central & eastern europe 15

hello everyone

I am sorry for the delay but the last few days were pretty busy and I
was too tired to blog.
The concert in Sibiu at the GONG theatre was probably our best so far
- hopefully we haven´t reached our peak on this tour now...
One more concert left and we are all very excited but also tired and
anxious to get back home again.

Sibiu was a beautiful city - unexpectedly pretty. On sunday we
finally had a day off and Olli and me went to an open air museum
about Romanian history and to the zoo next door. It felt good to
break our daily routine of rehearsing, eating and sleeping or sitting
in the bus for hours.
On monday we took the train to Bucarest. Unfortunately we didn´t get
the chance to take a look at the city. The very scenic train ride
took more than 6 hours and when we arrived it was already dark. We
were picked up by two Bulgarians in their future taxi bus. They had a
2000 watt bass system in the back, blue light underneath, a tv,
cameras on the back bumper, navigation system and other fancy things
they liked to show off. It was kind of strange to drive in such a
well equiped car and then take roads that hardly deserve to be called
a road. As soon as you leave the cities the standards change
drastically. The gap between rich and poor seems so much bigger than
I have ever seen before....
2 hours later, after crossing over the mighty Donau river we arrived
in Ruse, Bulgaria.
We checked in at the city art hotel, a quite luxurary hotel in the
middle of the center. Ruse is not that big (160 000 people) but has
everything you need except for food after 12pm.
On tuesday we started rehearsing right away. We still had to do some
work with the Romanian piece and we had to prepare ourselves for the
Bulgarian composition.
We rehearsed at the concert venue - the Canetti house - an old
building that belonged or still belongs to Canettis family. It is
empty and in bad shape now but the Bosch institut is allowed to use
it for cultural events.
Eventhough it is a very warm spring here the building was super cold
so that today we moved to a different rehearsal space.

I am not sure if we can do better than the 150 people in Sibiu but
everyone is trying their best.

- first pic was our hotel in Sibiu - next pics are impressions