Author: luciusbarde
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The Bard’s story VII : the Hungarian sea
Lake Balaton is that long, large lake, a bit bigger than Lake Geneva, which stands out on maps of Hungary, and where the entire Hungarian population comes to spend their summer vacations. It should be noted that with an average depth of around 3.5 meters, the water heats up quickly with the slightest ray of…
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The Bard’s Story VI: The Bindle
October 2020, Budapest, II. district. The invisible threat we called “the undercooked bat,” “the pangolin soup,” or “the Chinese cat” was wreaking havoc. The entire country was under lockdown. Muzzle-wearing was mandatory. And my landlord, Dr. Csaló (a pseudonym), kept increasing the charges every month. Because of the gas price, because of the crisis, because…
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The Bard’s story V : the origins of “Bards in Exile”
I left Switzerland in April 2018 while keeping my job as a remote web developer. One of the reasons for my departure was to try my luck in a cheaper country that inspired me for artistic and musical projects, but also had its advantages for my professional field. And where I knew people. I lived…
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The Bard’s story IV : the exile
During the discussions, aperitifs, evenings at the refuge and other events that we did with the groups described in the previous article, I had the opportunity to make contact with expats. I had planned my first trip to Hungary in May 2017, but an anthology metal concert took me to Kiev with two friends in…
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The Bard’s story III : the community
The thing that drove me to leave Switzerland was mainly the lack of a grip on the real world. Having the impression of being stuck with a low-income job, in an overpopulated country where everything has been bought by the richest and where nothing is accessible any more, because even the poor with no income…
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The Bard’s story II : the Grove
Around 2015 – 2016, I contacted the head of a Druidic association that organised rituals on the eight sacred days of the ‘Wheel of the Year’, i.e. on the solstices, equinoxes and the four festivals that fall exactly between them. The groups that reconstitute European ancestral cults name these festivals as follows: Imbolc on 1…
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The Bard’s story I : Introduction
I was born in Switzerland in 1990, and did all my chaotic schooling and training in web development there. I’ve always felt at odds with the world : with what exactly, I can’t say. A bit of everything was bothering me really: commercial music, the hype around Hollywood films, the professional attitude and ‘forced smiles’,…