It has been a month since I came back from Venice. During last four weeks I have been listening to 30 GB of sound material and backing it up on my cloud storage. It sounds so ephemeral but it gives, so much reassurance. This 30 GB has become the most precious of my possessions and I feel that I am so not ready to loose it. The last few weeks gave me an opportunity to reflect on the project
and the journey itself. Many times I thought how different this journey could be if it took place 23 years ago before the collapse of communism. During our journey we crossed and recrossed, what had once been the Iron Curtain 3 times and our passports were not even checked once. All the countries, which we travelled through, are under the Schengen treaty, which allows free unrestricted travel in the countries of EU who are signatories to the treaty. There is no passport check on the
train, you only realised that you moved from one country to another when the language changes. The language defines the geographical location and acts as a point of orientation. The borders of Europe
have changed so much in recent history but the national and ethnic identities are still strong even in this globalised era.
I am fascinated by the recording of conversations on streets and
stations, which I can barely understand but I can tune to the unique melody of the speech sounds. I almost became obsessed with the sound of announcements in the reverberated acoustics of the train station. My favourite train station and the voice of the announcer at the moment are in Brno and Trieste. Please listen, I hope you will also fall in love with these sounds … I have made the first edits for all the cities that I have visited so far. At the moment these are samples of only a few minutes each but you can be listen to them on the website which has been put together especially
for this project: www.krakowtovenicein12h.com
