, sometimes look like they’ll go mad because they don’t get it. They just can’t put their fingers on what we ARE if we are not doctors or teachers or lawyers. There are no such things as not having anything to go back to. No such things as not knowing exactly how to make your living for the rest of the year.
For most people it is just way too far from the only life they ever knew.

I apparently make more sense to the people if I tell them what my job is.
I must be either a waitress, or a bit crazy.
Truthfully, I rather put “crazy” on my business card.

I believe that I can teach people something if I don’t just let them see me as a waitress, a word that they already know. They might understand that they are just as free to live the life they want as I am. By just leaving them the with the idea that I have a regular job that I need to go back to soon, I also leave them with the same old thoughts that there isn’t much to change in this world.

But I disagree with that.
My job is not my identity.
Life educates us every day, it is the same for me as for other human beings.
I learn, and I try to teach when I believe that I can do so.

We are more than our university degrees.
We are also people, free to break out of our boxes and discover ourselves.
I mean to say bigger than “you can become whatever you want to be”.
Blink once, then open your eyes.
You already ARE whatever you want to be. You choose to reduce or enlarge yourself, you choose what people will see when they greet you.

How will you introduce yourself next time?