Festival trip

Our favourite bar manager (and my old boss) VC invited us along to a trance festival. I was slightly apprehensive, as I haven't been to a festival for a long time, but went along to see what would happen. we ended up having a really good time, as did all the others in our 10+ group of people. the 6 hour drive was not too bad, epecially as I managed to get away with only a 2 hour stint. we arrived just before sunset on friday and our tent was alredy pitched for us by friends. cool!

we danced all night under a starry sky and, on saturday relaxed in the sun, while the local fire service hosed down some of the crowd, clearly the dissapointment of a lack of runaway barbeque fires was too much. Some of us were 'eaten alive' by the mosquitoes, luckily I do not suffer from them much, but VC was suffering badly.

By day
Saturday night was the big night, and the visitors numbers grew through the day. we sat drinking chai in the afternoon. At 9.30 the main dance floor started up with a big firewoks display, and live music. It was great, after dark, the lights and decorations made it look as if we were inside a massive marquee, but in fact we were outdoors. really clever. Until it started to rain. It rained all night and we all got wet. At least our tent managed to keep out the rain.


By night
all in all I would say that my fears of it being a strange disaster weekend were unfounded, and a good time was has by all, plus I discovered a fab new drink called becks lemon, it tastes like lemon, but has the effect of beer. brilliant!

All the fun of the Fair

It's called a Kirmes here. This one comes every year, and spends 3 weeks setting up on the banks of the Rheine, and is open to the public for 10 days. I've never been before, so I just HAD to go last night when some friends invited me. Someone told me it is the biggest kirmes in europe, but I'm not sure. It has apparently over 4 million visitors in it's 10 days of opening. It is also, I discovered, connected to the parade on Sunday (see my last post) celebrating the schutzenfest (shooting festival)
More info here (in german though!)



Not being an experienced fair-ride traveller, I chose to go on the 'Euro-star', the biggest mobile rollercoaster in the world and scareyest ride in the whole fair. Brilliant! Of my fellow riders, TI was unimpressesd because it was not as smooth a ride as the rollercoasters in her native Canada, Mr V loved it, and I was stunned into silence and just grateful that I could still walk and talk when I got off, come to think of it CP was also rather quiet, and mysteriously dashed off home after the ride...


Following all the excitement, we calmed our nerves with a beer, and found a nice 'push penny' arcade to play on. I won a haky sack and a toy motorbike, great! I did also go a bit crazy taking pictures, what with all the 'pretty lights' and stalls. you can see them here.

Altstadt Parade

Having spent the last three weeks afraid to leave my flat without an umbrella, I was most elated to see that this weekend the forecast was hot hot hot, with lots of sunshine. It was sweltering in fact, and on sunday mr V and I ventured into the Altstadt to sample the delights of the annual 'Frankreichfest', (french festival) which I have to say was somewhat lacking in frenchness. Granted there were a few stallholders from france, but there were also several Sausageland ones, masquerading as french............Shocking! so we ate 'brie' on bread, as it slowly melted onto the plate, and washed it down with 'pink' champagne, which was probably sekt, pah! such a hard life. We purchased some sweaty cheese, and turned our attention to the marching bands that were circling the town. Now, I do love marching bands, all the uniforms, the xylophones, drums and well, marching....i think it's great...and if there is one thing that they do well here, it's a parade.



I have no Idea what the parade on sunday was all for, or who the groups were, or why they were marching, and strangely I can find no reference to it in the local events magazine. Perhaps it was just an oppourtunity to get dressed up and show off a bit while there were lots of people in town, who knows...but i enjoyed it. I think my fascination for these parades stems from rememberance day parades in the village where I grew up. We always went and marched with the guides or brownies, or whatever organisation we belonged to, and there was always a really big parade since we had a large army base just next to the village, who came out in force, with bands and everything. It was kind of exciting and serious at the same time.



Dispite the 30+ temperatures, the 100% sunshine, and lack of breeze, these guys soldiered on with their formations from 1 till 6pm, marching about all over the place. I think a few snook off for a glass of the local altbier, but who can blame them really?!

Grandpa's Honey

 

this is my favourite kind of honey. thick and pale. I got this jar from my grandpa's house, when I went round with my parents after his funeral. It is a bit sad eating my dead grandpa's honey, but it comes from his village, and I'll probably never have reason to go back there. It is nice to remember him everytime I have toast.

Demolition

they are knocking down the block at the end of my street. there is some kind of strange satisfaction about seeing the insides of a building as the outside is stripped away. It was a perfectly good building before.

One Night in London...

Well, leaving at 4am in the morning to go back to London for a night out does sound a bit drastic, but it was K's 40th birthday, so I think the occassion justified it. Besides, you can go really fast when there is no traffic on the roads here.. another good excuse. Mr V. chose to go out for drinks on friday night, so with only a few hours sleep we charged off into the dawn on Saturday and by 9am we were having tea and toast in Essex. wild. We trundled down to Southend on Sea for a spot of last minute gift shopping, and could not resist the lure of Fish and chips, by the sea, overlooking the funfair. Ah...the Great British Summertime. They even had Daddies sauce which went down very well.



It had only dawned on us as we drove over that this weekend is probably the most hectic weekend to visit london and it's congested surroundings. Wembly stadium was playing host to 90,000 Live Earth concert goers on saturday and The Tour De France was making it's first Stage on Sunday. There were the Mens and Womens Finals at Wimbeldon, Plus the date was 7.7.7. so naturally every engaged couple in the land was getting married. Oh, and there was a grand Prix, but that was outside London.

Dispite all of this excitement, we managed to get a cab to go out (a miracle) have lots of fun, and not get mown down by cyclists, showered in confetti or stuck in any train delays or traffic jams. I think we did rather well. We did get stuck in a massive traffic jam passing Bussels on the way home, but I fell asleep and ignored it.

Down to business

Well, as I keep telling everyone, I'm starting my own business. So, what exactly is it all about? I have finally made my first 'prototypes', and took the opportunity to show them to a couple of friends, (& potential customers), to get their opinion. Fortunately, they liked them, and with perhaps a few slight adjustments, I could have someting actually saleable on my hands. Brilliant!



Next step is to get sewing and start finding local shops to sell them in.

Curry night

Well, I somehow, and at very short notice got myself involved in cooking curry for 8 people on Saturday night. I read a recipe book, trapsed around all the finest foodstores I could find, looking for the right ingredients, and came up with a selection of dishes to offer my friends. I did also manage to use up some leftover Sharwoods curry that I'd made earlier in the week (CHEAT!)

One of the major drawbacks of sausageland is that they, as a nation, are not curry lovers. They do have a favourite dish known as 'currywurst' but anyone who has sampled it will know that it is a very poor form of curry, most probably made using curry powder ketchup and water, pored over a chopped up 'wurst' (sausage). I refuse to eat it, and as a result me and my rostbeef friends are resigned to cooking for ourselves or going to the very expensive "shalimar" restaurant.

SO, after a MAJOR stressful saturday cooking and shopping, dinner was served at 9pm, and everyone enjoyed it, thank goodnes, and as yet, no reports of food poisoning. hoorah! The dinner was followed by the customary visit to Fatties Irish bar. my memory ceased to function beyond my first drink, which was certainly felt the next day, as I spent to whole day in bed watching the second series of Monk. I've not been so sick in ages, and, as usuall...I'm never drinking again!

Fatties!
all the pics