Here are two things you absolutely must have on your bucket list: See Eric Clapton in concert; and visit Istanbul. What you must not do though, is go to an Eric Clapton concert in Istanbul; friends of mine and I did it and it was a disaster!
I called my brother and suggested we get tickets to see Eric in Istanbul, he suggested we went with two other friends to make a mini “boys holiday” out of it. Best seats tickets were purchased at 370 Turkish Liras each (US$170), flight and 5-star hotel rooms were booked; all set fair for a memorable experience.
We arrived on 10 June, a few days before the concert, scheduled for Sunday 13, to see Istanbul and enjoy each other’s company. Our sightseeing checklist was successfully ticked where it included mosques, bazaars, riverboat trips and such like, with a bonus chance meeting Ilie Nastase, the famous Romanian tennis player of the Seventies who was flattered to be recognised by complete strangers and more than pleased to pose for pictures with some of us.
Sunday finally arrived and excitement was getting to fever pitch. We did our last minute shopping during the day and returned to the Marmara Hotel for rest and change of clothes, in time for the once in a life concert.
It was by shear luck that one of us read “Time Out” Magazine and discovered the concert venue had been switched from a proper concert hall to an arena called “The Turkcell Kurucesme Arena”. We made enquiries and the concierge made a couple of phone calls, which confirmed the change of venue. We wondered how the seating was going to work out given that our tickets had specific seat numbers; it would have been amazing for both venues to have had the exact seating arrangement. We need not have worried!
The concierge informed us the venue was a little over 5 km away and would take no more than 15 minutes to get there by taxi. With the concert due to start at 9:00, we decided to play it safe and leave at 8:00, to give us plenty of time to get to the arena and make our way to the best seating area of the concert as befit our top-priced tickets. Everything was going to plan.
Everything stopped going to plan the minute we jumped into a taxi driven by the biggest idiot to ever take control of a vehicle anywhere in the world, ever! My guess was that he arrived in Istanbul from “Planet Stupid” on that same day and learnt to speak a form of Turkarabenglish in the afternoon before he fell into the drivers seat when the real owner stepped out to relief himself.
We explained to the driver where we wanted to go, and he confidently nodded his complete understanding and drove off, in a random direction, in my view. The Marmara Hotel is situated high on Taksim Square, one of the most famous landmarks in Istanbul. From there, you take any number of main arterial roads down to the lower parts of the City and head East towards the arena on the water front.
Like all morons, our driver had a different idea from the simple approach of taking the straightforward route from A to B. He left the main road and went down a minor road, not satisfied with his handy work so far, he found an even more minor road to navigate through and soon found himself stuck behind a long line of not-in-a-hurry local cars with no chance of turning right or left. After about 10 minutes of no movement, we asked him how far we were from the arena. He confidently replied we were but a “dak dak” away. We took this to be a couple of minutes because “Dakika” happens to have the same meaning in Arabic and Turkish, which is “one minute”.
30 Dakikas later, we covered the same distance an unmotivated tortoise with a bad leg would have accomplished. The concert was due in 20 minutes and we were nowhere near our destination. For the 50th time, we asked him how close we were to the arena and for the 50th time he assured us we were: dak dak! A quick conference was held and the decision was taken to abandon our mode of transport and walk the rest of the way. Mr Dak Dak protested but we threw enough money at him to shut him up and we walked in the general direction of the arena.
Amazingly, we arrived only 10 minutes late and we could hear the music wafting through the air in our direction. The place was in total chaos. Clumps of people were gathered around different entrances, no signs, or stewards to give you an indication of which way to go and what to do. After a while, we decided the only way open for us was to push through and make our way in. It was impossible for the four of us to remain together so, we split in two pairs and battled through the crowd.
Finally we reached an open area and that’s what it was, just an open area with no seats anywhere at all. However, there was a stage and in front of the stage was a caged area that could take roughly 100 people but already had over 300 concertgoers. Having paid top dollar for our tickets, we felt we belonged to that prestigious group of caged animals and we began to search for a way into this exclusive pen. It was not easy but somehow, we managed to squeeze through people and barriers and wormed our way in to the middle of the cage, reasonably close to the stage.
Eric Clapton was accompanied on stage by a number of musicians including his old friend and very accomplished singer / songwriter Steve Winwood. By the time we made camp in the middle of the cage, the two legendary musicians were about 50 minutes into their set. With no seats or refreshments and being in a highly agitated state, coupled with the fact that that was the last night of the two legendary musicians world tour, and they clearly were going through their repertoire in a mechanical manner, what promised to be a memorable night of music turned out to be memorable for all the wrong reasons.
I felt really bad for my other companions because I had seen Eric Clapton in concert on two previous occasions in proper concert halls organised in well-run venues and he was nothing short of outstanding. That night, Eric and Steve were well below average playing to a rowdy and restless crowd in a very badly organised setting.
Life has its compensation though. The following night we went to a fish restaurant where we were encouraged to dress up as Ottoman courtiers and had an excellent meal, which is not surprising in Istanbul since the food there rarely disappoints. What made the evening memorable, apart from the dressing up, was the belly dancer. I don’t wish to be unkind to her but, she was the ugliest belly dancer any of us had ever come across. Come to think of it, she would have been high up on the ugly chart if she was employed as a bouncer, let alone an exotic temptress dancer; there was nothing tempting about that woman, bless her. But, we had a good time taking pictures with her and very carefully inserting banknotes through her scanty clothing; that was a great night out!
The following day, we went home reasonably happy.
