the baltic sea

there's a sweet song about sweden by swedish/scottish band the social services called "the baltic sea" that i found on indie-mp3. the song is downloadable there but also listenable on the social services myspace. listen to it!

a piece of the lyrics go

Oh Sweden, I’m sorry to say that you’re tedious sometimes / Your natural beauty is unsurpassed, your children are healthy and ruddy / Your recycling facilities are second to none / You’re an ethical peace loving nation.

and then that no one smiles at her on the underground on her way to work. welcome to sweden.

acid test

here's yet another reason to why i love 4AD so much. (as if throwing muses, belly, pixies, the amps, red house painters, birthday party, lush, lisa germano, breeders, kristin hersh, mountain goats, that dog and tanya donnelly weren't enough!) emma pollock - of the delgados for the ones who remember. the song is acid test, and i just ordered her album, she's awesome!




man, i love the 90s.

the france post

ok, so france was nice. and by nice i mean warm, still, relaxing and a whole lot of non-s; non-home, non-stress, non-.. well, you get the picture.

i've uploaded a bunch of the photos i took onto my flickr page if you want graphics.

we didn't really do much. we were mostly just hanging out. we did visit the city of narbonne one day and had a look at their 700 year old cathedral, which was no match for st peter's in rome, but still pretty awesome, and older. for that matter, there isn't much on this planet that IS a match for st peter's - it's fucking huge! that would be the pyramids in egypt or something in their league. i'm so not religious, but there's something really awesome about cathedrals that i can't help but be pulled into totally. i saw st peter's 3 years ago and i still haven't quite grasped its awesomeness - and by awesome i mean the original meaning of the word, not the hot dog.

i read a lot, since i wasn't interrupted by the gizmos of the modern world. i especially loved two of the novels i read, this book will save your life by a.m. homes, and garnethill by denise mina. two very different novels but oh so good. read them!

the former takes you to the world of richard novac, a retired stock market person (what the fuck do i know about that?), who finds himself being cut off of the world in his fancy los angeles house only seeing his housekeeper, his personal trainer and dietist, and he's in pain, excruciating pain. was it there before and he didn't notice or did it just come? he can't tell, he doesn't know, but he feels an enormous urge to connect. so he does, in his own way. the novel is full of odd characters and a lot of warmth, but also harsh reality, though seen through richard's eyes. homes' use of language is captivating in a simple way and her characters, though odd, feels very real. i really loved this one.

the latter is actually a crime novel, oddly enough, cos generally i don't care for crime novels, but garnethill i found extraordinary. for once the protagonist isn't a middle aged alcoholic divorcee ex-cop man, but a young woman with a strike of bad luck. and it is gender aware!

maureen's an incest "surviver" with a fucked-up family; dad gone, mom alcoholic and in denial about the abuse, brother a drug-dealer, one sister pretending they're a happy family and one sister escaped to london. she's also been a patient at a psychiatric hospital a couple of years back. taking place in glasgow, scotland (which, i guess, is part of its appeal to me since i've been there) it starts with maureen, one morning after coming home late drunk and passing out the night before, finding her married therapist boyfriend dead in her livingroom with his throat cut. the police seems interested in pinning it on her and.. damn, i'm really bad at making whodunnit-stories sound interesting. here's what someone else has written;

Viewed in turn by the police as a suspect and as an uncooperative, unstable witness, Maureen is even suspected by her alcoholic mother and self-serving sisters of being involved. Worse than that, the police won't tell her anything about Douglas's death.
Panic-stricken and feeling betrayed by friends and family, Maureen begins to doubt her own version of events. She retraces Douglas's desperate last days and picks up a horrifying trail of rape, deception...and suppressed scandal at a local psychiatric hospital where she had been an inmate. But the patients won't talk and the staff are afraid, and when a second brutalized corpse is discovered, Maureen realises that unless she gets to the killer first, her life is in danger.

ok, so you really have to read these ones. promise!

ok, so i really have to sleep now.

welcome to scotland

so, me and lars went to glasgow for a week and in retrospect, maybe late october/early november wasn't the best season to visit scotland, but we did it and we liked it. we made these observations on scots

1. they are friendly
2. half of the time even people with good knowledge in the english language (read us and the foreigners we talked to over there) can't understand a word they're saying
3. they don't seem to mind the constant raining


we lived in a backpackers hostel owned by a crazy canadian who, during our stay, celebrated his 40th birthday, but you couldn't really tell if he's really 40 or if he's 15. the people working there, mostly girls 20-25, backpackers themselves, were friendly and helpful. we stayed in a 14 bed dorm, the cheapest, for a full week. now we know that's too long. the other guests came and went, most quiet and harmless but some annoying. i wouldn't mind staying at hostels in the future but it had its drawbacks.

most of the time we spent walking around town or in the park, going through bookstores and drinking coffee at starbucks. we also hit a few museums. i loved the bookstores cos they were filled with fiction in english (!), a luxury here. mailorder aside there's no real place to go through shelves with fiction written in english here. i bought 4, too few, but it's not like i'm rich.. the two newest couplands, the virgin suicides and one i really liked, the bitch goddess notebook.

starbucks got a lot of our money though. i got hooked last year when i was in edinburgh, and lars joined in after his second cup. there is no starbucks in sweden.. :( the white moccas after a long day of walking around town getting sore feet is like heaven.

bagpipe players in front of the royal concert hall

i found the record store avalanche - also in edinburgh, where i spent £50 last year - in glasgow and found a few cds i really like, some belly singles and hope sandoval and the warm intentions. the best thing about the store is that they have great music, and it's not expensive. the record stores here with the best music tends to be the most expensive ones..

we also went to edinburgh one day, and it was as beautiful as i remembered it. the old buildings, the narrow streets in the old town, the castle. we even had some fish & chips there on the royal mile. we spent some time and money in the avalanche store there but mostly we just walked around. we took the train back to glasgow with sore feet and marks&spencers sandwiches.

the royal mile

the canadian's birthday party was on a friday and we joined in, we didn't plan to but we did. and it was fun. a lot of the guests were there, and the staff and some of his friends, and we talked to a lot of them, especially two american guys studying in london and two canadians who were friends of the owner. the american guys were fun and we talked a lot about politics actually - they were torn between our interesting conversation and the two pretty german girls who they tried impress by joking about the holocaust, no it didn't work, surprise. i was however surprised i wasn't more drunk considering how many beer i had that night, but except for running to the bathroom at least 6 times during the night i was fine.

we took almost 300 photos, mostly buildings (my fault), and i really don't feel like sorting them :) all in all we had a good time, it was worth the money and i got what i sought for; change of scenery and relaxation.

scotland here we come

i'm going to glasgow on my november break! yay! me and lars just booked a trip there october 28 - november 4; a full week! i'm so happy. last year at that time i was in edinburgh for 4 days and it was just lovely, so i just had to go back. and now, with a full week there's lots of time to explore the place. i'll have to show lars around edinburgh and we'll have to see some of the highlands.


oh, i can't wait! scotland is beautiful. people talk funny. the beer is cheap. they have lots and lots of starbucks! [i love their coffee, and sweden is totally without :(] the only thing that's possibly not great is that we're staying in a dorm with 14 beds at a hostel, but hey, it'll sure make for interesting anecdotes. i know, cos it's the same hostel that sister and her friend stayed at when they were there in april, and they came back with interesting anecdotes (like the one with the american girls who repeatedly said "i'm so excited" without any trace of excitement either in voice nor facial expression).

who wants postcards? ;)