Peeping Stockholm

Have you ever been to Stockholm?

I think it is the most beautiful city in Europe… with its many little islands, the atmospheric Gamla Stan, all its beautiful bridges… …




However my memories might be a bit coloured by the circumstances under which I first visited Stockholm… I was doing my Erasmus in Finland and - to put it bluntly – Finland has no real “city”… Helsinki comes close, but still is a provincial town compared to the grandeur of Stockholm. Me and my friend Maria decided to embark on a hitch-hiking adventure leaving from Turku in Finland, via Vaasa to Umea and then down to Stockholm… So after hitchhiking more than 1000 km through Finnish and Swedish nowhere-ness, you suddenly arrive in this magnificent stylish metropolis.

Why do I mention this now? Because Joris is leaving tomorrow to go there for the weekend, to work with the internationally acclaimed “Peeping Tom” dance-theatre company for their performances in Stockholm... Lucky bastard…

PS: If you ever have the chance of going to see one of the performances of this theatre, it's definitely worth it! check here

The End

Last Sunday it finally happened... We had been dreading it for some weeks and even months now... My car... My beloved VW Golf has broken down... And it decided to go out with a bang in front of a big audience... Driving on a very busy roundabout going towards Queen Street, transporting six people (ok one over the legal limit).... After some some desperate attempts getting it started again and pushing it towards a safer place, we towed the car (thank you Kenny) to its next-to-last shelter place, our street... It has given us great pleasure, driving thousands of kilometers through entire Scotland; from Edinburgh-Glasgow-Mull-Handa Island-John O'Groats-Inverness-Aberdeen-Stirling-Perth and many more beautiful places in Scotland... I'm not too sentimental though, because after three crashed windows, one crashed mirror and a broken antenna, three new tyres and several cans of oil I'm more than relieved that this ordeal is finally over...

Away!

Last night we did a very good job – as I say so myself… we cleaned up all our clothes and discovered there were actually a lot of them that could be thrown out… so we embarked on this clean-out mission and ended up with an enormous pile of old clothes – things we hadn’t worn for ages it seems…

And just because people like lists here follows our little junk-list – all items now nicely packed into 4 big dust bags:

13 T-shirts
8 long sleeved T-shirts
9 pullovers
11 trousers
3 shorts
7 pairs of shoes

cool?

Is Jamie Olliver still cool? Is he still “in”?
Cool or not, I made one of his recipes yesterday... a great fish-cake (sounds better in Dutch i suppose : "te gekke vistaart!")... And although my balance between some ingredients didn't really seem to be ok, the finished result was tasty (wasn't it joris?)...

Before dinner, we just spent the sunday-afternoon just being lazy on the couch, watching Grand Designs (big fans, we are) on Channel 4 and dragging ourselves of the sofa to go and do the necessary shopping. Don't we just love lazy sundays!

Sauna Office

big problem: the sun is shining...for most people not a very large problem (unless you suffer from Polymorphic Light Eruption) except for me and my boss... since we moved to our new office last October, we have been able to enjoy the magic scenery that our new windows offered us... but on a very bright and sunny day like this, the down part of this is beginning to show : outside temperature today about 6 degrees Celsius, but here inside, with curtains closed (so bye bye nice view) it is i guess already getting close to 25 degrees... I am sitting here in a t-shirt (two actually) and already feeling too warm... (Especially after lunch, the need for a nap emerges more easily in these temperatures...) I dread already the day when temperatures will rise outside...

Opal

Wat een schitterende ochtend; blauwe hemel, stralende zon (enkel vries-koud) – mijn favoriete weer!

Heb een heel leuke avond achter de rug gisteren – vandaar dat ik hier nu wat zit met een iets suffer hoofd dan normaal...

We hadden een delegatie uit Londen op bezoek in Edinburgh – waaronder onze vriend Nic - en uiteraard hoort een introductie van het avond- en nachtleven van onze fijne stad hier bij de feestelijkheden. Onze pub-crawl begon met champagne in de prestigieuze “Opal Lounge” – een bar die Prins William in zijn studententijd vaak frequenteerde - in het poshere New Town in Edinburgh.

Het leuke aan vrijdagen – buiten het feit dat ze op zich al een feest zijn – is dat mijn collega/bazin elke vrijdagnamiddag niet werkt, waardoor ik het op kantoor iets rustiger kan doen en het weekend goed kan inzetten.

Dit weekend blijft Nic – na het officiele gedeelte – nog wat hangen bij ons om een kleine tour te doen in de Highlands... we gaan proberen via Loch Lomond naar Glen Coe te geraken – een van de mooiste plekken in Schotland...

Religious Experience

So finally I did manage to get tickets to go and see Nick Cave last week in the Playhouse, and – although my expectation were rather high, my personal God managed very easily to live up to these expectations. He opened with a very strong first part – lots of “greatest hits” in a new coat.

That is one of the strengths of Nick Cave, he can play all his songs in 5 different versions (until now I have seen him live 4 times and each time heard a different version of Stagger Lee, ranging from a melo-drama version to a satanic-chaotic version) but still manage to keep his own Nick Cave “sound” to it… divine…

Although announced as being a “solo-Performance”, Cave brought with him his bass player, drummer and totally lunatic violin player. The sound they created was not far from the Bad Seeds sound, especially when Cave started to pick up the lead guitar. That might have been maybe a little “disappointing” because I would really like to hear Cave in a very acoustic setting…


Almost as religious – not as much for me as for the 20 000 other Rugby fans – was the important rugby game Scotland – France last Sunday here in Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh. And so we all went to see our first Rugby match, which – I must admit – not being a sports fan – was a very nice experience. Moreover the victory for Scotland (rather unexpected) was a fantastic bonus.

rockin' the boat!

Yesterday was the first session of the course i subscribed to, Discover Your Voice and Sing (used to be called "Singing for Pleasure", which probably describes it a bit better). The course takes place in Stevenson College, a bit – in my opinion – a dodgy campus – an old high apartment block, ugly cafeteria, typical school-style… (not as glamorous as the new Plantijn building I got used to). And until the last minute before the course started, nobody seemed to be sure if the course would be organised at all (reception staff seemed very unaware…)

I found myself in a group of 10 people (4 female, 6 male) and our teacher Emma – a young and very funny opera-singer, leading this gang. After some warm-ups we started singing some songs together, which is ultimately the goal of the course, bien sure! And in the mean time we learn a bit of singing technique and get tips to sing better… hurray!


One of the songs we sang yesterday was a song from the musical “Guys and Dolls” –“rocking the boat”