sOUndS fROm IStAnbUl

Merhaba,

Sitting at the top of our appartment block, looking over the Asian side of Istanbul, with at the horizon, behind all the minarets, the Bosporus and some silhoutes of the Europian side of Istanbul.

Just finished a small tour of five small concerts in Adana and Konya. On both places we stayed with some lovely families, with awesome funny kids, a lot of laughter and fooling around and a bunch of hospitality expressed in different ways, like good food and nice stories. The concerts were quiet low profile, but that made it also easier to make contact with the audience and drink some cay (turkish tea) together. In Konya was one venue underneath a low-price 'McDonalds' kind of fast food restaurant, which was completely frunitured into a turkish tea house. We did two gigs there, but in between there was a local cover band playing turkish folk songs, which was a nice-smokey atmosphere to taste/smell. They sometimes mix major and minor in a very surprising way, probably part of the music vocabulary.

Just outside of Konya (a city with almost 700.00 citizens, formerly know as Iconium) we visited the oldest remaining church building in turkey, already there since 327 AC. It had been restored two or three times, but still quiet impressive to know it's there already such a long time. Used by many people for ages.

The weather is getting quiet cold here at the moment, freezing during night times, and in Ankara there had been falling almost 40 cm of snow. A lot of travelling is going by bus in Turkey, especially the overnight busses, which are used for almost all the long distances, so we had two trips overnight, which didn't provide that much of rest.

At the moment we are just preparing and packing all the stuff to take the plane to Kyrgyzstan this afternoon from Ataturk Airport Istanbul. We don't know yet what Kyrgyzstan will bring. It will be another 4 hours of time difference. But all the rest is still a kind of surprise. There will be a local person who has arranged all the stuff. So hopefully she has done a good job.

later,

posted by bASSIc aRTs @ 1:30 AM