ArchivePage 2 of 145

Londontown

I went to London and all I got was this blog post.

Which is actually not true at all but seems like a fun first sentence when thinking it up. Reading it at the top of a blog post: not so much. However, I do want to tell you about my stay in London. Now, the ones who know my itineraries will be most nonplussed, considering that this stay I want to tell you about happened not a week, not four weeks but rather six weeks ago. That’s right, I went to London and only now I am going to tell you about it. Which would have been a rather cool opening sentence as well, come to think of it. But enough with the rambling. Let’s loosen this whole thing up with one of numerous potentially award-winning pictures I took:
Primrose Hill II (cropped)

Letting you figure out by yourself what this image depicts, I will go on with my jumbled narrative. I spent a long weekend at my sister’s in London in mid-March. Not only was she gracious enough to take me in, she even took a whole chunk of time out of her busy schedule to explore that fair city she calls home.

To top that off, she also managed to get me into a concert which took place in a chapel in Westminster Hall. Not only that, the whole thing was preceded by drinks with rich people, among them Ruth Rendell of crime-fiction fame, that were had in a hall which to my ears sounded something like “Chumley Hall”, but which upon closer scrutiny turned out to be named something else. Something very else. So very else that I was unable to remember, nor find the name online. But hey, we got a good laugh out of it and now that I’ve shared this with you, you did as well!

Anyway, I also got to have drinks and pizza with the musicians, who turned out to be a very fine lot and who you should be hitting up on their website. And with hitting up I mean having a look at their website and then visiting their concerts. No excuses!

I could go on now about the numerous rides on double-decker buses, the vast amounts of food we consumed, the movies we saw at splendid cinemas (actually, just the one), the countless episodes of “Flight of the Conchords” we watched late at night with my sister and me alternating as the one who would fall asleep first, the extreme number of little vintage shops on trendy brick lanes (where vintage actually means the results of people going through their parents’ 80s clothing and then deciding to sell them for ten times the amount they had cost initially, notwithstanding the fact that they still look exactly as silly as they did back then), the fish & chips we had looking over the river Thames, our stroll through a big park, our trying to spot celebrities at a place called Primrose Hill but failing miserably (even though I heard someone on the street mentioning Johnny Depp), the meeting up with a good friend from school who is now a famous producer for a computer game company, the dinners and lunches we had with the many splendid friends my sister is fortunate enough to call, well, friends, or last but not least my initial confusion with the various privately held train services that cost me an extra nine British Pound Sterling for a ticket which turned out to be useless, but I will instead stop here so as to not turn this posting into a gargantuan piece of sentence and letter mush that nobody reads anyway. And if you’ve made it till here, I will reward you with the rest of the above mentioned award winning pictures. Enjoy, and always remember to buy a ticket for public transportation in London. They’re kinda strict when it comes to that.

Museum of Childhood Museum of Childhood Bagelshop Westminster Hall Bounty Eggs Benedict London Eye Electric Cinema Cafe Latte Nighttime Full Monty Breakfast Brick Lane Icecream Big Ben vs London Eye Pigeon eating sausage from a plate Snack Primrose Hill Greasy Spoon Well.... Chocolate Banana Cake Porterhouse, 800g Primrose Hill II Fish and Chips Primrose Hill II (cropped)

Of past and future decades

During the last couple of days I read the usual plethora of end-of-year lists, reviews and rants, and was mostly unphazed. Except for those that resonated with me (which is already expressed by the usage of the word “except”. So yes, I won’t stop using bad grammar, not in 2010 and not in the many years to come).

Anyway, I thought it prudent to at least quickly write something up, so people know where I stand when it comes to the advent of new and the goodbye to old decades. Well, here I stand: I don’t give a fuck. What I do give a fuck about, though, is the way some people manage to use that man-made concept of time, calendars and new-years bashes to create a sort of sense-inducing narrative for their own lives, something which I have never managed to do and which I truly envy.

Which is yet another reason why I’ll never be writing an autobiography.

To you, on the other hand, my dear and loyal reader, I wish a fantastic new year. May all your plot-lines work out the way you once envisioned them in that head of yours.

Of Trees, Food, Nativity Scenes and Rain

Christmas Dinner

So there we go. We’ve all spent weeks collecting presents and honing our social skills to survive the getting together of large quantities of human beings only for it all to be over in a mere two and a half days. That’s Christmas for you.

But, as always, it’s two and a half days that are quite rewarding. Spending time with people you like and/or are related to seldom leaves you in a bad mood, especially if it involves trees adorned with shiny stuff, little sweet things commonly referred to as cookies (biscuits for the Brits among you), obscene amounts of poultry, tiny little nativity scenes you can practice your camera’s macro-mode on and of course brief bursts of thunderstorms on Christmas day.

For graphical representations of above ramblings, click the picture on top. For a brief glimpse of what the rain accompanying a thunderstorm looks and sounds like, watch the gripping feature presentation below. Enjoy.

40 Seconds of Rain from Richard on Vimeo.

Christmas, Merry

Merry Christmas

I had planned on writing a longish post about the various meanings of Christmas, from people actually believing that there was someone born a couple of thousand years ago to a carpenter whose wife insisted that “no, it wasn’t anyone from your company’s Christmas party who knocked me up, ’twas this mythical creature that sent an angel did the job” to those thinking that Christmas is mainly something to enjoy what the entertainment and dumbing-down industries put on their platters, no matter how awfully insipid it might be, to finally those who just enjoy the free days that allow them to spend time with their dear ones.

I decided against it, simply because I can’t find the time between going to church every two hours, listening to “The Best of Wham” (a wonderful record consisting of just this one song) and playing “do you need to pee or not” which my little Swedish nephew.

So instead I’ll just leave you with a hearty Merry Christmas and all that stuff.

Cheers.

Stockholm, a tale of food and peril

Crawfish salad

So after more than two years of absence, I returned to Stockholm last weekend to visit my sister, her husband and two unruly but fantastic little Swedish kids. Contrary to my usual ways of taking at least 5000 photos, bugging everyone and their grandma to death, I actually took but a moderate amount of pictures, saving myself from being slaughtered by an angry mob of Swedes and half-Swedes.

As always, my days were dominated by my quest for food and drink, which is nicely reflected in some of the pictures I did take. I also met up with an Austrian friend, whose cousin introduced us to traditional Swedish saturday-night entertainment highlights such as one-room appartment skinhead parties somewhere in the outskirts of Stockholm, complete with pint-glasses of Captain Morgan’s and face-tattoos. One thing I learned that evening is that nights out tend to be so much better when suddenly your only hope is getting out alive. I need to find myself some perilous places in Vienna for jolly good evening entertainment.

Anyway, I did survive the party as I did drinking (another Swedish specialty) at Kvarnen, a pub/club in the heart of Stockholm’s Södermalm. Which reminds me: if you go and smoke a cigarette outside that place, make sure to not sway in any way, because security guys might think you’re too drunk and bar you from going back in. Which in no way happened to me, of course. Oh, and if it happens to you, simply walk away and go back in. Which I heard might work.

And finally, just to prove that I did not spend my days and nights on food and booze only, here’s something for my fellow Stieg Larsson fans. There are tours organized by the city museum called, aptly, Millennium-tours, where you’ll see many of the places featured in Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy. They are Sundays only, but you can buy a map of the tour, complete with explanations of the spots’ relevance in the books. Which is what we did, and, yes, I did take a few pictures. I felt like a fanboy, which, I’m unfortunately obliged to say, I guess I am.

Well, that was my rather concise but nonetheless extremely witty, entertaining and as always dramatic recount of my three day weekend in probably the cleanest city of Europe, if not the world. Enjoy the pictures.

Sun Kvarnen Montelius Vägen Swimsuitboys View Damaged Kötbullar Södermalm Berns Salonger Millennium Office Södermalm Crawfish salad Berns Salonger Brandstation Mellqvist Kaffeebar Stockholm Public Library Tivoli Salander's Home Stockholm harbour Stockholm Salander's Home II Köttbullar



Stormgrass is powered by WordPress 3.0.1 and K2