Day 257 - 270 Auroville

Wow, for the last 2 weeks I have been living a more or less 'normal' life - getting up in the morning to get to work and stuff... And I tried to enjoy as much as possible of Auroville's offerings. During the first days the women's performance festival was going on - which meant: usually two international performances every evening, some of them really great.
After the festival ended it got a bit more quiet, but there was still plenty to prevent getting bored.
At work I programmed a new player for the websites of Auroville Radio (which should be online soon at www.aurovilleradio.org ) using flash, php, xml, javascript - all of it stuff I have either used last time about a decade ago or never. But that's what I wanted, some brainwork after so much bodywork. And I was quite successful at it!
After some house shifting during the first days I lived most of the time in Mitra youth hostel - mostly inhabited by people much younger than me, many of them architect students as Auroville is kind of a Mekka for experimental architecture. In the first week I shared the room with the great Mr.
Suleman 'Lucky' Khan, actor, writer & bansuri player.
One thing I did all 3 sundays was listening to the russian bells and later joining in. To hear them look here: www.aurovilleradio.org/arts-a-culture/performing-arts/2743-sing--resonate - between 56:30 and 62:00 you can even hear me perform: it is the bell mistress Vera on high bells and me playing the low bells.
I met a french couple who are travelling on recumbent bikes. I had a try at one - at first it is like learning cycling again from the start but after some minutes I wanted to have one, too - it is very very comfortable and I guess you have a much better position for enjoying the landscape. Hmmmm, maybe that's something for the next long tour, whenever this may happen. Both Melanie & Fabien were very nice people to chat and share cycling and non-cycling experiences with and both have blogs (en francais): realityslow.blogspot.com
roulifistrouille.blogspot.com
I tried to do all interesting activities at least once: I went to the introductory concentration in the Matrimandir - the huge golden globe in the very center of Auroville. You are greeted by white robed female and male guardians and ordered to be silent before you are allowed to take the spiral walkway up to the central chamber - a cool white room with a crystal orb in the center, surrounded by columns which end into nothing. There you can sit down on one of the matts and start concentrating, whatever that means to you in particular. As a newcomer I was only allowed for a 15 minute session. I had planned to come back for a longer concentration, but in the end I was to busy.
I also took part in a session of laughter yoga, which was wonderful, funny (obviously) and surprisingly exhausting!
On my last evening I went to the
Om choir, which was great because one girl with a very loud voice deliberately prevented all upcoming harmony by always ommming half a tone beside the possible harmony - for me this made the whole thing very exciting but she possibly destroyed the experience for all those that were in search of simple and modest harmony, gnihihi.

And we were creative, too: Most of our last weekend we spent
using some basic radio facilities to record this music: arthurmarektrabant.bandcamp.com/track/tomorrow (bluesharp & webdesign by Trabant!) The recording was finished on a day when Jupiter, the crescent Moon and Venus hovered in one straight line on the western sky - whatever that means.

Now I finally have some real plans: I will cycle through India about 2 month more month, meeting fellow cyclists Mr. Erick & Mr. Yannik on the way in Hampi. I will make it up to Gujarat and have a look at my old home in Vadodara. From there on I will slowly think about coming back. Travelling is great, but there are many people I miss at home. During your travels you meet many many very nice people, but most of them you won't see again after the next morning - I really miss some social interaction which lasts longer than that. Sooo I will take an airplane to Europe around beginning of June. But I want to cycle home, so I will fly to somewhere a bit farer away - probably Vienna. From there it will be 2 more weeks of cycling through the beer country (Budweis! Pilsen!) before I will roll down Elster to arrive home mid of June -  anyone wants to join for that last part (or part of that last part) :o)?

Day 255 - 256 Auroville

Uuuh, I like this place. It feels like I am here on a will-work-for-culture
agreement. I will stay for about 2 weeks doing some programming for
Auroville Radio. After so many body challenges it is good to finally have
some brain challenges again. And in the evenings: culture. At first this
town seems to be crazy but maybe they really focus on the important things:
on one hand side there are nearly no paved streets, only sand/dirt tracks
through the jungle, after sunset everybody is carrying a torch because
there are no streetlights,... but on the other side there is a abundance of
very nice, modern, clean performance spaces - every evening something is
going on. The last 2 evenings I have been to cuban theatre (en español,
only understood un pocitititito), norwegian theatre in English (a woman
playing mens roles and that in a very convincing way), a french female a
capella trio (singing old georgian songs - interesting but not as great as
I had expected) and a tabla & sitar rendition in a huge auditorium (a tabla
player who was taught by the one and only Ustad Zakir Hussain!!!) which I
found by accident on the way to dinner because so many motorcycles were
parking at the entrance. Of course there are also many offers for those
searching spiritual enlightenment, but I have been too busy practising the
yoga of work and enjoying music to go on this quest. Everyone is really
relaxed here - and this statement is in no way to be understood in the
typical
western-tourist-in-India-is-totally-relaxed-because-he-smokes-weed-all-day
- way!
On my first day I had some problems finding accommodation and had to stay
in a nearby village (which was nice though). But now I am settled and can
enjoy all the facilities of Auroville. This lunch I was so enthusiastic
about the organic food being prepared with solar power only that I ate way
too much, my stomach still feels stuffed.
Oh, and there is nearly no mobile connection in Auroville. Don't expect too
many blog entries in the next 2 weeks - I will be too busy for writing
anyway.

Day 254 Auroville

Relaxed sunday. The first activity besides sleeping and reading
was,watching a performance of Russian plate bells. Wonderful instrument.
And the best thing about it - at some point people from the audience were
allowed to join. Guess who did ? I want a set of this bells, now!
And there are other news: today Trabant drew the winners of the Haiku
lottery! From 12 poems (of which 9 were more or less Haikus) the following
are the winners:

In deinem Auge
Ich seh die Göttin des Lichts
So klar wie ein Fisch

Eine Fischsuppe,
die Göttin der See im Tel-
ler, welch' Augenschmaus

Weder Fisch noch Fleisch
Sag mal Nein zum "Augen"-schmaus
Die Göttin dankt es

And what could suit the end of the Haiku-lottery-day more than a
performance of japanese dance, accompanied by shamisen, both very (VERY!)
minimalistic.

Day 253 Puducherry - Auroville

I spent the day in Auroville - a futuristic experimental town. That is, futuristic in a 70s sense. Its center is the Matrimandir - the shrine of the mother - big, round, golden. The mother was the companion of well known guru Sri Aurobindo and she is the one who commissioned the whole place. It is supposed to become a place where people from all over the world can live and work peacefully together. And it is all based on the spiritual writings of Sri Aurobindo - which I don't know at all. Even though this might all sound a bit too esoteric the whole thing is supported by UNESCO. One thing I really like about the place is their strong focus on sustainability. As I was searching for accomodation I saw a note that the local radio is searching for volunteers who know about sound editing and computer programming. Sounds like me :) I will check with them on Monday and if it works out I might stay here for a week or two. In the evening there was a concert - the local Aurovillean Rock Band playing mixed-quality renditions of everything between the Stones and Lady Gaga.

Day 222 Negombo - Kandy

We are both still a bit jetlagged, so we only got started pretty late. We took the bus to Kandy. The bus station and at first the bus itself seemed to be much more relaxed than what I know from India - it was no problem to get a seat. However as the bus picked up more and more people it got very crowded. Nevertheless it was a very nice ride. As soon as we got into the hills the landscape was quite stunning and this impression was dramatically supported by rainclouds. We got out close to Kandy and waited for a tuktuk to bring us up a very bumpy road along a hillside with stunning sunset views to our very very nice couchsurfing host family. Ben and his family are hosting like crazy - when we came three other couchsurfers were already there. His family and the other guests were very very nice, we had a delicious Lankan dinner together and later we could even play music. There was a 5-stringed guitar and a 2-stringed violin (great because Anne could not carry her cello on the trip) in the house - this plus the small orchestra I am always carrying  made up for a very nice session.

Day 063 Istanbul

Lalala, I did something today, dumdidumdidum.

Day 016 Ostrava

The last music & rest day is over - tomorrow I'll be on my bike again heading to Bratislava. I started the day with 2 concerts in the church: David Hykes who had some nice overtone singing but was overall a bit too esoteric for me and belgian acoustic chamber rock group Aranis who were interesting. The main part of the afternoon I spent with further travel planning, charging the batteries for the next days and getting ready for the Grand Finale. First of the last three artists was the great Yann Tiersen who delivered the last act of beauty on this festival - that does not mean that the remaining acts were not enjoyable! I really really appreciate the festival organizers sense of drama shown by scheduling the whole thing in such a way that 4 days of beautiful, light hearted and cheerful music were literally torn down by the last 2 acts, namely: the amazingly inspired monotonic drone noise dreadfulness of the Swans followed by the blunt hairy Garage Rock nastiness of Nick Cave's Grinderman. I was surprised to see how many people attended (and did not leave throughout) both shows. My ears need some rest now. Good Night.

Day 015 Ostrava

Still no cycling, just Music and Relaxation today :-) This morning I took a short walk through Ostravas center, which is very nice - there are also some stages with some festival artists playing in the city which are free to visit for everyone. Today I did not have many plans about which concerts to visit, so I was just walking around and stayed wherever I liked the music. The day started with a lot of horns (both brass & saxophones): czech fun ska with horns, belgian-french balkan brass style stuff with horns (obviously), english technobeat-RnB-jazz with horns... Then finally some czech bands made me stay longer: Madebythefire (wonderfully complex math metal) & Kacu! (completely crazy cello & morin khuur jazz). Nevertheless someone (8-E) tried to convince me that the best czech band was the one called Traband (though I also have to admit that I like their concept of using a tuba [yep, horns again] instead of a bass guitar [something I always wanted to try out in my own band - even though my band was not very fond of that idea]).
The best concert today was definitely Mono from Japan. I got warned by several friends that they would be great, and they were great :o)