The clothes of the vikings

If you want to attract a bit of attention around the streets of London, all you need to do is put on a pair of fluro green jeans and waltz along without a care in the world. Walking toward Covent Garden today I attracted the attention of a charity money collector. I was all prepared to let rip a yell of fear and anguish, trip him up, and make a helter skelter dash away down the street. Covering my ears with my hands and squealing like a slaughtered pig (or really, a pig that is being slaughtered), I only just managed to lip read, and discover that, no, he wasn't trying to extort money out of my dieting wallet to feed some half extinct tree gecko species, but was, in fact just asking where I'd bought my jeans. I took my hands away from my ears, and stopped scaring the passing tourists with my animal noises, and managed to splutter out that I had bought them in Denmark, and that they were developed from the original battle design used by the vikings when the raided and plundered the English coast.

Well I continued on down the street, a spring in my step, confident in the knowledge that lime green pants, despite being physically impossible to colour coordinate with anything - i mean, they are LIME GREEN! - have the ability to make one noticed in the world, to attract attention, be it good or bad.

Bubble baps for lunch

I thought I'd arrived in the wrong city when i stepped outside Stanstead airport in London. There were patches of blue in the sky and the pavements were bathed in warm sunshine. I was expecting floods, overflowing sewerage, third world conditions of disease and army drops of water and supplies.

It didn't take long to be reminded that yes, I am indeed in London, England, despite the lack of flood induced chaos. It seemed to me that London doesn't need weird and wonderful weather conditions to nurture chaos, it just lives in a perpetual cycle of chaos regardless. Just the trip from the airport to the city by bus took something over 2 hours, due to closed tunnels, road works and blocked up traffic. We even managed to cross the Themes two times before arriving, and I certainly received feelings of deja vu driving along various streets.

I arrived eventually, my throat parched, my legs wobbly from lack of food, and stumbled to a bagel shop in the nearest food court. I fluttered my eyelashes, and charmingly asked the lady for a bacon and cheese bagel, and if she would so kindly top up my water bottle from the tap. Now my degraded level of English (resulting from my year with the vikings) may be to blame, but I was rather surprised when she smiled sweetly, took me water bottle, and tossed it neatly into the bin beside her. I like to think it wasn't my poor English that caused the misunderstanding, but instead that she became light headed and confused as a result of my windswept looks and charm...

My reintroduction to wonderful London would of course not be complete without a journey on the reliable and fail proof London underground. A lovely journey 5 stops down the line, a relaxing 15 minute wait on a motionless train (due to radio failures), a lovely journey 5 stops back up the line (due to those radio failures), a handful of trips up and down the never ending escalators and eventually and almost an hour later I had completed my journey of a few kilometers. I at least got my recommended daily intake of Picadillys, Waterloos, and Elephants and castles.

Oh, and I had a bubble bap for lunch.

København, Malmø

First for a little photoblog tour around København!


A windmill..... somewhere near the little mermaid!


Den lille havfrue herself, watching the storm roll in.


Some mythological character rides her steeds through the foam and spray.


Nyhavn in spectacular weather.


Anyone fancy a beer? you have over 16000 to choose from... Carlsberg brewery.


Eat your heart out Papa :P

And now a little tour around Malmø - a nice little Swedish city


Lovely colourful streets in Gamle Staden.


There were flowers over all.


Some swedish architecture.


Bam!


Now that's a little cuter


One of the artists


The swedes in Malmø use bikes just as much as the danes in Copenhagen.

Here come the photos...

Roskilde
First, an introduction to the weather conditions...


Wind power, and water.


Good luck mate!


Stuck in the mud.


"Don't worry about the mud - have a nice cold beer to quench your thirst!"

Now the people and the music


Please meet Frank. The ambassador to Camp Frank.


Veronica is ready for the Ark, Ivår is hiding, and Kari is downright sick of waiting for them!


The Ark, waiting, waiting,


And there he is, that Freddie Mercury inspired entertainer!


We sat down, Heidi reflected on the days at Roskilde...


Me and Heidi,


They were mud resistant - I swear!

Life after Roskilde

Life after Roskilde is remarkably free of mud. Free of rain, filled with sun. Copenhagen is sparkling, offering up its sights, sounds, and glorious pastries to me!

The last night at Roskilde took off. It was fantastic. The weather turned beautiful - dark blue evening skies with an occasional faint star poking through. And there was such a communal feeling of happiness, and sadness that the festival was coming to its final, glittering, dancing end. The last concert of the night was one not that many people hand much experience with - Basement Jaxx. We all knew a couple of songs of course, but we didn't know how they would turn out live, what performance they would give. Well, they gave us a darn good night! Never before have I danced so much. Congo trains spiralling through the crowd, people young and old, male and female throwing their bodies around in fits of uncontrollable dancing. The music was infectious, it found it's way into our blood, it entered our souls! A blend of house, salsa, disco, it was a perfectly crafted concert - a gem of organisational genious.

It came to a glittering, firework filled close, and as the organisers said thankyou and goodbye, they had tears in their eyes, reflecting those in ours.

Well life after Roskilde. Life after Norway. Life without people surrounding me, people there at both sides to talk to. I found yesterday tough - i was exhausted, and alone for the first time in almost a year. But wherever i turned i would see people with their Roskilde bracelet on, and have a feeling of kinship wash over me. I chatted to a old version of David Brent from the office, was bored to death with talk about his life working at a aluminium pressing factory, and his life making small computer programs to calculate the most efficient production methods. But I was saved by a fellow Australian who had been at Roskilde too, and chatted to him about our experiences together.

But now I will leave my friendly readers, to continue my explorations of lovely Copenhagen. Possibly tommorow I will take a trip to Malmø in Sweden, On Thursday visit the Helsingor castle, and then take a trip around the Carlsberg factory on Friday. Who knows :)

The Great, The Good, The Bad, and The Red Hot Chili Peppers

The great - "The Flaming Lips"
The good - "The Who", "Thomas Dybdahl"
The bad - ...
The Red Hot Chili Peppers - "The Red Hot Chili Peppers"

The Flaming Lips. Wow. People who had never heard of them confessed of nearly breaking down in tears during their concert. Those who had heard of them came away speaking in tongues, touched by the hand of Wayne Coyne. They have played at Roskilde five times, the first time before I was born, in 1987, and I can't imagine they have lost any of their touch with age. A whirlpool of imagination, colours, and fantasy creatures, they are not only spot on musically, but they know how to entertain.

And then there was the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Not worth talking about. We were all falling asleep with boredom.

Roskilde

The inuit have 17 different words for snow? The arabs 10 words for sand? Well well, those in Roskilde have at least 50 words for mud. Sloppy mud, thick mud, stuck-in-the-mud-mud, water on top of mud, mud with hidden holes, muddy mud, concert mud, tent mud, clothes mud, leg mud, mud inside the sleeping bag, mud on the inside of the concert tent roof?!, mud that makes dancing impossible (you dance inside your gum boots - because they're stuck fast),mud under the fingernails, mud in the hair, mud inside of my knee high gum boots, mud that makes sucking sounds, mud that makes slurping sounds.

It's incredible! I haven't seen so much mud in my lifetime. And I'm quite proud to say that I am surviving the wettest Roskilde festival in history. Yes, EVER! Apparently before the main festival started, Roskilde had already recieved more rainfall than during the whole week in previous years. So it's a muddy paradise here.

But we survive. We've got a pretty darn good tent site - it's not down in the swamps, but on slightly raised ground thank god. Those poor folk with tents sitting over 10-15cm muddy water.

But as for the music. My highlights so far - a Swedish band called The Sounds - great dirty female vocal rock. Bjork was fantastic. Completely strange as usual - dressed in a rainbow dress, with the Icelandic wind quintet backing her up. She did a great performance of trance affected electro rock??!! A lot of fun dancing around in the mud to that. Arcade fire was good as well. The Killers dissapointed a bit - bad sound, and just not all that great. Tonight is the night to top them all though. Big bang followed by The Flaming Lips, then The Who, topped off with The Red Hot Chilli Peppers. A killer line up - all at the same stage. So I think it's just down to getting in early and nabbing a good spot.

Possibly the one band I'm looking forward to most - The Ark - The Swedish winners of Eurovision for a couple of years ago - are playing tomorrow, 2pm. It will be fantastic :) Glitzy glam pop-rock - tacky, tacky, tacky, but oh so fun!

Well that's my festival so far :). The weather is improving - no rain for the rest of the festival supposedly - we'll see :).

Regardless of the weather it's great to be at Roskilde!