Dear friend,

"Tout un monde lointain", the travel I do along the silk road with Nathalie and Quintus cello has began! I left Belgium a month ago; after my last concert, on Sunday September 21st, I had two days to finish to prepare the luggages for the trip. On Tuesday, I went at 5p.m. in Brussels in order to record Bach first Prelude for the Belgian TV (with the black cello). Immediately after, at 11 p.m., I left Belgium by bus to Copenhagen. (I must admit it's an original place to begin with for the silk road)

September 24th 2003

It was not possible to greet the famous Mermaid: a week before, on the night of the 11th September, the statue of the Mermaid had been blown off the stone base by vandalism. The statue had been send for repair at a bronze factory. We could however see Christiana. Founded by the hippyes thirty years ago, this part of the city could soon disappear. It seems that the new governement would like to be rid of the social experiance in order to earn money with real estate.

At the National Museum (it was written at the entrence: "the Museum just got a fortune; enter for free until 1st of November!"), we saw an exhibition about the influence between the nordic civilisations and the roman empire.

September 30th 2003

A cheap flight dropped us in Rhodos. It was not possible to greet the great (Greek) "Colossum": it had been destroyed by a huge seism 2229 years ago. (And I was not aware of it!!!) I found another object for my curiosıty: a multitude of tourists walking along a multitude of tourist shops, being called by a multitude of traditionnal Greek food with traditionnal Greek music -live-. "Hello! Where do you come from?..."

Where do we sleep? In the cheapest pension in Rhodos; that means a 3-sides-windows-room in the very centrum of the city, on the roof of the pension, on the roof of the city. Really, there is no bette view!

Evening: I open a window at my left and a window at my right. The wind crosses the room without noticing me, the cello, the luggages, etc. It just crosses the room! From the city, below, comes the mix of "traditionnal live Greek music" from the restaurants. In the room comes the wind, and come forks and plates and wine and laughtes.

TURKEY - MARMARIS (touristic city).

First thing to visit: the "TANSAS" supermarket. (Opening time: 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. free admission)

Ideal place to make yourself confortable with the gastronomic vocabulary and with the Turkish lira. One euro is changed for one million six hundred thousand Turkish lira. TANSAS supermarket will also help you to discover aliments you don't know.

Selçuk, Ephese, October 4th

The weekly "bazar" takes place in front of our hotel. Terrific noice! We bought grapes: the best I ever tasted.

ANTIC CITY of EPHESE

For a price equal to 60 cups of tea in terras, you will be pleased to hear at 9 a.m. in the antic theatre a performance of 30 Japanese tourists singing "SAKURA" song to try the accoustic.

At 10 a.m., you will be able to compare the attitude between tourists from different cultures.
At 11 a.m. you won't be able to do it anymore, but you will rather be able to choose in any language the guide which pleased you the most.
At noon, you will try to find the way to get out of this "dead" city.

I feel a bit frustrated to pay much money to walk with thousands of people in a city abandonned long time ago and completely broken. It gives me the feeling of attending a sold-out performance of a drama made up by archaeologists from a book so old that only few words remained readable...

October 6th,

We are now going eastward inside the country. Our idea is to join Konya, and from there, travelling up to Istanbul, where we plan to stay one week; then we would travel again eastward this time definitively.

Today we have a 7 hours journey. That lets me time enough to discover Turkish grammar. By night we find an hotel in Egirdir. Our window has the best view ... on the mosque's speaker: we will thus have to wake up at 5 a.m.! On the roof of the hotel, I practice scales, arpeggios, and I play some Bach. The view is great: Egirdir lake (517 square kilometres) all around me! Sunny weather... A Young couple come; the man thought there were a radio "on" somewhere but couldn't identify where it was. Then, he went on the roof and found me. They invite me to drink tea and we begin to talk. Can I say "talk"? They speak only Turkish... not a word of English except "fish", "she" and "ok", nor French. Nathalie and me will spend long hours with them, improving our new Turkish skills. Paradoxally, althrough we had no common language, that was the only real contact we had with people until now. Most of those speaking English with us are only interested by our "touristic value", which means "what kind of service we could buy to them". If somebody ask to us where we are from, and if we start to talk, the conversation will soon get the "turkish" point:
- Hello, excuse me, where are you from?
- (should I answer this time?) Belgium.
- Oh! Belgium! Nice! I went there 2 years ago. Brussels, Gent, Bruges...
- ...
- Do you speak French or Flemish?
- (He really knows something about Belgium; it could be true he went there) French.
- Do you enjoy your time here? How long are you staying here?
- We are leaving tomorrow.
- So early! How pity! Have you had a chance already to see Turkish culture?
- (OK. Here we are, once again) Yes, of course, we visited some beautiful museums.
- Are you interested by Turkish carpets? Would you like to visit my shop? We have very beautiful carpets and kilims, not expensive, etc. (here it takes 10 minutes to get rid of it)

This typical conversation can be adjusted in the case of touristic guide, adopted for pensions, touristic tours, restaurants, intercity bus companies, etc. Most frequently, and with a 3-days experience, the conversation can be avoided immediately, or in case of doubt ("would he be sincere?"), after a few more seconds. We saw however in Istambul a perfume sellor following a couple in the streets for at least 10 minutes: they didn't know what to do. So, for moment, we must accept the consequence of our condition, which is "European tourist". This problem fortunately doesn't affect two of our interests: nature and culture.

Konya, October 12th

The music I do everyday at 6 p.m. in the room had a surprising effect: the hotel manager came up to listen. After that, he told us that the shower was available (even if we didn't pay for it!), and he sent the "garçon" to bring tea to us. The latter want also hear Bach, he is moved and want to explain to us that he plays also music, probably saz.

The Mevlâna Museum hold incredibly fine Coran manuscripts.
There are so many mosques in Konya than when the muezzin in each of them call for pray, the resulting sound all over the city is very impressive.

Afyon, October 15th

If in Konya every muezzin sings simultaneously the call for pray, in Afyon all mosques speakers are connected to the same muezzin.

Afyon means "opium". The plant used in order to produce opium has given us another pleasure: from it is extracted a kind of cream called "kaymak", very popular for dessert's preparations. We tried it in huge quantity and have been sick all the afternoon.

In an important part of the city, houses are made in wood and stone, and painted in diverse colors. It looks like those of Venitian Islands, but in our case they are from Ottoman design. In Kutahya too, we found these beautiful houses. On the top of both cities lies a solid old fortress where we enjoy (with or without tea supply) a marvellous view. Autumn is coming and these are the ideal places to observe ıts inherent changes: leaves that get orange, chemneys that slowly begin to do their winter job, special quality of silence,... In fact tourism is over, and every touristic place begin to sleep until next season.

Bursa, October 15th

The cello has been noticed by the hotel manager! At 8 p.m., he went up in our room and introduced me to a highschool teacher who was going to bring a few people to visit a violinmaker. We went thus together and observed how were made saz, ouds, violins and cellos. The violinmaker asked me if I would show him the Quintus carbon cello (he didn't know the existence of this kind of instrument). I went back to our hotel and brought the instrument. He asked me to play something and I played Bach. Having compared the price of the Quintus with that of his own instruments, he got sad and quiet angry that his price was half that of the synthetic cello, althrough he worked every night on his art. Everybody felt embarassed. I asked him if we could hear some Turkish music played on his best saz. He accepted to play and smiles came back. -Money concerns are easily forgotten when art is present. He finally said that his own instruments couldn't be played in the rain. I nodded. This was the point. (Some days later, the cello would travel on the roof of a cahotic small bus for more than 3 hours...)

I bought a cheap book with the famous Nasrettin Hoca's stories. For moment, I don't understand them but I will post some of them on our website as soon as I can translate them. Nasrettin Hoca is a very popular Turkish character. When I show this book to poeple here, they read the stories and laugh in such a way that I feel motivated in my curiosity to read them. These stories are funny but they have always a hidden meaning. ("rompre l'os, & sugcer la substantificque mouelle" - Rabelais)

Istambul, October 18th

An important part of our luggages is books:
First of all, we have the Lonely Planets, famous travelbooks -traveller's bible- about nearly all countries we will visit. We must carry them from the beginning because we are not sure we will find them later.
Then, we have grammar and conversation basic books about Turkish, Farsi, Urdu, Indi, Chinese and Russian languages. I have also Gogol novels book in Russian-French language.
Also, we have a cultural important book about the Silkroad and I have my beautiful Homer (Iliad and Odyssey).
In some hotels, there is a library where we can freely exchange books. This business is funny: I gave the book about Rhodos that we bought in Greece and I took in echange a book about the Byzantine Renaissance. Having read it, I came back with the latter book and exchange it for a children tales book in Russian.
With that, we still didn't have enough books to read, so we decided to try to find books in English or in French that we could later exchange. There are few places in Turkey where one can find books in foreign languages. Istambul was one of this places, and we bought them here. Nathalie chose Umberto Eco's "Foucauld Pendulum" and I chose Henry James "What Maisie Knew".

We stayed 6 days in Istambul, and just began to like the city when we had to leave it to be on time in Ankara for the TV interview.

Istambul dark and grey with rain; Istambul luminous and nostalgic with an autumnal sun upon the Bosphore. Istambul poor and dirty; Istambul bright and belle époque. Multiple Istambul, like very huge city (population 14 millions inhabitants), Istambul is difficult to grap.

TOPKAPI PALACE - HAREM SECTION

This is where you should go if you want to pay $8, join a group (mandatory) and follow it through 22 rooms at the (mandatory) high speed of 1'40" per room. You don't have to run (elderly are welcome) but you won't be able to observe anything. If you let yourself dreaming in front of a marvelous art masterpiece, and if the group let you behind, the security guard will shout furiously: "Stop! Go! Now!". There are interesting notes in English in each room, but if you read them, your time for looking the room itself is over. Some people thus take pictures of these information notes; then, immediately, without reading them, they observe the room. Back to their hotel, they can read the notes and put the pieces of the puzzle together. We encourage you to adopt this system or to come back with a second group and another $8 half an hour later.

Ankara, October 22

On October 23rd, the Turk pianist Muhiddin Demiriz-Duruoglu and me were invited for an interview for the Turkish Television (TRT Int.) in Ankara. I had to play 10' and talk about our travel "Tout un monde lointain". People could phone and speak to us on the air. The following day I had a concert in Hacettepe University. This concert was introduced by a lecture about the Silkroad. I played for both events with the Quintus cello. My concert dress was: treck shoes, green treck trousers and black polar... The audience had formal dress but they understood that I was there as a traveller and not as a performer... I told them that my cello case was my backpack.

We were invited to stay at the University Guest House. This place was donated to the University by a sponsor for the purpose of giving to intelectuals a place to archieve a specific research or only in order to stay for a short time, when needed, like in our case. We had there delicious breakfast in compagny of the rector of another university, a composer, a bariton and a cellist.

In Ankara we met Muhiddin's familly as well as that of Ezgi (friend met in The Juilliard School). We stayed two days in her familly and enjoyed their hospitality a lot. They introduced us to the great Turkish gastronomy, they answered to specific questions we had, and they gave us an internal knowledge of Turkey. Canan (Ezgi's friend), went with us to visit the world famous Anatolian Museum and the Ankara fortress. We visited also the impressive Attatürk Mausoleum.

In Ankara also we apply for the Iranian Visa, which will soon allow us to stay one month in Iran.

We are now going Northward (Black See region) and then Eastward. We are planning to stay approximatively one more month in Turkey.

We hope to have news from you soon!

Nathalie and Nicolas
PS: The fırst pictures of our travel (19) are now on the Web Page.