EuroVision!!!!!!!!

EuroVision was amazing! So much glitter! So much fluoro! So much wind machine! Love it!

So photos are here. I'll put some good ones up as we go. Also, we made it on to the SBS coverage of the event. You can see us here - Craig and Sarah mostly, but you can see all of us very rapidly at the very start.

Ok, so let's get down to business! I'll walk you through our personal ratings of some of this year's contest.

POLAND!
Poland nearly won our internal voting contest. If it wasn't for the fact that Austria put in a fabulous bearded lady, they should have walked away with the top spot, in our opinion. Traditional dress! Cleavage! Native language! More cleavage! Churning butter on stage! And a decent song. This is what EuroVision is all about!

AUSTRIA
Austria's Conchita Wurst did win - both the internal vote, and all of EuroVision. Bearded drag queen, epic dramatic ballad. Wind machine!!! Fire! You just can't beat this- it's the stuff of EuroVision legend.

ARMENIA
Sarah: depressed zombie vampire and then his caffeine kicked in, upbeat part of song saves it a bit. deadpan expression, grew on me
Craig: Aram MP3', seriously? Some off key shockers. HUGE turnaround with the dubstep break. But he's still off key. Flames shooting out of the floor - taken into consideration.

Russia and Ukraine were about even in the rankings. The Guardian was interviewing people as they were leaving the first semi-final, trying to find some sort of political tension angle for a story. No one was biting. Ukrainian answer: Oh, you know, we're friends. We're happy Russia made it through - they have a good entry, and we're happy for them. Russian answer: You know, it's all about the music. Ukraine's entry was really great - we're glad to see them do so well. And so, without further ado:

UKRAINE
Me: Tick-tock - hamster wheel one. Faster again! Woot! Wind right from the start. 
Craig: Spinning wheel. YES! This is better. 'kiss me till I drop'. Split on that dress is pretty scandalous.
Sarah: spinning wheel?? good dance beat finally, wind machine. Dude on a hamster wheel!! interesting key change, sounds a bit eastern european despite english, catchy chorus, tick tock
Fatemeh:  nice movement

RUSSIA
Craig: twins bonus.Song not that memorable.
Sarah: twins, more fog machine, random transparent bars, on a seesaw. light show galore, sounds a bit abbaish
Me: Even more liberal use of fog machine. Twins, see-saw. Wind machine! Sun and lighting, solid
song with a bit of a key change attempt at the end.
Fatemeh: Symmetric!

There were two boy bands. The first was BELARUS, with Cheesecake. They can't really dance, and the song is kinda terrible. The other was DENMARK, with Cliche Love Song. THEY knew enough to make fun of themselves a bit! And they can dance, had a chick, and like every ethnic background they could scrounge together. Good effort Denmark.

The NETHERLANDS, SWEDEN, and a few others finished well, but because they put in people with good voices and decent songs. Not fair! More fire! More sparkles! More wind machine!!!

Honorable mention to AUSTRALIA for their first performance! They were the most well represented country at the second semi-final, hands down. We were watching the finals on Saturday, just on tv, and there were a LOT of jokes and references pointed to China. Maybe all the Chinese international students in Oz have taken a love of EuroVision back to China with them? At any rate, Craig said he's going to be upset if China gets an official entry before Australia.

Ok, will sign off with my favourite photo of the night, a Jedward-inspired air-jump high-five, in full fluoro!

Whirlwind European Visiting Trek Stop #4: Nijmegen

My friends Kim and Martijn are in Nijmegen, Netherlands, along with their daughter Myca. You may recall, Myca was my illegal immigrant baby-sitting charge when I was unemployed in Cali for a few months. I had Myca when she was 10-14 weeks old a few times a week. She is MUCH bigger now! We had a fun day at the park my last day there, feeding the ducks and playing on the slides:

At the start of my trip, Kim met me at the station then we left Myca with Martijn and she showed me a bit of the city. I got to try out the local raw fish delicacy, and then we sat outside at a beer garden and did a tasting of the local brews.

Had some good chats. She's finding it socially different being at the uni in Nijmegen than it was back in California. Now that she's a Prof (or essentially a prof), she can't really just hang out with the PhD students and post-docs. The other profs and staff have their own families and friends and lives, and their extended family is all back on the west of the country. So they spend a lot of time traveling on weekends, and feel a bit isolated in Nijmegen still. It takes time. It's how I felt at first in California, before I met Carolina, and then all the Stanford people. So she'll figure it out, but she was also very glad to see me, and that was nice.

Other fun things we did: 25 km hike on Sunday. Watching some WWII movie in the evening (it was the "Day to Honour the War Dead"), and Monday had a number of parties scheduled since it was Liberation Day - the day they got rid of the Nazis after WWII. I hadn't thought of having a big party, with bands and festivities, to mark the end of a war before, but I guess it does make sense. If you're country had been over-run by Nazis for years, you'd be pretty happy when they were gotten rid of, and celebrations would indeed be in order. I'm glad to live in Canada.

So it was an excellent trip to visit Kim and Martijn and Myca. Next was a quick stop in Aachen again, before.... EuroVision!

Decompression Stop: Antwerp

I love Monica and Antoine, and their children are beautiful, but after a week at their place I needed some 'me' time. And so before I moved on to Stop #4 and another potential screaming kidlet, I took a one-night decompression stop for myself along the way, in Antwerp.

As this was a last minute decision, I had some trouble finding a hostel on a Friday night. Hostels dot com said that everything was booked. But they also said that for Paris, and after e-mailing the hostel there directly, I found a spot. So assuming the site was just broken, I e-mailed a likely-looking hostel, jumped on a train, and went to Antwerp.

Antwerp is amazing. I really like train stations, and this was one of the best I've seen. Directly outside the station is the city zoo on one side of the square, and Chinatown on the other.

 
The city was less impressive as I walked to the hostel, however. I guess it was garbage day, so all along the way the streets were lined with huge bags of trash, some of which had ripped, and all of which smelled. When I arrived at the hostel, it turned out that all the rooms were booked, except for a double that was expensive. And they couldn't let me on to the WiFi, so directed me to a pub/cafe around the corner where I could access the internet and figure things out.

From here, the luck changed and things got great. I ordered a delicious ginger tea, hopped on-line and started looking for accommodation. The bar tender brought me the tea, and we started up some small talk. I said I was only in town for one night, and my hostel plan had fallen through, so was just trying to figure out where to stay. He looked at me, thought for a few seconds, then said "You look like a nice person. Do you want to just stay with us?". I thought for a few seconds, looked at him, and said "You also seem like a nice person. Sure." So that was taken care of. He also plans events in the city, and said I was in luck. The night I was in Antwerp was one of three nights in the year when all the private art galleries are free and open to the public. Then he pulled out a flyer, circled the good galleries for me, and suggested I rent a bike for the 24 hours I was in the city. So I did. And it was most excellent!

The art galleries were amazing. Also free wine and cheese events at most of them. I particularly enjoyed one with interesting photos of famous artists and musicians. Another that caught my attention was all watercolours, like this:

That's actually the cleanest photo I could put up. They all had sexual under-tones/over-tones. Including this one. But it was interesting, and there was a narrative you could kind of follow, and I liked the style. As far as modern art goes, not terrible.

The fellow and his boyfriend went to some massive CD release/art opening thing which I was invited to, but I was too tired. They got home around 7am - I was feeling too old for that kind of a night. I got up and went to the Exotic Market in the morning - basically a regular market, only you can get awesome Greek and Moroccan food as well - then had coffee with Bert (bar tender) back at the house before leaving for the train station around noon.

We had a bit of a conversation about random acts of trust like this, and politeness, and travel. I guess after I left the bar to adventure around town, he'd offered the gallery advice to a couple of other tourists that had come in. In general, he was excited about the increase of tourists to the area. I think it was a predominantly Turkish or Moroccan area, that's been morphing into hipster, so it's a bit off the beaten path. Anyways, once he gave them an inch they wanted to take a yard - they started demanding information from him, how to do things, where to go - he had to back waaaaay off, as he was at work, and shake them somehow. He said he would never offer to have them stay at his place had they been in need of help - they were so demanding. I told him about my other random house-stays, when I was taken in in Fiji, and when we reciprocated and offered our place in Sydney to some random German tourists I met at a beach. I guess you get a sense after a while of what type of person is ok, and what isn't, and generally you can recognize each other, and things work out.

Anyways, that was my Antwerp adventure! The city was really amazing. I highly recommend checking it out should you be in the neighbourhood some day.

Whirlwind European Visiting Trek Stop #3: Brussels

My friends Monica and Antoine and their two little kidlets were the attraction for Brussels. They were excited to have me, both for the visit, and for the added help with the kids. Carolina is 2.5 years old, and David is 3 months. It's quite the handfull- there were many days where the kids traded off crying in the mornings and the evenings, and I gave myself a one-day decompression stop in Antwerp after this one. But I love kids, and David is a charmer, super happy, and so he fell to me for a good portion of the days, which was amazingly awesome.

Part of the excitement for the visit was the chance for Monica and Antoine to cook all sorts of delicious traditional French and Belgian meals for me. It was amazing. Antoine has an actual crepe-making flat-iron thingy, and made delicious savoury crepes for dessert one night:

Another night feature honey-glazed duck filets, with potatoes fried in duck fat on the side. Again, amazingly delicious!

During the days, Carolina was in day care, so Monica and I wandered about the city, did a bit of sight seeing, and hung out in a number of comic book shops. Also went for lunch at this excellent little restaurant that was basically the Cultural Exchange version of all restaurants. Mmmm!

Thursday ended up being a holiday (labour day, I think), and so Antoine didn't have to work. We drove up to the Netherlands, had lunch in a very cute little town, and then went to the beach. The weather later in the afternoon wasn't fantastic, but it was cool to have the beach to ourselves. Turns out it wasn't a holiday in the Netherlands, hence the low traffic. And super touristy photo as proof of our day trip:

Monica and I had a really good catch-up too. She's a great person to just talk about general life stuff with. Her current debate is whether to move to California for a job at the moment. She and Antoine have good jobs that they like in Europe, and life here is pretty good for them. Raising kids in America is tough, compared to Europe, due to headaches about school districts, health care, and the general American indifference to appropriate work-life balance (not enough holidays, long working hours, and generally discouraging working from home). The job would be a good opportunity, but it's debatable whether the personal sacrifices are worth it. I'm trying to figure out a bunch of life things too at the moment, and it was good chatting with Monica.