A working life
Travel
SUMMER 2010: WALES
Jul 20th
The past few days, I’ve been with Tom in Moss, a small village near Wrexham in Wales. We’ve planned the upcoming South Africa trip, played with ther puppy dog Rosie and played some golf. It’s been great.
We also paid Chester a visit, one of the oldest Roman cities in Great Britain. We got to see some sights and I bought myself some proper golfing clothes (trousers and polos) so that I will be allowed entrance in South Africa. Tomorrow we leave for London and the day after tomorrow, the trip to South Africa will finally begin!
Below you see a couple of shots taken with my phone (and the very cool Hipstamatic app).
The clouds making shadows between Oslo and Manchester.
Rosie playing in the bushes.
BBQ with Tom’s friends. Here: Matt, temporarily playing BBQ chef – Matrix style.
COPENHAGEN & ROSKILDE
Jul 16th
My inverted blogging continues and I’ve now arrived to the Roskilde Music Festival 2009 – June 28th to July 5th.
Cate, Geir and me arrived in Copenhagen the 25th of June. We stayed at Nina’s where Johannes and Anna-Mari also cutched for a few days.
Copenhagen is truly beautiful and we saw the little murmade, the opera and even got to see a very good Veto concert in Tivoli!
After some good days in Copenhagen we packed our bags and headed for Roskilde Saturday night (big thanks to Nina for such great preparations). The official opening of the festival is Sunday at 8 o’clock, but the fences are normally cut down a few hours in advance. We figured arriving at midnight would give us enough time to prepare for the running to get an ok camp.
Sunday night: Coffee and Irish cream (Feeney’s)
This year it was all different – the fences were cut 9 o’clock Saturday night and the camping site was practically full when we got there. We managed to squeeze ourselves into a spot in J camp, as far away from the festival area as you can get. We got the tent up in the dark and were pleased to have a slot!
Left: Beer system. Right: Happy people in our camp.
Sunday we got our camp properly together and chilled out by the tent. We did this most of the four first days, but we also listened to some of the up-and-coming bands at the Junior Pavillion.
Festival life is good!
The big names started Thursday. Kanye West did a good concert, as did Trentemøller and his friends (great show), but my absolute Thursday favourite was the danish rock band Volbeat!
No Roskilde without Tuborg beer
Friday we saw a really good concert with Negash Ali, we got disappointed by the Fleet foxes but re-energized by Baddies.
One of the main names Friday was Oasis, that we saw earlier this year in Toulouse. This time it was a lot better (a good crowd too makes a good concert)!!! We got to see Röyksopp too – but it was too crowded as they played on a stage that was too small in my opinion (Arena).
Oasis!
Saturday was a great day. We saw Lily Allen, Tim Christensen, Håkan Hellström, Slipknot and Petshop Boy.
The crowd at Gogol Bordello – best concert ever!
The American rapper Lil Wayne was supposed to have a gig on Orange stage, but cancelled and he got replaced by Gogol Bordello!
BEST LIVEBAND EVER! The ground shook underneath the thousands (20-25k) that jumped to their Balkan inspired punk music!
Gogol Bordello!!!
The last and final day we got to see Peter Doherty, Ida Maria (I like you so much better when …!), a bit of Madness and Coldplay. In my opinion, Coldplay was beaten by Whitest boy alive, who had a super concert in Arena.
I realize that this isn’t the best post ever, all I’ve done is to mention some of the bands we got to see – but hey, that’s what a festival is all about – the music and the bands!
We got on the train straight after the Coldplay concert and returned to Copenhagen. The following day I flew to Oslo and work :)
A heavy duty backpack in the chaos (bad organisation at the train station)
Roskilde is without a doubt my best music experience ever!
MUNICH, BERLIN AND ROSKILDE
Jun 26th
The Roskilde festival (Photo: Once again I’ve been very bad at updating the blog, so I’ll give you a heads up on the events of the past week.
My year in Toulouse is over, it all ended June 19th with a big BOOM! The party, BOOM Mousse (foam party) was very fun, even though I don’t really get the point of having foam in a party (messy and your shoes smell).
Before the BOOM I cleaned my apartment and will get my entire deposit back (Promologis is often hard to please aparently)!
The day after the BOOM (Saturday) Cate, Geir and I left for Munich by train with short stops in Bordeaux and Paris. We spent two days there and then we headed to Berlin where we stayed at a friend’s place (thank you Dinah!).
We then took a plane to Copenhagen where we now are staying at Nina’s. We’re staying here with Johannes and Anna-Kari who’s traveling around Scandinavia these days.
It’s been great so far and Cate, Geir, Nina and me are all super excited to go to the Roskilde Festival on Saturday!
Because of that it’ll be more radio silence from me, but bigger updates will come later!
WEEKENDS IN MAY
May 6th
Airshow over Porto (Photo: Unknown)
They are long, specially this year.
May 1st, 8th and 22nd all count as holidays here in France, the two first are Fridays, meaning three day weekends! The last one is a Thursday, but INSA don’t give courses on Friday 23rd. How convenient!
Last weekend I visited Torbjørn in Antibes, this weekend I’m going with Juha, Cate, Geir, Tom and Roberto to Porto in Portugal to visit Joao and Tiago!
The timing of our stay is well planned as we are visiting during Porto’s student festival.
I’ve been working lots with the multidiciplinary project the past few days, now I’m off to my apartment to pack my things and meet the others heading for Porto.
50 minutes left!
WEEKEND TRIP: CÔTE D'AZUR
May 3rd
Nice as seen from La colline du château
This weekend I’ve been visiting Torbjørn, a friend of my from the university in Norway. Torbjørn is studying at the Eurecom institute near Antibes and is staying there for a year.
Antibes is situated between Cannes and Nice (Google Maps), which is pretty far away from Toulouse. So, Thursday afternoon at 17h I got on the train. 7 hours and a train swap (in Marseilles) later I arrived in Antibes where Torbjørn picked me up.
Dan Brown’s Digital Fortress, my camera and me heading for Antibes
It took 15 minutes to get to Torbjørn’s apartment near the school campus. The apartment is pretty much identical to mine here in Toulouse. Because of the bad bus connection to the school campus, Torbjørn bought a car a few weeks ago!
So, Friday morning, we got up around 8 o’clock and drove to Nice!
Torbjørn and his monster car at Carrefour
I’ve been to Nice once before, but that was during sixth form (“lycée” in French, “videregående” in Norwegian). We parked just next to the local marked, a place I visited last time as well. Nice is such a beautiful city!
We didn’t stay for a long time, but we saw the Promenade des Anglais, the beautiful view from La colline du château and we enjoyed a coffee in Place Rosetti. During our coffee I was lucky enough to get pooped on by a bird. It hit me on the head, on the shoulders and almost hit my camera. Not the most pleasant of experiences, but everything has a first I guess.
Me, Torbjørn, coffee, card writing (and bird poo) in Place Rosetti
We then headed for Cannes where we spent the rest of the afternoon on the beach, chilling out and playing beach volley.
The same night we met up with Kristoffer, the other Norwegian studying at Eurecom. We had dinner together, I had Calzone pizza for 9€, coffee for 2€ and expensive Crème Brulée Ice cream for 8€. We ended the evening with a couple of pints of Guinness the Irish pub the Hop Store. I am amazed by the number of Australians in Antibes. Surely, Antibes is a city based on tourism, but Australian-English was more common than French in some areas.
Saturday we got up late, bought baguettes and ate our breakfast on a fortified wall overlooking the crazy big yachts in the marina. We stayed there for a few hours because of the great view and marvellous weather!
Torbjørn and me in front of crazy big yachts! (Photo: Kristoffer)
After an ice cream in down town Antibes we headed for the beach in Juan-les-pins where we tried to find some friends of Kristoffer and Torbjørn’s. We couldn’t find them and ate our lunch on our own. We played a bit of beach volley and Torbjørn and I even took a swim in the Mediterranean!
Chilling on the beach in Juan-les-Pins (Kristoffer and Torbjørn)
We ate home made dinner in Torbjørn’s apartment before I took the train back on Saturday at 21h16. I left Saturday already because the two others were leaving for a one week cruise in the Mediterranean Sunday morning. It’s been a great weekend, Côte d’Azur is fantastic!
