A Te Is Alapítvány már régóta EVS küldő szervezetként is működik, ezért nagy örömünkre szolgál megosztani veletek következő EVS önkéntesünk, Fuhl Dániel élményeit, aki a csehországi Brno-ban fog önkénteskedni az elkövetkezendő hónapokban. Lelkes beszámolóiből megtudhatjuk, hogy mivel is tölti az időt Dániel Csehországban! :)
So one sunny day, at 30th of September, first time in my life, I arrived in to the capital of Moravia – Brno. After I moved my stuff to my new flat in Hvězdová street – which is literally like 5 minutes away from my workplace – I decided to go out, to do some good old-fashioned wandering around the city. Firstly, I decided to discover the hood where I live: Zábrdovice, the Bratislavská and Francouzská streets, the main road of the district, the Cejl, so shortly, to use the popular local name, the “Bronx of Brno” – although I found this name quiet exaggerated, to be honest, but it´s true, that this district have many attributes of a typical inner-city ghetto. In fact, I actually found many parallels between Zábrdovice, and Józsefváros, the 8th district (Nyolcker) of Budapest, to such an extent, that I started to call the Cejl as the “Népszínház street of Brno”, or Bratislavská as the “Práter street of Brno”. There are also similarities in the history of these districts: in Zábrdovice, before the Second World War, there were mostly German and Jewish working-class population, whose worked in the local textile factories. During the war the Germans deported the Jews, and after the war the Czechs expelled the Germans, so the whole neighborhood became empty, and there was a shortage of workforce, so the government settled here cheap, mostly unskilled Romani workers from Slovakia. Both districts are generally associated with the high density of Romani population, with crime scene, with heroin usage and so on – a typical public image of urban ghettos, which are actually like a 10 minute walking distance from the heart of the city. On the other hand both districts showing the signs of gentrification, although in different degrees – while some parts of the Nyolcker are now completely transformed to a mixture fancy cafes, and modern business centers, in Zábrdovice only some early birds started to popping up: the neglected century old houses are now mingling with the new, or renovated residences (from where of course the lower-income population was expelled), and around the corners you witnessing the popping up of trendy pubs, vegan bars, Italian cafes and so on – as they said in SoDoSoPa episode of South Park: “From the independent merchants, and unique cafes, to the rustic charm of mixed income crowd” …
Anyway, on the next couple of days I also had time to explore the center of Brno, with the old town and the Špiberk castle. I don´t want go in the details very much – you can read about this part of city in every brochures, and websites for tourists, I just share few notes about my personal impressions.
So the whole city center, with its architecture and city structure, actually have a pure classic kaiserlich und königlich (k.u.k) atmosphere, which forms and interesting blend with the socialist-style paneláks of the suburbs – so a typical East-Central-European city, feels like home, especially for a Hungaroslavic guy like me. But still … every day I´m finding something strangely new at every corner of the city, even the familiar surrounding and culture offers me a multitude of new impressions. Maybe I´m too much a Budapest-centered guy and everything outside Bp. is something remarkably fascinating and new, maybe it´s because of the fact, that although I speak the language quite good, I´m still a foreign stranger … I don´t know … But I stay until next September, so I have enough time to find it out … or to get completely familiar with it.
My next post will be about my actual EVS volunteer work at the Museum of Romani Culture...
Kövesd Dániel kalandjait www.moravianlife.wordpress.com oldalon is!
