The Bridge Guard - Part 1 - Flying.

Well, two days in and I don't know where to begin. For those of you not familiar with my current surroundings a short intro.

I am in a town called Štúrovo, it's in Slovakia. There's a bridge, Mária Valéria that crosses the Danube river to Esztergom in Hungary. The idea of the residency is that people are invited from all over the world to make work that responds to the bridge and it's history through living locally for three or six months. The title of the residency is Bridge Guard and I have only just figured out that they didn't mean literally guarding it, although I could if I wanted to! The idea is to keep the bridge as the focal point to the work you make whilst here. This is to be interpreted however you want. Therefor the bridge lives on in the minds of the visiting artists and the links they make and also the readers of blogs such as this. It becomes part of a wider reaching story.

"In the year 2001 the Mária Valéria bridge between Štúrovo (Slovakia) and Esztergom (Hungary) was reopened. During its history, this bridge was destroyed and unusable for a longer time than it was actually connecting the two towns. The bridge’s stubs kept the memory of the second World War alive for 57 years.

This was the second destruction of the bridge built in 1895. Already between 1919 and 1926 it was out of service.

The rebuilt bridge deserves to be saved from further destruction by people. To this aim, mental protection is more important than physical protection. As long as the mental connection between people is intact, the bridge is not endangered."

http://www.bridgeguard.org/en/project/

So, history bit done - it is fascinating I just know with my limited knowledge at this stage and rubbish ability to recall never mind rewrite facts and dates this blog is going to be a more personal account of my time here.

So...deep breadth - here goes ;-)

I arrived at around 11pm on Sunday 30th September after an interesting journey from Budapest! After working out a route to Esztegom and showing it to the guy at the airport he pretty much tore it up and said don't do that go this much more complicated way. To be fair, if it had of been daytime and I hadn't of had so much to carry it would've been OK. But, it was dark and I did have the stupidest heaviest bags to carry! At the final bus station, Arpad hid, there was no staff and I ended up asking some cleaners to help me - after about 20 minutes they got me a ticket to the correct place, I don't speak Hungarian and they didn't speak English, but we got there in the end and they were very friendly. 

I fell asleep on the bus and woke up in Esztergom! I was so relieved when the man approaching me with a big white beard resembling Father Christmas was in fact Karol, the boss. I then met Sandra, the current bridge guard and we headed back to the apartment. I was so tired and relieved that I didn't really notice where we were driving, plus it was really dark but I caught my first glimpse of the bridge and was really impressed, it was all lit up and looked, well...triumphant! After an hour or so of chat and an omelette everyone went to bed. I didn't sleep too well, all the strangeness and curious noises of a new place kept nudging me out of my sleep.

The next morning there was a brief chat to Sandra before she headed off back to Berlin and Karol was going back to Switzerland. I was sorry both of them were going so soon as I liked them! I was briefly introduced to Guri (George), who said he'd be back at 6pm. It was then 10am and I thought OK, hmmmm, what do I do now? I walked around the gigantic apartment and felt a little lost to be honest. After a few moments of feeling a crisis of confidence creep up on me decided to get out for a walk. I couldn't quite get my head around anything and my mind darted off in crazy directions as certain buildings/words/people/architecture reminded me of other places varying wildly between Mexico, particularly San Cristobal, a tiny town in the US I once stayed in years ago called Towanda which then led to a pondering of Huck Finn whilst looking over the Danube river. My geographical clock was all over the place.

I was really impressed by the bridge and my first impressions of Esztergom were very good. I was brave and ordered a beer at one of the cafes besides the river, and took a picture of it. Look...

Maria Valeria Bridge

A beer in Esztergom, think it was about 70p

Esztergom Bazilika

My new front door (with workies)

view back to Slovakia from Hungary

I got back to the apartment and Guri turned up, he said we were going to his families house, I said OK! I then spent the evening with Guri and his wife Sophie, it was so good as I'd felt uneasy and out of sorts all day and they put me at ease. We had locally made bor (wine) and talked about music, politics and their trip to England to visit their kids. A great end to a very wobbly day.

Day two started so much better, I felt more confident and looking forward to the day. I pottered around the flat, have I said how massive it is!? So much so I haven't quite settled in one particular room yet, still haven't unpacked either. Anyway, Guri came around and we went to get a Slovakian sim card, we also had some good coffee and strudel. Good stuff. By chance we bumped into a photographer from a nearby village who happened to be having a show in a gallery two minutes away, this led to meeting a journalist from a Slovakian newspaper who asked if she could interview me sometime. The photographer guy invited us to come around soon and have fish and drink wine. Hurrah, I said. I liked today.

One of the best discoveries of the day was seeing Martin Skrtel on the front of the newspaper here, this made me really happy!

"Skrtel to blow away: finally"

"Finally"

I've just burnt my dinner writing this...I shall be back in a few days.