How time passes by...

There's no place like home...! Yeah, right!

I was going to write you about my trip to Rotterdam, Netherlands but since I didn't make it there this month I decided to make a change and write you something about the city I live in: ISTANBUL. I assume for all the tourists who come to visit this exotic city it must be exciting to see the Istanbulian in their day-to-day grind. However, for all us residents this son of a bitch of a city is a pain in the ass. Solitude is the biggest luxury in this city as there are currently 14 mio. people living on top of each other and hey that is the official nose count. I am pretty sure that the census takers do not go to every house in every district of this juggernaut city. And then you have the traffic! Sometimes I'm downright begging my wife that she hits me something hard, while I'm stuggling to get from point A to point B with our car in 2 hours, so I could be released from this hell. By the way, in most cases the distance between them points would be like 10 or 20 kilometers so any sane person would get mad here. This also explains the huge number of psychopaths in this city. Blessfully it is not that easy to obtain guns here as it is in the States, so the number of people killing each other through gun-violence in traffic is low. Interestingly though that most psychopaths here prefer to practice a certain profession. As if there is mutual understanding between psychopaths in this city almost all of them get to become taxi or bus drivers! So Turkey has a huge number of roadkill-victims. I'm telling ya: They are all mad, mad, mad!
And there is the government and their ridiculously high taxes. You even have to pay taxes for breathing dammit! Ok, I'm exageratting a bit but this is how the Istanbulian feel. But then again, this dumb shit of people get to vote every 4 years and who do they vote for? For the same fucking mayor! Anyways,
naturally as a resident doing your daily routine of job-home and home-job you only get a chance to enjoy this mega-village weekends. But guess what? there are 14 million lunatics who think the same way.
So what is left to talk about? I am not going to tell you about the typical sightseeing-shit like the Topkapi Palace with its spoonmakers diamond and the harem-debauchery or the mighty hagia sophia and its counterpart the blue mosque. I would like to tell you about the more interesting aspects of Istanbul, when it was indeed a metropole where different nationalities encounter and had cultural interchanges. Those encounters reflected itself in many forms. I, for my part, am interested in the encounter that comes through architecture. When you cross the Haliç-bridge with all its fishermen you arrive at Karaköy and to your right-hand side you will see the beautiful 'Karaköy-Palace' that was designed by the levantine architect Guilio Mongeri. As part of the levantine minority he was born in the Ottoman Empire in 1873 but died in Italy in 1953. He left his architectural heritance in different cities in Turkey but I am very fond of this building.

Of course there are buildings more beautiful than this one but I like the facade and how you can see the influences of different cultures in his design. That period was indeed culturally very rich. You had Levantine, Greek, Armenian, Turkish, Arabic, Jewish people living side by side. But as all good things come to end this era ended in the 50s when Turkey's nationalists movement made a hunt for all non-turkish and the good people had to flee so Istanbul can take in the east-anatolian invasion. Before there were operas and theaters but now we have kebap and döner shops. Makes you feel sad when you walk the Istiklal street and see the remains of the cultural heritance of an Ottoman empire that gave home to so many minorities.

Another favourite building of mine is in Eminönü and it's easy to oversee it since it is hidden in side-alleys but it is worth to look for it. This art-nouveau building was designed by german architect August Jachmund, who also contributed to various masterpieces such as the Sirkeci train station, which stylistically seen is a mess but still quite a sight. However the Deutsche Orient Bank speaks for itself. When you see the building among other oriental constructions you get the feeling that it is completely out of place since it has an appearance that rather belongs to Paris or Vienna or some city in Italy. August Jachmund was commissioned by Sultan Abdulhamid II to build the main train station that would welcome European travellers to the capital of the Ottoman Empire. With this task at hand he had to do something to impress the Sultan and designed this piece that is oriental to such an extent that it is already perverted. I do not know whether the Sultan liked it but it still stands to this day.
Anyways, later when he received the order to create something for the German Bank he let the creative european juices flow and designed this art-nouveau beauty. Sadly this building is no longer in use and stands empty.

(Deutsche Orient Bank)

Enjoy the pictures and maybe next time I come up with something more interesting from Istanbul.

It's a rainy day in Belgrade too!!

Last month when I was in Paris I was bitching about the weather and when I went to Belgrade three weeks ago I couldn't believe how beautiful the weather was. I arrived on a Sunday morning and the weather was brilliant: Sunshine and degrees over 25° Celsius. What else can you ask for? But wait, my meteorological happyness lasted only one day! The very next day, I was going to particiapte at the exhibition so I had to get up early. But I could not believe my eyes when I looked out of the hotel window: dark grey clouds with tons of rain splashing against my window. What the fuck had happened? Maybe it is just a cloud I thought. It can't be that one day I was gaping after beautiful serbian girls in mini skirts and the next day I was drowning in the flood of the century?? That was some crazy Balkan weather.

I have to say, I stayed the whole week in Belgrade and it was like this every single day.  I had a room at hotel Life Design, which is in the heart of the city. It is a nice hotel with nicely-decorated, clean rooms. Very recommendable. Right next door was a strip club but unfortunately I didn't go in since I heard only bad stories about such places where they rip you off prettttty gooooood!! But judging from the girls that you see on the streets you can say that serbian girls are indeed really pretty.
Anyways, back to the subject: Flood of the century.
Each time we left the hotel me and my colleague got soaking wet. Nice thing about the hotel was that it had a spa area where guests of the hotel could enjoy different varieties of sauna and a jakuzzi pool.
But boy the weather was depressing. Belgrade is boring as far as sightseeing goes. They have a nice castle and were heavily influenced by the Ottoman. Turks left their mark everywhere. One guy made a joke about it. He told me:
-hey once we were all blond and blue eyed like the Slovenians but after the Turks fucking our nannies for 400 years..look at us..we look like Anatolian shepards!
Well, what could I say? the man had a point. Hmm..although, I'm fair haired, fair skinned, my mom and granny were blond with blue eyes..what does that say about me?
Ok, let us not wake sleeping dogs and let's move to the next important subject of this blog: Food! Serbian food is very meat-oriented but also quite delicious. We went to a fine restaurant at Kale Megdan, where you had a beautiful view over the Danube river, There were 3 gorgeous looking ladies playing classical music. I had a beef soup, which was awesome and a steak. Traditional serbian food includes specialties such as cevapcici or pecenje etc.
The food itself is pretty close to what we eat in Turkey, even the names are similar; however, without the pork stuff of course.

(me looking bored at the exhibition!!)

So, as far as sightseeing goes, not much to see in Belgrade but I have been told that the night-life is one of the best in Europe and that the people know how to party. Everybody was friendly and I did not experience anything bad about this place. Most of them spoke good English. I'd say it's worth a visit!