Christoph Rehage's video: THE MIRROR Timelapse

When I arrived in Cholpon-Ata, everyone was gone. Gone were the Soviet holidaymakers from decades past, gone were the tourists from yesterday. There was a heavy wind, and I leaned against it while I was stumbling down the main road. Much to my surprise, I managed to find a place to sleep. Again, I was the only guest. At night I used my sleeping bag and two blankets to keep warm. It was only October, but there was a wintry cold that came creeping down from the mountains. I stayed in Cholpon-Ata for a week. I looked at old rocks with rock carvings on them. I climbed some of the hills to look at the cold mountains. I played with a cat and bought some sausage for it. Then the cat was gone and I ended up feeding all of the sausage to some mean dogs on the way. They looked very ill-tempered, and I wanted to be their friend. Especially so since I had to cross their way every night when I came back from my favorite spot: the mirror. The mirror was actually a small lake next to Issyk-Kul. I liked to think of it as a mirror, because it was so calm and so clear you could see the sky twice. And the clouds. And the stars. I stayed next to the mirror for hours, and I wasn't alone. There were two little animals building something there. I figured they were beavers, and I realized that my presence annoyed the hell out of them. But after a while they apparently got bored of me and just decided to go on with their business. They would even come over to inspect my camera equipment. Rob and Bob we should call them, said the owner of the hostel where I was staying. Rob and Bob, the gay beaver couple. And there was Hogan. I called him Hogan because he was very big. He would wait until I was almost asleep, then come leaping out of the mirror and into the clear air of the day, and then go splashing back down with a mighty sound. Hogan was a perfect showman. Or rather, a showfish. And there were the crows. Every evening precisely at sunset they would come in the thousands, and they would sit it the highest branches of the tallest trees. The sun would go down and turn the sky pink and purple for a few minutes, and then, when darkness had just begun to sink in, they would leave for a different place. I wondered if the crows came just to look at the sunset. One time I ran into an old guy at the beach of lake Issyk-Kul. He had been to East Germany in the 70s, as a soldier. It was also the place where he saw his very first porn magazine. He laughed and told me about the time he went swimming in the Baltic Sea. It turned out there were myriads of jellyfish in the water, and he never went swimming there again. Then he said: "Everything used to be better back then!" When? "In Soviet times of course!" Back then, he said, there was no trash anywhere. You would buy milk in a glass bottle and then take the bottle back if you wanted more milk. Life was simple, the beach was clean, and the state paid for your holiday. Today, everything cost money! Back then, there were no rich people! Are rich people bad? I wanted to know. He looked at me, then made a gesture that encompassed everything around us: "What is it all for? They eat different bread and drink different tea. But what for?" Then he left, his silhouette becoming smaller and smaller in the distance. I heard a seagull cawing. I saw a plastic bag floating in the lake. The water was gently playing with the plastic bag, reminding me of a jellyfish. Drop by on my site: ▶ http://www.crehage.com or add me on FB: ▶ https://facebook.com/crehage on TW: ▶ https://twitter.com/crehage INFO: This footage was taken in October 2014 in and around Cholpon-Ata, the old spa on the northern shore of Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan. ▶GPS: N42.63833 E77.09026 ▶Shot with: DSLR 15mm + 55mm ▶Soundtrack: Sky-Productions - "Piano" If you have any ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS, please refer to: ▶▶▶ http://crehage.com/faq CONNECT WITH ME: ▶OFFICIAL SITE: http://crehage.com ▶FACEBOOK: https://facebook.com/crehage ▶TWITTER: https://twitter.com/crehage ▶WEIBO: https://weibo.com/leikexiaoliumang ▶▶▶SUBSCRIBE to my channel: http://bit.ly/1BcQ6Ol REISEERZÄHLUNG "THE LONGEST WAY" (PIPER/MALIK) ERHÄLTLICH: ▶Amazon: http://amzn.to/177iCpG ▶Hugendubel: http://bit.ly/1rJj5rc ▶Thalia: http://bit.ly/14hoJXr BILDBAND "CHINA ZU FUSS" (NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC) ERHÄLTLICH: ▶Amazon: http://amzn.to/1xAd7ve ▶Hugendubel: http://bit.ly/1zZqcP4 ▶Thalia: http://bit.ly/1BqvYWR