Archive for the ‘Holidays’ Category
A weekend in Dublin, Ireland
One of my main interests is music. I’m simply fascinated by the way it sometimes hits me. Naturally, I also like concerts. According to me, there are only few things better than being in a dark, crowded room, listening to loud, great music with a beer in your hand. Actually, I’ve been going to concerts since my early teens, 14-15 that is. This post is about my latest efforts to hear some great music and thereby enrichen myself with a brand new experience – my weekend trip to Dublin where the band This will destroy you (TWDY) performed October 12th at Whelans.
During a walk in the city, we saw a TWDY concert poster.
Looking at my notes for this post, I suspect it’ll get long. Simply because it is a long and complicated, but hopefully interesting story. I’ll try to leave out unnecessary details. I took some pictures with my new camera which I’ll also include a few of.
The tickets. It all started in my summer vacation 2008 where a couple of mates, Søren and Morten, and I decided that we were going to hear The Lymbyc Systym (LS) live some time soon regardless of the expenses. As they’ve only toured in the USA so far, we talked/joked about going over there to see them. Fortunately, we didn’t have to, because it turned out that they were going on a EU tour in the fall as warm-up for TWDY – not passing DK though. Still, we had to consider this our cue, our cue to finally see them. After this realization, it all went very fast deciding on Dublin as destination and booking stuff like a hostel, concert tickets and plane tickets. Clearly, we couldn’t bear to miss out on this opportunity. We were really excited.
A month or so had past when we for no apparent reason clicked into the MySpace profile of LS. To our horror, we found out that only a few weeks after we booked the entire trip they had postponed their EU tour to January – JANUARY! We couldn’t believe it. We were speechless. Nothing to do. Our plane tickets were of course bought without insurance to save money and we had deposits hanging too many places to cancel the trip. So we didn’t. It was going to be a great trip anyway and after all, LS was only playing warm-up.
So what was this other mystery band they’d play warm-up for? That was the question I asked myself. When I wasn’t going to a LS concert, I may as well enjoy whatever name showed up. I slammed all of TWDY’s material on my Ipod and started listening to it – that’s one or two months ago. I haven’t stopped listening to it since. I think I’ve heard it every morning on my Ipod – absolutely amazing music. Won’t even start describing it, but give it a go when you don’t know what else to put on your Ipod. If you won’t like it the first couple of playthroughs, you will the next – if you’re into that kind of music of course : ). But anyway, we ended up liking it a lot. It took the edge of the LS disappointment and we looked very much forward to the trip.
The trip. So, the trip took off last Friday afternoon. We went on a plane, got to Dublin and found our hostel – The Abraham House. We had a room for three – bathroom, breakfast and TV included.
The front of the Abraham House. The building is really confusing once you get inside.
I’ve only stayed in a hostel a few times, but I think this place was great – at least for its purpose. Clean, centrally located and relatively cheap (around 200-250 dkr). There was even a snack machine. Wuu!
After another meal at the King. Our standard meal was the "Double meat beast whopper super meal with coke" - kind of hard to say in one breath.
This leads me to my next subject: The food we ate. To say it mildly, I’ve rarely lived unhealthier. The first building in front of us when we stepped out of the bus from the airport was a Burger King. I guess it was fate. From that point we went there twice a day. If not there, then Donalds or some pizza place.
Tough choice.
Between these visits we lived off the snack machine, coke (the drink of course) and beer. Okay, we had two decent meals, bananas and steak at a restaurant. Still, so unhealthy, so good : ). My concious is definitely not was it was before. Good thing I still have my morning runs and fitness visits going – they’re definitely kicking in again tomorrow.
The concert. When it became Sunday (concert day) we were a bit tired after a couple of late nights. Still, we had a great concert coming up at 8 pm. I know I was excited when we stood in front of the venue.
Outside the venue - Whelan. A small, but definitely nice place.
After walking through two wrong doors into the same building we finally found the place. The first warm-up band Mom was already playing, so we ordered something to drink and threw our jackets in the corner. The place was really cool – underground, small and very intimate. I don’t think there was room for more than 150 people.
TWDY preparing their encore.
Anyway, the two warm-up bands were alright, especially the last band Halves. No one beat TWDY though. When then they took over the scene, it was dark and the venue filled. It was a great, informal concert with great music. Even though they only played for something like forty minutes and didn’t talk much to the audience, there were definitely times when you thought they’d actually destroy you with their complicated, beautiful, big sounds, their intriguing rhythms and crushing effects. There was also a lot of great build-up and they really dedicated themselves to it. Big words, they don’t describe it rightfully though.
TWDY in action.
The informal atmosphere was really cool. It established itself in the facts that it was a small place, only one step up to the close scene, the warm-up bands became part of the crowd when TWDY went on, the bands acted roadies themselves and you could just go exchange a few words with them afterwards if you felt like it. I/We didn’t though : ).
Of course, I also had to get some merchandise – as I always do. The guy who sold it was really a character. Seemed so stoned, but also really nice. He’d made a small sign on which it said “I work for PINTS!”
The man who sold merchandise in the corner of the venue. Disturbed picture, I know, but we were told to leave at this moment.
Anyway, to make a long story short, due to some misunderstandings over the merchandise booth in “rush hour” right after the concert, I came home to the hostel with LS’s and TWDY’s new Field Studies album, Halves’ only album and a really cool, white TWDY t-shirt – in Large. Darn! I normally use XL or XXL. There’s was nothing to do. Fortunately, I had a grateful, smaller brother at home who was happy about the incident. I think I’ll search the web some time for another t-shirt for myself.
The photography. This paragraph may seem a bit out of place. I’m including it anyway. So.. I took a lot of pictures over there, 300-400 or something like that.
A man playing guitar in the street. It's his dog too. I think he was playing Hallelujah at this moment. It sounded alright.
They were mostly results of experimenting and random clicking when bored, but there were also few where I tried to make an effort. So some were okay, but frankly, I’m not satisfied with the set (or whatever you call the entire outcome) at all. It sure was fun to play with, but I really feel that I missed a lot of good opportunities for taking some great pictures.
We walked past Trinity College on our way to the concert. I like this picture. The colours are almost surreal.
I was bad at taking the time necessary to focus the shots – did too much “walk, (stop, )click and walk again”. That has been my main problem, and I’m quite convinced that isn’t the camera’s fault.
I guess you could call this the main street of Dublin. A sample of my "clicking away" randomly when we walked. It could have been a cool picture.
I’ve also had trouble in darkness. When I turned up the ISO, the shutter became way too long, which made it impossible to focus.
Too long shutter time. I have no idea what I was trying to get a picture of here, but it looks alright, doesn't it?
Don’t know why I didn’t adjust the two settings at the same time. Guess I didn’t have a qualified idea of what they should be. At least I know a little more about that know. I’ve generally needed to know more about what the camera was actually capable of. The blitz was also a bitch to figure out, but I’ve definitely learned a lot. Also about what to actually take pictures of. Till now, I must admit that the photos taken with the auto buttons are best : ).
The main street again from another angle. It is taken with the auto buttons. They do a great job at daytime.
Fortunately, I only see it as an exciting challenge to take good pictures, and I look forward to clicking away some other time.
The end. So, I guess I was right when I suspected the post to get long. Thanks for reading so far anyway. To put an end to it, we got home Monday afternoon, and I can honestly say that I think it was a weekend well spent. It’s always fun to visit new, foreign places – Dublin was a really cool place, loads of people, weird beer. A trip abroad like this is also a great interruption of a stressful everyday. It was incredibly relaxing to just “chill around” in Dublin.
So, I’m looking forward to another trip, maybe another place – maybe even with the fantastic LS as main attraction.
Going on holiday
My vacation from the university is coming to an end. And there sure has been some great times.
Roskilde Festival 2008
The first week of my vacation, I spent on the Roskilde Festival in Denmark. I decided to go despite my wet experience last year. Fortunately I was lucky this year. In the morning around 9 am I’d wake up in the tent literally swimming in my own sweat. No matter how wasted I’d feel after a long night out I’d have to rip of my sticky sleeping bag, get up, struggle with my shoes – if I could find them – and eventually fiddle with the zipper desperate to get out. This would save me a few hours to peacefully hang in my chair (if it hadn’t been stolen) with a gentle wind in my hair… Till noon – then there would be absolutely nowhere in the entire area to hide from the burning sun. Gee it was hot.. But I shouldn’t complain. We had a great time. Some of the best concerts I went to would be Radiohead, Band of horses, Veto, Lulu Rouge and Tina Dickow. The programme wasn’t that good but there really is more to come for – the people, the primitiveness, the dimly lit, vivid camps and just the whole atmosphere. Sounds pretty, right?
Moving on. Another great part of my vacation was the caravanette trip to Italy with my family. It was basically the six of us stuffed in the car, 14 squaremetres of space tops, for two weeks. We decided to go south and – to mention the main destinations – ended up in Venice, Lago di Garda, Milano and the mountains in Switzerland. Great trip with a lot of beautiful sights.
On this vacation I also read a couple of books since I had a fair amount of time to kill on the road. I’ve never been much of a book enthusiast but if it’s good I tend to get quite hooked. One thing I like about reading books is that it really gives you time. Time to pause and wonder. Think about certain sentences you’ve just read. Anyway, the books I brought from home was Into the wild by John Krakauer and The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly. I knew Into the wild from the excellent movie by Sean Penn and I really think the story is amazing. So was the book. The Lincoln Lawyer however turned out not to be my cup of tea. Sure, it was clever and all – just not my kind of book. I finished it because I had nothing else to read at the time. Later when we came to Milano – right to the centre of it actually – I found this great, quite charming bookstore. In the basement they had loads of English books. I decided to buy a couple of classics, The Animal Farm by George Orwell and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. I finished The Animal Farm quite fast. It was clever, funny, grotesque – depicting the Russian revolution. Huckleberry Finn I’m still reading..
Unfortunately it hasn’t all been music, road tripping and fiction. I’ve also worked. In a week I’ve finished about five weeks in Supergros the Herning department. Like last year when I worked there, it’s been a struggle because I’ve had to get up at 6 am – which I’m not used to – and well, because the work isn’t the most exhilarating. But pushing the moaning aside, I’ve earned some money and that’s really all that counts.
What’s also made the working period a bit tough is the other job I’ve had and still haven’t finished. Among other things my dad imports these different kinds of floor sweepers and scrubbers, and in Denmark it’s required that a danish manual follows stuff you sell. So these are the ones I’ve literally spent hours maybe days translating. It’s really time consuming and a bit stupid. Flipping back and forth between Open Office and my dictionary translating stuff like “when you turn the wheel to the left, the machine goes left”. Whoa!? Really?! Not what I expected… Anyway it has also been a source of income, so it’s not so bad.
Even though I’m slowly getting used to wandering around in Supergros, I’m also looking forward to getting back in school. I feel like I need a break from my so-called vacation. That’s why I’ll soon be “Going on holiday” again.
