TURKEY TOUR REPORT
English:
We met on Friday 4th of April 2008 around twelve a.m. at the airport Stuttgart to start our powerful tour in Turkey. The crew consisted of Poldi (Forbidden Kings), who turned out to be our tourist guide and tour manager, as well as Birol (Block Action Music), who did a fabulous job as interpreter, his girlfriend Claudi, a film crew (Stefan+Alex) and, for now, the whole PDF band.
Starting with some nice scenes for the film, the shock came when we had to check in. For everyone unexpected an arrest warrant was issued against Karle, our vocalist. The condition for him, to make it possible to leave the country, was to leave a bailment over 3500€. So, did you ever try to find that amount of money within let's say, half an hour? For sure this didn't work so we had to leave him heavy hearted behind. This is not the whole drama, actually Karle was convoyed by police to a prison in Stuttgart Stammheim.
From now on the band continued the journey without their singer, but nevertheless we decided this won't stop us to try to earn a good reputation in Turkey. Exhausted and somehow pissed of we arrived in Istanbul. The drama didn't seem to come to an end: another accident happened as Davor picked up his luggage and discovered that someone's paint bucket had been emptied out over his stuff. His jacket was silver-coloured, which made it actually look somehow like a bad-taste 80's disco outfit.
We assumed this was a consciously planned act of sabotage, and as we have a keen mind we immediately presumed to have saboteur within the crew, a person that was infiltrated to annoy us. Up to now we didn't find out who this saboteur is, but one thing is for sure: he accompanied us the whole tour.
After a 2 hours trip from the airport to Taksim, a busy district of Istanbul that somehow reminds a bit of New York, we checked in a cheap hotel, that turned out to be the only one around where you don..t need a marriage certificate to share a room with a girl.
After our check in we met the OFISBOYS and other nice guys in a nargile-bar to relax a bit and discuss the further run of the tour.
According to the principle „hand me the gas station" the tube was passed from one to another and we inhaled delicious melon tobacco. This was the Turkish element of that evening, then we decided to switch to the Kraut mode, what contained an exorbitant consume of alcohol.
Later on, at a car park of TRT a Turkish TV station we met some other freaks and reached our aim to get really wasted.
Eventually we tugged totally hammered to our hotel and decided to test whether the lift lives up to its promise that said it was only able to transport 3 folks. We overloaded it with 5 persons what made us run high half a meter and run down one and a half meters afterwards!
After an unintentional ten minutes stay within the lift we were freed and could finally sleep.
Saturday, 5th of April 2008
The shooting of our tour film started, we aren't sure yet whether Stefan thought this is gonna be a porn movie but he started the first scene while Davor was lying in bed.
Due to some hangover problems, I didn't have that much control over my face and therefore wasn't able to issue a statement that will make history.
After breakfast we started to explore Istanbul to get some scene shots for the movie.
As the standard West European Tourist we ran immediately into a hustler, represented by a shoeshine boy. He made us want to get our shoes clean and of course, he ripped a lot of money from us. Somehow we were astonished that he didn't offer us to pay by credit card or cheque. Businessman through and through,
After being ripped of, we went back to the hotel to pick up our guitars for the first gig in Istanbul in the evening. The venue we played in, the "Factory" was located downtown, across from a Heavy Metal Pub we got to know later.
We played as headliner together with OFISBOYS, AYILAR and OI!-BOIZ and Davor did a fantastic job as backup-singer, started to bawl at the audience that cheered us effusively.
We returned our instruments to the hotel to get wasted at the car park again.
Tricky as we are Davor and me took two girls to our hotel and after a backhander of 5€ for the receptionist we weren't forced to pay for another hotel room. As we settled back the rest of our crew attacked, themed by the tour motto "all for the tour, all for the movie!" us in our room, in order to catch us unprepared doing dirty things.
They wanted to have some more titties appearing in the film, so they asked me whether I could bare those of my girl. But as I am a timid, I didn't , even though I think it would have been possible. Disappointed by me, the others left after an hour and a couple of beers, and Davor and me were able to give our attention back to the girls.
Sunday, 6th of April 2008
We got used to the fact that Stefan woke us up filming and penetrating till we finally got up. We said goodbye to the girls and went to Ankara for our next gig. Actually we should have taken a flight but for reasons of economy we took the bus which had cost us 6 hours of our valuably lifetime.
In Ankara the drummer and the guitarist of MALAZLAR picked us up to show us the way to the location. The drummer introduced herself as "Tuvet", whereupon Fabi bursted out laughing and said: "your not Tuvet, I am too fat!".
Due to the fact that it was Sunday not so many folks came to our concert and the location, but the mood was quiet good and the sound was even better. We and the 40 guests had a lot of fun.
Afterwards we had some more beers and hit the road back to Istanbul, another 6 hours bus trip, where our saboteur assaulted another trick on us: Poldi had some paint on his pants!
As we arrived in Istanbul we found ourselves sitting in the most shabby taxi we've ever seen, and nnowhere near enough the driver was weird. He turned out to be a race driver while he drove us to Taksim, and I spent my time by searching the barf bags.
The vehicle was fucked up, just as well as his way of driving.
Fabi and Davor got over their agony through insulting the driver in German, but Poldi, me and the camera team were simply to exhausted to spend any energy in laughing.
Certainly the driver wouldn't have cared about what they said on the backseat anyway, even if he understood it. It was a descent into hell…
Around 8 am we came back to the hotel and fell asleep immediately.
Monday, 7th of April 2008
On our day off me and Fabi decided to get tattooed. The others went to the Besiktas stadium to film an interview with the OFISBOYS. We decided to meet later at the Heavy Metal Pub to get wasted a bit. Which we then did. Boozing is a commitment!
Tuesday, 8th of April 2008
Stefan, the cameraman woke us up in the morning by peppering us with some questions. Somehow we got used to that procedure that happened every morning. We spent the whole day doing some shots for the film as we visited the mosque and the bazaar. Finally we did some scenes directly on the Bosporus.
Wednesday, 9th of April 2008
The camera team left us this day. We all missed them. In the rehearsal room of the OFISBOYS we started to practise the good old "meet the boys" song of FORBIDDEN KINGS together with Poldi and Kerim (OFISBOYZ). We decided to play that song united (PRODUZENTEN KINGS DER OFISBOYZ) on Saturday in Istanbul at our last gig.
Actually we planned to play a gig in Izmir as well, but this wasn't possible cause the one way distance was 12 hours by bus from Istanbul and we simply didn't find the time to do it. All in all that would have cost us 24 hours, not included the gig and the boozing session afterwards.
We really would have enjoyed playing at the Turkish California but it wasn't possible at all. It's a pitty, but however….
At this point should be also mentioned we had to cancel a gig in Bursa, cause the host, even though it was already arranged, said he isn't able to pay any money. We didn't even want to get paid for this but as he promised before and then came up with that message we felt somehow pissed.
After band practice we met the girls again at the nargile pub, smoking some pipes and got wasted afterwards in the Heavy Metal Pub ("DoRock"). Same procedure as the other days: we finally partied at our hotel room together with the girls till dawn.
Luckily some shops are opened 24 hours and so we now and then got some more beer. Thereby we discovered the concierges must have been drunk as well cause they spent their time dancing in the hotel entrance.
Due to our medical knowledge we found out Fabi was pregnant the same night. He'll soon be proud mother of a Snare, just to mention this as well.
Thursday, 10th of April 2008
Nothing spectacular happened this day. It was quiet relaxing. We went to an Internetcafé and did some sightseeing, later drinking…
Friday, 11th of April 2008
We did sightseeing in Besiktas and an extensive bar-hopping together with a couple of nice guys.
Saturday 11th of April 2008
We spent the day at the Bazaar, preparing for our last and also best gig in Istanbul. We played together with 4 punkrock bands and the concert was simply awesome. The whole concert finally boozed with us on our regular parking site, some stops in different discos followed and me and Davor were escorted home to the hotel again by the girls.
Sunday, 12th of April 2008
Relaxing on Sundays? Forget about it! We were on an important mission to our football match against the OFISBOYZ. It was great and lots of fun. We were actually a bad team but we gave a shit on fairplay, that's why we were hard to handle! Fabi did an awesome job as keeper and the girls cheered us.
After this sportive activity we decided to go to the nargile bar and some other pubs again. There was some time left cause our flight departed Monday at 4 pm.
We said goodbye to a lot of people that we really became fond of. Awesome people over there in Turkey and it was really not easy for us to leave.
Altogether it was a wonderful trip, we met plenty of nice folks and we are sure:
Turkey, we..ll come back!
Special Thanks to:
Poldi
Zeynep
Zia
Kerim
Can
all the others from the OFISBOYS and their friends
Birol
Claudi
MALAZLAR
Stefan and Alex
Evrim and Nilay
OI!-BOYS
written by Satisfaction Smily, translated by Janine.