Hoi Zäma!
Welcome to my first post for 2011 (despite what all the dates and the weird post order will tell you)! How did I go almost 6 months without blogging at all? Well, having gotten married on holiday in Aus in Jan, and getting married again in August, meant there hasnt been much time to concentrate on other stuff. So here we go again, trawling through My Pictures, for some old blogworthy (hopefully) stuff.
First up, I spent about 2 months in the UK in 2010 waiting for my Swiss work permit, starting from the week after the Ejafjallajoekul volcano eruption (400£ for a 1-way Eurostar ticket to London thank you very much), to the end of June (great welcome back with the Weil am Rhein Windmusic Festival on my doorstep).I started off staying in amazing in Camden for about 3 weeks. A mixture of what was once definitely cool and alternative, now very touristy, but still a great place. Thanks heaps to Michael for letting me stay in his flat. I didn't do much in my time there but it was good to be a bit of a tourist without huge time pressure. I could go out every day and just sit in cafes and soak up the ambience, in between excursions to museums, concerts, a very contemporary opera, the Camden Crawl music festival, Bletchley Park WW2 message decoding center and so on.
The Gherkin
A Cornwall Beach - NewquayAfter London I went to Brighton for 2 days where the Brighton Arts festival was happening, and caught a couple of concerts and saw the famous Brighton Pier and holiday town. I found a good whiskey bar and tried the weirdest Whiskey ever: Mackmyra 5 y.o from the Swedish distillery - oily and weird.
I also saw a very rare performance by Philip Glass, of his Music in 12 parts, which goes for over 4.5 hours, which I didn't realise at the time of buying the ticket! I just knew that I liked alot of his stuff. I have a sample here (not taken by me) to give you an idea of what I sat through. Many people find this music annoying, but it was actually far more interesting and entertaining than I expected it to be. Minimalist is the wrong term for his music because although there is no dynamic change or tension and it's very repetitive, there are constant subtle changes in the way parts overlap, which slowly warps the soundscape. And it was an amazing performance from the singer and huge feat of concentration for the other instrumentalists - it cant be easy to play. Check it out for only 4 mins:
Then it was into a hirecar and across to the west coast, to Cornwall, where Cornish pasties are called "Pasties". It is a popular tourist spot in England due to the beautiful landscapes, beaches, cliffs, and surf. It really is beautiful, and there were a surprisingly large number of surfers there, because although the sun looks enticing, it is short lived and not hot!
But Newquay is also a prime "Stag-do" destination - that's Englandspeak for weekend-long buck's parties. When you're sober and travelling alone, a town full of roaming bands of very drunk English yobs in matching bodystockings is not the most fun place to be.
Typical Cotswald village, just a quick stop for a pint and look around on the way back to London
The Hathern Band Gang, "doing Colonial"
Hands up who's a drongo?!
And yes, the bit of excerise I was trying to do, on a bicycle, didn't exactly help improve my health!
More pics in Picasa - click on the picture link below:https://picasaweb.google.com/DrMrTerner/UKTime?authkey=Gv1sRgCN3qjcjYvZ7G_QE&feat=directlink
