The Dance of the Cranes
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This was in my city about two weeks ago on a big construction site
[flash=540,400:3mus3r33]http://www.youtube.com/v/bTQW4y0qX8E&hl=en_US&fs=1&[/flash:3mus3r33]
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The cranes and Ravel´s Bolero - weird combination, but very impressive indeed.
And what is going on at the construction site? Is this the grand opening of some kind ? -
Well, that 13 November was the anniversary that Pécs got the status of being the European Capital of Culture for 2010. Those sites are where the big constructions are now for next year. (Too big IMO but that's not the point of this video of course)
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Congratulations! And what are the 2010 programmes?
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I'm afraid even the organiser do not know
No, seriously, here is their home page - find what you can.
(There is always a very big amount of scepticism in my nation about anything that turns out great elsewhere)
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Thanks for the link.
@gaieus said:
(There is always a very big amount of scepticism in my nation about anything that turns out great elsewhere)
Yeah, tell me about it...
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Congratulations Gaieus!
I am certain that your city will have quite a number of Finns speaking a funny dialect visiting - in 2011 Pécs will be succeeded by Turku in the western Finland. I wonder if they have a clue what they are going to do about it either.
Anssi
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We have Lahti as a sister city and the relationship is actually quite active in many things.
Turku is quite Swedish, isn't it?
Pécs had this big "advantage" during tendering that it's a kind of multicultural city with (I think) eight registered national minority self governments - including German - and a lot of Turkish relics from the Ottoman Empire.
Now if you consider that Essen and Istanbul will be partners, this places Pécs right in the hub of these relationships.
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@gaieus said:
We have Lahti as a sister city and the relationship is actually quite active in many things.
Turku is quite Swedish, isn't it?
I visit Lahti quite often, as I have an ongoing project there.
Turku is proportionally much less Swedish than my home town Porvoo. Swedish overall (in Finland)is a bit receding, with mixed marriages and such things. I think today Porvoo is about 25-30% Swedish, when I first visited here as a child, it had a strong Swedish majority. My late farher was born in 1910, and when he was a child, Helsinki was still largely a Swedish-speaking town, nowadays it is, I think, down to about 5% there.
Anssi
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@gaieus said:
Pécs had this big "advantage" during tendering that it's a kind of multicultural city
Is it a good thing or a bad thing for a city to be multicultural?
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I guess, in this case, it was an advantage as the EU wants to emphasise its multicultural "identity" (unlike the US where the "melting pot to be one nation" theory is stronger).
@Anssi - it seems to be a kind of natural phenomenon and process that national minorities assimilate. And as our culture is becoming more and more globalised, mobile and urban, it is speeding up.
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Thanks for your reply.
I was just curious to see if this was the "advantage" or the
real advantage in your personal opinion (it was not my intention to start a discussion about multiculturality vs. assimilation whatsoever). -
Well, I guess it was "one of the advantages" - or maybe more exactly the one Pécs wanted to emphasise as other cities have other advantages) and together with (probably) effective lobbying, this was the winner.
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Well, I don´t know about the other cities and their advantages, but it is obvious that it does not take only the necessary infrastructure and organizing capabilities to get the status of the European Capital of Culture - the contribution to the European cultural development and the historical tradition (which is something you surely don´t lack) should also be taken into consideration.
After all, isn´t it "The Borderless City"?
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Good luck with the City of Culture thing. Liverpool held the title in 2008 and the result was a huge programme of modernisation and restoration. The new city centre is now unrecognisably improved from what it was only a couple of years ago.
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