Sunday Salon: Week Four

This week I've finished off Twilight and The Opposite House and started The Awakening (The Vampire Diaries I) Let's start with Twilight.



I mentioned last week that I bought Twilight well over a year ago when I was working at Borders in San Antonio. There were a lot of Dad's who came in to buy the latest sequel for their teenage daughters, which at that time was the third book Eclipse. I have a soft spot for Young Adult fiction and decided to give it a go. While I found the book quite readable and interesting I stopped at pretty much the most exciting part of the book and didn't pick it up again for a year. I started from the beginning and again, it's an enjoyable book but I can't say it is one of the best books I've ever read, or even one of the best Young Adult books I've ever read. I liked Bella a lot, but I agree with people who say that it was frightening to watch her become obsessed with Edward and lose sight of everything else in her life except for him. Is that the message I want to be giving to young readers, especially girls? Er...no. I found the brooding Edward to be a bit annoying too. That said, I'll probably give the second book a read but not for a while and I won't be buying it. I'm sure the library is chock full of copies. I might also watch the movie when it comes out, mostly out of curiosity to see how the book to movie transition goes.


I'm faintly surprised that I managed to finish The Opposite House. A strange little book that I came by via the Writers on Writing podcast (if you're reading this, you're very welcome for the link to the podcast Terri!) and I was impressed by the author's poetic turn of phrase and her youth (she's about 24 I think). I don't know quite how to explain or describe this book. It's an experience, not a journey. It doesn't always make sense, and in fact usually doesn't. I'm not sure it is supposed to. It starts somewhere, then goes nowhere but in a peaceful way. It's overblown, but incredibly subdued and small. It's a study in contrasts, I guess. I stated last week that I wasn't sure if it was incredibly brilliant and not able to be understood by the mortal mind, or if it was utter crap and we just think it is brilliant because we don't understand it. What is certain is that Helen Oyeyemi has a poets mind and some of her phrases are amazing enough to make me want to weep at her gift. This is "high literature" at a peak and I don't think I'd rush to read anything by Oyeyemi again, however this one will live on in my mind for quite a while methinks.



I read about The Awakening in someone's Sunday Salon post...I wish I could remember who it was! I think the discussion was about Twilight, which peaked my interest as I was reading it at the time and the blogger recommended this series over Twilight. I'm about half way through and it isn't shaping up to be a bad little book. The cover you see above is not the cover on my book - mine is a very early-90's horror cover where they have tried to do something clever with a crow and a vampire, but it just comes off looking cheesy. The book cover above reminds me a great deal of the Twilight movie promotional posters, which is probably the point. Perhaps these books will experience a comeback. There are certainly worse books out there - our heroine Elena (the Queen of her high school, orphan and all round supremely beautiful being) has the hots for the new boy in town Stefan who is (dum, dum, dum , DA!) a vamp with a mean brother. We seem to be building to something, and this is the first in a four book series so its on slow boil at the moment. I just wish there were more teen books about regular teenagers. Not the really popular ones or the really outsider ones. It gets a bit old after a while. Anyway, we'll see how it goes.

Happy Sunday!

Venice, Italy and Paris, France

Venice

Venice was my favourite place.

It seems like madness to build so much on a tiny scrap of land, but the Venetians were fearless in a way modern architects can never be

The rooftops of Venice

The canals of Venice

I feel like I lived here in another life, jumping from bridge to bridge and leaping from roof to roof.

Lots of people, pigeons everywhere, phone to call internationally at the top of the tower, gondola rides, doors that opened into the canals from houses that were built hundred of years ago, the courage it must have taken to build these buildings on a network of tiny muddy islands, the huge cruise ship, gelato, the book binding man, the North Africans and their rip off bags that look great, but you can get busted 2000 Euros if the police catch you buying one, cold drinks, too much heat, gondoliers balancing and shouting to one another, the Merano glass and the glass blower who wore extremely tight clothing and blew glass, handling it like a well practiced lover, my beautiful azure glass heart, a boat ride through the S canal, imagining what it must be like to see Venice underwater, imagining what two big gates to block out the sea would look like, pondering the thought of Venice becoming a dead city with the only industry being tourism, plotting and planning my return in the winter to ghost through the streets reliving something and imagining I might stealth over Venetian rooftops once more...

Paris

Long bus ride, rubbish flowing through the streets of Paris on the way to the Moulin Rouge, the fact that I am never sure to spell it "Moulin Rouge" or "Moulin Rogue" which are two very separate things, the talking dog, the acrobatics, the fancy costumes and bare breasts of the dancers, the tiny tables and cramped space, the huge line of people for the second show, the Louvre with its Da Vinci-esque pyramids upside down upright, the crowds of people, the incessant photographs, the irritating Mona Lisa, the unfinished works of Michaelangelo who I am sure would be horrified to have works in progress exposed to the prying eyes of tourists (this is how I would feel if people considered my first drafts of stories to be genius...how embarrassing) but whose works nonetheless look like they are resigned to life half out and half imprisoned in the marble, the Eiffel Tower with its views of Paris, Duncan McLeod's houseboat, walking down the steps of the Eiffel Tower after the most irritating man, buying a pink scarf emblazoned with PARIS, buying my pink bag and some pink nougat at the Louvre, the candles in Notre Dame, the life of Quasimodo (who only lived in Victor Hugo's head, but if I was deformed and had to live in a bell tower, I would choose the bell tower of Notre Dame), the new altar with its new age 12 apostles who looked very out of place, the weird hot dog in a bun with cheese on it from the vendor, crepes and ice cream with Lorna and Carlos, almost buying a Dior purse, seeing the Eiffel Tower lit up late at night and flashing its sparkling lights happily, taking a cruise on the river and watching the city of Paris light up.

I understand why people love Paris. I didn't think I would love it, but a part of me does. What can I say? It's Paris!

V-A-I-N

Well you had me several years ago
When I was still quite naive
When you said that we made such a pretty pair
And that you would never leave
But you gave away the things you loved and one of them was me
I had some dreams they were clouds in my coffee, clouds in my coffee

You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you.

- Carly Simon

Sunday Salon: Week Three

Featuring:

• The Golden Compass
• Book Lover
  
• Twilight
• Like, Mad
• Novelist's Boot Camp
• The Opposite House
  

I started this week by finishing off Book Lover on Monday. It turned out to be an oddly compelling sort of book. Even though indications weren’t good last week, the book was very easy to read and clearly I found something interesting in it, even if I’m not exactly sure what. The title of book refers to the main character’s habit of retreating to her bathtub and her books for days on end on a “book binge” when times get tough. I think the book is supposed to be about her evolution as a person and how she learns to deal with life instead of retreating into books, but I think the storyline is lost somewhere and the end judgment seems to be that reading too many books is bad, and dating a man who works in a bookshop and is writing a crappy play is also bad, because he isn’t the “real deal” and your cheating, workaholic, sometimes shallow ex-husband is. I certainly wouldn’t rush out to read other books by both or either of the authors of Book Lover and I’ll be selling my copy ASAP.

As promised last Sunday I finished off His Dark Materials aka Northern Nights aka The Golden Compass. I can’t remember why I stopped reading about 20 pages from the end in January, but I did. Obviously the ending had little impact as the rest of book had blurred a bit in my mind. In any case, I really did enjoy the book. I bought it after seeing the movie and after hearing from a number of people how good the books are. Unlike some people out there I enjoyed the portrayal of the church as a manipulative controlling monster. Philip Pullman has written a book about a child, but I don’t think it was written for children. His writing has a glorious timelessness about it, and I feel that this book could have been written 70 years ago instead of just 12. The concepts and relationships in the book (especially those of Lord Asriel and Mrs Coulter and Iorek and his bears) are complicated and very adult. I think children could certainly enjoy the book, but the complexity of storytelling is subtle and the nuances compelling, seeming to exist for understanding by the adult mind. Very interesting and highly recommended. I also love one of the titles – His Dark Materials. It give me goosebumps! As I have the three book omnibus, I plan to move onto The Subtle Knife in the next few weeks.

Most of this week has seen me reading Twilight by Stephanie Meyer. I bought this book in February of 07 when I was working at Borders in San Antonio. I read about three quarters of it and for some reason stopped (this is clearly a theme with me…I wonder why?). So I’ve picked it up again and I’m starting from the beginning. It is extremely readable and the character of Bella is easy to relate to, even to a 31 year old woman like me. As I type this I am remembering that I found the angst of Bella and Edward’s relationship a bit annoying, so perhaps that is why I stopped reading. However I will persevere this time. At the writing retreat I attended in Scotland last month a 14 year old listed Stephanie Meyer as the author whose work had changed the way she sees the world, so there can be no doubting of Meyer's place in the heart of teenagers as a powerful and memorable author. Unless you've been under a rock you'll also know that Twilight the movie is due to be released in December 08.


I also picked up a funny book this week – Like, Mad – which was one of my Dad’s books. My dad died 4 years ago, so I smile to think of him as a 15 year old paying the cover price (35 cents) in 1960 at the local shop. I’ve taken a photo of the book below.


It hasn’t coped well with age (how would you feel if you were a 48 year old paperback?) and the pages are very yellowed and literally falling out of the book. There are also about 50 pages missing from the middle of the book, no idea where they went. I’m about half way through and it is a lot like reading today’s Mad Magazine, except sometimes I miss the pop culture jokes because they're 50 years old. One segment was on the invention of the “video phone” and how spouses could lie to one another about where they were and what they were doing. It’s a fun read.

I borrowed Novelist’s Boot Camp by Todd A Stone from the library this week. I’ve read a bit, but so far I’m not too impressed. Stone is a former military dude who believes that I need to “take command of my novel” and “plan and execute a writing strategy that’s in sync with my ultimate mission objective: getting published”. I’m not a huge fan of the military or military discipline, but I picked up this book at Borders a few weeks back and thought it might have a few good ideas so I put through a request for it at the library. I’ll keep reading for now, but I’m not sure I can be bullied into writing a novel. Seems like the wrong approach entirely to me. Then again, Todd Stone is published and I’m not, so we’ll see I guess.


Another book I want to mention is one I’m half way through and that is The Opposite House by Helen Oyememi. I found out about this book after listening to the author being interviewed on the Writers on Writing podcast. According to the book jacket, The Opposite House “is about the disquiet that follows us across places and languages, a feeling passed down from mother and father to son and daughter.” This doesn’t really do the book justice though. It is literally prose in the form of poetry. Oyememi is a poet and the way she constructs her sentences makes me want to weep at their beauty. She tells her story in images which are then written as words which are then conveyed with a mysterious sort of disconnectedness. I can imagine people gushing about this book because it seems to be smarter than we are – it exists on a higher plane of consciousness and the reader only gets glimpses as to what it really is. On the down side, it is difficult to read, requires total concentration and is best served in small portions. Sometimes we think something must be genius if we don’t understand it, but sometimes it is just not good writing. I am not sure which description fits Oyememi and this book just yet, but I will keep reading to find out.

And that’s me for this Sunday. Yay!

Sunday Scribblings: How I Met My Question Mark

I can imagine some of the responses to this prompt. People will write about the day they met their soul mate, or the day they met their baby. Heart rendering stuff, but also vomit inducing. There is only so many times you can hear “There is no love like the love you have for your child” or “When I met him, two became one”.

Yes siree, pass the bucket.

I’m a weird combination of a romantic soul and a practical person. I read Mills and Boons romances five in a row and then abruptly I decide it is all bullshit and I throw the paperback against the wall and deem the books stupid and misleading. Imagine if love really was like a romance novel? If you weren’t a slim 20 something virgin whose parents are usually dead or generally defective and you haven’t just met a stunningly handsome yet wounded billionaire, you’re out of luck. Sorry, sister. Love is not for the overweight, the self fulfilled or the poor. And then there’s the virgin thing… Of course romance novels have come a long way and not all of the female characters are virgins these days. But there are enough of them to illustrate a sort of trend.

In any case, what I’m driving at here is the fact that all of these soul mate and baby stories don’t seem entirely honest. I am thinking of one blog in particular that I read in the same way I read romance novels. Sometimes I melt a bit and think the heroine (ie. the writer of the blog) leads the perfect life with the perfect husband blah blah blah and the rest of the time I want to smack her across her beautiful face for being so self absorbed and lucky. Here is a woman who does a creative job working from an impossibly cute studio in her house where I’m sure she doesn’t have to worry about bringing in much money as her very handsome and perfect husband worries about that side of things. She swans around, typing out deep thoughts and obsessing over her life choices. Everything she writes about is virtuous. Even her flaws somehow come out as positives. I imagine her life to be wrapped in cotton wool. A protected, sterile existence where she is centre stage and the world worships at her carefully painted toes. She just doesn’t seem real to me. Doesn’t she ever wake up angry with the world? Does she never hold that anger instead of turning it into an entry in her blog whereby she worked through it, there was a sign from nature or the universe and her husband gave her a big hug and it was all okay again?

In short…is she really that perfect? A part of me is very envious. I’d love to have a husband to go out and make the “real money” while I fluffed around at home (this couple do not have children, so she really is fluffing around at home) writing little things and thinking deep thoughts and thanking all the people who make comments on my blog for giving me support and love and do they know how much they mean to me?

And we’re back to vomiting and obviously, I don't really want her life.

Perhaps it is just me, and whoever is reading this is thinking what a horrible bitch I am. I’m not. I’m a caring person, for the most part. I’m also scrupulously honest with myself and most of the time with other people. I don’t ignore the seedy underbelly of life. I like it, finding it infinitely more interesting than the warm fuzzies of life. I insist on making that underbelly a part of my “real” life. I’m not an angel. I don’t have wings and I don’t always see the best in everyone and everything. I get annoyed, envious and irritated. I lack patience sometimes. I’m a flawed creature. But at least I’m real. I’ll always give an honest and true answer. I won’t dress it up in its Sunday best and parade it before you with sweet words and patient insight that I think I’m supposed to feel as I show you how much I’ve learned and how much of a better place I’m in. I’ll get angry, I’ll beat it up and then I’ll reach a kind of war torn peace which I’ll share in the way survivors do.

I’m not afraid of the dark, or the wolves at the door, or the question marks in life. I think this is a good thing.

Sunday Salon: Week 2

I'm really enjoying being a part of Sunday Salon. I'm finding it is helping me make more time for my reading and that makes me oh-so-happy! It has been a wonderful Sunday. Despite the fact that we are still technically in winter, the skies were an achingly light blue today with nary a fluffy cloud in sight. The sun was very warm and I've been wandering around without a sweater for the first time in ages. I only wish Sunday did not precede Monday. Blah.

And now to the reading!

This week I finished up Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

It was a good read, and so much better than its immediate predecessor. Of course the "shock" ending has lost its impact as it is several years since the book was published and I knew what was coming anyway, just as I know what is coming with the final Harry Potter book. Two thumbs up though - it was a very enjoyable tale. I think Ron gets most of the best lines. Case in point:

Hermione: I heard Dumbledore say that it is easier to forgive people when they are wrong than it is when they are right.
Ron: Sounds like the sort of mental thing Dumbledore would say.

That seriously made me laugh for ages. And also this gem from Harry:

Hermione: It's alright for you, the Death Eaters would have you as a member. You're not a 'mudblood'!
Harry: Oh yes, I'm sure we'd get along really well if they could stop trying to do me in all the time.

I paraphrased a little, but you get the point. I love it when books make me laugh out loud.

After Harry Potter I gave some thought to moving onto Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and even cracked it open, but I was right in my assessment last week - I need a little breathing room between installments of Harry Potter.

While I was on my holiday I picked up an omnibus of the first two books in Meg 'The Princess Diaries" Cabot's Heather Wells series - Size 12 Is Not Fat and Size 14 Is Not Fat Either.

I bought the omnibus (such a weird word that...makes me think of a really big bus) for $5.00 at a book sale figuring it would be good light and fluffy reading for the plane and it was! I'm not a big fan of "chick lit" and technically these books don't fall into that genre, but they are certainly light and fluffy, with a mystery twist. Heather Wells is an ex-pop star (think a flash in the pan teen pop tart who sang in shopping malls a lot) whose label and boyfriend dropped her when she said she wanted to sing her own songs and her Mom ran off to Argentina with all her money. Heather is endearing, and I really enjoyed reading about a girl who battles weight issues and isn't afraid to order double whipped cream on her coffee. I also admit that I stayed with the books mainly because of Heather's sexy yet distant room mate Cooper. Anyway, I had to leave the omnibus in Scotland as a donation to the library at the Cathedral of the Isles as it was just too heavy to bring home. When I got back I checked into whether or not there were any other Heather Wells books and found "Size Doesn't Matter" (aka "Big Boned" in the USA. I have never understood why publishers change titles from country to country. Did you know that the book entitled "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" in the USA is actually titled "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" in the UK and Australia? Why?).

Anyway, I finished up "Size Doesn't Matter" this morning. It was probably the weakest of the three books and the ending was sort of bizarre. Without giving too much away, I would have settled for a kiss between Cooper and Heather, instead of the whole enchilada. I half expected to read "And then Heather woke up" it was all so picture perfect and out of place. Anyway, I read on Meg Cabot's official site there will be 2 more Heather Wells books next year so we'll see what happens. I don't know that I'd rush out and buy them in hardcover, but I'd definitely pick them up at the library.

Today I moved onto Book Lover by Jennifer Kaufman and Karen Mack.

The review on the website of publisher Harper Collins Australia reads like this:
'Women do different things when they're depressed. Some smoke, others drink, some call their therapists, some eat ... And I do what I have always done – go off on a book bender that can last for days.'

Whenever she's in crisis – her marriage ends, her career stalls, her fantasy man shows signs of human frailty – Dora (named after Eudora Welty) escapes into not one, not two, but a carefully selected stack of books, shutting the door on the outside world until she emerges from her book binge strong enough to face her problems. Books have always been her saving grace, sheltering her during a difficult childhood and arming her with lessons and epigrams that are right for nearly every situation. But life is more complicated than a–book–a–day, and people – like her ex–alcoholic mother and judgmental sister – aren't as compliant as beloved characters in a novel ...

Whether she's being seduced by a quotation–quipping Quixote, or explaining death to a child by reading from 'Charlotte's Web', Dora is Every–reader, and her charming story, shot through with humour and humanity, will delight anyone who's ever sought solace in the pages of a book.

I'm about 50 pages in and I have my doubts. I actually saw this book on the shelves at Borders last weekend and made a note to request it at the library. I requested it earlier this week and it came in super fast. I picked it up yesterday and then had a weird feeling that I actually owned the book. I double checked my shelves and there it was. Weirdly, I am reading the library copy instead of my own (what's up with that?). Nothing much has really happened so far (the main character went to a bookstore, parked outside her old mansion where her ex-husband lives and had her sister come over to her condo). Maybe the problem is it's the product of two authors - how does that work? Does one do the grunt work and the other the polishing? Do they each write a chapter? Anyway, I was definitely drawn to this book as I love books and could easily retreat from the world and stay in a book induced coma for days... We'll see how it goes.

I'm also keen to finish His Dark Materials (aka The Golden Compass) as I have the 3 book omnibus (I swear I have only bought about 3 omnibuses in my life and I happen to be talking about 2 of them in this post...) and want to move onto the second book. Maybe I'll get to it this week, if not then next weekend for sure.

The final word goes to my golden retriever Hopie, who seems to have inherited my love of books!

The Hoper, contemplating the book 'Foods that Harm, Foods that Heal"

Happy reading!

Sunday Scribblings: Observation

This is the perfect prompt for me this week as I have been sifting through my holiday memories and making random observations about the places I visited. This post is about one of my favourite places in Europe - Lucerne, Switzerland.

Lucerne

The view at the top of Mt Stanserhorn in Switzerland

Lake Lucerne

Lucerne as seen from the lake

A lovely white swan going about its business on the lake

This post is a little different. I wrote things on Lake Lucerne - not snippets, not stream of consciousness, not tiny glimpses of memories. I wrote fully formed sentences, crafted paragraphs of sights and sounds and feelings... Here are some of my favourites:

The water of the lake is so achingly clear that I can see the rocks on the bottom. It is like looking through fluid glass. I hear a car revving, people talking Swiss-German as they walk past my kelly green bench. I hear the splash of someone diving into the lake. I see perfectly white Swans gliding across the glassy surface like they have swum out of a storybook and into the scene before my eyes. I hear rope clanging softly against the metal masts of the yachts bobbing gently before me. My raspberry painted toenails rest on my shoes which rest on grey gravel that crunches as people walk by.

I breathe in peace and breathe out worry and tension. It is like the top of my head has been lifted up and a stream of ideas and concepts and consciousness has flowed in. A key in a lock, the completion of something I didn't know was undone.

There are white fluffy swan feathers on the surface of the lake, floating like nothing will ever weigh them down and they will simply float on this lake as it ebbs and flows until the end of days.

Sunday Salon - First Week

I'm excited to be a part of The Sunday Salon. I stumbled across the Salon when looking for a writing group and it looks to be a lot of fun. You can find out more about it by clicking the link (go on...give a little linky love), but now is the part where I get to talk about the books I read today.

I started the day with a little Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. There's pretty much nothing I can say about this book that hasn't already been said, re said and turned into a movie and accompanying McHappy Meal toy. This is my first read through of the 6th Harry Potter book. I stalled on reading it for a long time as I really didn't care for Book 5. I felt like Harry was irritating and angry the entire book and it wasn't a great reading experience. However, I'm enjoying book 6 although the whole 'Hermione loves Ron' thing is really being done to death. I started the book on Monday and I'm about 400 pages in. I think I'll take a little break between book 6 and book 7 though.

I took myself off on a book looking expedition today. It started with the Save The Children book sale. I think the books had been very thoroughly picked over - today is Sunday, the last day of the sale, and opening night was Thursday. However, all the books were hald price today, so that was something. I picked up four books for $4.50 (I really wouldn't have minded paying full price!) and those books are:

Gladiator by Dewey Gram
The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans
Language Most Foul by Ruth Wajnryb
The Unburied by Charles Palliser

Gladiator is obviously a book adaptation of the film. I enjoyed the movie and I have a certain fondness for book adaptations of films, particularly where I really enjoyed the film. I find the book then lends a different interpretation on the whole thing. No longer do I have to reply on the actors ability to emote in order to work out characters.

The Horse Whisperer is a book I have heard much about, and again, I enjoyed the movie when I saw it which must be five or six years ago now.

Language Most Foul is a book about foul language and its origins. Language fascinates me (but I'm not one of those crazy linguist types who know the root source of all words and can't wait to tell you about it) and so does swearing, so I'm a winner all around here.

The Unburied just sounded interesting - it's apparently a murder mystery in a sleepy town. We'll see I guess. It isn't the sort of book that would usually attract me. But for 50 cents...



Then my book day progressed with a lunch where I read Page after Page: Discover the confidence and passion you need to start writing and keep writing no matter what! by Heather Sellers. I bought this book on Charing Cross Road in London when I was there recently. I knew I shouldn't - I could order the book from Amazon for half what I paid in pounds but I really wanted it. Really really. So I bought it and I'm not sorry. The more I read of it, the more I love it and want to give Heather Sellers a really big hug. Over lunch I read her take on people who are always saying "I'm so busy! I'm so stressed! I have so much to do!" I work with people like this. They drive me crazy. I worked out a while back and everyone is busy. It's ridiculous to tell people that you're busy. We know you are, because we are too. A Heather says - we all get 24 hours in a day, how are you going to use yours? She also wrote a whole bunch about treating writing like a lover instead of a mistress (or whatever the word is for women who have another dude on the side) and giving it attention and love and dreaming about it. Anyway, I love this book. I am reading it in small doses, digesting and completing exercises.

I'll be back next Sunday with another Sunday Salon post. I'm thinking I'll explore a different bookstore and see how I go. Maybe I'll even get some of my own writing done!

Rome, Italy

Rome

The Coliseum

The Vatican Entrance
The Pantheon

graffiti, ancient, awe inspiring, all roads lead to Rome, Julius Ceasar, posterboards with thick sheafs of paper built up over time as new posters have just been put on top of the old ones layer 'pon layer 'pon layer, hot, gelato, amazing Margherita pizza, fountains of fresh water, crumbling ruins, Popes, magestic buildings, gladiators, kissing Italians, roses, cheesy souvenirs, 3 coins in the Trevi Fountain, pushy modern day gladiators getting 5 Euros for posing with tourists - what a strange way to make a living, beggars and gypsies thrusting their twisted limbs and other maladies in my face so sure this gives them the right to money from strangers (maybe it does?), fields of sunflowers, Etruscan villages rising from stone plateaus, beauty within, dead popes, the beauty of the Sistine Chapel, Vatican stamps, olive trees, Under the Tuscan Sun, pasta.

Cologne, Germany

Cologne

The Cathedral in Cologne

The golden box where the bones of the three magi are said to rest

Arch upon arch upon arch...

Kolin, soot covered church, awesome sandwich with sundried tomatoes and creamed cheese, wasps in the pastry cabinet attracted to the sweetness of the cakes, the most amazing bathroom I have ever seen in my life, the fact that the bones of the three 'magi' (wise men) rest in the church, the fact that the 3 Wise Men were considered to be real people with bones, the couple dressed like extras from a Vin Diesel eastern European movie, the 11,000 (or just 11) virgins who were sacrificed in Cologne to Atilla the Hun.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

This is the first in a series of posts about my travels around Europe. Each post will focus on one city I visited and will include my favourite photographs from that place and some free association words.

This one is for Amsterdam.

The canals of Amsterdam

Where I come from, there are no buildings marked as being constructed in 1665.

Why is it that life on a houseboat seems so romantic to me?

people, bicycles everywhere, bells ringing, canals, sex workers in windows beckoning men, tall skinny buildings, houseboats like Duncan MacLeod's, fries with yummy mayonnaise in twisted paper cones, wooden clogs, busker with a dog, boat ride, big ferry, decorated gables, an area so expensive only banks can own buildings there, steep stair cases, thinking of my life on a houseboat, feeling alone, wooden doors on buildings, weird fashions, cold.