Do you hear that?
What do you mean? It can’t be chickens. They don’t even exist here in the city, do they? I hear the traffic from the main road. Only cars.
no. that! can’t you hear it?
Ah, that’s what you mean, the birds?
Yes, they’re sitting everywhere in the trees, it’s all full, and that’s in the middle of Sofia.
I think they’re all talking to each other.
What kind of birds are they?
I think they’re starlings? I’ve been hearing them for a few weeks now, always in the morning, when they gather here in the
trees, in the middle of our street.
And what do you think they’re talking about?
Maybe they’re planning a new trip?
That’s right, they are migratory birds. They fly long distances and live in very different places.
There are quite a few of them here!
And where do you think they want to travel to?
I think they fly through many countries, sometimes there, sometimes there, back and forth and back again.
Now it’s October, they’re heading south for the winter.
There are a lot of young ones. They are flying with them for the first time. They have to get to know the way. Then in spring they fly back to the north, where they found their families, where they breed.
At the Goethe-Institut in Sofia, you will be told how young Bulgarians are brought into contact with German companies investing in Bulgaria and looking for skilled workers in specially arranged workshops. Bulgarian skilled workers for German companies in Bulgaria. On the website of the European Commission in the section: CIRCULAR MIGRATION AND RETURN MIGRATION, you read that highly qualified professionals should bring their skills, knowledge and expertise back to their countries of origin. A back and forth of knowledge, an exchange, a taking and giving.
You take a pair of compasses, stretch them out, stick the needle in the middle of your notepad. You place the lead at the top of the page and very slowly draw a semicircle downwards. You pause here. Think about whether you want to start at the top again or continue the circle in the same direction. You try going around to the left, then to the right, sometimes circling, without stopping, the painted line becoming ever more powerful.
Research suggests that migratory birds acquire their knowledge of navigation and flight routes through inheritance as well as through learning and imitation. Young birds can learn from older, more experienced birds by flying in flocks during their first migrations or by simply imitating the behavior of older birds.
The animals are able to detect the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field and its orientation and compare it with their magnetic field map.
And then you imagine how the starlings travel with their map and compass over the same areas, fields, towns and forests every year and you wonder if they always bring different knowledge with them?
Listen to what they are telling you!
And whether they then bring this knowledge back to their country of origin?
What would that be? The breeding area? or the wintering grounds?
As you think about it, is it no longer so clear to you where a migratory bird actually comes from?
You ask yourself whether they are northern Europeans, Germans, Poles or Bulgarians or Greeks, or even from the Levant?
Or perhaps where you have drawn the thickest circle?
And in which direction do they migrate, to the left or to the right?
And as you imagine it now, you ask yourself whether it means back and forth or just backwards?
And then you remember the conversation with the theater director who came to Germany to study and who said that every Eastern European who studied here was constantly asked: “When will you finish your studies, when will you go back?”
To the breeding ground or to summer quarters?
At the Goethe-Institut, an employee tells you that the relaxed lifestyle in Bulgaria has a particularly positive effect on his attitude to life and that you can get by with English even without learning Bulgarian
You ask yourself what he will in a circular fashion bring back to Germany as knowledge?
They are sitting in the leaves in the tree in front of you. They are beautiful songbirds, black with a green and blue sheen that shimmers in the sunlight. Now in the fall they are strikingly spotted with white.
Yes, you’re right, they are beautiful. I’ve been looking forward to them coming all year.
Ivan Krastev speaks on Swiss television: „As a Bulgarian, you have a special perspective, a different knowledge, you see the world from the periphery. The world looks very different from the periphery. We, me and my generation, have an advantage that Western Europeans don’t have, we have the experience of how quickly things can change. That gives our generation a big advantage.“
You wonder what the starlings who come from the north or the south, from the centers or from the periphery know?
Does the periphery even have a geographical location, a specific place?
Listen to what they are saying! Perhaps the starlings fly to where they have the best living conditions?
Do they only come to migratory areas for the food?
Today you look out of the window, everything is covered in white snow, old people from the neighboring house have hung up food for the birds on a bush.
There are always birds that stay here in winter.
As long as the snow cover is not too thick and the temperature does not fall below minus 5 degrees, the starlings fluff themselves up like the other „stayers“ and create a protective layer of insulation with the air cushions in their feathers.
You are thinking about putting up a bird house in your garden Country house feeder: The large feeding station is divided into different compartments.
It can be filled with fat blocks, sunflower seeds and other grain mixtures.
And when they are fed, there is no need for an exchange of knowledge, just an exchange of goods, a filled feeding house?
And then you think of circular migration again, which is supposed to be about a mutual exchange of knowledge, and you ask yourself what forms of knowledge are
actually meant?
And you continue to ask yourself whether this circular exchange of knowledge must always be linked to an exchange of goods.
You look at the circle you have drawn with the compass and now you are unsure whether you have drawn it unevenly, out of round?
Are starlings also carriers of knowledge and what do they bring with them when they come and what do they take with them when they leave?
You read in a publication: The total number of Bulgarians working abroad is currently larger than the entire working population in Bulgaria. In 2015, around 2.5 million Bulgarians worked abroad, while only 2.2 million were active on the Bulgarian labor market. According to a survey conducted by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in 2015, 42% of young Bulgarians want to leave the country.
Are you wondering which knowledge migrates from where to where and whether the „peripheral knowledge“ also migrates with it?
What percentage of our starlings here actually leave us before winter? How many remain in their summer quarters and how many return?
Then you remember the conversation with the vascular surgeon who told you that there is practically no unemployment in Sofia and that the hospitals are urgently looking for nursing staff, but there are hardly any young people who want to do this work.
Some starlings stay here in Bulgaria and others move on. Is it even possible to tell them apart from migrating starlings?
And then you let your thoughts run free and imagine what such a place, a space, an embassy building or consulate could look like, where the circular exchange of knowledge takes place and where it could be located.
On Google Maps, you spontaneously search for “Consulate for Circular Knowledge Exchange”.
You wonder if the migratory birds‘ navigation skills would be sufficient or if they would need Google Maps support to find the consulates? or if the new ICARUS satellite animal tracking system could help them?
And if a suitable location was found, how could the knowledge be exchanged there?
When you open the window to the street, you are surprised to hear a chicken somewhere among the dense foliage. If you look closely, you see a small black spotted bird, the starling, which imitates the cackling in a bluffing real way.
Over the next few days you listen more carefully to what the birds are singing in the trees and now you are no longer sure whether the crows are really crows, sparrows really sparrows or the oriole is really an oriole or whether it is starlings that are imitating the other birds in a bluffing real way.
In the chapter on language, you read in Paul Valéry: “Means in the attempt to make the other similar to oneself. This other is the one similar to me, is my equal, insofar as I repeat him and he repeats me. “
Then you think again of Ivan Krastev and the other knowledge of change and you imagine how this exchange of knowledge could succeed through imitation and making oneself similar in the reverse circular direction?
You pin a feather on your shirt and the next day you see two very small new ones.
You sign up for a course with a bird call imitator and learn to imitate the call of the coot, the blue tit and the reed warbler.
Today you are overtaken by reality. A few days ago, you suddenly wake up and look for your cell phone, which you left on the windowsill. It clearly sounds like your ringtone, but it’s coming from the leaves in the trees outside your window.
You hear from the Japanese company that used to produce karaoke software that they have developed software that lets you sing along to lyrics with a synthesized voice