It's all about the stories, dear Watson

Getting a scholarship for doing storytelling work 24/7? Best. Thing. Ever.

Finally, after doing all kinds of stuff kind of simultaneously, I am in a place where it is my full-time job and responsibility to work on my storytelling. I read about it; I write about it; I discuss it with my classmates; I hear lectures about it; I go to see storytellers perform; and I perform myself. When I am not working on my stories, I am doing research for new ones. I have been raiding the library almost on a daily basis, and I turned the Interlibrary Loan system into Skynet. Long story short, I am having a field day. A two-semester long one.

My favorite part about storytelling work (right after being on stage, of course) is background research. I got that much out of the Archeology Master's. I found out that I immensely enjoy digging into a story and seeing where it came from, and who took it over from whom. Once I get started, time ceases to exist, and then it is two in the morning and my friends in Hungary are waking up, asking me why am I not in bed yet. It is kinda hart to explain. Here is what it would sound like:

Well, there is this story that I found, it is an Algerian folktale published in an English magazine in 2001. I have been looking for the original all over the place. Finally, after Googling and JSTORing my life away, I figured out that it is actually a Berber folktale, and has been published before in a French folktale collection in Paris, in the 1940's. Here comes the Skynet, someone must have that book in America too. And, lo and behold, they do. The firt loan request bounces with a huge red warning, "THIS BOOK IS IN FRENCH", so I have to do the whole order again, and tell Skynet that yeah, I kinda figured (Contes Algériens, Paris, 1940?... No sh*t, Sherlock.) Book comes in, and then comes a whole night of painfully slow translation, word by word, sentence by sentence, and all the previous sins of Google Translate are forgotten. I read enough French just to be able to tell if the translation is A.) correct or B.) fishy. Good enough.
Moving on. Comparing the translated version to the English, I notice significant differences that do not come from the translation (extra chapter, that kind of stuff). On we go to happily Googling and JSTORing our life away. The problem? The female hero's name is Aicha, kind of a common name in that part of the world, so in addition to the tale I am actually interested in, I end up with a whole bunch of other Berber folktales where the hero is called Aicha, Aisha, or Ayesha, and three of them are daughters of merchants, so no help there either (the whole title of the French version is Aicha, the merchant's daughter). Some of these tales are actually good, so I am not complaining, but I am obsessed with that one particular story. So.
Apart from searching for the name, I also search for all the other names and places in the story. The prince's name is not helping, he is called Aslan, I could Google that till the end of days and keep ending up in Narnia. The villain, on the other hand, is pretty unique (Horath), I do have a chance there. And I do. As soon as I turn of the Hungarian autocorrect (Horvath). You know those books on GoogleBooks that don't really have a preview, but if you search for a word in them, they show a two-line long snippet with that word? Well, I manage to find a footnote in one of these snippets referring to a name and half a title. Here we go. I find the name and the full citation. Old magazine, a hundred years old, in French, archives on the Internet, God bless the Internet. Searching French archives. That are in French. Searching in French. Found it.
This is the earliest version of the tale where I have gotten so far - 1916. But I do have some very interesting leads. One is that the story from the French book is actually a mosaic: only the first part was about Aicha, the later adventures belonged to other Berber heroes, and surprisingly enough those same stories were printed in the same newspaper. Whoever chose Aicha's tale for the book (that would be the author I guess), added the latter stories to Aicha's series of adventures, maybe to make it longer or more complete. Also, there is a point in the story where the wandering Aicha meets a mysterious stranger with scras on his face, who tells her a story about his escape from an island full of strange cannibals. Hey, I know that story. I know that guy. Aicha just met Sindbad the sailor... that opens a whole new thread of clues to go on!
And this is not all. To tell the story properly, I also need to read up on Berber folktales and culture. So, back to the library to dig. The story also has an ogre. Two hours worth of research later I figure out that 'ogre' is French for 'ghoul'. Here we go. Let's see what we know about ghouls.

At some point during this investigation (a fairly late point, but oh well) it also occurred to me to actually ask a storyteller who speaks Arabic. Wouldn't that just be so much easier?! So I went online and asked the other storytellers if they knew of someone. And so I got the name of an Algerian woman who is currently compiling a folktale collection about strong women stories... waiting for her to respond to my email now.

There is no solution to this investigation. No criminal, no original story. Not one clear answer. But if you keep following the clues, and walking the path back in time as it gets thinner and thinner and splits up into many smalles threads, if you keep your eyes and mind open to details... it will take you to places so far away in time and place you would have never even dreamed of. And when you return in the end, you will have one heck of a story to tell...

X-tellers, assemble!

(I'm so gonna get kicked around by the geeks for that title.)*

It really is like joining the X-men, in more ways than one. There is this huge, amazing setting that is the ETSU campus, this closed world of students and sciences and creativity. Then, there are our professors, gathering us from all the corners of the USA (or, in my case, the world), to help us nurture and develop the skills we already have, and teach us new tricks of the trade. We are all gifted in one way or another; we all come from very different backgrounds, religious, ethnic, family, language, age, all those details that make the handful of storytelling students colorful and unique. And our gifts are all different too; the stories, the telling styles, the tale of how we got here and the plans of where we are going, they are all different and fascinating. And together, we make a great team, and we have a mission: keeping storytelling alive and sharing it with the rest of the world. Even if many people do not understand why we are doing this at all.
With that said: first week of classes, and I am having the time of my life. It is not always easy, being an international student in America; many times locas students are just not entirely sure what to do with us, or how to talk to us, and it gets all kinds of awkward, or even lonely. Adjusting to a new culture and a new place, far away from everything and everyone you know is not easy, and even when you do, not everyone will be nice to you. You have to keep trying to find those groups, cliques, communities that just accept you as you are.
Good thing I came here to study storytelling.
Storytellers are a wonderful bunch of people. They are open-minded, kind, fun, and completely kick down the cultural boundaries. As I said, we have a passion in common, and that washes the initial awkwardness away. When I first walked into class, I was greeted with smiles and questions and stories, and I just felt like I belonged. No matter how strange and faraway this land is across the sea, storytellers are storytellers everywhere you go, and they will be there at the end of your journey to catch you.
Romantic images aside, I really do like my classmates. They are smart and fun, and as different from each other as you can possibly be, and as far I can tell now, we work perfectly together. I haven't felt this anticipation about going to class since... um. Sophomore year in college? I think I took some awesome course back then. Yep.
Anyhow. I am here, they are here, we are going to go through these two semesters together, and I am looking forward to it!
X-tellers, assemble!



*Just so you know, I could have gotten my references straight if I wanted to.

Back in Jonesborough

I have worked two years for this. Two. Years.
Actually, it might have been three.

After I returned to Hungary from my one-year trip that really, truly transformed me into a storyteller, everything I did with school and work was for making sure that I would come back here, sooner or later. Finished my degree in Archeology, graduated, applied for the Fulbright, worked my way through mountains of paperwork, found work to make money, practiced my storytelling and performed all over the place, got a job, got the Fulbright, more paperwork, administration, visa, and finally, here I am.
Of course it would not have happened without the help of a lot of amazing people who helped me thorugh all this work, and I will not thank all of them here because I don't want to sound like I am at the Oscars. They know who they are and they know how grateful I am.
Long story short: I have been accepted to the Storytelling Master's program at East Tennesse State University. More paperwork, traveling, moving in, jetlag, more jetlag, campus maps, orientations, I spent five days on the Johnson City campus and I was itching to finally break free. School is amazing, and ETSU is the best place to be; but I knew one that is even better.
On the Friday of my first week, I couldn't bear it anymore: I called for a cab (yeah, no wheels, European exchange student here) and headed straight to Jonesborough.
The driver was explaining to me she was not entirely sure where the "storytelling center" is; but when we turned the corner and I saw the Visitor's Center, I told her she could drop me off right there.
It was early afternoon; I arrived just in time for the Teller-In-Residence performance. It all felt suddenly real; three years just melted away as memories, smells, feelings came rushing back. I crossed the parking lot where the market used to be; only a few short weeks, and a huge tent will be standing there, a tent I must have shown to half the world on a photo to illustrate what a storytelling festival really is. I practically ran down the little alley between the parking lot and the main street; still cool, green, crowded with trinkets, smells of warm grass in the sun.
And then I burst into the light on the other side of the alley, and I was back in Jonesborough.
...
It felt like returning to Narnia. I can't really describe it any better than that. All the details I loved were still the same; the same shops, the same colors, the same smells. I must have looked like some crazy person, walking down the street with my eyes welling up and grinning like the Cheshire cat. My own personal little fairy tale world from three years ago was still the same. And I was back.
Arrived to the Storytelling Center just in time to say hi to everyone, pick up my ticket, and find a place in the auditorium. Then, I just sat, and let the memories wash over me.
The ISC still smells the same. When I used to work there, it had that really unique scent that probably came from some potpourri they sell at the gift shop; one whiff of the air inside was enough to take me back to the storytelling mood and the storytelling days. I sat in my seat and listened to the people murmuring around me and looked at the empty stage and remembered the evening when I was sitting up there telling Hungarain stories, feeling like the queen of the world.
And then the day's queen of the world appeared.
Dolores Hydock has been my instant favorite the moment I first heard her tell at the National Storytelling Festival; then, I met her again while I was an intern at the ISC; and now here she was in her own graceful, smiling self, and she noticed me across the room, and recognized me, and proceeded to introducing me to the audience which made me look not unlike a tomato with a sunburn and red hair, and then she hugged me. It was so good to see her again! She will be performing my two favorite stories at the Festival and I am going to be there to listen and if I have to break a leg and an arm to be there so be it.
Her performance of the day was a wonderful mixture of the life stories of a Southern lady and the story of how she collected those stories. I couldn't say which was more fascinating and more touching. All her words just in place, her face, posture and accent changing as she slipped in and out of character; her own humor and wit combined with those of the lady she was telling us about. The tales were full of references to American culture and people I don't know about; and still, even for me, the once-upon-a-time Southern lady turned into someone loveable and real.
After the performance and talking some more to the ISC staff and Jimmy Neil, I took a walk in Jonesborough. I wandered in and our of shops and up and down streets; and when I finally grew hungry, I went to the Cranberry Thistle.
Right after the ISC, the Thistle means the heart of Jonesborough to me. I used to have breakfast there, and sometimes lunch or an afternoon piece of delicious cake. I wandered in, and I felt right at home; there were no other guests, just the lovely ladies of the Thistle, so I got to sit wherever I wanted, got a big glass of lemonade, and a sandwich that could have fed an army for a week. I just sat there, listened to music, munched on my lunch, and felt completely happy.
I am back on campus now. This year will be mine, all mine, and I am going to enjoy it to the last second before they kick me out of the country. I will be in, around and all over Jonesborough; I am going to be there at ever storytelling event I can possibly reach in some way; I am going to contradance all my shoes to pieces, and I will learn as much about storytelling as I can get. I am going to drink deep from the well that is Jonesborough. And then I will be on my way again, just to beeline around and wonder back here again from time to time.
Every once in a while, one needs to return to Narnia.

(And thank God we have no mean old lion to tell us we are all grown up and cannot come back anymore! Take that, Aslan. Duh.)

Guadalajara 2011 - The tales of the Ocean Mouse

Yes, Ocean Mouse. Sea Mouse, more accurately. The pun took me almost three days to figure out, and it's a cute one, so I just had to share it with you all. 'Mar' is Spanish for sea, 'ratón' is Spanish for mouse. Hence, Maratón.

Of course, I am talking about the 2011 Maratón de Cuentos (Story Marathon) in Guadalajara, Spain.

My first storytelling festival experience was Jonesborough in 2007; ever since then, every storytelling event (including our own festival) I involuntarity compared to that one. And let me tell you, it is hard to measure up to Jonesborough. Not really in numbers or quality, or the tellers; not even tradition or fame. It was the unique feeling of a whole town living our of time in some fairy tale world for days and nights.
Guadalajara brought all those memories back, and more.

We arrived Friday afternoon, just after the Marathon started; Pep was nice enough to take me to my hotel to get rid of my luggage; after that, I was on my own to walk downtown and find the Palace.
It took me about half an hour, but it was worth it.
The closer I got to the Palace, the more people I saw; music floated above the palace gardens and the green labyrinth, and I saw all the colors of the rainbow on the walls. As I got closer, the crowd began to grow, and the music with it; and suddenly, I turned a corner, and there it was: banners, flags, colors and the marvelous old building of a palace filled with stories.
Maratón de Cuentos.







I wandered into the gardens first. They were filled with colorful little tents selling colorful little things; jewelry, dresses, trinkets. And of course under the colorful arches there were long tables filled with books. I dove into the thrill of the book-hunt (with what money I had left from the travels and Toledo) and spent a lot of time (I mean, a lot) wandering shiny-eyed and bushy-tailed along the tables, turning pages and admiring covers, and generally enjoying the fact that I understood what was written in them. I was finally surrounded by a crowd of Spanish-speaking people, and I loved it.
(Spanish was my second language in high school, and my mother used to teach it too; I grew to love this language when I was a kid, but I only visited Spain once before, and I was eight years old then)
I finally settled for buying one book (ONE!) - a collection of Spanish gypsy legends and tales, and wandered on. A little farther down the road by the green labyrinth there was another tent, with a sign that said Taller Cyrano - Poems and tales for measure. For one Euro, you could sit down and have a poem or a story written just for you on the spot. Of course I had to buy a story, how often do you get to buy stories tailored just for you?! So I sat, and talked to the nice guy wo sat at the table, and he wrote me a story (in Spanish!) and I paid for it with one Euro and a 200 Forint coin. We were both satisfied with the business. How awesome is that.

Finally, I wandered inside through the main gates, and walked right into the story.







What you are seeing now on the photos is the inside of the Palace, an open courtyard covered with a roof against the sun, filled with chairs and hundreds of people listening to tales. In the back, under the green tents, sat the artists who illustrated every story as they were being told, and hung the pictures on the walls for veryone to see!



I grew to love this idea during the Marathon. Every time I walked along the long rows of pictures, I admired how beautiful they were, and tried to guess the stories they illustrated. It was great fun, and a beautiful addition to the lively colors of the festival.

So, I sat down, and listened. I spent a long time listening, drinking in the language and the stories from the ever-flowing fountain. The Marathon is really what its name suggests: non-stop storytelling for three days in a row, day and night.

Around ten o'clock at night (still not dark outside) I joined the other storytellers who came with us from Toledo to the marathon. We met outside the Palace, and talked, and laughed, and then the local tellers and the organizers of the festivals took us upstairs to the balcony for a welcome dinner. It was amazing; we stood on the balcony above the crowd and the colorful tents, watched the sky turnd dark, watched the swallows flying in great numbers, nibbled at stawberries, cherries and cookies, talked and laughed, drank champagne, and listened to the music from below (in th gardens, simultaneously with the Marathon, there was a marathon of music going on. Inside the palace, not a note could be heard, but outside it was magic)

Once dinner was over, we all returned to the inside court to wait for our turn in the telling, which, according to the program, was about to happen at 3 in the morning. So we wrapped ourselves in blankets, sleeping bags, and some of us even in banners and pieces of courtains, warmed our fingers on cups of boiled wine and listened to the tales.
We had audience all night. Even if most of the people went home, after midnight we still had about fourty or fifty people listening to our tales. I almost fell asleep once or twice, but when the FEST tellers started telling, I felt awake again. I told my tale around 5 in the morning, in Spanish (try telling on stange in your second foreign language... I would love to hear what I said, but the audience seemed to like it). My first official Spanish telling. It was fun :)
I waited till the sun came up before I walked back to the hotel to sleep. I woke up at 3 in the afternoon, got dressed, and walked back to the Palace. This was enough to mess up my perception of time; from that on (well, even from before that) the whole three days in Guadalajara felt like being out of time. Days, nights, light, dark, it didn't really matter; I slept and I woke randomly, I listened to enought stories to last a lifetime, I laughed, I cried, I wandered in the city, I ate when I felt like it, I hung out with other tellers, some of them disappeared and some stayed, and it was all very colorful, and very exciting, and magical.

The whole city was full of story people. They were eithr storytellers, or friends of storytellers, or listeners, or writers, or musicians, or just tourists who wandered into the city and got trapped in the Marathon like flies in honey. We couldn't walk ten meters down the street without meeting someone one of us knew; we always found each other at the oddest places (I ran into Birgit and Brendan in an alley at an open bazaar once).
And then, all of a sudden, after a century or two, we were in the courtyard again, and colorín colorado, the Marathon was over.
So, we danced.

We danced to the music under the yellow-red-orange banners that hung low from the ceiling; we waltzed and polkaed (however you spell it) and danced in circles, and laughed, and spun, and had a great time while the decorations of the festival were already coming down around us. We went to have dinner together, courtesy of our generous hosts and the festival's organizers; and by the time we returned to the palace, the square was empy, the banners gone, and not a soul wandering around in the garden.

It felt like a fairy market; for three days and nights, it was there, filled with magic and colors and laughter; and suddenly, it was gone with the light of the day. It left the same sweet heartache behind, the same exhausted happiness and memories like trapped butterflies. One could only sit in a quiet park, smell the freshly printed pages of the book of tales, and make a quiet promise - see you all next year...

FEST 2011 - Jeux Sans Frontières

More than half a hundred storytellers gathered in a haunted castle in Spain to share ideas, news and stories for three days and as many nights before they scattered again in every direction of the compass.
Sounds like a fairy tale?
You bet.
(Also, 'castles in Spain'. I learned that from Orlando Furioso. The air castles of Spain, held together by spells and dreams, and occasionally a hyppogriff. How freakin' cool is that.)

It was the fourth annual meeting of the Federation for European Storytelling. In Spain. More specifically, in Toledo. Even more specifically, the thousand-year-old castle of San Servador, complete with its very own five-hundred-year-old ghost (that has already been exorcised at least once).
There was no way I would have stayed away from that.

I set out by plane on a rainy Tuesday morning from Budapest to Madrid, and I realized once again how much I love to travel. Especially by plane. Not like I am not afraid of a crash, but the whole experience makes me feel excited and comfortable at the same time. Terminals are easy. They tell you exactly where to go, and what to do, and they are usually clean (at least the ones I've been to), and full of interesting things and people. From the moment you walk in the airport gates all through to the gates of your destination, you are somewhere else. Outside of time. In-between. No everyday problems, no worries. Just... traveling.
(Annnd yes, I'm an Eshu, thank you to all of you who asked ;))

So, as I said, I set out from Budapest to Madrid. I was prepared to tell in Spanish; the tale I brought, translated and practiced, was the Hungarian folktale of The Boy who wanted to walk on the clouds. And now that I could see the clouds from above, I started to understand why. From below, clouds are just puffy white and grey things in the sky; but from above, they are their very own realm. The Cloud Kingdoms. There are valleys and mountains, islands and great white seas, cities with towers and walls, ships that sail the endless blue, and flocks of tiny white sheep. I spent three ours staring at them with my nose pressed against the glass. Not like it has been the first time I flew. But with the story fresh and rehearsed, it suddenly made all the sense in the world.

In Madrid, I got a brief taste of the 10+ metro lines from the airport to the railway station, and a little bit of the pouring rain, before I was on the train and on my way to Toledo. In the meantime, I found an unlikely travel companion in the one and only Giacomo Casanova, whose travel journal of Spain proved to be an amusing read on the long plane and train ride.
When I arrived to the most beautiful train station I have ever seen, the rain was still pouring. I walked around the castle hill, and up some steps; and suddenly, there it was, Toledo on the other side of the Tajo, with a great ridge in-between, and the sight was so beautiful I had to stop and stare. I climbed up the hillside, carrying my backpack with wild ducks circling above, and stood on top of the road, staring at the city and the river and the bridges, laughing.










San Servador is old, and cozy, and beautiful, everything one can wish a castle to be. And it was already starting to fill up with storytellers. Pep was there, with some of the other Spanish organizers, and I knew everything in the world was all right. I found my room, and a roommate from Austria called Karin, all smiling eyes and colorful clothes. And then other people started to arrive. Martin from England (big hug and laughing), the Italians (Paola, Davide and Giovanna, long time no see, and a lot of smiles), and other storytellers, one after another, some of them I knew and some of them were new. And then suddenly Birgit and Tone were there too, and the conference has begun.

When you have 50+ storytellers in one place (which usually puts 'herding cats' into a new perspective), speaking more than a dozen different languages, it is always confusing in the beginning. But our steering group did a great job keeping the program together as we introduced ourselves, and laughed, and slowly figured out who spoke what. That is one great thing about international storytelling: most of us speak 2+ languages, and then it is just a matter of time to figure out who can help you speak to whom. And by the end of the week, we even spoke in languages we have never heard before, and every once in a while I found myself wondering which language I have been using a moment ago... our hosts compared the whole experience to Babel, and I liked the idea. Many many languages, working together, trying to reach the sky. The book got it all wrong.





Once the introductions were over, it was time for some short presentations; first, the FEST babies, those projects and organizations that were born from the inspiration of FEST meetings in the past. One was FIST, the new organization of Italian storytellers, and the other one was our very own HOLNEMVOLT Festival. I was proud like a mother.
After the presentations, Abbi Patrix told us the tale of FEST; some of us have heard it before, but there were new details to it now, like to any good story, and it was good to hear it again, to remind us where we started.


After the presentations, we had dinner; by that time, the rain stopped, and a rainbow appeared over San Servador. This settled out program for the evening: after dinner, we all gathered and walked down the hillside to the bridge, to cross over the river and visit the magnificent city of Toledo.
A nighttime walking tour.
The city was ours; we barely ever saw anyone as we walked down streets, through narrow alleys and under great old buildings, following our guide who told us the story of Toledo. I think we must have spent about three hours wandering around, amazed by the city in the dark, the shadows around the cathedral, the moon above the main square, the gates and massive walls and cobblestones and tiny little balconies. It was great fun, doing that tour with other storytellers. I did not envy the guide, but we had so much to talk about... and at night, it felt like the whole of Toledo belonged to us, and there was no one else within the walls.

It was very late by the time we got back to San Servador; after a whole day of traveling and all the new things and the excitement, I fell into bed as I was. And the conference had just begun.

After the first day of the conference, three more followed; we had a lot to talk about. There were panel discussions of different topics; I participated in Young storytellers, Multilingual experiences, and Repertoire. In Young Storytellers, I learned about storytelling education in other countries; how the new tellers are taught, through mentors or in schools, where they practice and how. It was all very useful and fascinating, especially since I am trying to help two other young Hungarian tellers (see below), and also because I only have 2 months left before I return to the USA to start the Storytelling MA program at ETSU. (Yay!)
Multilingual experiences was equally interesting; as a group I have described above, we needed to talk about solutions to multilingual telling, which includes telling to audiences with a different native language, and also telling with other tellers, translation or tandem. There were a lot of fascinating ideas for tandem telling, and we all agreed that languages are essential in our work, and also in promoting the art of storytelling. Everyone should be able to tell in their own language, but it is also important to speak at least one other, to make international telling easier. And of course, the more the merrier.
Repertoire was mainly about what kind of stories we tell, and how we work with them. Patricia McGill had a lovely image for that: she said picking stories is like buying shoes. There are the ones that are comfortable enough to wear for years; and there are some beautiful ones you just have to have, even if they hurt your feet for a long time before you break them in. And sometimes you just need to run into a shop and buy one out of necessity, and that's okay too.







Apart from panel discussions, we also had group meetings. One for festival organizers, which was extremely useful for me (our festival is still a baby, while others are already teenagers, or even grown-ups). I took pages and pages of notes of useful ideas and creative tidbits about making a storytelling festival successful. And there were a lot to them to learn from. Hakaya, Maratón de Cuentos, ZauberWort, Raccontamiunastoria, Beyond the Border, Festival on the Edge... it would be a long list, if I listed them all. But they all had good things to say, and I was happy to be part of the group.
We also had meetings about FEST itself, trying to figure out what to do to make it more visible, to promote storytelling, to create a website, a newsletter... there were a lot of ideas, and we invented the wheel more than once, but there were things to be said, and in this huge Game Without Borders, we all had to be on the same page. Our greatest fear was that between the annual meetings (Belgium next year, Rome after that, and then Sweden) nothing would happen. But everyone seemed very determined to continue active projects in-between, so we had all the hopes in the world. We'll see.

On the last day of the conference, we even sketched out an international all-European storytelling project for the 2012 Grimm year. It is called Project Grimm, and includes dozens of tellers all telling Grimm tales in their own languages, styles and versions. I am currently coordinating the project. Fun fun fun!

And of course, we had fun. While the festival organizers worked, those who do not have a festival had creative labs, and in two days they created five multilingual story performances, one better than the other. Thursday evening we all walked into Toledo once again, to the baroque theater, to watch the show. One group after another walked on stage and told us stories, and with the abundance of languages they used, all the stories were great, and the performances enjoyable, full of fun ideas for translation and interpretation.









We even had a Mini Film Fest, where we watched videos and slide shows of various storytelling events and programs of the past year. It was nice to see the photos from Raccontamiunastoria, the amazing DVD from Hakaya, and I even presented a short music video myself, cut from the videos made at Holnemvolt. Once the music is legal, I will post it online as well...

Anyhow, a lot more happened in four days than one would believe; it felt like a year, or more, some reverse fairy tale where one thinks she spent a year in the other world, and comes back to find out nothing has changed. Not that I mind.

We are all very different, us storytellers. It is a unique European experience, having so many cultures and so many languages in one place. (Just for the record: Spain, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Italy, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Greece, Sweden, Norway, Canada, Israel, Jordan, Chile, Mexico... I must have left one or two out...) We have ideas, and festivals, and a lot of stories; sometimes we invent wheels enough to supply a car factory, but most of the time, we get along just fine. Storytelling builds long and strong bridges from one culture to another, and even when we are tired and confused and don't always understand every word, we always find our way back in the end. It is a great honor to be a part of such a great group of people; to listen to the tales, and share the news the old way: traveling, listening, telling.

And here ends the conference, but not the tale.

The Oriole, the Cloudwalker, and the Multicolored Lady

The first storytelling guild in Hungary!!!

In the aftermath of TEDxYouth and the Holnemvolt Festival, quite a few people approached me to ask about storytelling, and some of them were even interested in telling tales themselves. They were eager to learn, and excited, and fun to talk to. Some of them I met more than once, others just sent an e-mail or two; but all of them were interesting and talented and it made me happy to see storytelling is indeed increasingly popular in Hungary, and that I can be a part of this change.
In the end, two people decided to try their hands at being a professional storyteller. Both of them I knew before for their other talents; I knew they would make good tellers. And so they did. Now when I am writing this post they are both past their first gigs, and we are having a lot of fun together as a storytelling guild. I cannot even begin to tell you how excited and happy I am!

Allow me to introduce the new storytellers:

Júlia Lovranits, a.k.a. Rigó (which is Hungarian for oriole or blackbird)

I met her in a summer camp organized for young writers and poets back when we were both in high school. She is a writer, and also now a Biology major at the university; she has been a birdwatcher since she was a child, and she knows everything there is to know about birds. No, really. Everything. In her spare time, she is a member of BirdLife Hungary, and a volunteer at a hospital for wild birds. She has always loved stories and tales, and she kept showing up at most of my gigs; she is a marvelous listener, and also collects stories wherever she goes. Not she decided it was time to tell them.
Juli specializes is bird tales, legends and myths, and she combines them with interesting and important pieces information. Into a Bulgarian folktale about storks, she wove the tale of their long migration from Europe and Africa, and even the stories of real storks who were somehow strange or amazing (there was one that came home from Africa with a spear in its body, and raised its young and lived on; and there is one in Hungary who came here from Spain and ever since then he does not migrate at all). She is graceful and cheerful, and she always has a spark in her eyes when she talks about birds.

Viktor Gy. Fekete, a.k.a. Felhőtlépő (which would roughly tranlsate into Cloudwalker)

He is the one who made the homepage and graphic design of the Holnemvolt Festival. He writes, he sings, he composes poems and music, he is a graphic artist and a webdesigner, and he studies at the Lutheran Theological University. Also, he now tells stories. He prefers improvising to traditional tales; he can make up the most amazing and funny stories on the spot, and you never know what to expect when you listen to him. He has a great sense of humor, and he is surprisingly good with young audiences. And have I mentioned the guitar?
(He also has a homepage)

I am proud and happy to be working with tellers like Juli and Viktor. I hope our performances and tales will encourage others to explore storytelling, and then the guild will grow into something wonderful...



(This is us, dealing with a gig at an open-air festival. We may look tired, but believe me, it was great fun! :))

Paul Bunyan visits Hungary

I have been planning on telling Paul Bunyan stories ever since I first met Babe the Blue Ox in the Fables comics (where, by the way, he totally steals the spotlight). This was entirely new for me, the whole giant lumberjack thing, so I looked up the tales on the Internet, and I enjoyed reading them immensely. I decided that I should tell them, sooner or later; sooner didn't quite work out, because I was busy with other things, but later finally came along, and I decided to give it a try.
Of course, I asked many American tellers about Paul Bunyan stories and how to tell them; I received tons of good advice, and many tales, and encouragement. I prepared by reading a lot, planning on telling the tales that stuck.
My audience consisted of two classes of second graders; they were lively, and cheerful, and very curious. I traveled from Budapest to a small town called Perkáta, in the bright spring sunshine, watching magpies and hawks fly along with the bus.
I was curious how Hungarian kids will receive Paul Bunyan. I had no clue if they would be interested, or if they would get the joke. But I found that they did not only get it, but they also loved it, and they cheered and laughed all through the whole telling. It was an unbelievable success.
I drew a few conclusions:

1. Telling tall tales is fun. I haven't really tried that before, I though it wasn't really my style, but once I started telling it felt good and I went a little crazy, with funny faces, big gestures and all. I also managed to be fairly serious when I wanted them to believe something. Hungarian kids are kind of used to tall tales; they are very popular in Hungary.
2. I started with a short introduction in the first person, telling them how I traveled to the USA and how everyone knows Paul Bunyan there, and not knowing him would be just like not knowing who King Mátyás is. They laughed. They understood what I meant.
3. They believed every word I said. I told them it was a long time ago and far far away, but other than that, I did not discuss with them what was real and what was not. At the end of the telling, one little girl raised her hand. "The only thing that sounded strange to me was, I mean, why five storks?..."
(The only thing that sounded strange. Go figure XD)
4. There were really no elements in the tales that needed explanation. Hungarian kids are pretty well trained in country life (both from our own folktales, and some experience), so such things as cutting wood, making dairy products or farm life in general didn't need to be explained, they just went with the story. And the giant mosquitoes were familiar, we have stories like that in Hungary, we even have a song ("I caught a mosquito, bigger than a horse..."). Maybe next time I'll put the song into the story...

All in all, it was great fun :)