London part 3

On the third day I woke up...oh no, wait, I didn't, thanks to Dean you can reduce that to just stepping out of bed and still be sort of awake. The worst part was he hadn't even noticed Eloise screaming at him and me kicking him all night long. He was very embarrased though, poor guy. :) Eloise went off to work, me and Dean headed to McDonald's for breakfast.

After some good laughs and Dean showing me all the pictures on his phone, we seperated ways and I took the tube all the way to the Wimbledon museum. Cost me 10 quid, but I didn't mind as it was quite a good museum if you like tennis. You get to see a whole lot of old (old, wooden rackets, tennis outfits for women that look like ballroom dresses...) and more recent (Wimbledon cup, Roger Federer's amazing military style outfit...) tennis attributes and the fantastic Centre Court (with the new rain roof). The shop is pretty good too!

On my way back I made a stop at Rough Trade East, which turned out to be HEAVEN. I bought myself a whole lot of stuff, ran into my mate Murray by coincidence, then headed back to Brick Lane. Lenny, Mathi, Eloise and I met up with Eloise's friend Rebecca. After watching some tv, we had a drink at the Old Blue Last before going to this place called Catch. At Catch, we had a great time dancing to eighties tunes you'd rather not know. We also ran into Grant from The Rifles, again by coincidence.

Breakfast with Dean

Wimbledon

Centre Court


Pretending to be Roger Federer

Roger's outfit

Rough Trade East

Party at Catch

Grant and Eloise

Rebecca's impeccable dance moves

London part 2

On my second day in London, Eloise had to work and Lenny was in the studio to master the upcoming second Freaky Age record. I spent the morning in the Tate Modern, where I visited the free exhibitions (I would still get to see the paid ones later on my trip). I was mostly impressed by Miroslaw Balka's installation. When I first saw it - a huge and rather ugly turbine - I felt quite insulted that this guy was thinking I could possibly see this as art, but then I went inside and experienced the actual power of the work. It's hard to explain to someone who wasn't in there himself - it feels like you're being sucked up in the darkness of the turbine. You're kind of scared even though you knów nothing bad will happen, and even though you're scared you can't stop yourself from walking further. Fascinating is the least you can call it.

In the afternoon I took the tube to Oxford Street for some decent shopping, the huge HMV record stores and Topshop being my favourite places to spend a few fun hours! :) I bought some christmas pressies and found myself some good dvd's, cd's, a cute dress and my new favourite shoes.

Back home, I watched some Top Gear until Eloise came back from work. She was planning on staying in that evening as she had to work the day after and was feeling a little ill as well. I was invited by Dean to join him that night. He had put me on the guestlist for The Enemy who were playing the Forum in Kentish Town. First we met up in a bar near the tube station, where I got to meet Deans brother and another friend of his. We had some drinks and chose some good tunes for the jukebox before heading to the Forum. Over there we met Nikki, Nadya and even more of Deans friends (he has over 2000 facebook friends, no need to say he knows about everyone in London).

The Enemy did quite well - I like them but I'm not a superfan, though I did enjoy this gig quite a lot. After the gig we went to the afterparty in The Enemy's dressing room (Dean's a friend of the band), I got to meet the band and had a good time chatting with Nikki and her mates. I was planning on taking the night bus home - didn't want to stay out too late as I had to wake poor Eloise to get in the house. Dean didn't have the money to get home (all the way to Kent) so he joined me on my way to Brick Lane where Eloise told him he could stay over if he wanted. Not the best of ideas: Eloise and I didn't get a second of sleep that night because of Deans eh, impressive snorring. :p

Tate Modern

the turbine

Oxford Street

Top Gear

The Enemy @ The Forum

London part 1

As I might have told you before, I'm planning on moving to London after I - hopefully - finish my studies in a little over half a year. Until then I'll have to keep myself satisfied with a couple of shorter visits. A couple of days ago, I came back from such a six day trip to the city of my dreams. And I feel like going back already.

I stayed over at my friend Eloise's place. She's from Leeds, but has already been living in London (on Brick Lane) for a while now. Some time ago her Belgian boyfriend Lenny moved in as well. Since Eloise had to work, I spent most of my first day in London with Lenny. We had breakfast in a place called Yummy's, where the owner told us a story about some kind of UFO's he had seen a while ago. He even had quite an interesting video to back up his story. Hmm. Afterwards, we headed to Camden and strolled around the markets. Some guy claimed he knew me, which was quite impossible, as my last visit to Camden was ages ago. Ah well, our familiarity got me a nice ring from his shop for only half the price!

After a great meal at McDonald's (the chicken selection, WHY OH WHY don't we have this in Belgium??) we went back to Camden where I was meeting Dean (singer from Regency, part-time key board player for The Rifles) and Rob (from The Rifles) at the Enterprise. Dean introduced me to some eh, interesting people (especially refering to this one very enthusiastic bloke who was non-stop joking and dancing) and we had a few beers and Sambucca shots. After a while, we all headed to Proud for Narrow Minded Social Club. There were gigs by Karova, The Paddingtons, Jersey Budd etc and it turned out to be an excellent night. A lot of my friends were around, English and Belgian (Lenny, Matthi, Wouter, Luc), and I got to meet some really nice new people. However, I still don't understand how the news got spread so quickly that I am Belgian. There were at least 10 random people coming over to me, asking silly questions like "Oh, so you're from Belgium! Tell me about Belgian beer! How about Belgian chocolate?" Rrrright. Great night nevertheless!!

Liverpool Station.
Cyberdog in Camden, possibly the weirdest shop I've ever seen!

Narrow Minded Social Club at Proud.

Jersey Budd.

Dean and I.

Wouter.

L O N D O N

I'm off to London tomorrow morning, coming back on Monday evening. I'm so excited to go back, have loads of plans. I've been missing that city so much, and of course my lovely friends over there. See you next week darlings! xx

Calling moon and moon

A couple of months ago my sister went to a festival in Luxembourg. My parents and I spent a day in the city of Luxembourg while she was spending hers jumping to Kings of Leon (I was saving my money for other festivals). In the evening, I joined my dad when he was picking her up by car after the festival was finished. It was a beautiful night, listening to Bat For Lashes, watching the street lights of Luxembourg.

Stay, don't just walk away, and leave me another day

Went to see 500 Days Of Summer - not your typical rom com - a couple of days ago, and enjoyed it very much. (great soundtrack as well) I loved how it was playful, a little excentric, in a certain way totally devestating and very recognisable at the same time. I've been in the position of both Zoeey Deschanel's ànd Joseph Gordon-Levitt's (btw, how cute has he become!) characters and thought they depicted everything rather accurately!

Waiting, you are fading

Part two of the fantastic weekend was the Editors gig at Vorst Nationaal. It was the sixth time I saw Editors play, but I can look you right in the eye and tell you they are still getting better and better and better. Tom's voice, the setlist, everything was perfect. I got so caught up in it that I even didn't take pictures, but here's one of me and Tom on the Editors signing session earlier that day in Brussels. (fan girl alert!)

And this is Phara, Tessa and I with Felix from the Maccabees, who did really well as the second Editors support act (the first one was Wintersleep, but I didn't enjoy them that much).

The world is ours and ours alone!

Part one of that great weekend I was telling you about earlier on was last Friday, when I went to see The Rifles play in Antwerp. Been a fan of the band since their first album and even more since I met the lads, a bunch of really great guys.

They were playing the Trix last weekend, which is a rather small venue somewhere in the outskirts of Antwerp. I hadn't been there before, but telling from the website, one could get there by bus or tram. I figured the tram would be the easiest way. Horrible choice. I started feeling a little worried when the tram started driving in directions it definitely shouldn't be driving in, so I asked the driver what was going on. He told me all trams were driving to the Sportpaleis (another gig venue, but a lot bigger and most of all...somewhere very different!) that week, so I had to take the tram back to the station (where I started out) and take a bus from there on. On my tram back to the station I was joined by seven British boys. I figured out they were going to The Rifles as well and felt very relieved now I wasn't lost in Antwerp on my own anymore! We hopped on a bus (those lads were fantastic, high fiving with the bus driver etc :p), and after a very long drive we finally got to our destination.

At the venue, I met up with Rob from The Rifles. The two of us, joined by the British blokes, looked for and miraculously found a bar not too far from the (very isolated) gig venue. Not really what you'd call a trendy/charming/any positive adjective bar, but ah well. There was Belgian beer and everybody was happy.

Back at the venue I started talking to this guy from France who turned out to live very near me and was dj'ing in the Make Up Club the next evening - seriously, how small is this world?? :) The gig was really good, a long and energetic set. The Belgian crowd sucked, but I had my newly found British friends to ensure me of a great night.

Afterwards, Rob and I wanted to go out in Antwerp, and some nice Antwerp people we only just met were friendly enough to take us to a good pub. The start of a very good night out!!