Cultural Week

This week I've been doing quite some cultural stuff. It started with a theater play at Bilgi. The play was called Kafalar and it was about how your head can be used in so many different ways...or how everybody's head is so different. The play was in Turkish so it was a challenge to understand it. I ended up getting half of it. But the actors were really good and it was quite funny as well. I was really pleasantly surprised about the acting skills because I usually can't stand Turkish movies or soap operas because...well...try to watch it yourself. If you can actually follow the story without being annoyed by the bad acting skills, you are an absolute prof!
Than on Tuesday I went to Salsa class in Cihangir. One of the Erasmus students at Bilgi was taking it and because his dancing partner was about to leave Istanbul in a few weeks, he was looking for new dance partners. It was really so much fun. It was an advanced course, so of course I didn't know any of the steps but the music was so good and the teacher helped me out a lot. I'm still not sure if I will continue with it since it's quite expensive and also a bit unorganized. Also there weren't enough men to form equal couples. But perhaps I could just come by every now and than. I heard that in Istanbul they also have these salsa parties, so I guess I could try that out as well.
Yesterday evening me and Sabrina went to this beautiful classical concert at Bogazici. It was called 'Musica Viva ve bir Opera'. In the morning we tried to call the information desk to reserve a few tickets. So we did but they said that for students it wasn't necessary to make a reservation because there would be enough tickets and if we would come at 19.00 it wouldn't be a problem at all. So they assured us. Being somewhat used to the Istanbul traffic I left home to be at Taksim at 18.00, I thought 1 hour should be enough to go to Bogazici...Well I was wrong. It took me almost 1,5 hour and so of course we were so late to get our tickets. When we were at the ticket desk there was just ONE student ticket left! First they said that we could also buy the normal ticket..which was 20 instead of 5. They saw we were so disappointed and I tried with my broken Turkish to explain that we really want to see the concert and that we called in advance and that they said there were enough tickets..etc...making very sad faces... I guess it worked because than she gave us just a normal paper and wrote two seat numbers on it and said we should get in fast. We didn't even had to pay at all anymore! It was so funny! Than we tried to find our seats but because the lights were already turned off we just took the first seats we saw. I guess they were not even the seats she wrote down for us. So than the concert started. The first hour the orchestra played Handel and Bach and after the break there was a piece of the opera La Serva Padrona. It was soo nice and very professional. After the rush and chaotic bus ride this was exactly what I needed.


an unexpected visitor during the break