good food, bad art

We did a lot of eating and art viewing this weekend. Friday night we met our friends Kate and John for Indian food on Brick Lane in East London. The host at the restaurant told us that he told the chef to make our meals extra-tasty; we were a little worried what "extra-tasty" meant for a table of Americans, but he stayed true to his word, it was quite delicious. Saturday morning Ross and I went to Jamie Oliver's restaurant "fifteen" for breakfast. I spent Thanksgiving at Fifteen with my family but had never been there for breakfast, and Ross hadn't been at all. It was a truly lovely way to start the day, and we couldn't help but notice that it was the same price as going out to Luciles. I'd pick Jamie Oliver's any day. With our stomachs full we had to take advantage of the clear blue sky (a rarity in London in February), and headed over to St. Paul's Cathedral. We climbed the 529 steps up to the top of the dome where we found amazing views of London, and incredible wind!

We heard from someone about an exhibition at the Tate Modern at 10 pm Saturday night. We had no idea what it was, but figured we would check it out nonetheless. The exhibition was actually a performance by a guy called Jonathan Meese. He was standing in a boxing ring, with several odd props (mannequins, plastic skeletons, random helmets and costumes) thrown around the ring, strange cartoon/child-like drawings hanging all around, and loud trumpety music playing, similar to what you would hear on a filmstrip in history class about world war 2. There was a projection screen behind the ring that was displaying a closed circuit film of the performance in the ring. Obviously an outcry of some sort against politics, authority, and namely Nazi Germany, he was yelling into a microphone in half english-half german. He was clearly strung-out on something, or possibly many things...he kept falling over and swaying in and out holding on to the ropes on the ring. The whole time he was yelling profanities into the mic, the only part I really picked up on was when he was holding a book up and yelling "this book is shisa, this book is shisa!" A lot of things were shisa to him. I felt really creeped out by him and the whole vibe in the room, so we didn't stay for very long.
Now, going to art school we've seen some strange things that people call art. I know that it is a personal expression, and art is completely different to each person, but there are times when I feel like we have to draw the line. The first time I came to London I remember the Tate Modern being this amazing gallery of world-class modern art; but now when I've gone back I've been incredibly disappointed and often confused. I find myself wondering why he can do a lot of drugs and yell profanities and get a private show at the Tate Modern, when I saw a woman last week in the tube doing the exact same thing. Everyone just gave her bad looks and took a few steps away. Why is she any different? I'm sure it's an age-old question of why one thing is considered art and another thing isn't, but I find myself wondering about it a lot.

Tomorrow is Pancake Day. It's been on our office diary for weeks now, and I keep wondering about it. Today someone brought it up in conversation and I asked why it's called Pancake Day. "Because you eat pancakes that day" was the only reply. Finally they remembered that it's what you do the day before Lent starts.

up north

First of all, I'm sorry for the lack of posts lately. I don't have a good excuse except that the last few weeks have been fairly busy. I've been meaning to post for some time now, considering that we've gone on trips for the last three weekends, and I want a record of these happenings for myself as much as I want you all to know about my life over here. Hopefully I'll get around to sharing some stories soon, but for now I should focus on the task at hand. The short version of the last few weeks is....a trip to Canterbury and Dover where we saw the Canterbury Cathedral, Dover Castle, and the white cliffs. The next weekend we went to Liverpool with Trace and Stephanie....our original intention was to visit the Lake District, but do to engineering maintenance on the tracks the train wasn't running for the weekend. So we made the best of it and enjoyed Liverpool, learning a lot about the Beatles' beginnings. This weekend was a much more exciting trip since Ross and I got to go to Sweden to visit our dear friends the Ordells.

As our plane descended through the clouds into Stockholm on Friday evening Ross and I couldn't help but notice that the snow-covered forest below had an amazing resemblence to Narnia...there was a very cold looking purple color in the air, and we couldn't help but wonder what we were thinking visiting Sweden in February. We were pleasantly surprised, however, upon stepping out of the plane, it wasn't as bad as it looked and we were incredibly blessed with beatiful sunshine all weekend. Arriving in Motalla we started the weekend on the right foot with a warm glass of glugg (I don't know how to spell that on an English computer, but it's very similar to mulled wine, and delicious), and then settled in with the opening ceremonies of the olympics. Saturday promised to be a very full day so Sven prepared us a traditional Swedish breakfast of porridge and lingenberry jam. The breakfast was delicious, and would have been even better if Ross and I had remembered to set our alarm clock to Sweden time and not woken up an hour late. oops. After breakfast we drove across town to Anders and Maude's new house, then Anders gave us a tour of the police station where he works. We also got the full tour of Motalla and the canal, then Ross and I joined Ulla on a walk through the shops downtown and then back home. That afternoon Tore and Anna came over with their son Carl, possibly the most adorable Swedish-Korean little guy ever. We had coffee and cakes and then went for a walk along the water, down to the lighthouse...don't worry, it was only -2 celsius. I think we were all a little jealous of Carl's mode of transportation-a fur lined sled pulled by Tore. Saturday evening Anders taught Ross and I how to eat Crayfish....we both caught them in streams when we were little, but never ate them. Then we had moose-meat for dinner. It was a whole day of "firsts" for us as far as eating goes. After dinner Anders took us over to his house where we hung out with his girlfriend Maude and two of their friends. We played a new game that they had just gotten, very similar to Taboo, except in Swedish. So, while the four of them had a chance to practice their English for the night, Ross and I each had a translator who would translate the word into English for us to describe to our partner. It was quite the process, but a very good time.

Sunday was a very special day...that's right, we went to Ikea. It seemed wrong to go to Sweden without visiting its most famous landmark. Ulla and Anders drove us and we met Tore, Anna, and Carl there. After Ikea Sven and Ulla took us to Vadstena to see the monastery and castle, and we had a wienerschnitzel lunch at a local restaurant there. Sunday night was very special entertainment with a personal slide show of their travels in Egypt and Yemen, as well as the 7-week road trip in 1968 that Ulla and my mom took across the U.S in a little red vw bug. It looked like quite the adventure. Surpsingly, some slides from Tore's summer in the states also surfaced....luckily Ross only got to see one picture of nine-year old amanda walking the streets of New York in a neon pink baseball hat and a fanny pack. Why my parents let me out of the house looking like that is still a mystery to me.

Monday morning began very early...we had to leave Motalla at 7 am to get to Linkopping to catch the bus to Stockholm. Our plan was to spend the day in Stockholm then catch the bus to the airport for our plane, leaving at 9:30 that night. Unfortunately we didn't have quite as good weather yesterday as we had the rest of the weekend....at 11 am it was -4 and it seemed to get colder as the day went on, the sun never came out. We had decided that we would try to see the art museums and the architecture museum, but when we got to the first one we realized that they are all closed on Mondays. A little lost as to what to do to fill the next 6 hours, we found a cafe in old town and got cappuccinos and sandwiches to warm ourselves up as we decided on our game plan. We went to the Wasa museum, which is dedicated to the Wasa Viking ship that sank in Stockholm's harbour over 300 hundred years ago and has now been recovered and restored. The evening was draining due to a lot of travelling...a 1.5 hour bus ride to the airport, then the flight was delayed, a 2 hour flight that got us back to London at 11:45, then the train into town wasn't operating due to mechanical operations so we had to take a replacement bus service that landed us at Liverpool Station (on the other side of London from our flat), at 1 am. Naturally the tube was shut down for the night and we were at the mercy of the night busses...always a scary thought. After waiting outside (which felt almost tropical after Stockholm) for 30 minutes the bus finally arrived, and 45 minutes later we were home, just over 19 hours after we got on the first bus of the day. Unfortunately when we got home we discovered that there had been a fire in my building staircase over the weekend and the carpet is now more of a pile of ashes than carpet. Luckily it was put out before it spread past the stairs; nothing and more importantly no one was hurt.

Overall it was a delightful weekend. It was great to spend time with the Ordells....it had been six years since I'd seen either Tore or Anders. It was amazing to have home-cooked meals- Ross especially enjoyed that. It was also really fun to see snow...in fact being in Motalla convinced Ross that he wants to live in a mountain town where it's cold and snowy all the time....he's still selling me on that one. We had a wonderful trip and we're very thankful for to our Swedish hosts. (by the way, congratulations if you made it all the way through this novel....work is boring today and I had to keep myself occupied.)