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”

Desk-Art

Desktop art... ever wondered how somebody's desk migh look like? Mine for instance?



freezing today in Edinburhg... I thought (hoped) that the city's white cover was a direct result from snowfall, but it turned out to be 'merely' a layer of frost... heavy frost...
but the effect was as astonishingly beautiful as it would have been with snow...

toothy

Well, i had a great weekend, with Gijs visiting - always fun to break the winter-calm! Although i did not participate in the adventurous "chain-walk" in Largos (because I had to work) and neither in the mountaineering trip on the three sisters in Glen Coe (because I was too plain lazy), it was a fab weekend, with yesterday (and today) a clear blue sky and lots of sunshine!








Yesterday i had a sudden heavy toothache, very very bad, which made me go to the emergency dental clinic, with as a verdict either pulling the damaged tooth or letting it repair asap...
Me, i don't like dentists...

prepare to burn(s)

busy days!... I decided to organise tomorrow evening a Burns Dinner, a traditional Scottish party to commemorate the birthday of Robert Burns, the famous Scottish poet and writer.
A typical Burns dinner consists of eating Haggis, bagpipe music and reciting poems…

I have invited more or less 10 guests, and with Joris back in Belgium for a couple of days, all preparations are in my (hopefully) capable hands. I started this weekend with preparations – downloading celtic and scots music, yesterday I made the cock-a-leekie soup and tonight I will prepare the Cranachans (dessert).

Today i bought my potatoes and turnip (“raap” in dutch) to go with the Haggis. I will post some pics later this week with the outcome (if our kitchen isn’t burned down because of my cooking skills)

Which reminds me that my good friend Sarah send me this link to this great fashionable cooking website to do with potatoes (tatties as we like to call them here)! Enjoy

My kinda town

I love Edinburgh:

• the flag on St. John's Church on Princess Street
• Edinburgh Castle
• Late night shopping (with 24 hrs supermarket)
• the view from my office
• saying “thanks” to the bus-driver
• lots of international people (probably because of being foreigner myself)
• Dean Village
• Meeting lots of new people
• The Highlands at the backdoor
• The river/sea
• Free digital television
• Speaking English (or something that looks like it)
• Getting visitors from Belgium
• The weather (not being funny!)
• Being a foreigner

What I would change in Edinburgh:

• Move my entire family/friends to here
• The barley/hops smell from the brewery
• The banking system
• The high accommodation prices
• The we-don’t-give-change-on-Lothianbuses policy
• Leith scum trashing my car... 4 times
• Girls wearing summer tops on freezing cold winter nights on the street
• Over-expensive trains
• Pub- and restaurant chains
• The unavoidable “where are you from – how long have you been here” conversation

Discover Your Voice and Sing

I am trying to find a nice evening course here in Edinburgh, so I could spend an evening or two during the week with something useful/interesting. I was thinking about something either musical or something technical (website design, PHP) or something historical.
I found a few courses that I found interesting... What about :

Discover Your Voice and Sing! If you were told at school that you couldn't sing - now's the time to prove them wrong!This course is designed to help you develop your voice and enjoy singing with others. The class is relaxed, confidence building and fun.

or

Write Your Own Pop Song


Nice?

My Personal God

Anybody who knows me a little bit, knows that I am a huge fan of Nick Cave. It all started when I studied in Leuven and my housemate Stijn introduced me to this dark and mysterious artist. I immediately fell in love with the gloomy ballads on the Boatman's Call and the morbid Murder Ballads.

So far I have seen Nick Cave perform three times, and three times in a different country; in Belgium, London and once in Chicago – the last one was by far the best one of the three. Three encore-sessions ending in a crazy version of Stagger Lee…

His concert in Edinburgh will be – what he calls - a “solo performance”, so not with the Bad Seeds and hence more intimate and less noisy, although he will take with him his violin player, plus bass and drum. It is not certain – however – that I will be going to see him here in Edinburgh, since I was too late for tickets and now I have to join the bidding-frenzy on Ebay… wish me luck!

I like Europe

i probably have said this before, but i really love europe and - despite all its difficulties and troubles - I am still very much in favour of a bigger, better and more powerful Europe!

Especially here in the UK I feel that people need a change in attitude. In the press, on television or just in day to day conversation they always talk about we, UK (or Scotland) and THEM - Europe - the others... so they do not consider themselves as European - even among travellers here in Edinburgh (lots of backpackers choose to work in Edinburgh for a few months because of the good wages and the low unemployment rate) they say "did you travel in Europe already" whilst meaning continental europe... Of course the island-mentality will always be present with the Brittons... but still... Or am I just a loner with my pro-europe-feelings? What about you?

and just in case you should doubt what Europe ever has done for us... click on the following link to find out!

Rome

There are not many television shows these days that made want to stay at home, except for one... The BBC has broadcast these last weeks (yesterday was the last episode of the series alas) a historical drama series about the life in ancient Rome with the rise of Julius Caesar at its heart.





The power of the series lies in its combination of sublime acting, clever storylines and the mix of historical facts with personal drama and passion. Adding a fair amount of humour, sexy scenes and a wee bit of violence, "Rome" had everything a good television show needs...

I am still reading a book about Queen Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots, and struggling my way through the last chapters, i am beginning to look forward maybe reading something more about the history of Rome... History has always appealed to me and especially if I have a visual aide to help me making this sometimes dry history a bit more plastic. In the same that my interest in Queen Elizabeth started by seeing the movie Elizabeth and living in Scotland, I just feel that my next project might be Rome... and Italy is already long time on my holiday-destination-list...

if you want to know more, a few links for the surfing crowd :

BBC ROME
HBO ROME

... and a happy 2006

to you all a Happy 2006!

The year has started with a minor cold - sniffing my way through New Year's eve (I still managed to go to the 2ManyDJ's gig here in Edinburgh on Thursday, one of Belgians hippest export-products)

Yesterday-night we celebrated first at our place with some champagne together with Audrey, Patrick and Ann who is visiting from Belgium. And afterwards we went to the restaurant in town to have dinner and afterwards the party in the bar...

I am a bit curious to find out what 2006 will bring... might be a year of big changes again, but we have to wait and find out... and in the mean time: ENJOY !!!

Merry Christmas

Well, my good friends :

a MERRY CHRISTMAS TO EVERYONE

Winter Solstice

Today, my good friends, it is official the Winter Solstice - which means that it is the longest night-shortest day. So on the positive side : days will only get longer as from today... (do I already feel a touch of spring coming?)

Today we had a Christmas lunch together with some European-instution-offices here in Edinburgh (all two or three people offices - so it's nice to have the lunch together). The food was lovely and we had some wine and it took us untill 16 pm to get back to the office, so just in time to check the last mails, update the blog and go home!

It was again a beautiful sunny day and i know i always seem to rant on about it, but that is because it has such a positive effect on me. also because we are one floor higher - with a spectacular view (and lots more natural sunlight coming in) we (my boss and me) do not seem to feel as "depressed" (in the most light way of the word) by this dark winter-time...

and just as a demonstration as to how cheery we decorated our christmas tree, you can the see the photographic evidences here below! Merry Christmas everybody!

the music-box of Pandora

ok, i officially started the Kristof-is-in-the-xmass-mood-festive-season... i felt i was missing out on all the xmass fun - i still haven't had the time to visit the edinburgh xmass-winter-wonderland and german christmas-market... So i decided to take some action. Starting with my office : my background picture now is the most cheesy christmas-backgroung i could find (other suggestions are always welcome, i like to change)

And a new website i found is www.pandora.com which is i think a great thing. You give in a song or artist you like and the site creates a "internet-radio" with music of the same "nature" as your favourite style/song/artist... and if you type in for instance "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" then you can listen for ever and ever to all the favourite Christmas carols... which - i must admit - I have been doing since this morning...

I just read on the internet news that Fairy Tale In New York from the Pogues was elected in The Netherlands as most favourite xmas carol... but i had never heard of it... so what are your favorite Christmas carols?