26.4.

At 4 am I wake up after 1.5 hours sleep. Somebody is standing in front of me inside Suryananda. I start shouting so he grabs my camerabag, jumps out of the car and runs. I am behind him but no chance to chat him at the first meters and I am afraid to they might be two and Suryananda will be stolen if I run after him. Of course the door is open as I just jumped behind him as fast as possible. I am very shocked when I go back inside and make coffee. I never believed this could happen – being robbed in suryananda while sleeping – less than 100km on European soil! It takes nearly an hour before I calm down. All camera Equipment is gone! No more pictures of this journey! I don’t expect the highway through Bulgaria and Serbia to be that beautiful but having no camera really hurts. After one hour I become very tired and sleep until 11. After standing up I contact my insurance at home and go to the police station. The police is very friendly and they come with me to check everything and look if maybe there are camera recordings as the whole area is covered with private and public cameras. Unfortunately all cameras look in the wrong direction so they just have pictures of me running behind him from the back side! When everything is clear they send me to another police station…..

Here I have to wait several hours before we go back to Suryananda again, check the lock, the cameras like before to return to the police station where I get the report just before sunset. Not my day. But very emotional days make me sing so I spend all evening at reggae café making music again. A friend of Suecrue from Olimpos whom I wanted to meet finally contacts me and apologizes for the delay. Back pain…. I tell him I will be there tomorrow and see what I can do. At night I meet two very nice guitar players from Libya. We make music together and they convince me to drink two beers with them. I am drunk in no time and forget about what happened in the morning. All fine!

27.4.
When I wake up I have massive hangover – I can hardly move so I have my first coffee when I should be at Kemals place already. After an Odyssey on public transport in Istanbul I arrive at his place. When he opens the door he is bent over and I can see the pain in his face. Still we smile at each other – we like each other immediately. After he is better we have food together and Kerman invites me to stay at his place whenever I am in Istanbul. Even though what happened yesterday I still like the city. When I come back to suryananda it is dark already. Saturday night in Istanbul – perfect time to leave the city!