Since I last wrote, I've been pretty busy doing a lot of fun stuff. After getting back from the Roskilde festival, Tanne and I spent a few days in Copenhagen to recover from the 8 days of mud, beer, lack of sleep and decent food...Luckily for us, it was the Copenhagen Jazz festival during those days, so we had some interesting music to keep us occupied.
While maybe not as well known as the Montreal Jazz festival, the Copenhagen version is definitely pretty cool. On any given day there were 20+ musical performances throughout the city, and many were really good. Tanne and I managed to check out a few of them....
At the end of the week we headed off to Sweden to visit Tanne's family's summer house. It is located in a region called Småland, which is about 200kms from Copenhagen. It is a really nice place, with beautiful wilderness and really cute old houses that really give you the feel of being transported back in time in some way. At the house where we were, all cooking was done on an old-fashioned iron wood stove which gave new meaning to the idea of slow food.
While there we took a lot of time to go on walks around the house, picking berries and breathing fresh air (something that one doesn't really think about when living in a city). We also rented a canoe one day and went for a 20km trip down-river. It was a very relaxing day (no rapids), just taking our time paddling down the meandering rivers. ahhh....just writing about it is bringing back good memories....
Once back from Sweden we went to another small music festival called Nakke festival. It is located in the Northern part of Denmark in a beautiful coastal region. Compared with the Roskilde festival, this one is really small and intimate. There were just over 1000 people there and really small danish bands of very diverse genres. It was really cool to hear new music from bands that are completely unknown to you. Even though the bands were pretty unknown (even within Denmark) many of them were really talented and put on a great show. The weather was awesome for us, which was definitely a nice change from the Roskilde festival, so it was nice to be outside, drinking beer, listening to good music without any worries....
I am back in Copenhagen now. We will stay here for the week and head out for another road trip to Jutland (The peninsula that juts out from the north of Germany). While there we will visit Tanne's grandmother and my friend Anna whom I met a few years ago in Toronto while she was on exchange at Centennial. We are also planning to travel around the western part of Jutland to see some of the amazing coasts and beaches that Denmark has. Hopefully the weather will hold up for us!!
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Roskilde Festival 2007 (aka Mudfest)
Hey there!
As I'd mentioned in previous posts, Tanne and I had been planning for awhile to attend this year's Roskilde Festival. This is the largest festival in northern Europe, attracting close to 100,000 people every year to a small town about 50kms from Copenhagen.
The band list was a music lovers dream, with acts spanning all genres and coming from around the world.....The festival lasts for 4 days, with another 4 days of 'warming up' before the music starts.
So we arrived on July 1st, a Sunday at 7ish in the morning to ensure that we would get ourselves a good camping spot (some people had waited outside the gates from 11pm the night before!!!). We set up our tent and then chilled out......and chilled........and chilled.......
Unfortunately for us, the nice weather didn't stay....the rain started on Monday and continued off and on until thursday (on the thursday there was a torrential downpour that saw 45mm dumped on our heads). Well, as I'm sure you can imagine, the entire festival grounds were turned into a mudwhole. Some camping sites were completey submerged in water and in many places the water was nearly knee deep. I had the proud distinction of having attended the rainiest festival in it's 35 year history (which is saying a lot in a country like Denmark that is pretty rainy in general)
So, while the music started on Thursday, the crowd wasn't exactly warmed up, and indeed, many were forced to leave because their tents were destroyed. We braved it out and managed to see some awesome music that night, the highlight being Arcade Fire, a band from Montreal. Then we saw Talib Kwali, a really good hiphop act. Both of these stages were covered, which protected us from the worst of the storm....the last act that we saw, Björk, was unfortunately playing at the main stage, which was completely open. While the show was awesome and her music is incredible, the rain pouring down on our already soaked bodies prevented us from really enjoying the show as we could have.
We decided to break with festival tradition and head home to Copenhagen to get some warm clothes and sleep in a real bed for a night. This was definitely worth it, even though it ended up being a serious mission as many other festivalgoers had the same idea. We returned on Friday, worked our last volunteer shift and then prepared to enjoy the last few days of the festival.
On Saturday, we saw the Who on the main stage (the orange stage as its known) and then headed to the more intimate green stage to watch Dj Tiesto spin a 4 hour set of some crazy assed beats :) I definitely enjoyed it, staying right until the end even though the others had left out of exhaustion ....
Sunday was another day of great music. We started with a folk act called Beirut that was pretty good and then checked out Somolian-Canadian hiphoper K'Naan. If you ever have the chance to see this guy at home, its definitely worth it! After K'Naan, we went back to the Orange stage to catch Muse, which was a pretty crazy set of good rock and roll. Next was Laurent Garnier, a Parisien dj who rocks out to a diverse mix of electro, rock, d&b, etc, etc....We didn't get to catch too much of him unfortunately because Bassment Jaxx was up on the Orange stage to close down the festival. That was an amazing show with some booty-shaking beats and amazing visuals.....mmmm.....wonderful!
Well, I guess thats the short story of it. There is definitely much more to tell, but you'll have to ask me about it personally......
Alright folks, thats all for now, be sure to check my pic site for a visual impression of the festival (pics will be uploaded shortly) and keep checking for the next update of my adventures in outer space......
As I'd mentioned in previous posts, Tanne and I had been planning for awhile to attend this year's Roskilde Festival. This is the largest festival in northern Europe, attracting close to 100,000 people every year to a small town about 50kms from Copenhagen.
The band list was a music lovers dream, with acts spanning all genres and coming from around the world.....The festival lasts for 4 days, with another 4 days of 'warming up' before the music starts.
So we arrived on July 1st, a Sunday at 7ish in the morning to ensure that we would get ourselves a good camping spot (some people had waited outside the gates from 11pm the night before!!!). We set up our tent and then chilled out......and chilled........and chilled.......
Unfortunately for us, the nice weather didn't stay....the rain started on Monday and continued off and on until thursday (on the thursday there was a torrential downpour that saw 45mm dumped on our heads). Well, as I'm sure you can imagine, the entire festival grounds were turned into a mudwhole. Some camping sites were completey submerged in water and in many places the water was nearly knee deep. I had the proud distinction of having attended the rainiest festival in it's 35 year history (which is saying a lot in a country like Denmark that is pretty rainy in general)
So, while the music started on Thursday, the crowd wasn't exactly warmed up, and indeed, many were forced to leave because their tents were destroyed. We braved it out and managed to see some awesome music that night, the highlight being Arcade Fire, a band from Montreal. Then we saw Talib Kwali, a really good hiphop act. Both of these stages were covered, which protected us from the worst of the storm....the last act that we saw, Björk, was unfortunately playing at the main stage, which was completely open. While the show was awesome and her music is incredible, the rain pouring down on our already soaked bodies prevented us from really enjoying the show as we could have.
We decided to break with festival tradition and head home to Copenhagen to get some warm clothes and sleep in a real bed for a night. This was definitely worth it, even though it ended up being a serious mission as many other festivalgoers had the same idea. We returned on Friday, worked our last volunteer shift and then prepared to enjoy the last few days of the festival.
On Saturday, we saw the Who on the main stage (the orange stage as its known) and then headed to the more intimate green stage to watch Dj Tiesto spin a 4 hour set of some crazy assed beats :) I definitely enjoyed it, staying right until the end even though the others had left out of exhaustion ....
Sunday was another day of great music. We started with a folk act called Beirut that was pretty good and then checked out Somolian-Canadian hiphoper K'Naan. If you ever have the chance to see this guy at home, its definitely worth it! After K'Naan, we went back to the Orange stage to catch Muse, which was a pretty crazy set of good rock and roll. Next was Laurent Garnier, a Parisien dj who rocks out to a diverse mix of electro, rock, d&b, etc, etc....We didn't get to catch too much of him unfortunately because Bassment Jaxx was up on the Orange stage to close down the festival. That was an amazing show with some booty-shaking beats and amazing visuals.....mmmm.....wonderful!
Well, I guess thats the short story of it. There is definitely much more to tell, but you'll have to ask me about it personally......
Alright folks, thats all for now, be sure to check my pic site for a visual impression of the festival (pics will be uploaded shortly) and keep checking for the next update of my adventures in outer space......
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