We, the musicians from Bhaktapur, Nepal are thrilled to visit Austria for the first time. We heard that there is plenty of clean air and water available for everyone and electricity supply for twenty-four hours a day. Could this be true? Here in the Kathmandu Valley we get four hours of electricity per day, if we are lucky. Most of the water taps have been running dry for more than a year. Owing to frequent power cuts, the mobile telephone systems keep breaking down most of the time. Our lovely rice fields have been occupied by hundreds of brick factories. Air pollution is so unbearable that it prevents us from seeing our beautiful mountains. We hope they are still there. To us it seems like a dream that there is a country which has everything in abundance, even mountains, and we are going to see it soon.

What happy people must live there! We feel privileged to spend one week in the paradise that is called Linz and hope to make the people of Linz even more happy with our music. We shall play like fire and expect everybody to jump in front of our drums and dance, as is the custom here during our festivals. During earlier tours of Europe we saw that the irresistable charm of our music god Nasahdyo works internationally.

We are also looking forward to meet musicians from other countries who have been invited to parade Linz, play together with them and feel the power of their music gods. We hope to meet again three folk musicians from the Bruckner conservatory who gave a workshop in Bhaktapur last summer.

We heard that cars drive very fast in Austria. Will the drivers take care not to hit us during processions?

Someone told us that Austrian people have a concept of ‘disturb’ or can ‘be disturbed’ by anything that other people do in their presence. In our language there is no such word and we feel a little shy about this. In Nepal it is generally accepted that everything happens at the same time. Will the happy people of Linz feel disturbed by us?

However, we are all very happy to go and will tell our families and friends all about our adventures in paradise.

Best wishes and many thanks for selecting our group!

Masterdrummers of Nepal