Summer update

I think it is really time for an update, as quite a lot has happened since my last post almost three months ago. Back in May we held the semi-traditional Camphill Blair Drummond reunion for friends we used to work together with in Scotland many years ago. In spite of months of tedious preparations, this time only Jiyeon turned up in the end.

But we had a lot of fun nevertheless, hanging out in Kunsten, the local art gallery,


meeting up with Katrine, another old friend from Scotland in Århus.

After Jiyeon left, l got really busy in order to conclude the first two years of my PhD contract in time. I literally managed it the last hour, so I got permission and funding to continue with Part B. This means another two years of job security and a handsome pay rise. Ane got promoted at the social work office where she works. From 1 August she becomes an internal adviser, supporting and training her colleagues, many of whom are quite new on the job. This is a new position, tailor-made for her. The change also means that she no longer will have direct contact with service users, which should make her working life a little less stressful - at least in theory.

As for Tristan, he is developing at a breakneck pace. He is still as inquisitive as a cat, and soaks up all impressions like a sponge. We really need to be careful what we show him, as he immediately tries out everything from changing light bulbs to watering plants or driving the car. Since May he has a day carer we all are very happy with. He simply loves being together with her and the three other kids she looks after, and also we feel very confident that he is in very good hands. Besides, his new place is just a few steps away from both where Ane works and from the railway station, which is very convenient for us.

Tristan can now say about 6-10 words. His vocabulary includes dad (both in Hungarian and Danish), car (also in both languages), mum (in Hungarian) and various greetings. His favorite word is mere ('more' in Danish), which is accompanied with heavy gesturing when he wants to get hold of something. His verbal comprehension is also excellent in both languages, although, curiously, still excludes all terms for no and don't. He is simply crazy about animals, and totally fearless when together with them, as seen in this video. He also has a keen interest in motorbikes, which he definitely hasn't inherited from me.

As usual, so far our summer has largely consisted of the usual mixture of various family functions and visits. This time also my mother made it here and helped out with looking after Tristan while his carer was on holiday. Ane has been working in June and July, apart from a week's holiday which we spent at the Danish east coast. But on the 8th August we're going abroad for a week. Originally we were planning to re-visit Scotland after almost 8 years, but we figured that Tristan wouldn't get much out of long hikes in the highlands (possibly in torrential rain) and extended car-trips. So Scotland will have to wait another year. Instead, we chose Malta, as a (hopefully) ideal place for both Tristan and his parents. He will enjoy the sea and the sand, and there are plenty of picturesque historical sights for us to visit, not to mention the Mediterranean kitchen we both are quite fond of. The apparent downside is that the place is really short of trees - but we'll just have to put up with that. We rented a three-room, 70-square meter bungalow in the celebrated "Danish village " (aka. the Mellieha Holiday Center) in Mellieha. I'll write about how we found it all in my next entry.

The great amber-hunt

We have Ane’s mum Inge visiting at the moment. Tristan and I went to pick her up at the airport last Thursday, and I took a few shots while we were waiting. Here are two of them.

Gomorra

It is amazing what a difference the presence of a grandmother can suddenly make in one’s life. I can make dinner or wash up without a 20-pound child hanging around my neck, the laundry gets hanged up in the basement before it dries inside the washing machine and it is even possibly to steal away for half an hour to check emails or write a blog entry. Inge even offered to do a bit of baby sitting so that Ane and I could get to the cinema - only the second time since Tristan was born. We saw Gomorra, the Italian Mafia / Camorra movie everyone's talking about and which harvested all the major prizes at the European Film Awards a few weeks ago. The film was great; really harsh and completely lacking the cheesy gangster romantics and glamor that Hollywood normally throws over the subject. It really shows you the vast devastation across the whole society that this type of criminality can cause. I particularly liked the cinematography: hand-held cameras, lots of focus-shifts, really dark scenes among the desolate semi-ruins of the Naples housing estate, which is really made to look like the worst place to live on earth (which it probably is).

Winter, at last

Yesterday we had the first (and possibly last) real winter day of the season. When we woke up, the town was covered in an inch of snow, and later it turn out to be the most beautiful day with sunshine, only temporarily disrupted by liberal scattering of picturesque clouds. Inge and I took the opportunity to drive to Lyngså on the east coast to look for amber on the beach.

Amber

Finding amber is not easy. It requires patience, luck, and, according to a common Danish belief, a special sense that one acquires only by starting out as a child. Some would even claim that being a great amber-hunter runs in the family – but I’d rather not get into that. Since the likelihood of finding amber on the housing estate in Hungary where I grew up was extremely slim, I will probably never make it in the amber-hunting trade. My record so far is nothing to brag about: over the years I think I’ve found about five pieces in all – although two of them were rather large, earning me 10 minutes fame and admiration in the family.

To be honest, finding amber is not something that gets me going. I just don’t see the fun in strolling along the beach at a snail’s pace, bent forward, steering at the sand and poking it from time to time with a stick (see below). For me the point of being by the sea is actually watching the waves, the sky, the dunes, the birds, and, possibly, the female sunbathers (who were regrettably very scarce this February morning).

Apart from luck, patience, that special sense and possibly the genetic component, it also helps if there is actually amber on the beach. This is most likely after a proper storm, when the waves throw up pieces of various sizes onto the beach. As the weather had been rather dull earlier, we didn’t find anything apart from a relatively small piece. A rather meager harvest after a day’s work, you might say – but the sun, the sea, the silence and the total luck of people made it absolutely worthwhile – in spite of the lacking topless sunbathers.

More pictures here.

Quiet days

A few quiet, uneventful days, at last. Our holiday in the States is now a distant (but very nice) memory, as we have long readjusted to our daily life in Denmark. The weather here is also back to its usual dullness that is characteristic of this time of year. We haven’t experienced any of those winter storms that from time to time hit the west coast with ferocious force, flooding low-lying areas and causing general havoc. So far this winter has just been wet, gray and windy. How we sometimes long for the deep snow of Wisconsin! At least the days are getting perceivably longer.

The greatest recent news is that Tristan has learned to walk! He took his first real steps in Madison. For some reason in the beginning he felt most sure walking barefoot, holding something in his hand But these restrictions don’t apply any more, and now he can even change direction and turn around without falling – most of the time.



Having mastered this advanced form of locomotion, he is now clearly getting ready to speak. In his babbling I can distinguish the distinct intonation patterns of his two languages. We really wonder what his first word will be. An interesting question in this respect is whether what we normally consider first words are really words or perhaps something else? Many linguists would say that these are in reality not words but mini-sentences or “holistic utterances”. This is because they seem to have a wide range of partially related meanings, only some of which are covered by the same word in the adult word. Thus the “word” apple may mean anything from ‘give me the apple’ to ‘I want to give the apple to daddy’ to ‘it looks like an apple’. (In the last sense, of course it can be applied to oranges, tennis balls and a myriad other things.) The other reason why we can’t really talk about words is that these utterances typically have the intonation patterns of short sentences. For example, apple, when applied in the sense ‘where is the apple?’, would have the rising-falling prosody of English questions.

Anyway, Tristan is not quite at this stage yet, although in some sense he already has a single “word”: mamama. It meets two of the three criteria typically applied to first words: it has a fairly clear and stable meaning: ‘give it to me NOW; 'I want it bad and I can’t wait' ('it' being mostly, but not exclusively food) and a very stable pronunciation. Only the third criterion is lacking: it doesn’t sound like anything with a similar meaning in Danish or Hungarian. But I’m sure he will soon be more explicit than that.


Anyway, what else is new since my last post? Tristan had his second haircut yesterday and it did not go quite as smoothly as the first time. I think the procedure of being installed in a high chair and having a comparative stranger fiddle around his ear reminded him too much of his recent traumatic visits to the ear specialist. But after some crying the result was excellent, and he looks quite cheeky with his new, trimmed looks.

In the Zoo

Last Sunday we took Tristan to the local Zoo for the first time. It was an interesting experience for us from the point of view of child development. He got very quiet and contemplative, not showing any overt sign of interest or excitement, though he clearly soaked every impression in.

The thing with small kids is that one can never be sure what catches their attention. This time all the animals were in top form. Anna, the huge orangutan (picture) was doing her bits about a yard from us, the baby chimps were playing like crazy, the penguins were feeding noisily, but the only thing that got Tristan really agitated was a plain domestic cat walking by.

Another example of the same thing is from Saturday, when we went to a toy shop to get some new toys for Tristan. After what to me felt like several hours of careful searching we selected three pieces of the best and most educational pieces ever produced. On the way out, as kind of an afterthought, Ane threw a cheap plastic toy mobile phone into our cart. Well, try and guess which one of the four toys has enjoyed Tristan's undivided attention ever since we got home?

Back to the zoo: we also visited the petting zoo, where Tristan very nearly managed to tear off a baby goat's ear. He does the same to me from time to time (although, strangely, never to Ane) and it is really not much fun for the victim. At least the poor goat didn't wear glasses.

We finished the trip in the cafeteria. Much good can be said about Aalborg Zoo. It was the world's first ecological zoo, the animals have reasonably decent living conditions, their educational displays are first class - but the food is simply appalling. The worst kind of junk, without a trace of anything green and healthy. This did not trouble Tristan, though who really enjoyed eating Ane's French fries with a BIG fork.

Århus University - the first 80 years

Århus University, where I work, celebrates its 80th birthday this months. Back in the 1920s several Danish towns in Jutland were competing for the right to host the country's second university. Århus triumphed, and in September 1928 the first 64 students began their studies under the guidance of 5 permanent lecturers.

The first year conditions were somewhat rough. The university had no buildings yet, so teaching took place in rented rooms, and the budget was a very modest 33000 DKK, provided by the town council. Later the city of Århus and the Danish government agreed that the state would be financing the administration of the university, while the municipality was responsible for raising funds for building expenses.

The building of the university campus began in the 1930's, and to a large extent was financed by private donations. The uniform yellow brick buildings, designed by the local architects Kay Fisker, C.F. Møller and Povl Stegmann, are gathered in and around the picturesque University Park. The hills, ponds and old trees of the park provide a very atmospheric backdrop to academic work. (Click on the pictures for larger size.)

Currently the university has 35 000 students and 8500 staff, and its annual budget is 4,5 milliard DKK. Among its students were Queen Margrethe II, who studied political science and archaeology, and her son, crown prince Frederik, who got his MA here in political science.

I work at the Linguistics department in one of the old buildings at the northern edge of the park:

Our department in the evening:

My office, which I share with a young Polish linguist. My desk is the one in the foreground:

My 'roommate' Kamila:

The university's central building, with the Main Hall. Our building is right behind, on the right:

The Main Hall:

The view from my window, overlooking the University Park:

In the first picture: the University's logo. For further details on the history of Århus University see here.