Mimmis Blogging on the Go

Hampton Court Palace celebrates the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII’s accession

2009-04-06T10:16:00.001-07:00

This past weekend Frank and I decided to take the car and drive to Hampton Court to see the palace there. I am a member of a charity called Historic Royal Palaces (http://www.hrp.org.uk/) so for £38 or whatever it was I paid last summer, I get unlimited access during one year to five palaces in London (Tower of London, Kensington Palace, Kew Palace, Hampton Court and the Banqueting House). I can highly recommend this, if you are interested in history and preserving some of the greatest palaces built.

Located in Surrey, the Hampton Court Palace is a beautifully situated palace and gardens by the Thames and we were lucky with the weather. The sun was shining and it was a lovely spring day. Frank took a nap on the lawn of the Great Fountain Garden while I took a walk through the palace.

The palace has an interesting history. The estate at Hampton Court once belonged to a religious order founded in the 11th century. They used the area as an agricultural estate and hosted a few administrative buildings and a high-status guesthouse visited by royal guests on occasion. In 1514, the Archbishop of York, Thomas Wolsey, took out a 99-year lease on the property and built a grand bishop’s palace there. Wolsey became Cardinal and Lord Chancellor of England and he was also a close friend of Henry VIII and served as his chief minister for over ten years. In addition to his own private chambers (called the Wolsey Rooms in today’s palace leaflets), Wolsey added three guest suites for the royal family – one for King Henry VIII, one for Queen Katherine of Aragon and their daughter Princess Mary – and built a chapel.

Henry VIII (1509-47) was only 17 when he became King of England, Ireland and France and the Hampton Court Palace is this year celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Tudor king’s accession to the throne with a lot of historical activities, lectures, performances and costumed interpretations. When we were there actors were staging the day of the wedding of King Henry to his sixth wife, Kateryn (Catherine) Parr, in full velvet and embroidered costumes of the period.

Visitors were told how to bow and curtsey in the presence of royal, learned what it was like to work at the court and be a servant, what the clothes fashion was like in the Tudor era etc. It was very interesting.

I visited King Henry’s State Apartments, including the Great Hall with large, impressive tapestries hanging from the walls, and the Chapel Royal which has been in use for over 450 years. It was in this chapel that Henry’s son, Edward VI, was baptized and also where the marriage between Henry VIII and Kateryn Parr took place. The chapel is still in use today.

The Great Hall

I joined a group of people into a room and listened to a questions & answers session around what people at the court were wearing and what materials were used. Apparently one of the fancy velvet and silk gowns with golden-embroidered bodices that a lady at the court would wear would have cost around £10,000 in today’s money and a wealthy lady would own maybe five of those in different colors. Of course these garments couldn’t be washed, only the white cotton or linen under-tunic could. The height of masculinity in the Tudor era was muscular calves – if you were not so well-equipped in this department, you might even have worn padded stockings to hide this deficit. Male fashion namely prescribed tights and padded breeches (instead of today’s trousers) and knee-long mantles to appropriately display your calves.

King Henry had six wives. It was only his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, whom he married in 1509, that lasted over 20 years, the rest followed each other in fairly quick succession: Anne Boleyn in 1532/1533, Jane Seymour in 1536, Anne of Cleves and Catherine Howard both in the same year (1540) and finally Kateryn Parr in 1543. Henry was a passionate man and a womanizer, but his youthful charm and wits over the years turned into ruthlessness and he had a rather brutal way of dismissing his wives when he got tired of them. The first one he divorced, or rather he had the marriage annulled since Katherine of Aragon failed to produce a male heir and he became obsessed to possess the younger Anne Boleyn with whom he had fallen in love. It was in this period that Hampton Court Palace was appropriated by Henry VIII from Cardinal Wolsey as a result of the king breaking with the Catholic Church, since the Pope refused to grant him the divorce he so desperately wanted.

Queen Anne was beheaded just a few years after the marriage supposedly for ‘high treason’. Jane unfortunately died of postnatal complications after having given birth to Henry’s first male heir (Edward VI). The fourth marriage with Anne of Cleves was never consummated and it was subsequently annulled later that year. The young Catherine, Henry’s fifth wife, had an affair and was executed as a result, as were her lover and an ex-lover. The sixth wife, Kateryn, known as Lady Latimer before she became Henry VIII’s final wife, nursed him by the end when he was crippled and sick, and she was probably glad just to survive him.

When Henry died in 1547 he had three surviving children – the 9-year old Prince Edward and his older sisters Mary and Elizabeth. They have all ruled England and Hampton Court continued to be an important royal palace during the Tudor era. Only half of King Henry’s palace has survived since the 16th century, the rest was rebuilt for William III (William of Orange) and Mary II as a baroque palace during the 18th century.

I also saw Mary II’s Apartments, the palace’s wine cellar and the Tudor kitchens. The latter displayed various cooking utensils, fake log-fires in wood-fire ovens, vegetables, herbs, bread, stuffed rabbits and other food that you would have seen in a medieval kitchen when preparing meals for some 800 people in Henry VIII’s court.

Mary II’s Apartments

The Tudor Kitchens

We took a walk in the beautiful and enormous palace gardens, which are divided into several ones with different character. We didn’t have time to walk through all, but started in the Great Fountain Garden, originally parkland. The yew trees you see on the photo below were planted by Queen Anne (1702-14).

The Great Fountain Garden

We also saw the Privy Garden, the king’s private garden completed for William III in the early 1700’s, and the smaller Knot Garden.

The Privy Garden

The Pond Gardens were originally ponds with freshwater fish for the palace but are now sunken, pretty flower gardens located between the palace and the river. Next to them is the Banqueting House which will have to be the target for another visit.

The Pond Gardens and the Banqueting House

Lower Orangery Garden

We walked down the Orangery Garden to the Great Vine – apparently the oldest and largest grape vine in the world with its respectable 240 years, planted in 1768 – located in a green house close to the river but it was unfortunately not displaying any grapes this time of year.

We ended our visit with tea and scones at the Tiltyard Café. During Henry VIII’s reign this area was used for tournaments. In the 17th century it became kitchen gardens, supplying the palace with fresh produce.

Hampton Court Palace is well worth a visit and you can even take a boat ride here from either Westminster Pier in central London or from Richmond. That will probably be our chosen transportation on our next visit.

View more photos from Hampton Court Palace and gardens>>

High and low marks of London restaurants and bars

2009-04-05T22:19:00.000-07:00

I’ve recently been trying different restaurants, bars and clubs across London, including the areas of Richmond, Chiswick, Earls Court, Kensington High Street, SoHo and Camden Town. There have definitely been both high marks and low marks and I’ll share a few of my experiences.

High marks

Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in SoHo – this club is celebrating 50 this year and is a fantastic hang-out for a Friday night. My boyfriend and I went there on a whim, ended up chatting with a German man named Peter in the queue and sat together with him in the club. It has some tables for regular dinner closest to the stage and then there are a number of benches and long tables stretching like shelves along the sides of the room where you can order cocktails, wine, beer or snack food, but most importantly, remain focused on the performance on stage.

On Friday when we were there they had two different bands playing and a jazz drummer who had his birthday sat in for a song. The first band had wonderful musicians but in the second set we were in for an even better treat: Sarah Jane Morris. If you haven’t seen / heard her, I can warmly recommend an evening of her music, which is not pure jazz, but rather a mix of rock / funk / jazz. She managed to totally mesmerize me within the first 30 seconds on stage with her amazing stage presence, charisma, warm and rich voice and by performing one great song after another. Check out http://www.sarahjanemorris.co.uk/ for more info on Sarah and her music. I bought a CD – “Where it hurts” – and had Sarah sign it for me.

I was very impressed also with the impeccable sound at Ronnie Scott’s – compliments to the sound engineer. This club is a really nice and cosy place. Try it! Even the bouncers were polite and helpful.

Bingham Hotel in Richmond – this peaceful haven by the Thames, 5 min walk from Richmond Bridge, away from the busyness of central Richmond, hosts a terrace facing the river with stone tables and chairs on pebbles, making it look like a serene Japanese garden. They often have functions on the first floor and in the garden – wedding receptions, birthday celebrations and similar – but there is a very nice bar on the second floor with stylish sofas and a view over the river, well-trained bar staff and excellent service. Here you can enjoy a glass of champagne, a cocktail or afternoon tea and really relax.

Spring blossom in Richmond

The Pembroke on Old Brompton Road in Earls Court – this used to be a gay bar, but the place recently underwent a make-over and seems to have changed owners and clientele completely. Although I quite liked the slightly kitsch design with big chandeliers before, it is now a stylish bar with cosy lamps, a room further in with quite trendy wallpaper and a fireplace. It’s now a place where you can come in and enjoy a glass of wine, a beer or an Irish coffee while reading the Sunday paper or a good book and chill. They also serve food with a slightly more advanced menu than regular British pubs.

Ok-ish

Tarantella Ristorante Pizzeria on Elliott Road in Chiswick – this is a very small and narrow place where you can look into the kitchen or have the chef watching you and taking notice of your needs before the waitress does. They don’t have a very extensive menu, the food is fairly simple in a typical Italian style, but surprisingly good for the very reasonable price you pay. Despite being an Italian restaurant with Italian speaking staff and menu, they had some sort of a Gypsy theme art on the walls and played salsa music through the loud speakers…

The Bollo House on Bollo Lane in Chiswick – a quite nice, welcoming and large bar in the middle of a residential area, with a nice circular ceiling with windows letting in light. They serve quite decent steak, burgers, fish and chips etc. Don’t go there on a Wednesday night though – it’s their big quiz night and it’s impossible to keep a conversation because it’s annoyingly loud and busy.

Floridita on Wardour Street in SoHo – this little Bohemian, café-style bar serves only fairly basic wine, beer and drinks, but the staff is friendly and you don’t have to dress up to meet friends.

Côte on Wardour Street in SoHo – a large French restaurant in two floors. This seems to be very popular, you’ll need to make a reservation; when we came there with friends on a Saturday evening, they were full. It was a quite nice place with linen table cloths and decent food, albeit perhaps a little touristy.

Low marks

L Restaurant & Bar on Abingdon Road, a side street to Kensington High Street – the so-called cocktails as well as the fish I ordered for main course were absolutely horrible. It's a pity because I thought the place had potential at the first impression: the staff was very friendly and welcoming, they played salsa music through the loud speakers (always makes a salsa dancer happy) and the restaurant area had very funky design, with a rather narrow inner room with dinner tables basically under a small loft which also had seating. The Mint Fizz I ordered was granted a wild card, but it reminded me of wind-screen washing liquid and I don't think it's supposed to. I don’t know what they had done to the poor fish and sadly it was accompanied by too hard potatoes and watery green beans. The main course was simply revolting. Eating and drinking well is too important to me, so this place will sadly not get a second chance.

The Canal Side Bar at Lock 17 in Camden Town – located next to the locks in the canal in Camden Town as the name indicates, this bar has a steady stream of tourists as well as local hippie Londoners. If the weather is nice and the windows open towards the canal in summer-time this can be quite a nice spot for a cool beer, but the length of time it takes to order at the bar on a typical Saturday here – the bar staff is quite slow and disorganized – and the poor food disappoints you. I made the mistake of ordering potato wedges with cheese and this was just the most pathetic bowl of shrivelled and dried potato “puffs” I’ve ever been served. It took them two minutes to bring the bowl out to the table, so I guess they had just heated the old wedges in the microwave – the cheese on top had not even melted properly.

Boat in the canal at Camden locks

Speaking at the German Aerospace Center in Oberpfaffenhofen

2009-03-28T11:56:00.000-07:00

Recently I had the privilege to give a presentation at the Galileo Control Center in Oberpfaffenhofen in Germany. Located 60 km from Munich airport, it is hosted within the compound of the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR). You’re not allowed to take photos here, so I have borrowed the photo of the Galileo Control Center from the DLR website. I must confess I had never heard of Oberpfaffenhofen before I was asked to go there, but was happy that the taxi driver at the airport knew where it was. It cost be €80 to get there and another €85 to get back the day after.

The reason for my trip was the Bavarian kick-off event of the European Satellite Navigation Competition 2009 (ESNC), an international innovation competition that awards the best ideas for innovative applications in the field of satellite navigation. It is organized by a company in Oberpfaffenhofen called Anwendungszentrum GmbH or “the Application Center for Satellite Navigation”. My company is sponsoring the competition with a special topic prize in the field of navigation and location based services for mobile phones.

The goal of the ESNC is to strengthen the international collaboration between a number of high-tech regions, particularly with regard to the development of applications and services made possible by the satellite navigation system Galileo. Galileo is a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) currently being built (still in trial phase) by EU and the European Space Agency (ESA). It is complementary to the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) and the Russian GLONASS but aimed at reducing Europe’s dependency on American and Russian satellite signals. The European Commission has expressed an ambition to have 30 satellites launched in 2013.

A number of international and regional events are scheduled for the ESNC this year and will provide information to developers and creative innovators on various satellite navigation initiatives in preparation for Galileo deployment, including how to use NAVTEQ digital map data, LBS content and services for application development. The ESNC is carried out under the patronage of the Bavarian State Ministry for Economic Affairs, Infrastructure, Transport, and Technology. There are over 36,000 people working in the Bavarian Aerospace industry alone, which is an indication of the size of the global market for these kinds of services and applications.

The event gave me a good opportunity to learn more about different development projects for use with satellite communication technology, including environmental mapping of seafloors, water depth and water quality. Other speakers covered geo-fencing solutions (tracking and secure locking / unlocking of valuable moving goods or hazardous materials), imaging and search applications using object recognition technology, and flexible address delivery of parcels by using GPS/GSM tracking solutions.

After the networking drinks I had dinner with the CEO of Anwendungszentrum and had interesting discussions over some delicious fish with melted hazelnut butter and spring vegetables, all the while it was snowing outside – big, pretty snowflakes like you want on Christmas Eve (well, at least if you’re a Swede). I was staying at Hotel Seehof by the Lake Wessling. The hotel was wonderfully peaceful with friendly staff, comfortable beds and it looked like a ski hotel in the middle of the Alps.

L.A. wedding at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel

2009-03-28T11:45:00.001-07:00

Wow, I never thought this day would come. My six year older brother Urban has gotten married to a lovely American girl called Julia, also a talented musician, just like him. The whole family – my parents, sister, husband and three kids – flew to Los Angeles, California to attend the big event this past weekend. Also my boyfriend flew in from London.

I had been in Chicago for meetings through work for a few days so luckily I had already started to get used to the time difference between Europe and the US. We were staying at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Downtown L.A. over the weekend. This is a five-star hotel. Granted, the hotel foyer, reception halls and lounge areas have all the splendour required (have a look in the hotel photo gallery) – designed in Spanish-Italian Renaissance style with sculpted columns, hand-painted frescos, Rococo-style furniture, nice wooden or marble floors with thick carpets, bronze details, crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling etc, but I was not impressed with the hotel room. This was quite basic, would have needed a good make-over with repainting and touching up of skirting boards, more stylish furniture and refurbishing of the bathroom.

The dress code for the wedding was ‘black tie’ so I had to get an evening gown and managed to find a beautiful, midnight blue, strapless satin dress in Chicago last minute. However the zipper on the dress I tried at Bloomingdales was broken so I had to order one over the phone from storage in Minnesota and have it shipped directly to the hotel in L.A. There was not much room for error… I already knew the dress was too long even with high heels so I had to find a tailor close to the hotel to shorten it the day before the wedding. Phew!

I also desperately needed a pedicure and manicure and also wanted to get my hair done before the rehearsal dinner on the Friday. In the Guest Services binder in the room there was a pamphlet for the Visage salon on the ground floor. I called and talked to someone called Mindy and decided to walk down and have a chat with her about the arrangements. Originally from Vietnam, she was a little hard to understand at times. Although she had lived in the US for thirty years she had a very strong Asian accent. She turned out to be a lovely, helpful and very professional lady and I couldn’t have been in better hands – I can recommend anyone who needs to attend a fancy party in Downtown L.A., may it be a wedding, a red-carpet gala or some launch party, to make an appointment with Mindy. She doesn’t look like a million bucks herself, but I was very pleased with the service she gave, the foot massage, my nails looked fabulous and I really liked the hair-do with romantic curls she suggested would be suitable for my face shape, my particular hair quality and for the occasion, so I made an appointment with her to do my hair also for the wedding next day.

The wedding rehearsal was held in the Bernard room on the ground floor of the hotel where the wedding ceremony was to be held the day after. There was a temporary stage where the ceremony would be held and we all rehearsed walking in and out, being seated, where the bride and groom were to stand, the musicians be placed etc. The bride’s maids had made a “bouquet” of the gift wrapping materials and ribbons from the wedding shower which was then used as the bridal bouquet during the wedding rehearsal. I don’t know if this is an American tradition or just an idea they had – we don’t have this custom in Sweden anyhow – but I found it a little endearing and silly at the same time, which I am sure was exactly the purpose of it in the first place; an internal joke between the girls.

After the wedding rehearsal, there was the rehearsal dinner in the hotel restaurant, held for ca 40 of the close family and friends, which included the bride’s maids and groom’s party. There were a number of spontaneous speeches – I saved mine for the wedding reception – and Urban and Julia handed out gifts to the people in their wedding party and the parents to thank them for all their love and support and for making it all possible. I had understood from Shan, Julia’s mother, that you’re supposed to dress up for the rehearsal dinner, but there was an odd mix of family members in suits and dresses and friends in jeans and a shirt or even t-shirt and shorts! Hey, this was in L.A. after all, where supposedly anything goes!

On the day of the wedding, Frank and I had breakfast with Urban and our parents at a dodgy Asian-slash-Mexican food court on 5th Street past Pershing Square and on the left-hand side of the street from the metro entrance. Here you have a few options during different opening hours, over-the-counter serving from El Come-Come, Casa de China and some other name of the Mexican burritos / tapas counter next to them from which we got our breakfast pancakes, omelettes and beans.

Specimens of “America’s finest” came and sat at the table next to us. One of them congratulated my brother to his upcoming wedding, showed us the identity discs he had around his neck and claimed to be in the military soon going back to Afghanistan, however he and his companion looked like homeless and dirty crack heads, not proud US military, but who knows what war does to people. Sweden as a nation has fortunately not been to war in almost 200 years.

After this, my boyfriend and I hurried to Macy’s for last-minute shopping of accessories for the wedding. At first, I stopped at the jewellery shop in the entrance hall of Macy’s department store, saw some beautiful necklaces and innocently asked the clerk how much they were. I was dumb-struck when he said “$15,000” (I didn’t realize I was looking at some really precious stones – the store didn’t look that fancy after all and wasn’t located where I would have expected these kinds of gems) and quickly had to tell him that it was a little over my budget that morning… I got a silvery evening purse, a beautiful necklace and earrings within my own price range from Macy’s own jewellery department instead. With these necessities taken care of I had to hurry back to the hotel again to make my appointment with Mindy.

I almost completed and refined my speech as much as I had time for with my laptop on the lap while Mindy was curling and spraying my hair and had to redo my toe nails because I had messed them up the night before when putting on my shoes. In the end the speech never was completely finished, but I knew it was too long anyway and that I would have to cut it down, so by leaving some room for “winging it” on spot usually helps in that department. My Mom and Dad came down to help me out with some details on the finer points of the speech where my memory failed me from childhood, and Mindy agreed to do my mother’s hair after she finished with me. Then I had to hurry back to the hotel room, get changed and ready for the big event (don’t know how the bride herself manages to get ready in time – I guess by months of planning and not waiting till the last minute with things…). I printed the speech and the tweaked song lyrics of the traditional Swedish song Värmlands-visan (well, I couldn’t very well sing that he’s taking a bride from Värmland in the first verse!) in the Business Center of the hotel last-minute and was able to rehearse the song a couple of times with the professional pianist just before the guests arrived.

Guests in their pretty evening wear mingled on the sidewalk outside the hotel and in the ground floor lounge area and bar before the ceremony. Some of the wedding pictures were taken before the ceremony, some after. I was stunned to see my mother in a beautiful red dress – I’ve never seen her more radiant – and my sister and nieces all dressed up in long dresses and my Dad, brother-in-law and 12-year-old nephew in tuxedos. I’ve never seen any of them so handsome. Guess it takes an occasion like this to bring it all out. You can see a picture of me and my boyfriend to the right.

I had butterflies in my stomach since my speech was not exactly well-rehearsed and I felt a little intimidated to sing during the ceremony with the room full of (normally) critical musician friends of Urban and Julia. I had to calm my nerves with half a glass of wine in the bar just before the ceremony…

It was a beautiful, stylish and funny ceremony in the Bernard room at the Biltmore. The room was dressed up in white-covered chairs, golden waist-high pillars along the aisle with flower arrangements on, a white carpet sprinkled with rose pedals leading up to the stage where the wedding ceremony itself took place. All the wedding guests were seated but Urban and the close family, maids of honor and groom’s party walked down the aisle as part of the start of the ceremony. My sister and I were led down the aisle by one of Urban’s close musician friends, Michael, who claimed it was a dream come true to have two Swedish redheads by his side. Ha-ha, bless him. Then we all waited a few moments for Julia to walk in with her mother Shan and their close family friend Phil. Julia was a beautiful bride. The guitarist played and sang very nicely as she came in and walked “on stage” with Urban, who stood up front waiting for her with proud sparkles in his eyes.

Shan recited a Shakespeare poem during the ceremony and I made it through my song decently after a little shaky start. The microphone was placed in front of the guy officiating at the wedding, so I had to walk up on stage, round Urban and Julia and then face them and the rest of the room.

The funny elements that made everyone smile or even crack up, including the bride and groom, were one of the floral boys dropping a shoe as he walked in, Julia having forgotten to bring her card with personal wedding vows – they each read their own, personally written vows to each other which of course made most people in the room wipe the corners of the eye – and had to rely on the wedding coordinator to bring her the back-up copy, and then finally she dropped the ring when it came down to putting it on Urban’s finger. My new sister-in-law may be a little crossed with me now for revealing all of this so shamelessly on a public blog, but it’s all part of a good, fairly-tale but down to earth wedding story and I love it! It all effectively broke the ice and made for a fabulous wedding reception afterwards.

The newly wed walked out to Scottish bagpipes – apparently Julia has some Scottish blood in her – which was a quite cool ingredient in the whole wedding mix.

The reception was held in the Gold Room with group seating at round tables, a big dance floor and a stage where a jazz band was playing during the evening. I think the first couple up trying the dance floor while waiting for the newly-weds were Shan and Phil. Urban and Julia eventually walked in, again accompanied by the Highland bagpiper (wonder where they found him?) and onto the dance floor, where the jazz band took over from the bagpiper and started playing a slow foxtrot, "Twenty-Four Little Hours". The happy couple performed a little dance routine and looked very cute indeed.

After this, Urban and his bride took place “center-stage” at a separate table facing the stage and the five-course meal could begin. In a very organized fashion, there were of course a number of speeches throughout the evening, including those of Shan, my Dad, the best man Clark – in kilt to honor his Scottish-Canadian heritage – and myself.

Following me was Susanne with her “back-up vocalists” in the form of her three kids. They performed a rap song entitled “The Urban Beat”, I believe, with Susanne rapping the verses, telling a story about Urban, his two lovely sisters, some things that happened in childhood, how he moved to the US, met Julia etc, and the kids doing the “beat-boxing” and went “Um Urban, Hey Urban!” or something similar in between – absolutely hilarious! I laughed so much I can hardly hear what they are rapping on the video I shot.

It was a very nice and stylish wedding reception. I had great fun and enjoyed the speeches, music, dancing – it even included the traditional Jewish folk dance called Hora, which was good fun – and cutting of the wedding cake and all that. The wedding reception finished fairly early (think it was around midnight) so then there was an after party in a hotel suite that someone had rented.

I wish my brother and his wife all the best for a long and happy marriage!

USA All-Star Nationals
Located next to the big Staples Center, home to NBA basketball, the L.A. Convention Center hosts many different conferences and events throughout the year.

The day after the wedding, my sister and her kids wanted to go to L.A. Convention Center to watch the big cheerleading competition, USA All-Star Nationals. I was quite curious of this piece of American culture so I decided to come along. What perhaps surprised me the most was that there were so many boys in the cheerleading troupes. I thought cheerleading was for girls, but I guess these kinds of competitions have gone beyond the provocative wiggling and waving with pom-poms in the cheerleading section at a football game.

During the USA All-Star Nationals there were large teams competing in different age classes, from 7-year-olds or so to what looked like college kids. They flip flopped across the stage in rondats and salto mortals, threw each other up in the air, built pyramids, girls balancing on one leg in the air, striking different poses, while two to three team mates held them steady by the foot only. There were some poses and tricks that formed part of every troupe choreography, so these tricks seemed to be part of what everyone were to be judged on.

You can see one example of choreography in the video below. There were troupes that were more advanced, distinct and synchronized, but all in all, all contestants were very impressive athletes. Since we didn’t know anyone, we didn’t stay for the prize ceremony and handing out of trophies so we don’t know who won.

For those initiated, you can download and study the results from the different classes here>>

If you’re a fan or know anyone who happened to be competing on March 14-15 in L.A. you can buy the competition videos here>>

After the USA All-Star Nationals, we were dying from hunger, so we quickly settled for dinner at Denny’s, the American chain diner’s.

Barbeque in Venice
On Monday after the wedding, we were all invited over for barbeque at the house of Urban’s childhood friend Crille, wife Malin and baby daughter Mika in Venice. It was a beautiful, sunny day and I had of course forgotten sun block so after a couple of hours in the sun I had already gotten burnt, way before we walked down to Venice Beach to watch all the weirdo’s and could buy some sun protection cream in a store.

My 12-year-old nephew Jonathan (soon to be 13) likes skating and had borrowed a skateboard from Crille, so I headed down towards Venice Beach with him and my niece Emelie to shop for sunglasses and watch other skaters. Jonathan is not so advanced yet so he got some friendly and brotherly advice from more experienced skaters who were practising jumping and sliding tricks on the steel bars along the board walk. He could have stayed there for hours and hours. 14-year-old Emelie (turning 15 this fall) and I shared some moments of laughter at a – well, how can I put this – older nerd on inlines who desperately tried to get my attention by skating on one leg. He did the same “trick” over and over again, and each time he passed, he glanced at me and smiled. Emelie was cracking up already after the fifth time, but after twenty or so it started getting ridiculous. He mostly looked like a dog getting ready to pee against a tree….

My parents and also my sister, her husband and kids were staying in the US altogether some 20 days, I think, so both Jonathan and Emelie were after this convinced that they would want to move to L.A., one to bum around I guess and the other to “become famous” – unclear with what but she likes singing… My oldest niece Angelica, who’s 17, thought L.A. was cool enough and that it was nice to get away from school in the middle of the semester, but she probably also missed her horses back home.

We finished the day with a burger and a beer together with the whole family and Urban’s friends Clark (best man at the wedding) and wife Alexa at the Whaler on the corner of Washington Boulevard and Venice Beach.

Walt Disney Concert Hall
Before I flew back to London, I visited the Walt Disney Concert Hall, located on South Grand Avenue in Downtown L.A. and only 10 min walk uphill from the Biltmore, giving your bum a little bit of an exercise while walking there. Designed by Frank O. Gehry and opened in 2003, this large metal building is made up of more than 6,000 panels of stainless steel.

The Walt Disney Concert Hall is one of four buildings of the Los Angeles Music Center and by far the funkiest. The building is beautiful with many different shapes, curves and interesting angles, with the sunlight reflected in the metal surface.

It's located next to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and is home to the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. When I was there you could sign a guestbook for Esa-Pekka Salonen (the one who conducted the "City of Dreams" concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London that Frank and I attended recently), whose year as Musical Director here is coming to an end.

You can take an audio tour for free around the Walt Disney Concert Hall and its garden and listen to some of the details of the construction and design work, why the carpet has a playful and colorful Lily pattern (in honor of the biggest private donor Lillian Disney) and from what spot you can see all the way to the Hollywood sign in the far distance.

The building of the concert hall cost altogether ca $274 million and was partly funded by Lillian Disney, the widow of Walt Disney, who donated $50 million as a way to give something back to the community in this city of entertainment.

Dorothy Chandler Pavilion

The trip to California came to an end and I’m back in the London drizzle... But stay tuned for upcoming excursions.

The London Eye

2008-04-19T06:18:00.001-07:00

I am actually on my way to Beijing but am stuck at the Hong Kong airport due to a typhoon with heavy raining and strong winds. I missed my flight yesterday afternoon from Heathrow and was rebooked on another flight 4.5 hours later via Hong Kong. We had a very turbulent landing due to the weather and now the connecting flight is already almost 4 hours late. I have missed a whole day's sightseeing in Beijing with a colleague but was hoping to get there at least before midnight so I could take her salsa dancing. It looks uncertain if we'll even make it out of Hong Kong tonight. Oh well, at least it has given me some time to write about my sightseeing excursion in London last weekend.

It was raining cats and dogs with occasional thunder and lightning last Saturday – typical London weather, some would say, and you will regret if you have left your umbrella at home. Defying the weather, I however decided to do some sightseeing since a French salsa friend of mine, Ludovic, was visiting London. Neither of us had ever been to the London Eye, the huge observation wheel on the South Bank of the river Thames.

The observation wheel is about 135 m high and apparently the largest ever built. Opened in 2000, the wheel was meant as a symbol of the turning of the century according to the married couple of architects who designed it.

I have never been close enough to study the construction of it, but I had somehow imagined it to be like one of the “Paris wheels” you usually find at an amusement park with the cabins swaying in the wind. The London Eye however spun silently around and so slowly you couldn’t even feel its movement from inside the egg-shaped cabins, spacious enough for 20-25 people in each.

You can see quite far in the distance and many of London’s landmarks are clearly visible from up there, including the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben and Westminster Abbey across the river in the City of Westminster. You have a great view over the Thames and several bridges, Victoria Embankment, South Bank with the Waterloo Station and the County Hall.

Westminster Bridge, Houses of Parliament with Big Ben and Victoria Embankment

The view over London from the wheel during its full-circle flight taking ca 30 min was marvellous, but the experience on this particular occasion was dampened by the wet weather. I also thought that the price was a little hefty, almost £14. I wouldn’t rush back in a hurry but on a sunny day I suppose it’s a nice experience and great photographic opportunity for the many tourists visiting London.

Left: Ludovic on Westminster Bridge with the London Eye and the County Hall in the background. Right: Big Ben.

After the London Eye tour, Ludovic and I walked across the Westminster Bridge, passing Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, chilled to the bone and in search of a café where we could warm up with some hot chocolate. Westminster however consists mostly of old buildings and hordes of tourists so we ended up walking to Covent Garden via Trafalgar Square. Not that Covent Garden has fewer tourists visiting, but at least you can watch the bustling street life in the square while sipping a glass of wine or enjoying a coffee. We ended our afternoon sightseeing at a small café / pizzeria in the Covent Garden Market.

Ludovic close to Covent Garden

Spring chicken in California

2008-04-07T15:11:00.000-07:00

I had four days off before Easter this year and went to California for a week to see my brother and hang out with one of my friends in Los Angeles. The benefit of L.A. is that you can get beach and skiing on the same week! :-)

My brother and his girlfriend live in Studio City in the San Fernando Valley in northern L.A. It’s a fantastic location, quiet and residential but also with some nice restaurants and shops. I spent some time shopping on Ventura Boulevard, the main shopping street and through-fare in the Valley, and also had dinner there at a cozy restaurant one night.

The weather in L.A. is mostly warm and sunny all year round. In the back yard at my brother’s, there is a lemon tree growing, constantly ripe with lemons (as you can see from the picture to the right), just waiting to be picked and used for fresh frozen margaritas!

On the Wednesday before Easter, my brother’s girlfriend, Julia Albert, a talented singer / songwriter, had a gig at Café Cordiale in Sherman Oaks. My brother played the guitar and sang backing vocals. Julia’s mother, brother, grandmother and some other relatives were also there to watch. We all had dinner there before the performance. Julia’s music is wonderful – check it out at http://juliaalbert.com/. It was nice to experience the intimate setting of this gig - see photos below.

I spent one of the days down at Venice Beach with my friend Thomas. For those of you who are not familiar with Venice Beach, this is a stretch of beach south of Santa Monica with a long beach promenade, along which people roller-blade, go skateboarding, biking and running, or work out in the sun at the Muscle Beach Gym, play tennis, volleyball or basketball at one of several courts dotted along the beach. The rather famous Venice Beach Boardwalk is full of quirky street stands, hustlers and weird people, trying to make a buck by making sand sculptures, wearing ugly costumes, juggling, selling their own, home made CDs etc. It’s definitely worth a visit – you’ll have a laugh and be fascinated by all the Weirdness there is in this world.

Since I am a passionate salsa dancer, Thomas took me to see one of his friends, John Davila (in picture to the left), who happens to be an On2 salsa instructor in L.A. We had good fun in the sun at his place for a couple of hours, learning a new On2 routine. Check out Davila's website at http://www.salsero.biz/index.php

On the Good Friday, Thomas and I went to Raffi’s Place in Glendale for some lovely Iranian food for lunch. I don’t think I have ever tasted Iranian food before, but I liked it. If you happen to be near Glendale, drive to Raffi’s Place and try it out. Nice staff and fresh food.

In the evening we went to Sherman Oaks Galleria for dinner and a movie. Thomas was mistaken for Eddie Murphy (very funny) by one of the visitors to the shopping galleria, who stopped him and almost asked for an autograph. The movie we ended up watching was really bad, not even sure why on earth we would randomly pick a film with such a title anyway… “10,000 B.C.”… If it screens at a movie theater near you, please pick another film for your evening out.

After four relaxing days in L.A., I was off to Big Bear / Snow Summit in Southern Caifornia for a couple of days of skiing with my brother.

London musicals, concerts and shows

2008-04-01T12:19:00.001-07:00

London has a great selection of theatres and jazz clubs where you can enjoy various musicals, concerts, plays and dance performances. During my first 5 months here I have been to several musicals and dance performances, a couple of jazz concerts and to the ballet. There are constantly popping up new musicals and plays so you can always enjoy something new on the entertainment scene in London.

Greased lightnin’!

A salsa friend of mine from Sweden, Camilla Alenstål, and a friend of hers, Luis, came to London for a visit in October last year. We decided to go see Grease at Piccadilly Theatre. This was highly entertaining – if you haven’t see Grease yet, make sure you do! You’ll have a ball! It’s ultra greasy in every way and it’s hilarious. Danny and Sandy were played by Danny Bayne and Susan McFadden, both chosen by the public to play the lead roles in the London production from the finalists in the ITV show Grease Is the Word. My favorite scene in the London musical was the shower scene (does not exist in the film) – very, very funny.

The Magic Flute
I got a free ticket through work once to see a show at the Young Vic theatre between Waterloo and Southwark tube stations, a few minutes walk from the office. A South-African music company performed their own interpretation of Mozart’s The Magic Flute (Impempe Yomlingo) and got standing ovations from the audience afterwards.

This was a truly colorful, inspiring and entertaining show which left you in a state of shear joy and happiness. I was rather touched and had to wipe a tear from the corner of my eye at one point, although I was smiling broadly throughout the performance. I find it amazing that a European composer in the 18th century can have had such a powerful impact across the world through centuries, in a way that even the most remote country and culture with a completely different set of instruments and way of singing and expressing themselves have heard his music, learned to appreciate it, and been inspired by it to the extent that they have really let in influence their own.

Impempe Yomlingo was filled with colorful African costumes, Mozart blended with African harmonies, African drums and flutes, barefoot dancing, acting and singing with a strong South-African, melodious accent. A truly wonderful and refreshing experience!

Billy Elliot – the musical
When my brother Urban and his girlfriend Julia came for a visit from Los Angeles before Christmas, they wanted to see Billy Elliot. Said and done. I got tickets for the Victoria Palace Theatre on a Monday night. I wasn’t particularly impressed by this musical. The only one in the cast that impressed was the kid that played 12-year-old Billy Elliot. For being so young, he was quite charismatic and good both at acting, singing and dancing. In fact he was the only one that owned the stage when he entered. The rest of the cast was in my opinion rather mediocre on all accounts. Perhaps I was disappointed because I really liked the film and the musical version of it was…well, lame, with amateur actors and really poor dancers.

Katriona Taylor Quintet

My salsa friend Jeff Tarpinian’s ex-wife quit her job as a lawyer and became a jazz singer – well, isn’t that cool? Now she’s given out several CD’s and performs at various jazz clubs and festivals. Jeff invited a bunch of us from the salsa scene to come and see her at the SoHo Pizza Express in January. The jazz club is found in the basement and provides a quite intimate setting for the bands playing with dinner and drink tables close up to the stage. Apparently this club is where a lot of up-and-coming jazz musicians get started and receive recognition. We had dinner and a really enjoyable evening followed by salsa dancing at Bar Salsa after the concert.

The Nutcracker
I have long wanted to see a real classical piece of ballet. Alessia got Martina and me tickets for the Nutcracker at the Royal Opera House in January. It was a fantastic experience. The Royal Opera House is beautiful and of course provides the perfect setting for classical ballet. The Nutcracker was pretty silly in a fairytale kind of way, but there is no denying that the dancing was beautiful with impressive pirouettes, lifts and jumps.

Eddie Palmieri Y Su Orquesta
Earlier this month, the world-famous jazz/salsa virtuoso Eddie Palmieri was in London with his orchestra and performed at the Jazz Café in Camden Town. Born in New York with Puerto Rican parents, he is in his 70’s now so I wonder how many more concert tours he is going to manage. The Jazz Café was packed and it was an awesome concert. I was really impressed by the trumpet player, Brian Lynch.

Many of my salsa friends were there: Mouni, Osiel on a quick visit from Stockholm with his girlfriend, Denis, Steve, Chris, Martina, Jeff, Olu, Floyd, Saher (whom I met at La Isla in Stockholm last year – he commutes between London and Stockholm for work). I stayed dancing after the concert until a quarter past midnight, and then went to Bar Salsa as many other did. Salsa fanatics...?

Bounce – Insane in the Brain

Jessica, one of my girlfriends from university, came to see me for a couple of days earlier this month. After trying the cocktails at Skylon Bar in the Royal Festival Hall by the Thames, we went for dinner at Iguanas, a Latin bar and restaurant by the Hungerford Bridge, and then crossed the river and went further north to Holborn. Bounce, a street dance group from Stockholm, performed an astonishing dance theatre piece inspired by “The Cuckoo’s Nest” (remember the film with Jack Nicholson?) at the Peacock Theatre. I can honestly say I have never seen anything like it. With very impressive dancing and strong acting it was depressing and funny at the same time. The performance stayed with us for a long time that night, even after entering the Sway Bar & Nightclub nearby.

Jessica & I sipping cocktails at Skylon Bar in the Royal Festival Hall

Jessica outside Peacock Theatre

London salsa – where and when

2008-04-01T12:01:00.000-07:00

After 6 months in London I believe I have come to some conclusion on which the best places are for salsa dancing here, at least L.A. and Mambo style.

Mondays – Bar Salsa on Charing Cross Road close to Leicester Square. Super Mario usually DJ’s here when he’s in town. Usually a good crowd – the good dancers are there between 11pm and 2am (which is when they close and the bouncers come yelling at you, trying to hurry you out).

Tuesdays – never been out yet; does not seem to be a good club night for salsa.

Wednesdays – Bar Salsa, open till 2am.

Thursdays – my friend Jeff has started On2 courses and social dancing at Surya Bar at King’s Cross, open till 12pm. See http://www.salsageeks.com/ for more info.

Fridays – MamboCity event in Ealing Town Hall, open till 1am. This is usually jam-packed, hot and sweaty and a lot of fun.

Saturdays
– Scala at King’s Cross last Saturday of every month (usually open till 5 or 6am) + the night before all Bank holidays (open till 6am)
– Prodigal / Cape on Love Lane (close to St. Paul’s) open till 3am – this is a nice venue with a good salsa DJ and usually there are good dancers. Sometimes this clashes with Scala nights.
– Palladium at Latin Palace in Oval – I have only been there once but it was not good. Irene is trying to build a rep there and get people coming regularly but I really didn’t like the venue and it’s located way off and therefore hard to get home from unless you have a car of your own or can catch a ride.

On Fridays and Saturdays there are also occasional salsa events at Colosseum on Nine Elms Lane in Vauxhall which can be quite nice as a change. These events usually draw a mixed crowd of Cuban, LA style and mambo dancers.

Sundays – Salsa On Sundays (SOS) at the Royal National Hotel at Russell Square. This is the salsa social of the week organized by Leon Rose and Tamambo, and usually all good mambo dancers come here.

Mobile World Congress 2008 in Barcelona in February

2008-03-31T16:14:00.001-07:00

I’m a little behind on my blogging, it’s just been crazy lately with too much work.

I was in Spain on business in February for a week to attend the Mobile World Congress, a big tradeshow, held at Fira de Barcelona. For all my years in the telecoms & wireless industry I have never been to this show, not even when it was called GSM World Congress and then 3GSM and was held for many years in Cannes. It was interesting to finally get a chance to attend this event, which is huge for all network infrastructure, service and mobile phone providers and carriers / operators to gather and discuss new industry trends and requirements. The event is typically attended by some 50-60,000 key decision-makers in the mobile industry.

A nice panorama photo taken at Fira Barcelona by one of my colleagues

I had meeting after meeting and walking around the tradeshow for four days... I didn't see much of Barcelona other than the conference facilities, restaurants and the inside of a few salsa clubs.

Symbian was there with the theme "Tomorrow's technology - today's phones". We had a booth in Hall 8 with good technology demos, a couple of speaker / panel opportunities, and a Hospitality Suite on the Fira Avenue to nurture and meet with customers, important partners and press. I went to visit my old colleagues in the Sony Ericsson booth and checked out some new phones. Symbian also threw a big party at an off-site venue with about 800 guests with local DJs and a live band called The Pinkertones, one of Barcelona's hottest new acts.

Symbian booth

Panel discussion

Symbian Hospitality Suite

Senior Product Manager, Lars Lindström, demonstrating some new smartphones in Sony Ericsson’s booth

The Fira entrance / exit gates

I found three fairly descent salsa clubs, which I visited on different nights. I managed to get a couple of colleagues to tag along to Antilla Latin Club on a Saturday night. The place was quite busy but unfortunately there were not many good dancers. I spotted one tall guy with long hair (kind of reminding me of the famous Swedish tennis player Björn Borg back in the days when he had long hair) that seemed to be the best there that night and invited him to dance which turned out to be a good move. Funnily enough, he showed up at the other two salsa clubs I tracked down while in Barcelona on other nights.

On Sunday night I went out on my own to Mojito Club. They celebrated their 10th anniversary on the night I was there, served champagne and handed out gifts. They also had a dance performance by some local dancers and a salsa band playing. I saw someone at the bar looking exactly like Ricky Martin but since he and his lady company seemed to enjoy the evening without much extra stir around them I assumed it was just a look-alike.

I met up with a salsa friend from Stockholm, John, who works for IBM and happened to be at the MWC as well this week. On the last night in Barcelona, or Barca, as many people call it, we had a long dinner catching up on life in the fast lane and then went to Agua de Luna, apparently the “place to be” on a Wednesday night in Barca if you’re into salsa.

Sure enough, there you could spot all the famous and good dancers that travel to international salsa congresses around the world, and I had the pleasure of dancing with the world champion of salsa 2007, Adrian (saw him compete with his partner in Puerto Rico last summer – see separate blog post about the Puerto Rico Salsa Congress 2007), and another quite well-known performer, Ramón, who took turns dancing with me to a couple of super fast Mambo songs...! Lots of fun but it resulted in me getting sore ribs and abdomen from dancing like crazy. I am apparently in poor shape these days! ;-)

Very pleased but beat after an activity-filled week in Barca with too little sleep I returned to London with the last night of great salsa fresh in my mind and body, and a big smile on my face.

I am hoping that next time I will have time to actually see more of Barcelona.

Finally some snow! Customer visit to Finland

2008-03-31T16:09:00.000-07:00

In early January I flew to Helsinki in Finland with a few colleagues to visit Nokia headquarters. We arrived on a Tuesday night in time for dinner with some marketing and communications people at Nokia at the Loft Restaurant & Lounge on Yrjönkatu 18. This turned out to be a very good restaurant with Scandinavian cuisine, located in central Helsinki between Bulevardi and Uudenmaanaktu. Since we were supposed to have a whole-day meeting with Nokia at their offices in Espo the day after, we did however not stay out very late.

We stayed at the Hilton Helsinki Kalastajatorppa hotel which had convenient rooms in Scandinavian clean design and a huge lobby with a nice bar and lounge area. The hotel also gave guests access to sauna, Jacuzzi and a pool area, which we unfortunately did not have time to take advantage of.

This was the first time this “winter” that I had seen snow. When I was home in Sweden for Christmas, the temperature was rather mild and it was raining. London has not even come close to snow. And believe it or not, I have actually missed the white coat of snow on wintry streets and trees, and feeling the cold bite your cheeks!

When we came back from dinner with Nokia the first night, I felt very upbeat when we got out of the taxi at the hotel because it had been snowing and there were still some snowflakes in the air. I bent down, took some snow and made a snowball and threw it at my British male colleague from Sales. I giggled happily, but he did not look amused at all. Ooops, culture clash? Perhaps my childish and spontaneous action was not considered appropriate. Or he was just tired.

New Year’s salsa in Birmingham

2008-03-31T14:48:00.000-07:00

The single excursion outside of London I have done since I moved to the UK was to drive up to Birmingham from London with my salsa friends Steve, Eva and Gormack over New Year’s.

The LatinMotion team of salsa instructors and promoters every year arrange a big New Year’s salsa bash attracting people from all over the country. We arrived after dark so I did not have the chance to see much of Birmingham except for the street where the Paragon Hotel, where we were staying, and St. Anne’s Club were located on Alcester Street, next to St. Anne’s Church.

When we arrived, there was a big Rueda workshop going on. As soon as the free classes for the night had ended, the actual party slowly started picking up. About 200 people attended the party this past New Year and it was a very relaxed and friendly atmosphere.

Sadly, very few people had really dressed up, despite being New Year’s Eve. On the other hand, dancing comfortably and sweating like a pig hardly go hand in hand with a tux or an evening gown, so it’s understandable. I was however quite surprised to see a few locals in jeans, polo shirt and leather vest… It did seem a little out of place.

Eva and Gormack gave a performance, as did another London couple called Mauro and Aiste, and a pale couple dressed in white, Lisa & Mark from SalsaOxford.

Left: Eva, Mauro and Aiste. Right: Steve & I

Eva & Steve dancing

At midnight LatinMotion had a balloon drop with gift vouchers for dance shoes, salsa classes and more. There was also a Limbo competition at some point during the night into which a few of our brave London salsa friends entered - didn't know Simon was such an agile Limbo master! The winner got 1 year's worth of free Latin Motion nights & classes. It was a quite fun night with lots of good music spinning, and the party lasted till 3am.

Salsa dancers always get starved by a full night’s workout, so when a big group of us had finally made our way down the street to the Paragon Hotel, we had the good fortune of finding an Indian food delivery guy in the hotel lobby. The poor man was service-minded enough to come back with a huge delivery of rice and curry dishes, and probably didn’t even get tipped enough. The New Year’s bash in Birmingham came to an end with a huge yawn and ours of after-sweating in an over-heated hotel room.

Dash to Brussels

2008-03-27T15:48:00.000-07:00

Since I moved to London I am behind on my blogging. Below you'll find a post I meant to publish in December 2007.

After having lived in London for 2.5 months and getting sick of the dreadful raining, in December I discovered one of the definite perks of living in one of Europe's largest hubs. The new St. Pancras International train station at King's Cross, only 15-20 min on the Piccadilly Line from where I live at Earls Court, hosts Eurostar with fast direct trains under the English Canal to Brussels and Paris.

I made a spontaneous last-minute decision to dash to Brussels to see my good friend Alex. I got a return ticket for £139, left my apartment one hour before the train departed, and the train ride to Brussels took less than two hours. Great!

We went for dinner with a bunch of Alex's friends and a drink after dinner at gay Olivier's fabulous 3-storey apartment. On Sunday Alex and I went to see a piece of land on which he and his girlfriend are going to build a house.

We also went to see the Atomium, Brussel's response to Paris's Eiffel Tower, or so they say. Built for the 1958 Expo and Brussels World’s Fair, the Atomium was a quite cool construction. As you can see from the pictures, the Atomium was built like a huge molecule. There were escalators and an elevator inside the "molecular bindings" and different exhibition displays inside each of the atoms.

The sunny weather suddently turned into pouring rain so we had to run back to the car, and it put an effective stop to our sightseeing.

Istanbul - a Turkish delight

2007-11-14T11:53:00.000-08:00

Every fall my girlfriends from university and I take a trip together to a new city in the world. This was the 11th year in a row since we started so it’s really become a tradition that neither of us want to miss. Several of the girls are now married and have families but still take the time for the fall long-weekend with the girls. I have missed a few trips over the years but was glad I could make this one. In fact, this was the first time all eight of us could join.

Istanbul turned out to be a very pleasant surprise. I had somehow imagined it to be a lot more “Turkish”, i.e. more Middle Eastern, old-fashioned, with a hustle and bustle of street mongers and such. But the capital of Turkey was very modern and European – well, perhaps that was after all not so strange since Istanbul stretches over both Europe and Asia, and we spent our 3.5 days only on the European side. People were really friendly and relaxed, were fashion-conscious and dressed well.

Istanbul is the former capital and center of the Byzantine and Ottoman empires. The city boasts 2700 years of history and as such is blessed with lots of beautiful, historical architecture and Oriental cultural treasures. The river Bosphorus unites the two continents and two seas, the Marmara Sea and the Black Sea.

We stayed at the Hotel Armada Istanbul on Ahirkapi Sokak No. 24 in the old city on the historical peninsula of Istanbul, at convenient walking distance from everything we wanted to see, and only 100 meters or so from the Marmara Sea. Situated alongside Byzantine city walls, the hotel is decorated in Ottoman style, has a large lobby with examples of Ottoman art and a little water fountain with turtles. Every morning we enjoyed a fabulous breakfast buffet on the top floor. The hotel has a roof terrace with a magnificent view of the old city and the Marmara Sea. See pictures below.

Turtles in the Armada lobby

Armada hotel roof terrace

Mimmis at the Marmara Sea

On Thursday night when we arrived we went for dinner at Mozaik Restaurant, located right in the center of the historical peninsula, on a small street called İncili Çavuş off of the bigger Divanyolu Caddesi and close to both the Blue Mosque and Haghia Sophia. We got a table in a room on the second floor. The building is an old Ottoman house which was renovated in 1996, and the restaurant serves Ottoman and Turkish cuisine. It was a quaint place and the food and wine decent but not memorable. It felt a little too touristy. We were all tired from the trip and got to bed before midnight.

Sultanahmet (Blue) Mosque
Friday started with a walk to the close-by Blue Mosque. This mosque is a beautiful and impressive building with six minarets, built 1610-1617 under the reign of Sultan Ahmet I by Sedefkar Mehmet Ağa, a student of Sinan (the architect of the Turkish bath further down in this blog post). You had to take off your shoes before entering. The whole floor of the huge mosque was covered by the biggest Oriental rug I’ve ever seen, all in a red and light blue pattern.

With the light playing through 260 different windows on the 20,000 Iznik tiles decorated in plant and flower motifs, predominantly in blue and turquoise colors, which covered the walls, ceiling and supportive pillars of the mosque, I understood why the mosque had received its name.

Blue Mosque ceiling

There were also some surrounding and near-by buildings for public use, such as the Arasta Bazaar, a theological school, a clock tower and the largest double Turkish bath in Istanbul, Haseki Hürrem Sultan Hamman, situated beside the park between Sultanahmet and Hagia Sophia, the latter which was next on our itinerary.

Blue Mosque and the park

The Blue Mosque is also beautifully lit at night.

Ayasofya – Hagia Sophia – St. Sophia Cathedral
The huge dome Hagia Sophia is today a museum and not used for worship. It has a very old history. First built on a circular plan by Emperor Constantine in 60 A.D., Hagia Sophia was burned in an uprising in 404 and later destroyed in riots in 532. Emperor Justinian I rebuilt it as a rectangular basilica in 532-537 with a dome supported by 107 pillars as a symbol of “renewed unity” between the divided Roman Empire.

In 1453, Mehmet the Conqueror converted the church into a mosque. It has had repairs done over the centuries, among others in 1573 by the already mentioned legendary architect Sinan.

Park between Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia

We had coffee at an outdoor cafe before heading to Istanbul’s old underground water system.

The Basilica Cistern
Located just southwest of Hagia Sophia, the 8,970 m² underground Byzantine water cistern named the Basilica Cistern, was built by Emperor Justinian I in the 6th century – the age of glory for Eastern Rome – to supply the city with water. The 4.80-meter thick firebrick walls and the brick floor of the cistern were plastered with a thick layer of Horasan mortar and made water-resistant. This cistern has the capacity to store 100,000 tons of water.

It is called “the Sinking Palace” by the public due to 336 marble columns, each 9 meters high, rising out of the water. Arranged in 12 rows of 28 pillars each, these are holding up the ceiling vaults of the 140 meters long and 70 meters wide water cistern, providing a spectacular effect in the dimly lit, huge rectangular underground area. As you walk around in the cistern on walking platforms you can hear the slight dripping of water and voices from other tourists echo among the columns and even see fish swim in the water.

My camera phone did not manage the darkness in the underground water cistern very well, so the pictures below are from a brochure and a postcard.

The cistern's water was provided from the Belgrade woods, which lie 19km north of the city, via aqueducts built by Emperor Justinian. The Basilica Cistern was used to supply water to the Byzantine palaces and later for watering the sultan’s palace gardens for a short time after the conquest of Istanbul by the Ottomans in 1453. However, the Ottomans who preferred flowing water to stagnant one, constructed their own water system in the city and the water from the Basilica Cistern was no longer used. Rediscovered by a Dutch traveller in the 16th century, P. Gyllius, who came to Istanbul for research work on Byzantine remains, the cistern got explored, measured and introduced to the west as an impressive work of art.

The vast majority of the columns in the Basilica Cistern are cylinder-shaped, but there are two columns found in the northwest corner of the cistern which have two Medusa’s heads as their base, one tilted on the side and one upside down. The Medusa’s heads have snakes instead of hair. These are Roman Age art sculptures surrounded by mythological stories. The mythological history of Medusa has a few different angles:

According to one story, Medusa was one of three sisters of the underground giant Gorgona. Out of these three sisters only Medusa, who had the head of a snake, was mortal and she had the power of transforming people who looked at her into stone.

According to another story, Medusa was a pretty girl who was very proud of her black eyes, long hair and beautiful body. She was in love with Perseus, the son of the Greek god Zeus. Goddess Athene, who was also in love with him, became jealous and turned Medusa’s hair into horrible snakes, and whoever looked at her from then on turned into stone. When Perseus discovered that Medusa was bewitched, he cut her head off and won many wars by showing his beloved’s head to enemies, thereby turning them into stone. It is said that this is the reason why Byzantine swords’ handles from then onwards were stylized with Medusa’s head.

A third story says that Medusa looked into the mirror and turned herself into stone.

These stories are said to be the reason why the Medusa’s heads are placed on the side or upside down – in order that people looking at them will not become stones. In the old times statues and pictures of Medusa were placed in very important buildings and private homes to protect against bad omens.

After the visit to the impressive Basilica Cistern, it was time for lunch. I had Turkish meatballs with a form of garlic yoghurt sauce similar to Greek tzatziki.

Topkapi Palace
After bargaining over the price for a 2-3 hour guided tour of the palace grounds with a local guide, we set off to learn and see as much as possible in the remaining opening hours that day.

The guide was well-versed in history and politics through times. I wish I could remember a fraction of all the things he told us about the Byzantine and Ottoman history and culture, but I will have to cheat by reading a couple of tourist leaflets. One of the interesting points he brought up during our tour, though, was that Turkey has applied for membership in the European Union. If accepted, it would be the first Muslim country in the EU. Turkey has set out to modernize and make its economy more progressive, but it has many barriers to overcome before an EU membership can be accepted, including Turkish recognition of Cyprus. All else aside, having a Muslim membership state in the EU might help bring some cultural awareness and increased understanding between the Western and Muslim worlds which would be very positive.

The Topkapi Palace was the Ottomans’ second palace in Istanbul. Built in the 15th century on the ruins of the former Byzantine Acropolis by Mehmet the Conqueror, and later added to by various sultans as needed, its construction includes several courtyards, many buildings and surrounding walls. The Topkapi Palace, covering an area of 70 hectares, was once a city palace with a population of approx 4,000 people. It has housed all the Ottoman sultans from Sultan Mehmet II to Sultan Abdulmecit – nearly four centuries and 25 sultans. It was turned into a museum in 1924.

Topkapi Palace

The palace has four courtyards. The first one was open to the public and used to be the service area of the palace consisting of a hospital, a bakery, an arsenal, the mint (where coins were made) etc. In its time, this courtyard was like the city square where the court and people met. You can also see the Byzantine church of Hagia Eirene (St. Irene) in the first courtyard, built before Hagia Sophia and renovated by Constantine in the 4th century.

Hagia Eirene

In addition to being the imperial residence of the sultan, his court and harem, the Topkapi Palace was also the center of the state administration. The second courtyard was the seat of the Divan, the Imperial Council, and was open to anyone who had business with the Divan.

Imperial Council Hall

In addition to the Divan, the second courtyard also housed the kitchens and stables. The kitchen buildings today has great samples of huge cooking utensils, a collection of fine porcelain from Turkey, Japan and China (the Chinese porcelain collection is apparently the third most valuable in the world), buildings with an impressive collection of Ottoman silverware, armoury and much more.

Cooking utensils in the kitchens

Ewer from the Ming Dynasty (16th century)

Ottoman silverware
Armory

In the second courtyard you could also find the entrance to the Harem. The harem in general was a part of a Muslim house that was dedicated to the family and closed to the outside world. It was also the special quarters of the Ottoman palace in which the dynasty lived. Non-Muslim concubines were accepted to the harem in the palace and they sometimes had the chance to become part of the dynasty as Sultans’ wives and became the Queen Mother, but most of them married Ottoman bureaucrats.

Harem’s buildings

Eunuchs working in the harems

Typical blue tile pattern

The Sultan’s reception hall where he was entertained. Whenever the Sultan wanted to talk, the water fountains / taps along the wall were started so as to drown what was being said.

View over Istanbul from the palace

Harem’s buildings

The third courtyard housed the Audience Hall where foreign ambassadors and the results of Divan meetings were presented to the sultan. It also had a library, an exhibition of Sultans’ costumes and some holy relics of Islam as well as the Treasury where a number of precious objects and jewellery, including the famous 86-carat, drop-shaped Kaşikçi Elmasi (the “Spoonmaker’s Diamond”) and the Topkapi Emerald Dagger, were on display.

By the time we reached the fourth courtyard, the palace grounds were closing and we did not have time to look at any of the summer pavilions located there, only have a quick view over the Golden Horn (horn-shaped river mouth and natural harbor, dividing the European Istanbul in a southern and northern part) and the Bosphorus.

Fountain of Ahmet III, at the entrance of Topkapi Palace

360
On Friday night we went to a nightclub & restaurant in the modern city center of Istanbul with Umut, a Turkish colleague of Jessica’s, and his friend Cuneyt.

Jessica & Umut

The place was called 360 based on its 360-degree view over Istanbul on the top floor of a skyscraper in the Beyoğlu area. It had a roof-top terrace for those who wanted to go out and smoke but it was extremely windy and chilly that night so after a quick look at the view we returned to the crowd and warmth inside.

After a great meal with good wine, we had drinks at the bar waiting for the “clubbing” to start at midnight. Most of the girls, Umut and Cuneyt were tired and therefore left around midnight. Jessica and I were the last remaining at the club. She and I had a great time drinking gin & tonic, dancing to a female DJ duo – DJ Leigh & DJ lLgln – and watching some odd dance performance by a whip-lashing, modestly latex-clad woman, crawling around and doing high-kicks on a catwalk. A photographer from Partipix.com took our pictures (see below), and if you’re interested in seeing the pictures from that night, check out the Partipix website>>

Kapali Çarşi – the Grand Bazaar
Saturday was a day of heavy rain. We started with an excursion to the Grand Bazaar. This bazaar was huge with hundreds of shops under one roof with a myriad of aisles and side-streets with everything you can think of from decorated plates, glassware and ornate lamps to Turkish coffee, teas, water pipes, shoes, leather bags and clothes. In a moment of weakness (I’d like to call it spontaneity), I bought a sort of belly dancing costume with golden embroidery and dangling spangles, something I thought that I might use at some salsa congress when I feel daring enough.

Gabriella, Eva & Jessica at Grand Bazaar

Spice Bazaar
Close to the over 370-year-old (considered “new” in this historical city) Yeni Mosque on the northern side of the historical peninsula, there is a big Spice Bazaar. This is open Monday to Saturday 8:30-19:00 and has not only colourful spices, but herbs, dried nuts and fruit, Turkish delight and citrus plants.

The girls spent a good 40 minutes in one of the spice shops, smelling and selecting among a great number of spices. The salesman was good at his job. By being charming, funny and patient, he managed to convince the girls to smell this and that spice, sample some Turkish delight and various nuts, and they eventually ended up buying a lot more than they probably had originally planned.

Turkish bath house
On Saturday afternoon, we decided to try a Turkish tradition, a historical Turkish bath. Built by the Turkish architect Mimar Sinan in 1584, the Çemberlitaş Hamam (“hamam” means bath”) situated on Vezirhan Caddesi No.8 in the old city, is a still-functioning and well-attended public bath house. Commissioned by Nurbânu Sultan, the wife of Sultan Selim II and the mother of Sultan Murat III, this bath house is one of the most important works of 16th century Ottoman architecture.

Open from 6am to midnight every day of the year, the Turkish bath offers a very interesting experience… We paid an entrance fee, extra for full-body massage, and walked in, not quite knowing what to expect. There are two separate bath sections for men and women. You undress and store your belongings in a dressing room / locker area. Equipped only with the “peştemal”, a traditional thin cotton bath towel, slippers and a small washing-cloth, we entered the female bath chamber.

This consisted of a large heated central marble platform where you lined up for your individual bathing service by lying down on your towel, starting from the middle and skidding closer to the edges as the “washing matrons” expedited the service. Lying on the marble platform looking up at the circular ceiling of the bath chamber and slowly starting to perspire in the humid room, helped you relax before your bathing session. Lined up like beached whales on the platform, there were women in all sizes and shapes, buck-naked and revealing their flabby tummies, cellulite thighs and enormous or skinny but mostly hanging breasts. Quite scary picture, if you ask me. ;-)

When it was my turn, a big, fat Turkish woman with dangling breasts, naked apart from a tiny thong, gestured for me to lie down in front of her at the edge of the marble platform. In a very impersonal manner she then started washing me using my clean washing-cloth, scrubbing every part of my body, massaging my scalp and giving my shoulders a light rub massage. Slightly uncomfortable at first, you soon realized she had done this a thousand times before and couldn’t care less about your particular breasts and buttocks. There were also several individual skin-rubbing and washing areas situated along the walls around the platform, which is where my washing matron led me to wash my hair and poor cleansing water over me as a finishing touch.

You were free to stay as long as you wanted in the bathing chamber, rest on the heated marble platform or use any of the individual wash basins along the circular wall. I sat down in an adjoined room between the locker area and the bath chamber, waiting for my full-body massage. For 10 YTL you could get a quick wax while you waited. Lying down on a bench in plain view of anyone walking by or sitting in the same room, spreading your legs, and 5 minutes and a number of “ouch!” later you were done. No false modesty there!

Ortaköy pleasures
On Saturday evening half of the girls decided to go all the way to the Asian side of Istanbul while half of us had lingered too long at the Turkish bath, decided to chill and instead visit the closer situated Ortaköy area. Umut had recommended a fish and seafood restaurant called Park Fora on the western bank of the Bosphorus.

As you walked in, all the fresh fish and seafood for the evening were on display by the entrance. It was a quite busy night and there were many large tables with big families or groups of friends who enjoyed course after course. The food was great, but unfortunately the service was quite slow and the waiter misunderstood one of our orders so we were a little irritated. They made it up to us by complimentary baklava (a kind of sweet pastry) with the coffee. Normally, I’m not particularly fond of baklava but this was the best baklava I’ve ever had and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

After dinner we decided to try a nightclub a few hundred meters from the restaurant. Blackk was a trendy place (and rather dark, so I suppose the name of the club was rather fitting) with lots of young, fashion-conscious and beautiful people. The music was really good, a mix of old-school and new pop, rock, hip hop, R&B and disco. Eva, Gabriella, Jessica and I found a spot at the back of the club, next to one of the bars and the restrooms, were there was a little space for us to set down our drinks and dance. We had a good time and stayed for 1.5-2 hours.

On Sunday morning, the girls headed out early to go back to Sweden, while I took the opportunity to sleep in and check out at noon before heading for the airport to go back to London. It felt a little odd not going back to my home country with my girlfriends.

This has been a fabulous trip and Istanbul is perfect for a long-weekend get-away. If you haven’t been there, I can truly recommend it.

My Flickr album from Istanbul>>
Some photos are restricted to friends and family only. Those of you who are counted among these, can view all 239 photos.

My first 1.5 month as resident in the UK

2007-11-14T11:51:00.000-08:00

Now a Londoner

Time flies; I have now officially been living in the United Kingdom for almost 1.5 month and don’t think that the penny has dropped yet. What I mean by that is that London feels kind of like Stockholm and any other big city in the world, albeit bigger than the capital of Sweden of course. I’m used to travelling a lot and using English as the communications language in my work every day, so it almost feels like I’m on an extended business trip. I have not yet realized the full implications of not living in my own home country anymore.

I finally found a place to live and “moved in” to a 2-bedroom apartment in Earls Court on October 1st. Well, actually my furniture didn’t arrive from Sweden until Wednesday the 3rd, and the apartment was not really ready to move into, but you can read more about that under “Cons” below. Here’s a list of random impressions of pros and cons of living in London:

PROS

1. Alessia, the Italian girl I met at the New York Salsa Congress earlier this fall, let me stay at her place near London Bridge for almost 1.5 week when I first arrived in London, while I was looking for flats. Both she and her flat mates, Turker and Joanna, were really friendly and hospitable, which gave me a nice first introduction to London.

2. On my very first night in London, Alessia invited me and another Italian salsera, Martina, along for dinner with Filippo, Luis and Yon in the boys’ top-floor apartment in Tower House with a roof terrace and marvellous view over London at walking distance from Aldgate East tube station.

3. Friendly salsa scene with lots of good dancers, some of them very handsome and charming too! :-) I now know where to go on what week-night.

4. Borough Market next to Southwark Cathedral on Saturdays – this is a well-stocked market-place with everything imaginable in one place; from fish, vegetables, huge pumpkins, and flowers, to wine from all over the world, all sorts of French and Stilton cheese, British jam and marmalades, all sorts of tea, sausages and salami... Next to Southwark Cathedral you can also get freshly made crêpes.

5. I like my new job. Symbian develops and licenses Symbian OS, the market-leading open operating system for smartphones. My colleagues are really friendly and welcoming and there are enough challenges to keep me motivated for a good while, I think.

6. Successful Symbian Smartphone Show at the ExCeL Centre and a great party.

7. London has many cool and trendy restaurants with really good food and I have already found a few that I imagine that I will return to many times:

Ping Pong on Eastcastle Street in SoHo near Oxford Circus – really good Asian fusion cuisine and fantastic cocktails.

Luis, Filippo, Alessia, one of her former colleagues and friend at Alessia's birthday dinner at Ping Pong in October

Busaba Eathai, a Thai restaurant near Goodge Street in SoHo – excellent food, busy environment (not really the place if you want a romantic setting for two but perfect if you go with a group of friends) with friendly and service-minded staff.

Mimmis, Luis & Martina at Busaba Ethai
Strada, a chain of Italian restaurants in England – good food at very decent prices in a nice, cosy setting.

Med Kitchen on Charing Cross Road, around the corner from Bar Salsa – fabulous pasta, however too heavy prior to dancing because you cannot help but eat all! ;-)

8. Wicked Halloween party at Tower House – lots of people, all really friendly and easy-going in truly international, cosmopolitan spirit; a mix of French, Italians, Spaniards, even a few Swedes, but I only met one Brit all night, and he was standing rather shyly in a corner of the roof terrace talking to no one before I walked up to him.

9. Nice walks along the river Thames – I like all the bridges and the way that the afternoon light and sunset glows on them.

Potters Fields Park
Tower Bridge

Cheyne Walk near Battersea Bridge

London Eye

10. The fact that most museums in England do not cost anything to enter. I went to the Tate Modern with colleagues to see an illusionist art exhibition and had a relaxing afternoon doing something I normally don't.

Spider statue outside Tate Modern - St. Paul's Cathedral in the background

11. The custom of British men (and for that matter women too) often calling you “love”, “hon’” (as in “honey”) or “darling” instead of “miss”, “Ma’am” or “Madam” – e.g. “Sorry, darling” when they bump into you or “Go ahead, love” when they step out of your way in the street. Wonderful! :-)

CONS

1. Foxtons, Foxtons, Foxtons! I’ve had nothing but issues related to the landlord and the lettings agency Foxtons since I moved in. Did you know that there is a "We hate Foxtons" web site?! http://www.wehatefoxtons.com/

2. Breach of contract - repainting not completed until Monday this week despite Addendum to my tenancy agreement clearly stating that, “The landlord will repaint all walls of the flat in the same neutral colour prior to the commencement of the tenancy” (which was October 1st).

3. Delayed and below-standard cleaning when I moved in which meant I have had to take care of the following issues myself:

Removing mud and filth in the detergent compartment and filter of the washing-machine.
Removing years’ worth of dirt on all skirting boards, door frames and top of doors.
Cleaning curtains / roller blinds and air vents.
Cleaning of cupboards and removing old, torn posters and a broken laundry rack in the hallway cupboard and dirty shelf papers stuck with tape or blue tac in bedroom cupboards (what I call general "junk").
Cleaning dirty and greasy kitchen fan (fan also in need of new filter).
Removing remnants of old food splatter in the top of the inside of the microwave.

4. Due to the cleaning not having been done upon delivery of all my furniture and belongings from Sweden, my moving company was not able to complete its work and unpack. So not only did I have to perform the cleaning on my own, but also all the unpacking.

5. Broken boiler meaning I had no hot water or heating the first 11-13 days of my tenancy.

This is the London rental market for you – a disgrace!

Check out my photos from London>>

Flat hunting in London

2007-09-10T10:45:00.000-07:00

I’ve just spent the weekend in London. I am changing jobs and start working for a new company on October1st, hence moving to the UK by the end of this month. I am very excited about this move, starting a new chapter in life. It will be the first time I live abroad.

I had some handover meetings with our PR agency at Piccadilly Circus on Friday and then went to my hotel near Gloucester Road and crashed… Still jetlagged from my New York trip, I ended up missing a salsa night in London, which I tried making up for by going to Salsa Palladium on Charing Cross Road near Leicester Square on Saturday night. It turned out to be a big disappointment and a waste of time – it was horrible, horrible, oh and did I mention horrible?! Most people who were there were absolutely shitfaced (pardon the language, but some colloquial slang seemed appropriate here) and could not dance. It was hot like a sauna in there and the floor was extremely sticky, and what’s more, they didn’t play one single salsa song during the full hour that it took me to queue for a Mojito at the bar, drink it while watching the swaying people on the dance floor and saying no to several guys who wanted to dance reggae ton or Latin disco with me… I then finally agreed to dance one merengue and one half-disco/half-salsa song before I couldn’t stand the place any longer. Remind me to never ever go to this place again! For a place called “Salsa Palladium”, I have never been farther from a salsa experience…

The rest of the weekend I have explored a couple of different parts of London and gone flat hunting – guess I need to start changing vocabulary now to more British… normally I would say “apartment”. I’ve seen some different places in the South Kensington / Earl’s Court area as well as Covent Garden.

Covent Garden Market

Martlett Court in Covent Garden

Although I haven’t yet quite found the type of flat I would like, I am confident it will work out by the end of the month. I met with a rental agency near Gloucester Road called Foxtons and the broker told me that flats are advertised and gone pretty fast in London, but if you’re willing to make fast decisions after you’ve seen a place you like, have your references and down payment (standard seems to be that you pay one month’s rent in advance + 6 weeks’ deposit) ready, you can actually get the keys and move in within a few days. Quite different from Sweden, where you usually have 1-3 months’ lead time… In Stockholm there can be several years’ waiting line for popular city areas, at least if you’re doing it the legal way....

Victorian style property in South Kensington

Left: Typical British phone booth. Right: Natural History Museum

Left: Victoria & Albert Museum. Right: Holy Trinity Brompton

I have grown very fond of the South Kensington area with its Victorian buildings and museums like the Natural History Museum, the Victoria & Albert and Science Museums. I hope to get a place in this area. The rents are in general three times higher than those for similar space and standard in Stockholm (well, the standard is perhaps not exactly comparable – they do things differently in the UK) but in order to do London properly I feel I don’t want the long commutes from any of the suburbs, so I guess I just have to suck it up and pay the price…

You can see more photos from London in my Flickr album here>>

Exploring Brooklyn and enjoying New York Salsa Congress 2007

2007-09-05T09:09:00.000-07:00

I’ve just spent six nights dancing in New York City! :-) I took a week off from work to attend a salsa congress and visit my friend Duane in Brooklyn. Duane picked me up at the airport shuttle bus stop at Bryant Park after work and we had a drink and something to eat at the restaurant bar there which allowed us to catch up a bit.

That same night we went to dance at the pre-congress party at Caché. I was extremely tired so I didn’t dance much but it was good to see some old friends again like Marlon and Dave. Also Angel Ortiz was there and some people I had met at the Puerto Rico Salsa Congress (Gustavo, Michael, the guy with the broken toe whose name I can’t recall…).

Street corner and Duane’s apartment building in Brooklyn

The New York Salsa Congress was held at the Hilton on 6th Ave (between 53rd and 54th Streets). The congress started with a welcome party on Thursday night and I managed to get a cheap party pass for the weekend from one of the congress organizers whom Duane knows very well. The congress was a lot of fun. I met a lot of dancers that I’ve seen before at various congresses around the world, most recently in Puerto Rico, but also at congresses in France, UK, Switzerland and more. I had a fabulous time dancing with people like Angel Ortiz from NYC, Al “Liquid Silver” Espinoza from L.A., dancers from London and some local dancers from New York like Luis Guerrero whom I met in Puerto Rico. Mark-Anthony Sheppard from Toronto (Canada) is actually considering moving to Stockholm to be closer to his dance partner Elena and be able to travel to more congresses in Europe with her. I also met some of Duane’s close friends. I was happy to get acquainted with Alessia, a very nice Italian girl from Puglia (south of Italy) who lives in London and can give me pointers on the salsa scene there.

Cool cats getting ready for the congress party…

Alessia, Duane and me

Duane with Mark-Anthony from Toronto, Canada

Larry (opera singer from Ohio traveling around the world and engaged by the Met), Anna (from Köln, Germany), Duane and I at the congress party

Me and Michael (was DJ at the after party at Platos in Puerto Rico) from Washington DC, I believe

After having danced all night you tend to get very hungry… Duane and I went to eat breakfast on the lower East Side one morning after the congress. After the last salsa party we had breakfast with Anna from Köln in Germany and a Dominican dancer living in Brooklyn, Manuel, at the Dominican restaurant El Gran Mar de Plata in Brooklyn at 7am... This was a local nightclub and restaurant for Latinos, seemingly busy around the clock. I tried some local dish which I can’t remember the name of (think it was mashed plantain with fried egg).

The last night in New York I went to Session 73 on the East Side of Manhattan, which had a nice live band playing. I sat down at a table on the sidewalk and enjoyed a good salad and some wine before entering. Most people from the congress were on a post-congress salsa cruise that night, so there was a limited number of good dancers at Session 73. However, the first one I invited to dance was a tall, handsome, fabulous dancer from Spain. I danced with a couple of other congress visitors from Germany, an older Mambo gentleman as well as the singer in the band during one of their breaks. I also made friends with Jonathan, an On1 dancer from New York who recently started learning On2. All in all I had a good night at this bar and restaurant in the corner of 1st Avenue and 73rd Street. They had a surprisingly good wooden floor for being a bar.

However, I have not only been dancing on this trip… I have actually had time to do and see other things as well.

Brooklyn excursions
One day I decided to explore Brooklyn on my own and took the subway to 7th Street and walked up 9th Street to Park Slope. This is one of the nicer areas in Brooklyn apparently and is close to quaint little bars, bookshops and restaurants.

Prospect Park in Brooklyn is a big park – not as big as Central Park, but it apparently has the same architect. Prospect Park has big greens with baseball fields, various trails to walk with ponds and small waterfalls, a dog beach at a pond which looked more like a Louisiana swamp (not that I’ve ever been there but I’d imagine it’s quite muddy with a lot of wild vegetation), areas where people meet to barbeque, walk their dogs etc. You’ll find some photos from the park below.

Entrance to Prospect Park

Baseball fields in Prospect Park
Dog beach

Trails in Prospect Park

Later I met Duane and we went to have beer at T-Lounge in Brooklyn. This was a cool place. Many people seem to come here and use it as an Internet café. You could have lots of different beers from all over the world, and I tried a very good raspberry flavored one. They also served very strong and good Turkish coffee.

T-Lounge in Brooklyn

Monday this week was Labor Day in the US so I went to a Labor Day Parade on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. It was a sticky hot day and extremely crowded. I think all Caribbean people living in New York City were gathered here this day… There were lots of Jamaicans, people from Trinidad & Tobago and other Caribbean islands. I had some pork sticks from a food stand and tried eating amidst all the shuffling of people trying to pass by to watch the parade. I think I only saw a handful of Caucasians all day. I didn’t really think about it until a truck drove by in the parade with a sign saying “Chocolate City” and then I realized how fitting that statement was in this setting.

It was hard to see anything and to get anywhere due to all the people but nonetheless it was quite interesting for a few hours. I made my way through the crowds to see the passing trucks and processions of people from different Caribbean islands with flags and colorful costumes. The NYPD had a busy afternoon trying to pave the way for new processions along the blocked Eastern Parkway and keeping the peace among spectators, filtering people to the overcrowded subway trains etc. You'll find some photos from the Labor Day Parade below (click on them to enlarge).

Baseball at the Yankee Stadium

Duane had tickets to a Yankee game at the Yankee Stadium in the Bronx so he took me to see the New York Yankees play Tampa Bay (Florida). This was a great experience! Luckily the Yankees won (Yankee fans would probably exclaim “Of course they won – it would have been a disgrace otherwise!”) and people around us were happy and helpful in explaining some baseball history, background on some of the players (of course I don’t remember anything!), the Stadium etc. Apparently the Yankee Stadium seats 56,000 people and has been the home of the Yankees for 84 years. Now they have started building a new park to be completed in 2009, which will seat 51,000 people. There are lively debates on what to do with the current stadium, which bears so much baseball history. It’s been remodeled a few times and today only has one of its original sections left with a lovely white fence at the top. Some photos from the Yankee Stadium and the game below.

Yankee Stadium and the parking lot

Bridge between Queens and the Bronx

On our way home, Duane drove me through Harlem so I would see the famous Apollo Theater (check out http://www.apollotheater.org/ or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Theater), where some famous singers like Ella Fitzgerald, Diana Ross, Gladys Night, Aretha Franklin and the Jackson 5 have been discovered during Afro American Amateur Nights or kick-started their artist careers.

Apollo Theater in Harlem

It’s been a great week in New York and shall miss the City beat, although I know I will be back before too long.

View all my photos from this NY trip on Flickr>>
(I have limited some photos in the set to my Flickr friends; if you’re one of the latter, you’ll be able to view all 180 photos.)

Sailing in 15.6 knots

2007-08-20T09:32:00.000-07:00

This past Saturday I was out sailing Hobie Cat in the Stockholm archipelago with my friend Anders, his girl-friend Carina and our mutual salsa friend Johan. It was a wonderful day with beautiful weather to start with, then cloudy and finally a little rainy. But who cares when you’re getting soaking wet anyhow while having so much fun?! It was a very windy day, great for sailing a catamaran. We were all happy since we enjoy speed. We clocked 15.6 knots at one point which is quite fast!

I don’t have much experience of sailing but with people like Johan and Anders, who clearly know what they’re doing and telling me what to do, it all worked out rather well. Besides, I didn’t have to do much but to hang in a harness out over the water on the sides of the Hobie Cat, used as balancing weight on the side of the sail from where the wind came. Wet, windy and fantastic fun! I think I had a smile on my face the whole day.

We were out about 6 hours, starting by Lidingö, sailing to Stora Värtan but turning around when we found that there was hardly any wind, and then sailed east-bound on Askrikefjärden (the Askrike Bay) in the direction of Waxholm. We anchored by an island close to Hasseludden to have picnic lunch. We rather carelessly tied the Hobie Cat by a public landing stage and used another pole by a private landing stage to keep the catamaran from pulling its moors in the wind. This however cut off the access to the private landing docks and we got a scolding from an impatient, arrogant and rather rude woman with a German accent (from then on named “the Achtung Bitch” by us) who came to the island with her motorboat only a few minutes after our landing and immediately complained about our unauthorized use of the pole on their private landing stage, which she found totally unacceptable. She had no sympathy for the fact that we at that very moment were diving after Anders’s digital camera which he had accidentally dropped in the 2-2.5 meter deep water while tying the moors. I was with Anders the last time he lost an, at the time brand new, digital camera during off-pist heliskiing in Kittelfjäll last year… That particular camera was never to be found, but luckily this one was. Johan is a travel guide on adventure trips and a seasoned diver, so he found the camera on the bottom of the sea after only three dives. Anders drew a loud sigh of relief (luckily it was also a water-proof camera down to 6 meters, so all his images and video clips were saved).

You’ll find a selection of my photos as well as some taken by Anders below.
View the rest of my photos on Flickr>>
View Anders’s photos on Flickr>>

Carina & Anders

Me
Anders
Johan
Me
Carina

Johan, Carina & AK

Me hanging in harness

Carina

The Hobie Cat - Landing for picnic lunch

Johan & I

Just got showered!
Carina & I

Sail-salsa 2007 at Vindalsö

2007-08-08T10:15:00.000-07:00

Last week I spent a few days in the Stockholm archipelago with 35-40 salsa friends on the annual “Sail-salsa”, which I have been to three times now. Unfortunately I ended up missing the first 1.5 days of this activity, following my Puerto Rico trip, due to bad weather conditions resulting in delays and a missed flight from New York. Once I got out to the island Vindalsö I was pretty tired and jetlagged but nonetheless happy to be there. Niklas and Annika of Djungelsalsa every year organize this combined sailing and dancing trip. Vindalsö is normally used by sea scouts. It is not too far from the popular Sandhamn and the closest stop for commercial boats from Stockholm City or the Stavsnäs Vinterhamn (winter harbor) is Idholmen.

Nicke & Annika

All participants at the annual sail-salsa are divided into teams for various activities, including helping to prepare lunch and dinner every day and competing in occasional group activities. Apparently last year’s participants had given feedback to Niklas and Annika that they wanted fewer scheduled, joint activities, giving more freedom for spontaneous activities or pure relaxation. There were however some yoga, meditation, tango and Friskis & Svettis workout lessons given, but apart from that people were free to go sailing or sunbathing and reading a book, singing karaoke or other activities as they pleased. Previous years we’ve had treasure hunts and I kind of missed them; they were always great fun and allowed you to bond with your team mates.

There is a house on the island with bunk-beds and those who register early for the sail-salsa get one, the others have to sleep on the floor or camp in tents. I was lucky enough to get a bunk-bed so I got some decent sleep. But unless you bring ear-plugs you may have a hard time sleeping because boy, some guys really snore!

There is a sauna on the island. We usually heat up there after a night of salsa dancing on the outdoor dance arena and then dive into the sea from a landing stage outside the sauna. The water was extremely cold this year – there hasn’t been much of a summer weather warming up the sea – so most people came up again faster than they hit the water!

You’ll find a selection of my photos from Vindalsö below. More photos are available in my photo album on Flickr>>

Boathouse and kitchen

Dance floor - when the scouts are using the island, this is just a roofed gathering place where they take their meals at some simple wooden tables and benches

Meditation
Karin W meditating

Anders K – check out his photos from the sail-salsa here>>

Another Anders practicing Iaido on the beach

Kia & Micke

Veronica, Karin & Håkan W sing karaoke

Left: Anders K, Jackie & Eva prepare dinner. Right: Håkan

Left: Dinner on the beach. Right: Chef Anneli

Michael Lowry, an American from Texas who has been living in Sweden for a while now – he is by the way a great photographer! See more photos from the sail-salsa on his blog. I have taken the liberty of ‘borrowing’ a few photos from Michael below (where noted in parenthesis)…

Me (photo by Michael Lowry)

Sunset

Percy & Veronica

Me & Johan Hast

Salsa dancing
Every night after dinner and sunset, we started dancing salsa on the outdoor wooden floor. There were also occasional swing (lindyhop), tango and disco tunes spreading in the night. There were always a bunch of people who kept dancing till 2 or 3 am, including myself.

Karin W & AK

Michael & Fanta

Fanta & Johan

Rock ring contest
One of the nights Niklas organized a ‘rock ring’ contest – you remember those plastic rings that you tried to ‘rock’ around your hips when you were a kid? Veronica certainly remembered – she was the Queen of Rock Ring and completely demolished the rest of us.

African theme
One of the nights every year has a special theme. Last year it was native Indians and this year it was an African theme. Fanta from French Guinea gave us a lesson in African dance on the beach, which gave me a nice muscle ache in my abdomen, back and thighs which I haven’t felt in a while... Fanta is apparently a famous dancer in her country and her parents (passed away a couple of years ago) and brother famous musicians. She was kind enough to braid my hair before the evening activity and I got to practice my French a little bit.

African dance with Fanta from Guinea (four photos above by Michael Lowry)

Left: Annika & Håkan W. Right: Veronica, Eva, Jackie

Left: Andrew & Elin. Right: Mark, Percy & Niklas

We were divided into two tribes for the evening activity and even fought a war with bows and arrows in the woods, pretending to be African Masai and Zulu warriors fighting each other in a live roll-play. This was great fun but I am still suffering from bruises here and there from the arrows that hit me – Håkan Wirén and Johan Hast are too good bow-men, I’m afraid… I was supposed to be a ‘War Amazon’ in my tribe and leading eight other female bow-shooters, which I failed miserably at since I and several of the others were hit and ‘died’ several times.

Håkan and I at war… (three photos above by Michael Lowry)

Left: Camp fire. Right: Veronica & Jackie

AK & Fanta dancing late-night salsa after African activities

Jackie, Karin & Veronica
Me

After a few days of fun activities, it was time to clean up, empty latrines, sort trash, pack and leave the archipelago. It’s been fun and I already long for next summer!

Also check out Martin's beautiful photos from the sail-salsa here>> (240 pictures)

Puerto Rico Salsa Congress 2007

2007-08-04T08:54:00.001-07:00

This was my first time to the world-renowned Puerto Rico Salsa Congress. The congress was held at El San Juan Hotel in Carolina in the Isla Verde area close to the San Juan Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport. Although the experience altogether has been very positive – listening to a number of great live bands and meeting a lot of local, excellent On2 dancers like Jhesus (fabulous dancer with only one arm), Edwin, Joey and Michael (DJ at after parties at Platos) – I must say that I was slightly disappointed in the congress. I’ve heard so much about it and everybody is raving about this world-famous congress so perhaps my expectations were set a little too high.

There were several famous live bands playing at the congress parties like Sonora Ponceña, El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico and Tito Rojas and this was of course a great experience. However, the floor was really bad (some kind of vinyl floor on top of a thick fitted carpet…), and has apparently been so for years which tarnished what could otherwise have been a fabulous congress. The floor was too ‘slow’, soft and sticky and annoying to most dancers who had a problem keeping their balance when doing fast turn patterns and spinning. I heard a lot of people complain about the floor and find it strange that such a well-known congress would not cater better to the dancers who come there. You really need a good hardwood floor when attracting some of the best dancers from around the world.

Sonora Ponceña

There were less international dancers there than expected, or perhaps I should say the regular European and US dancers that I usually meet at other congresses. Maybe they’ve already done the Puerto Rico congress for a number of years and now have decided to do something else.

Apart from Leon Rose and some other UK dancers, and an old friend from London named Edward whom I haven’t seen in a couple of years since he lives in Sydney, Australia these days, I met a different crowd at this congress. There was a mix of local dancers from Puerto Rico, people from different parts of the US – to name one of them Luis from New York who surprisingly enough has only danced for a little over a year but was already very good and I actually believed he had been dancing for ages – and from the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina and other countries in Latin America. There was also a big group from Spain supporting Adrian and Anita who competed in the World Salsa Open, a bunch of Italians (I danced quite a lot with a guy named Stefano), the Dutch dance team Los Intocables, and some French.

Edward & I

Edward, his friend Steve from Sydney, and I made a habit of eating breakfast at Edith Café close to El San Juan Hotel after the congress parties. In fact, Edith Café drew lots of salsa dancers both for breakfast and dinner and one night when I had dinner there with my Swedish friends from Stockholm, Laia and Alberto, we saw Eddie Torres (famous New York instructor and usually referred to as “the Mambo King”) and his wife there. They also performed at the congress the night after. Laia, Alberto and I were the only Swedes at the congress, as far as I know.

Alberto and I at Edith Café

The first few days they had an exhibition of paintings outside the congress hall at El San Juan Hotel to celebrate the famous Puerto Rican salsa singer Héctor Lavoe, who died in 1993. The collection was quite strong and impressive and the various artists had depicted some famous songs like El Cantante. See some samples below.

World Salsa Open 2007
Every year, there is a big salsa dancing competition in Puerto Rico. This year it was presented by Jayson Molina, a famous salsa dancer from Puerto Rico. They had a Junior competition for max 18 year-olds, two rounds of eliminations, semi-finals and finals for adult couples – all having been through elimination processes and won national competitions in their home countries – as well as a separate category for dance teams. They all performed on stage against the colorful backdrop facade resembling colonial street houses, characteristic for the Puerto Rico Salsa Congress and used since its start 11 years ago.

Alberto and Laia had won the Swedish competition held at the salsa club La Isla in Stockholm earlier this year, and were in Puerto Rico to compete in the World Salsa Open and represent Sweden. The competition was however fierce and they did not make it to the semi-finals.

Semi-finalists after 2nd Round Elimination

Dinner at Edith with Alberto and Laia after 2nd Round Elimination in World Salsa Open

Finalists

Three top couples – winners of World Salsa Open 2007 in the middle, Anita & Adrian from Spain

After parties
There were two different after parties being arranged between about 3 or 4am when the main congress party ended to 5 or 6 am or so during five of the nights in conjunction with the salsa congress. It was a little unfortunate that they hadn’t coordinated this and just had one official after party since this meant competition between the two venues and splitting up the dancers.

The best dance floor (flat, clean stone floor which was very easy to spin on), bar service and atmosphere were to be found at Platos, a local bar where the drinks were very cheap ($ 2.50 for a beer) and the local DJ Michael played some very good music. I had the pleasure of dancing cha cha cha with Stacey Lopez, another well-known and famous Puerto Rican dancer and instructor, there one night. The first after party night Laia and I were the only two female dancers there and naturally enjoyed the full attention of some 10-15 fabulous male dancers. :-)

The other after party venue was Brava, a nightclub at El San Juan Hotel. This club has a crap floor but played great music, the first night by local DJ Masoz (not sure about the spelling) and the second night by the famous DJ from New York, Henry Knowles, who came there over the last weekend.

After ten nights of dancing in a row, I finally had to leave the beautiful island of Puerto Rico and fly home. Unfortunately, my Puerto Rico vacation trip ended on an annoying note. Due to poor weather conditions, the landing in New York was delayed and I ended up missing my connecting flight from New York to Stockholm. After an hour’s wait at the Continental Airlines’ very slow customer services desk, I was rebooked on a flight to Stockholm 24 hours later! Since I was stuck in New York over Sunday night and they were going to put me up on a hotel, I was hoping I would be able to go dancing at Jimmy Anton’s social or at Wish on Manhattan that night. But after another five hours’ wait at the baggage retrieval conveyor belt (with no luck and the retrieval service finally closing for the day), I had to give up on the idea of going dancing and was put up on a hotel in New Jersey at 2am… The only sensible thing I could do at that point was to wash away the frustration by having a beer in the hotel sports bar with a British teacher, funny enough also named Marie-Louise…

If you ever plan on going to Puerto Rico, a good starting point might be http://www.gotopuertorico.com/ – the Puerto Rico Tourism Company sponsored the salsa congress and since the presenter of the semi-finals and finals of World Salsa Open was forced to repeat this web address over and over again, it was difficult to miss it…

Chillin’ in Puerto Rico

2007-08-04T08:39:00.000-07:00

I came home from my vacation in Puerto Rico this past Tuesday. I had a great time – very relaxing, lazy and intense at the same time. I was staying at the Courtyard Marriott Isla Verde (see photo to the right) in Carolina. I had a fabulous view overlooking the beach below and the Atlantic Ocean from my hotel room and balcony.

Puerto Rico is located in the northeastern part of the Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic. Carolina is Puerto Rico’s fourth largest city, located close to the capital San Juan. Puerto Rico's most famous baseball player, Roberto Clemente, elected into the Hall of Fame in 1973, was from Carolina.

View from my hotel room / balcony

The hotel had a casino, the Banana icecream and pizza/snacks bar, the Picante cocktail bar, the Salsa restaurant which served breakfast, lunch and dinner buffets, and the outdoor ocean-view Sirena restaurant, which is where I took my breakfast to enjoy the very soothing morning view of the beach and ocean with the occasional jogger in the waterline before heading to the rainforest (see separate blog post). The hotel also had a very nice pool area, a fitness center with treadmills, a stair-master and weightlifting machines and handles – and believe it or not, I actually used the fitness center once during my vacation and it felt good, although it rendered me a terrible muscle ache in my calves for days afterwards.

I was dancing ten nights in a row in Puerto Rico, of which eight of them were at the Puerto Rico Salsa Congress (see separate blog post).

There were salsa bands playing in the Picante bar area on the ground floor of the Courtyard Marriott Hotel every afternoon and evening. This was a very pleasant distraction. When you came in from the pool or the beach you could always sip on a glass of white wine or a rum drink and chill before going to the room to get ready for the congress parties. Puerto Ricans are very family oriented, it seems. In the pool area you always saw them in groups with several children and the adults were always very loving and playful with their kids, being very proud of them, judging by their faces. In the Picante bar there were always older couples drinking cocktails and enjoying the bands playing. As soon as the band started playing a slow bolero, all the older couples were up on the dance floor, closing their eyes and holding each other tightly, many of them having to lean forward due to their potbellies to be able to put their cheeks against each other, and seemingly really enjoying the dance. Very endearing.

Salsa band playing in the Picante Bar

The night after my arrival, I was dancing till 3 am in the Picante bar and made friends with Edgardo, a local engineer in his 50’s who has been to the congress for a number of years – I saw him every night there trying to work off his potbelly by dancing and sweating intensively for hours… ;-)

On the Friday before the congress, there was a salsa band playing in the lobby of El San Juan Hotel. I had e-mailed the organizer and president of the Puerto Rico Salsa Congress, Elí Irizarry (his regular job is tour manager for El Gran Combo!), and learned that there would be a few dancers there. Elí was a very friendly and nice person, buying me drinks at the bar and introducing me to some early arriving dancers, including Brian Libier & Mechteld Sterk running the Salsaddiction dance school in Holland and competing in the World Salsa Open a few days later (although they actually were disqualified since the rules stated a time limit of each performance of 2 min and their routine was 2 min 44s…such a shame they hadn’t checked the rules – the audience gave them standing ovations after their performance!), and Patrick, another Dutch dancer from the dance group Los Intocables (see a video on YouTube of all of them). Saturday was the congress welcome party and Patrick’s birthday so he was in a good mood and we ended up partying to mostly reggae ton music (yuck) in the Brava nightclub at the hotel.

Elí Irizarry

Apart from the nightly salsa dancing I was very lazy in Puerto Rico. I slept late (when dancing till 3, 4 or 6 am every night for ten days you get a little worn out…), went to the pool and beach, read a book in the hammock and watched the sunset over the beach. My salsa friends Alberto and Laia from Stockholm came and joined me at the Courtyard a few times, enjoying the pool, beach and restaurant with ocean-view (see photos below).

Laia and Alberto at the Sirena restaurant

Pool area at the Courtyard Marriott Isla Verde

Visit to Old San Juan
One of the afternoons, I went with Alberto, Laia and a young dancer from Brazil, Gustavo, to Old San Juan. After a visit to a reggae music and paraphernalia store where Laia and Gustavo to the owner’s amusement started dancing while listening through a bunch of CD’s, we went to see fort San Cristóbal.

This was quite an interesting visit. Christopher Columbus (‘Cristóbal Colón’ in Spanish) discovered the island of Puerto Rico in 1493, and in the 50 years following, Spain built a vast and lucrative New World empire that helped it become the leading European nation at the time. The conquests of Mexico and Peru provided the Spanish treasury with dependable sources of great wealth in precious gems, gold and silver. Spain sent two armed ship convoys to the New World every year to assure safe delivery of these riches, and the Caribbean Sea was a vital passage-way. It was however also a dangerous maze of islands with few harbors of refuge, and Spain’s authority and territorial rights to the Caribbean were constantly challenged by pirates and the traditional European enemies (England, France and Holland). San Juan was established in 1521 as “the key to the Indies” at the most strategic location on the island of Puerto Rico, and Spain built massive fortifications in the San Juan harbor and other key harbors in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico to safeguard New World possessions and maintain its trade monopoly.

There are two forts in Old San Juan, Castillo de San Felipe del Morro (“Castle of St. Philip of the Headland” – see video here>>) and Castillo de San Cristóbal (“Saint Christopher Castle”). Laia, Alberto, Gustavo and I entered the latter, built 1634-1678 and the largest fort built by the Spaniards on the island. These two massive stonework defenses are the oldest European-style fortifications within the territory of the United States. Unlike El Morro, whose main job was to prevent enemy ships from entering the harbor, San Cristóbal protected the land approaches to San Juan from the east. It’s an example of the “defense-in-depth” principle, meaning that each part of the fort is supported by one or more other parts. If a fort has a single barrier and the enemy breaks through it, its defense is broken. But if a fort has several barriers, each higher and stronger than the one in front of it, and the enemy breaks through one of them, the attacker can still be driven out by fire from the barriers behind it. Both of these bastions and batteries are impressive remnants of Spain’s historic power in the New World. Read more about the history of Puerto Rico here>>

You’ll find a selection of photos from Castillo de San Cristóbal below.

Alberto

From left to right: The Spanish colonial flag (the “Burgundy Cross”, 1516-1556), the Puerto Rican and US flags

Gustavo & Alberto

Me, Gustavo and Laia on the bastion wall

Gustavo, Alberto and Laia in dungeon and catacomb

Iguana lizard

The two forts San Cristóbal and El Morro lie within a mile of each other with a strong city wall in between. We took a walk along the wall and the scenery was beautiful with ocean waves hitting the cliffs below and some houses built on the outside of the city wall. San Juan’s soldiers and settlers once grew food on small plots inside the great walls. Plátanos (plantains), a banana from Africa, and West Indian crops such as sweet potatoes, pumpkin, yucca, malanga and yautia supplemented regular military rations. These fruits and root fruits are common still today in Puerto Rico and my personal favorite was mashed yucca filled with shrimps and a Puerto Rican red sauce with lots of garlic which I was served at Edith Café in Carolina.

Most of Spain’s New World colonies revolted and gained independence during the 19th century and by the 1890’s only Cuba and Puerto Rico remained part of the once so powerful Spanish empire in the Americas. Spain lost Puerto Rico to American troops in the Spanish-American war by the end of the 19th century, as already mentioned in my blog post from the trip to the rainforest.

Colorful colonial style buildings with overhanging balconies pave the cobblestone streets in Old San Juan. The town is very picturesque with inner patios, courtyards, and small town plazas. We hit a Puma store with discounted prices and I bought a cool new bag. The visit to Old San Juan was ended with a cold Medalla Light beer at an outdoor bar before we headed back to Isla Verde and El San Juan Hotel to watch salsa dance performances.

Streets of Old San Juan

Who wouldn’t want to play basketball in this kind of environment with the Atlantic Ocean and palm trees on one side and the medieval city walls of Old San Juan on the other?!

Plaza

El Yunque rainforest – Puerto Rico

2007-07-20T18:25:00.000-07:00

I am now in Puerto Rico for the first time and will be spending in total 11 days here. I must say that I am already enjoying the Caribbean life immensely after only two days. I am staying at a hotel on the beach in the Isla Verde area in a town called Carolina, just outside the capital San Juan along the northeast coast, see map below (more about the hotel, beach and other casual activities some other day).

I took a guided tour with Rico Sun Tours to El Yunque rainforest today. Our tour guide and bus driver for the day was an energetic and friendly fellow named Josué (not sure about the spelling but it wasn’t the regular José). That guy was a living encyclopedia! He was an excellent story-teller; knowledgeable about everything from history to social studies and culture to political science – all while being charming and entertaining. I learned a lot from him about Puerto Rico and am very pleased that I decided to take this tour. It makes a world of difference for the experiencing and appreciation of a new place and culture when you know a little of its past and present. If I could only remember one tenth of what he told us, it would make a very interesting summary of the island’s history, culture, population and sauna.

Anyhow, here’s what I remember:

There are three ethnic origins of the people of Puerto Rico: the native Taíno Indians, Spanish conquistadors and African slaves. Today there are 4 million people living in Puerto Rico and the first language is Spanish. The biggest populations of Puerto Ricans outside of Puerto Rico reside in New York, Chicago and San Francisco.

Puerto Rico has belonged to the US with ‘commonwealth status’ for over a hundred years, and has contributed to the US military armed forces, fighting to defend democracy together with US troops since the First World War. After the Spanish-American War in 1898 the island passed to the United States, and in 1903 the US officially proclaimed the Luquillo Forest Reserve which is where we were headed. Timber, bananas, subsistence crops and coffee were once harvested on the forest's lower parts. An 1899 hurricane prompted abandonment of some farms in this area. Subsequently, the Forest Service replanted trees and lands were allowed to return to rainforest. Today, there are only a few houses left in the National Forest and the people living in them have to abide by the Forest Reserve’s strict guidelines in order to preserve the rainforest and its wildlife.

Although Puerto Rico is governed by US federal laws and is an important port and point of trade with Latin America for the US, it is not an own state. Puerto Ricans are not allowed to vote in the Presidential elections. They have to move to any of the other 50 states first and register to vote in order to participate. In order to become the 51st state of the union, the majority of the Puerto Ricans would have to vote yes in a referendum, and the rest of the states in the union accept to let them in. Since Puerto Rico is mainly Democratic, the Republicans would not be too keen on letting in a new state where they’d basically always lose Presidential campaigns in that state. Puerto Rico is also the second most densely populated island in the world (only Singapore has more people per square mile) and if I understood what Josué said correctly, this would mean that they therefore would get more votes / influence over US politics and legislation than other (scarcely populated with lots of land) states that have been part of the union since its start, e.g. Wyoming, which would probably not be seen very favorably by those states.

On the other hand it’s unlikely that Puerto Rico would be ‘allowed’ to become an independent, sovereign state. USA would then risk losing its most important window to South America to Venezuela or Brazil. Puerto Rico has enjoyed a lot of positive trade effects and boosted economy by being part of the US commonwealth, so it’s perhaps not surprising that around 65% of the Puerto Ricans have claimed in recent surveys that they would vote for becoming a new state of the union. On the other hand, when push comes to shove, Puerto Ricans are very protective of their national heritage and one of their biggest national “sports”, cock fighting – which is apparently an 800 billion dollar per year industry(!) – recently became illegal in the last remaining state of the US, Louisiana, which is phasing this old tradition out by the end of this year. Therefore, Josué believed that the final say on the future state of Puerto Rico would not be determined any time soon.

The three main industries in Puerto Rico are pharmaceuticals, rum and tourism. In fact, Puerto Rico is famous for its premium rum (I can’t complain about the Mojitos I’ve had so far) and the quality is ensured by all rum being stored at least a year before it’s bottled and sold. There are 11 brands of rum; the Bacardi Rum is the no 1 brand in the world but not in Puerto Rico – here the Don Q (named after Don Quixote) is the no 1.

El Yunque rainforest was a fantastic experience. It was very humid and felt very hot and I would guess it was around 35° Celsius. After watching a 15 min film at the Visitor’s Center in the Luquillo Forest Reserve and checking out their exhibition to learn a little about different plants and animals in the rainforest, we stopped at the Yokahu Tower, an observation point some 480 m above the sea where you saw the whole east coast of Puerto Rico, including Luquillo Beach – see photos below, although they may not give justice to the colors in the rainforest. Unfortunately I was out of luck with my cameras today (or perhaps badly prepared is more correct) – first, I discovered that my analog system camera was out of battery before I had even taken one single photo (it’s been a while since I used it, since it’s so convenient to carry a small digital camera these days), then I ran out of batteries in my digital camera, so I was left with my Sony Ericsson K810 Cyber-shot phone for the entire rainforest excursion...(not too bad considering).

Yokahu Tower

We walked along paved trails in the rainforest and saw breadfruit, banana plants with beautiful flowers, thick vegetation of palm trees and bushes, some incredibly large trees, bamboo, tiny lizards (thankfully no snakes as far as I could see!), creeks and waterfalls. There were lots of sounds – birds and rustle in the underbrush – and I wished we could have seen some parrots but apparently the green Puerto Rican Amazon Parrot only lives on the higher altitudes and have long been an endangered species although it is now slowly picking up in numbers thanks to the relentless work of the Caribbean National Forest Reserve. There are however 105 species of Coqui (frogs famous for their ‘coqui, coqui’ sound at night, soothing to most Puerto Ricans but a nuisance to some other nationalities who are not used to them), of which 75 are represented in El Yunque rainforest.

Breadfruit

Banana plant with a flower at the end of the stalk

Condensed water in the moss on a tree

La Mina waterfall was a beautiful spot with a wooden bridge after about 20-30 min walk along a forest trail. Here people ‘cooled off’ in the warm water under the falls and played with their kids in the river.

La Mina falls

On our way back with the tour bus to Carolina we passed a couple of towns along the coast, the biggest one being Luiza with a typical town center with a Catholic church and directly in front of it a town square and next to it the City Hall. The coastal towns predominantly have black population with descendants from African slaves brought to Puerto Rico when the indigenous population of Taíno Indians had diminished and the Spanish colonizing the islands needed more labor. The biggest river in Puerto Rico is the Río Grande de Luiza, which we crossed and saw the river mouth in the Atlantic Ocean.

We also passed another little village just outside Carolina called Piñones with lots of little simple restaurants along the road and live music at night. I will perhaps go back there one evening, enjoy the local beer, Medalla Light, and see what the locals are up to. By the looks of it, they seem to enjoy horse race betting even if on a turn-wheel with miniature horses (I saw several of them within a mile of each other, with locals gathered around)…

Hamburg Salsa Congress 2007

2007-07-17T12:00:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I have been in Germany for the 5th international salsa festival in Hamburg. I have been at this congress before, but it was a couple of years ago. I have now started a 4-week summer vacation and what can be a better start of your holidays than four nights of salsa dancing?!

I stayed at a cheap Etap Accor hotel in the St Pauli area the first night and went to a pre-festival party on Thursday night. It was a fun party in a club called La Macumba. Some of my salsa friends from Stockholm were there, including Christoffer, Arram, Lalla and a few others. I danced with the famous DJ from New York, Henry Knowles, and the producer of the major part of all L.A. style salsa congresses in the world, Albert Torres. Juan Matos, a fabulous dancer from New York, known for his slick moves and incredible charisma on stage, was standing dancing and singing to himself in a corner so I decided to be daring and invite him to dance - I was actually rather surprised that he accepted. He was very friendly and it was a very pleasant dance experience.

Lalla and me at La Macumba

On Friday I changed hotel to Radisson SAS at Congress-Centrum (next to the central Dammtor train station), where the weekend salsa congress was hosted. A salsa friend of mine from Stockholm, Elena, performed for the first time with her new partner from Toronto, Mark Anthony - it’s not the famous singer, as you can probably tell from the spelling! They were the opening number at the Friday congress party at the Congress-Centrum and did a great job with an On2 show.

Since I had been up dancing till 4am the night before, my feet were already hurting so the first part of Friday night was kind of mellow for me until I got an energy boost from dancing with a very talented French guy. I had a similar experience the rest of the nights, with a part in the middle where I ran out of energy and then all of a sudden the mood and energy levels picked up the last two hours from 3 or 4am…

I had a great weekend dancing with many “congress friends” from different countries, among others Marlon, Bernard and Sonder from Holland; Ludovic, Didier and Juan from France; Tony, Guy, Floyd and Sean from London – always a pleasure dancing with all of them! I was also invited to dance by Cesar Sanchez from Latin Dance Education in Hamburg, which was a lot of fun. It turned out that there were quite many people from Stockholm attending this congress - apart from the ones already mentioned, I was happy to run into Miriam from Stockholm Salsa Dance, Rafael, Jose, Carina and Johan - very nice and friendly people all of them. The parties closed at 5am, but the last night it didn’t finish until about 6am.

German TV really has some silly shows. As I was getting ready for Saturday night’s party, I had channel 1 (http://www.daserste.de/) on in the background. They broadcasted some sort of family entertainment, I presume, with what I would describe as videos with “oompa, oompa music” and German traditional music à la Bier Stube. It wouldn’t have been so bad, I guess, if they hadn’t insisted on showing some sort of “music videos” as well with silly dancing and pretending to play instruments in an overly cheerful manner in a country environment. It was a little surprising that the next program was one of the Beck programs. Beck is a character in a Swedish detective novel series by Sjöwall/Walöö, which has been made into a TV series and several movies with Swedish actors Peter Haber and Mikael Persbrandt. Of course the program was dubbed into German; I don’t know how the Germans, Italians, French and Spaniards learn English when they never actually hear it…

Saturday night a big Cuban band called Mercado Negro from Switzerland played. On Sunday night, my friends Anna and Laia in Mambo Sisters from Stockholm performed their very nice mambo routine in white dresses and long evening gown gloves. During the social dancing I saw an amazing 7-year-old girl dance with one of the adult, male performers and was astonished that she was already way more advanced than most of the rest of us! It’s besides the point that she should probably have been home in bed instead of spending late nights in a loud environment at a salsa congress.

Me with Guy & Floyd, two dancers from London – as you can see salsa dancing at congresses is a sweaty experience!

(Click pictures to view them enlarged)

Elena and Laia from Stockholm

7-year-old girl dancing with one of the male performers

On Saturday afternoon I walked from the hotel to Gänsemarkt and went shopping along Gerhofstrasse and Jungfernstieg followed by enjoying the sunset over lake Alster (a branch of the river Elba) with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc from South Africa (my favorite wine country). The restaurant on the lake had delicious lasagna, a friendly atmosphere and decent prices. It’s been a hectic first half year and I so enjoyed being off and not having any obligations at all. A handsome male friend of mine accompanied me to the same place for lunch on Sunday afternoon. It had become incredibly hot, 30-35°C and quite humid. Apart from these short strolls, I haven’t seen much of Hamburg, I’m afraid.

Binnenalster - Left: me. Right: Tony

Tony and Anna at McDonald’s

View from my Radisson SAS hotel room, overlooking Dammtor train station, a park and the city

Sailing Hobycat in the Stockholm archipelago

2007-07-11T20:07:00.001-07:00

Normally I only blog about my travels, but also Stockholm can offer some treats. This is just so cool that I have to share it with those of my friends who may be interested…

I am fortunate to have some friends who sail. Two of my salsa friends Anders and Karim are enthusiastic sailors and frequently take off into the Stockholm archipelago. One weekend not long ago I was offered by Anders to accompany him and Karim on Anders’ Hobycat (a Catamaran) for a few hours’ intensive sailing on Askrikefjärden (the Askrike Bay) close to the peninsula Lidingö east of Stockholm.

It was fantastic! See photos below (the ones of me are taken by Anders). It was wet and cold but went fast! Very liberating and like balm for a stressed soul. Anders has promised me to hang in the harness next time – I’m going to hold him to it! :-)

Karim and Anders

Quick trip to The Big Apple

2007-07-11T18:21:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I went to New York for 3.5 days again. I had some meetings with my PR agency, a couple of press interviews (read an interview with Fast Company here) and then a whole-day press event together with a couple of US colleagues. The PR agency also took me out to dinner at Asia de Cuba, a fabulous and trendy restaurant with a fusion of Asian-Cuban cuisine. As I walked in they played salsa music and kept doing so the whole time we were there, so I felt right at home. :-)

View over Lower West Side from one of my press interviews – Ground Zero where the Twin Towers once stood are to the bottom left of the picture

On this June trip, I was staying at the Sheraton Manhattan near Times Square with a short walking distance to my PR agency. I flew in already during the weekend so I could meet some friends and go salsa dancing. New York is fabulous for that!

I went to Greenwich Village – usually shortened to “the Village” by New Yorkers – to have dinner with my Swedish friend Vinay who has moved to New York and one of my On2 salsa friends, Marlon. We met for a drink at Sushi Samba on 7th Avenue and Bleeker Street. This was a hip restaurant with a sushi kitchen in the middle where everyone can see, a trendy bar with good cocktails being served and modern music coming out of the speakers. It was very crowded and the waiting line for a table was over an hour so we gave up and walked around in the West Village until we found a good Italian restaurant called Morandi who could seat us after some wine and a starter at the bar. The food was excellent, as was the wine and service. This was a very good pick in a quiet area on Charles Street / Waverly Place, away from all the traffic on the bigger avenues. The West Village felt like the narrow streets in some Southern European town, not like the hectic Manhattan. New York is full of surprises.

Vinay was tired after many travels so I accompanied Marlon to someone’s birthday party at the dance studio where he teaches mambo and ballroom dances. There was an interesting mix of people, mostly dancers of various styles.

I had Sunday brunch with Vinay. We walked up on 7th Avenue to Columbus Circle and Central Park West and found a restaurant that served pancakes and some sort of wine cooler which was a mix of melon (or was it orange? I can’t remember anymore) and Champagne, apparently very popular among New Yorkers this summer.

7th Avenue

Monument at Columbus Circle

Vinay and I went for a walk in Central Park in the afternoon. It was a hot summer’s day with sunny weather and lots of activity in the park. First, we sat down to watch a couple of Sunday afternoon baseball games. I am not familiar with all the rules but was intrigued by the passion that all the locals poured into this game. Baseball is such a natural part of regular Americans’ life but we don’t have this sport in Sweden other than among some elitist sportsmen who see it as a more advanced form of the Swedish “brännboll”.

Baseball in Central Park

We went for a stroll in the park, saw the regular horses and carriages with tourists (one of these days I’m going to take a ride myself; it seems like a comfortable way of exploring central New York and the vast Central Park) and passed beach volleyball courts, various drummers and jugglers drawing attention from the Sunday strollers. We went to see the Central Park Dance Skaters, meaning people on rollerblades dancing with their own DJ spinning old-school disco tunes. This was an interesting phenomenon. I suppose that some people might compare it with salsa fanatics like me who attend Sunday salsa socials and get totally absorbed by the music, rhythms and sweat like pigs. Some of these dance skaters have made their own “disco costumes” and show off their dance moves with a series of skating routines, spins and even couples’ dancing. Quite fun to watch – until you get sick and tired of the same beat / tempo of the music and have to move on to greener pastures.

Central Park

Every second Sunday evening, there is Jimmy Anton’s salsa social at the Manhattan Dance Studio. I was lucky to be in the city on the right week, because this is one of the best salsa nights you can get in New York City. I had barely walked in and put on my dance shoes when I was lucky to be invited to dance by Angel Ortiz from Stepping Out Studios. He’s a well-known international instructor, on occasion arranging events where Eddie Torres, the king of mambo from Latin Dance Studio, gives classes. I had a fabulous night with many great dances. The tempo (and temperature) is high at Jimmy Anton’s and you need to drink lots of water to be able to keep up the energy. I am already looking forward to next time in New York. But I suspect I will meet at least some of the same dancers at this summer’s salsa congresses, which some of my next blogs are likely to cover. So stay tuned.

Beihai Park – Classical imperial garden with 1000-year-old history

2007-07-09T16:38:00.000-07:00

After my visit to the Forbidden City and Jingshan Park, I stopped for a few minutes to watch some locals play some kind of old Chinese board game. I then continued to China’s oldest and most impressive classical imperial garden, Beihai Park. As you walk between the parks, there are a number of bicycle taxis (I would say “rickshaws” but I’m sure the Chinese have their own word for it) offering you a sightseeing tour in the old parts of Beijing located to the east/north of Beihai Park. It was however already getting late in the day for me, so I prioritized taking a stroll in Beihai Park and digest all that I had seen at Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City and Jingshan Park.

Street area between Jingshan and Beihai Parks

Men hanging around and playing a Chinese board game

Beihai Park is located west of Jingshan Park and has a history of nearly 1000 years. It has existed throughout the Liao, Jin, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties. Beihai was first built in 938 A.D. during the Emperor Huitong of Liao Dynasty and in the 12th century improved into an imperial summer palace. In the second half of the 13th century, Kublai Kahn – a name recognized by most Westerners thanks to the Marco Polo travels – took Beihai as its center to establish the capital of the Yuan Dynasty in Beijing. Beihai means “the north sea” in Chinese and the park actually contains a large, artificial lake with Qionghua Island in the center of it. In1267, Kublai Khan had an imperial city called Dadu built around the Qionghua Island. He called the island Longevity Hill, and the lake around it Taiyechi.

The park is huge and there are many walkways through it. There’s a path next to the water around the whole lake, so I strolled around it for a while, passing tourist boats for rental and some restaurant or teahouse overlooking the lake. It was getting windy and cloudy and the big lake really behaved like the North Sea, with big waves rippling the surface and making the tiny, colorful tourist dinghies pull their mooring ropes.

By the northern shore of Qiong Island, at the foot of Longevity Hill, there is a palace-like, lake-side building with a curved walkway “corridor” along the waterfront with colorful pillars, beautiful wall paintings and red lanterns lighting up the evening stroll.

There is also a very elaborately decorated restaurant with a big, golden, imperial chest at the entrance and various artifacts displayed outside, like imperial China vases and an ancient imperial sedan chair. Waiters and waitresses in traditional costumes dashed in and out of various side doors to the restaurant and kitchen areas, with plates of food that were exquisitely adorned with vegetables and fruit carved into fancy decorations, pastry looking like a swan etc. It looked like a very expensive place and I saw many dressed-up Westerners go there, perhaps for business entertainment. See photos below.

Restaurant and waitress

Beautiful wall and ceiling decorations at the lake-side restaurant

After contemplating the imperial ways of living by the lake, I started climbing up the hill and discovered lots of colorful pavilions, chambers, towers and terraces among the rocks, some Taihu Lake stones apparently moved here during the Jin Dynasty from Genyue Garden in Bianliang (capital of the North Song Dynasty in 990-1127), ancient trees and pathways.

Ceiling details in pavilion

At the top of the hill on the Qionghua Dao (or ‘Jade Flowery Islet’) in Beihai Park, the Tibetan style White Pagoda (Baita) Temple is the landmark visible from miles away. It’s an almost 36 m tall Buddhist temple constructed on the former site of the Palace in the Moon where Kublai Khan received Marco Polo. I arrived after closing hours so unfortunately I missed the thousands of Buddha statues that are apparently on display in the temple.

Baita – The White Pagoda

It was getting really dark at 8:30-9 pm and since I couldn’t enter the temple I looked at the view of Beijing and the lake from the terrace at the hilltop. The evening sky was very pretty with a pink sunset breaking up the heavy clouds.

View over Beijing and the Taiyechi lake from the top of the Qiong Island

Beihai Park is probably one of the fondest takeaways from my trip to Beijing. Located in the middle of a modern city, this multi-faceted but harmonic imperial garden showcased the powerful elements of nature and history in a beautiful mix. I left with an impression that I could return many times to let the winds by Taiyechi lake wash away contemporary problems and to discover new historic treasures every time.

Jingshan Park

2007-07-09T16:37:00.000-07:00

Directly north of the Forbidden City you will find the beautiful Jingshan Park. It contains a number of imperial pavilions and the one located at the top of the hill in the park has a marvelous view overlooking the city. From here you can view the whole Forbidden City with all its imperial palace buildings to the south.

View to the north from Wanchun Pavilion (All Time Spring Pavilion)

Jingshan Park's hill is topped by five pavilions, the main one of which contains a large Buddha statue. The pavilion is from 1751, named All Time Spring Pavilion and is 17.4 meters high.

Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square

2007-07-09T16:34:00.000-07:00

These are my last reports from the China trip back in May. I thought I'd better finish the series before my summer vacation travels start...

To give you a little background to ancient and imperial China, I suggest you read up on history:

A very comprehensive and interesting history of China from Wikipedia>>
Timeline of Chinese dynasties>>
Ming Dynasty>>
Qing Dynasty>>

The hotel concierge pointed out some of the main attractions and sites in Beijing on a small fold-out map, and the Beijing Travel Guide helped me get acquainted with the capital of China online before I started exploring the city physically.

In the city center of Beijing you find Tiananmen Square which is not very imperial, but nonetheless located right next to the Imperial Palace grounds (called the Forbidden City) so you can’t miss it and it’s a good starting point for a sightseeing tour. Tiananmen Square is apparently big enough to fit half a million people and as such the biggest central square in the world. During the Ming and Qing eras, there were red walls around the site which also had buildings. The walls were pulled down in the 1911 revolution (see photo below with revolution sculpture).

1911 revolution

The Chairman Mao Memorial Hall, commonly known as the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong, or the Mao Mausoleum

The square is used mainly for big, momentous occasions. This is where Mao Zedong announced the new “People’s Republic of China” in 1949. This is also where a series of mass demonstrations for democratic rights and against the ruling of the Chinese Communist party were held in 1989 led by students, intellectuals, and labor activists, resulting in the Chinese army storming the demonstrations and many civilians being killed or injured (numbers vary from a few hundred up to thousands of people who died) – in Western media known as “the Massacre in Tiananmen Square”.

Tiananmen Square with the Monument of the People's Heroes to the right

In front of the Museum of Chinese History and the Museum of Chinese Revolution: a count-down sign keeps track of number of days left to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

On the northern side of Tiananmen Square you see the entrance to the Forbidden City, with a big portrait of Mao Zedong on the facade of the Tiananmen Gate. This “Gate of Heavenly Peace” is a 20th century creation but the gate sticking up directly behind it is a Ming Dynasty structure.

Tiananmen Gate

It was very interesting to walk around in the Forbidden City. The Imperial Palace, today a Palace Museum complex, was completed by Emperor Yongle (one of the Ming emperors) in 1420. A moat and a 10 m high wall surround all the palace buildings (apparently there are 9,999 of them but not all are open to the public). The area was forbidden to all but the imperial court and the only westerners allowed were Jesuit scholar-priests in the 17th and 18th centuries, plus ambassadors who tried to trade with China.

The Forbidden City is almost 1 km long and 750 m wide and divided into two parts. The southern section – the Outer Court, housing the throne halls of Supreme Harmony which was under repair when I was there, Central Harmony and Preserved Harmony – was where the emperor exercised his supreme power over the nation.

Hall of Central Harmony

First built in 1420 during the Ming Dynasty and originally called Hua Gai Dian (Hall of Overwhelming Glory), the Hall of Central Harmony (Zhong He Dian) was destroyed and reconstructed several times over the centuries. The existing hall (seen on the photo above) was constructed in 1627, but received its current name in 1645 during the Qing Dynasty. This square building has a single pyramid-shaped roof, with a gold plated bronze covering. The floor is paved with high-quality square clay bricks, commonly known as “golden bricks”. A throne is placed in the center of the hall and a board hangs above the throne with an inscription by Emperor Qianlong, which according to a sign outside the hall says: “The Way of Heaven is profound and mysterious and the way of mankind is difficult. Only if we make a precise and unified plan and follow the doctrine of the mean, can we rule this country well.”

The emperor used to rest in the Hall of Central Harmony on his way to attend an important ceremony or hold court, and officials kowtowed to the emperor here. The day before the emperor held a sacrificial ceremony, he would read the prayer tablet aloud in this hall. The words “Zhong He” come from the Book of Rites, meaning “When we handle matters properly and harmoniously without leaning to either side, all things on earth will flourish.”

Hall of Preserved Harmony

Originally called Jin Sheng Dian (Hall of Scrupulous Behavior), also the Hall of Preserved Harmony (Bao He Dian) (seen on photos above) was first constructed in 1420 but destroyed by fire and reconstructed several times. It still retains its original beams and columns. During the Ming Dynasty, the emperor changed clothes in this hall before an important ceremony. In the Qing Dynasty, the emperor held banquets here for his princes, dukes and ministers of ethnic minorities on the lunar New Year’s Eve and the Lantern Festival. The words “Bao He” are from the Book of Changes and mean “Maintaining harmony between all things on earth to have a long period of peace and stability.”

Gate of Heavenly Purity

The emperor lived with his royal family in the northern section – the Inner Court – featuring the Palace of Heavenly Purity, the Hall of the Union, the Palace of Earthly Tranquility and the Imperial Garden.

Hall of Heavenly Purity

The Palace of Heavenly Purity (Qian Qing Gong) was constructed in 1420 during the Ming Dynasty and rebuilt in 1798 during the Qing Dynasty. The emperor lived and handled political affairs in this palace. After an emperor passed away in the Qing Dynasty, his coffin was kept in the hall to prove that he had died peacefully. After the memorial ceremony, the coffin was moved to Guan De Dian (Hall for Observing Military Virtue) in Jingshan (Prospect Hill) Park (see separate blog post), north of Forbidden City. Finally, the funeral was held and the deceased emperor was buried in the imperial mausoleum.

Emperor Yongshen (1678-1735) secretly set up a succession system with an “Heir Apparent Box” placed behind a board in the Palace of Heavenly Purity. The name of the emperor’s successor, written down by the emperor himself, was kept in this box and after he passed away the secretly appointed crown prince would ascend the throne.

Hall of Celestial and Terrestrial Union

The words “Jiao Tai” mean “the union of heaven and earth” and hence the square Hall of Celestial and Terrestrial Union (Jiao Tai Dian) (see photos above) is situated between Qian Qing Gong (Palace of Heavenly Purity) and Kun Ning Gong (Palace of Earthly Tranquility) in the Inner Court of the Forbidden City. In the center of the hall is a throne, above which hangs a board inscribed with words by Emperor Kangxi, meaning “doing nothing.” Below this board there is a screen with an inscription by Emperor Qianlong. In the Qing Dynasty, an annual grand ceremony was held here on the empress’ birthday, the lunar New Year, the Winter Solstice and on the “Day for Opening up Treasures” in the first lunar month.

The Inner Court housed not only the residences of the emperor and his empress, consorts and concubines, but also administrative buildings.

The Inner Court has been the home of fourteen emperors of the Ming dynasty (from the third Ming emperor Zhu Di) and ten emperors of the Qing dynasty. The Qing Dynasty fell to republican revolutionaries in 1911 and the last emperor of China (the last Qing emperor Puyi) was forced to abdicate. He was finally driven from the Inner Court in 1924 during a coup launched by the warlord Feng Yuxiang.

Read more about the Forbidden City here>>

Imperial China – Temple of Heaven in Beijing

2007-07-09T10:52:00.000-07:00

The day after my arrival to China, my former colleague Abbas took me sightseeing. To the southeast of the Southern Gate of Beijing City lies an extensive ancient garden. When overlooked from the sky, it is circular in the north and square in the south, a pattern symbolic of the ancient belief that heaven was round and the earth square. A stone-paved main road is running from the north to the south. In the south there is the white Circular Mound Altar; in the north there is a round main hall with blue tiles and golden roofs; to the west of the main road there are exquisite square palaces.

It was a beautiful and hot summer’s day, perfect to see the Temple of Heaven. Built by the Emperor Yongle during the Ming Dynasty in the early 15th century (1420), this was where the emperor renewed his mandate with heaven at every winter solstice, offered sacrifices to Heaven and prayed for a plentiful harvest.

Abbas at Zhaoheng Gate (South Gate)

Me at the Circular Mound Altar

In 1530, people offered to Heaven and Earth separately, so the Circular Mound Altar was built. It has three terraces made of Artemisia leaf gray marbles. In the center of the upper terrace there is a raised round marble called “Heavenly Center Stone” or “Supreme Ultimate Stone” with a special acoustic resonance so that when you stand on it and speak it gives a loud and resonant effect “as of speaking with God”.

First the emperor would enter the Imperial Vault of Heaven (the smaller circular hall on the photos below) where he meditated and prepared himself. Then he crossed the Danbi Bridge, to the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests with its 3-tiered blue-tile roof. Both the Vault and the Hall of Prayer are round buildings enclosed by square courtyards symbolizing the journey from earth to heaven by the emperor.

Imperial Vault of Heaven

Danbi Bridge - The path is one meter high at its southern end and rises to four meters high at the northern tip, signifying that it is stepping up towards heaven.

Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests

Me in traditional costume at the Temple of Heaven

China – The Beijing salsa scene

2007-07-04T16:52:00.000-07:00

Due to a huge workload and many late nights at the office the past few months I haven’t had much time, nor energy, to go salsa dancing. But every time I’m abroad, I try to find some time to test the local dance scene. It’s such a great way to relax, meet new people and get a good work-out! I simply had to try the salsa scene in Beijing and looked for some tips on the web.

On the day of my arrival – after having slept 9 or 10 hours at the hotel! – I called the owner of Latinos, supposedly the premier salsa club in Beijing. It was Saturday night so the club was open till 4am and I decided to take a cab there and try it out. Cab fares are cheap in Beijing. The 10-minute drive only cost me RMB 17 (roughly equivalent to the same amount in Swedish Kronor, i.e. approx 17 SEK). The club was located in a historical building on Dong Si Shi Tiao 22. They had a nice bar and a good, wooden dance floor. There was no cover charge and the drinks cost RMB 40, so it was rather cheap.

A 9-piece band from Venezuela plays every night except Mondays (when they have other theme nights like Swing, Tango) but since I arrived about 2am I came too late to catch them. The band plays from 9pm during weekdays and 10pm during weekends. The band alternates with local and international salsa DJs. But nobody spoke English – well, the bartender at least understood “Vodka Tonic” – so I had to get by with my limited Spanish, which wasn’t so much of a problem in a salsa club where most visitors are Latin anyhow. There were few people and I only danced with a few different guys: a Colombian that thought he was God’s gift to women although he couldn’t keep the beat, a couple of very nice guys from Venezuela called Jorge and Javier (see picture to the right) and some Cuban guy. Unfortunately I didn’t see any Chinese dancing that night.

I had more luck with the level and quality of the dancers on the following Wednesday night. Two of the most well-renowned dance companies in Beijing are Phoenix Dance Company and Sunbeam Latin Dance International, see below flyers. Representatives from both of these dance companies were present at Latinos this Wednesday night.

Every Wednesday there is an “After Work Salsa Party: Let's Dance Mambo @ LATINOS”, which is a special mambo night with Phoenix-Dance Company. As I arrived this particular Wednesday, there was already high intensity on the dance floor, so I took a moment to watch the dancers and figure out which ones were any good that I should ask to dance. ;-) I quickly saw one high-quality mambo dancer emerge from the rest and as soon as he became “available” I asked him to dance with me. It was a very good pick, since it was “Mambo Jack” himself. I didn’t recognize him, but when he heard I’m from Stockholm, he told me he had visited Hot Salsa Weekend (the annual Stockholm salsa congress) a couple of years ago to perform and instruct. Small world!

On Friday night, I decided to visit the other salsa club in Beijing that I had heard of. The Salsa Caribe Latin Club, located at 4 Gongti Bei Lu (across the street from the Loft on San Li Tun, only a few blocks from Beijing City Hotel where I was staying) in the Chaoyang District in Beijing, is open every day but is best on Fridays and Saturdays. It’s open at least until 2:30am but longer if enough people stay. Check out some cool bartender tricks from Salsa Caribe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agRiiO6-Po0. The band Sabor Latino from Venezuela plays every night. The place was packed and the band in full swing as I walked in.

The club offers the largest hardwood dance floor in the city. It claims to also be the largest salsa club in China, and the place to be seen if you are a salsero. I was invited to join a table with a couple of Italian girls whom in their turn knew some other people so I ended up having a fun evening. I was very surprised when one of the Chinese guys, Richard, all of a sudden started speaking Swedish to me. It turned out that he had lived in Gothenburg in Sweden and studied at Chalmers University of Technology ten years ago so I was quite impressed that he remembered the language so well. I also got to know DJ Diack a little and when the club started emptying he invited me to dance Zouk (a music style originating from the Caribbean islands Martinique and Guadeloupe) with him since I seemed to be the only person at the club who had actually been to Paris and enjoyed this type of dance.

Some photos from my night at Salsa Caribe are pictured below.

Making new friends at Salsa Caribe

Two Italian girls (Elisa and Sara), a Cuban and Richard Li

DJ Diack and I

China - My visit to the Great Wall and one of the Ming Tombs

2007-07-04T11:34:00.001-07:00

Time flies…I’ve been extremely busy since I came home from China but here is finally one more of my planned reports from the China trip in May.

The Great Wall of China is in reality not one wall; it consists of a series of walls totaling some 6400 km, some of which date back to the 5th century BC! Wikipedia contains some great background info and history, so I will not try to pretend I know better…

I got help hiring a private driver for the day and set off to see the Great Wall. I really wanted to go to one of the older parts of the Wall to avoid tourists and be able to take in a more ‘genuine’ feeling of the ancient China. But according to the driver, the roads were very poor and he recommended the Wall at Badaling. The Badaling Great Wall is located in Yanqing County, 60 km northwest of Beijing. It took about 2.5 hours to drive there from my hotel in east central Beijing. It was a very hot summer’s day, around 35° Celsius.

As he dropped me off at Badaling I realized he had taken me to the most tourist-dense place imaginable. The Great Wall at Badaling has apparently been awarded Guinness records for the Great Wall scenic spot receiving the most tourists and the most state leaders, whatever that’s worth… There were probably thousands of tourists from all over the world climbing the sometimes quite steep wall and there was hardly a single square meter free from people. Sigh…

What’s more, the Wall was really fortified or even partly reconstructed in the last decades here at Badaling. However, the view over the green hills and surrounding mountains was absolutely breathtaking (see photos below). Despite the large crowds of tourists I thoroughly enjoyed walking around on the Wall and imagining historic times.

I attracted a small fan club of little old ladies that followed me around wherever I went. When I stopped to look at the view, they stopped. When I started walking again, they were always only a few steps ahead or behind me. It was slightly disturbing at first but then I saw that they were smiling and looking at me quite fascinated, so I found it kind of endearing. Then all of a sudden, they asked if they could take pictures of me. So I had to pose with each of them while the others snapped away on their cameras. My only guess is that they had never seen red hair before.

Two of my fan club

China’s hosting of the Olympic Games with the motto “One World – One Dream” was promoted also here.

After a few hours’ sweating and drinking lots of water in the heat, I was ready to head back to my driver. I decided to try the ‘Sliding Cars’ down the mountain, a form of plastic-seat rollercoaster which was operated with a man at the front with a manual break…

Sliding cars: “Here we’re coming down the mountains, here we come (toot toot toot…)” – remember the cartoon character Goofy (‘Långben’ in Swedish) in Mickey Mouse’s camping trip?! Our down-trip was just as bumpy and hazardous but the driver seemed blissfully unaware and relaxed...

I thought it would take me back to the Badaling center where I entered to climb the Wall but it took me to the other side of the mountain and I ended up next to a zoo with bears.

Visiting Ding Ling Tomb, one of the famous Ming Tombs

The Ming Dynasty had 16 emperors who reigned for a total of 277 years (1368-1644). All the tombs of the Ming emperors, except for that of Emperor Zhu Yunwen, are still preserved today. Together with the tombs for posthumously crowned emperors, there are 18 tombs altogether, scattered in Jiangsu, Anhui and Hubei provinces as well as Beijing’s Changping District. Read more here>>

Spread out over a total area of about 80 km² (click on the photo below for an enlarged map overview), located in a broad valley to the south of Tianshou Mountain (Longevity of Heaven) some 50 km from Beijing, 13 of these imperial mausoleums can be found, along with seven tombs for imperial concubines and one for a eunuch – together forming a complex called the Imperial Ming Mausoleums. Construction of the Imperial Ming Mausoleums began in 1409 and was completed more than 200 years later when the Ming Dynasty collapsed in 1644.

My driver took me to one of them, the Ding Ling Tomb, which was excavated and opened to the public in 1957. It is located just east of Mount Dayu. Here you also find the Ming Tombs Museum, which is one of the renowned ancient imperial tombs museums in China. Ding Ling is the first imperial tomb excavated so far in accordance with the state’s plan since the foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. It’s the joint tomb, constructed in 1584, of the thirteenth emperor Zhu Yi Jun of the Ming dynasty and his two empresses.

Zhu Yi Jun (1563-1620) – see painting to the right (sorry, it's a little blurry) – came to the throne when he was only 10 years old and reigned until he died at the age of 58. Construction of the Ding Ling Tomb began already in the 12th year of his reign and was completed after six years. The Ding Ling complex covers over 180,000 m², see photos below. The models of the whole complex and the tomb, or Underground Palace, as it was called, gave a rather good impression of the size of these imperial mausoleums. It was widely held in the Ming Dynasty that although dead physically, a person's soul remained, still having human needs. Consequently, the 13 emperors' tomb complexes look like imperial palaces.

Model of Ding Ling Tomb

The Underground Palace

The Underground Palace was located inside a circular wall overlooking the valley and surrounding hills.

However, I must say that I was disappointed. I felt there was not much to see. The mausoleum compound looked rather colorless and dusty and the Underground Palace itself – composed of five halls which upon excavation in the 1950’s unearthed over 3,000 cultural artifacts (not sure where all of those are today but some of them were exhibited in the Ding Ling / Ming Tombs Museum on site, see photos below of the empress coronets) – more looked like a concrete bomb shelter about 25 m below ground. Maybe I’m being unfair, but it had little resemblance with what I in my imagination had compared to Pharaoh Tombs in Egyptian pyramids or Catholic crypts in cathedrals in Europe. Since I’ve been to Japan once and was extremely impressed with all their imperial palaces and temples, sadly many Chinese remnants are just dusty and pale in comparison.

Empress crowns with Phoenixes and in gold

If time had permitted, I would have liked to go the center of the valley where you can apparently walk down the Sacred Way (Shendao) or “spirit path” flanked by large stone statues of animals and humans on the Avenue of the Animals. If you want to find out more, there is a very interesting read about the architectural lay-out and spiritual meaning around the imperial tombs here>>.

China – first impressions of a modern Beijing

2007-06-04T12:34:00.000-07:00

I have been to China for the first time in my life. Beijing is one of the four great ancient capitals of China (Xian, Nanjing and Luoyang are the other three). Beijng is today recognized as the cultural, educational and political center of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), proclaimed in 1949, whereas Shanghai and Hong Kong dominate in economic fields.

It has taken me a couple of weeks since I came home to gather my thoughts from all the experiences and I will divide my travel report from China into several parts. Below you’ll find my first consolidated impressions of the work related part, of Beijing as a city, the Chinese people and local customs. In my next parts, I’ll take you with me on some of my sightseeing excursions and salsa clubbing.

I was staying for five nights at the Great Wall Sheraton Hotel Beijing, a fancy hotel just outside the east Third Ring Road, and for three nights at Beijing City Hotel which was more centrally located.

A breath of China
You can try and learn some Chinese characters (and associated culture) by visiting http://zhongwen.com/m/hello.htm

Browsing the web for other travelers' comments can be quite enlightening. "Lasse G" from Sweden says that Teresa Teng (Deng Li Jun) is one of the most popular singers in China (or at least was in 2005). Click here to hear one of her songs and catch a breath of China - quite nice, actually!

Sony Ericsson Developer World China launch
The reason for my trip was the official launch of Sony Ericsson Developer World China with a fancy launch event for developers and close to 50 Chinese media in mid-May. This was an interesting happening in comparison to all developer events I’ve been to representing my company in the US, UK and other parts of Europe so far. The Chinese are very pompous and ceremonial in their ways and this was considered a formal opening of business operations of the new program launch. A famous anchor man from Beijing TV, their big TV channel, was the moderator and presenter at the event and all the foreign guests (including myself), technology partners and the company’s Chinese senior executives were prominently lined up on the front row with a name sign placed in front of us. There was lots of talk about "building bridges for a successful future", "let's join hands for mutual success", "achieve win-win" etc and "Thank you, Mr So and So, for your infinite wisdom and expertise". I couldn't help but being somewhat amused.

After some opening presentations there was a formal launch ceremony with the elevation of a golden plaque sign with the logo and date (May 15th) of the official launch of the Developer World program in China on it, paper fireworks and a photo opportunity for all attending media in front of the back drop on stage. These photos showed up in a lot of the media coverage after the event.

Launch ceremony

I was there as the official spokesperson for our global program and also conducted a couple of group interviews with ten reporters from a mix of IT, telecoms and programmer publications.

Here I am with my boss Ulf and my Chinese colleague Joyce at the launch event

After three days of working till midnight I finally got a few days off to explore Bejing and its surroundings.

Shopping
A lot of foreigners come to China to shop like crazy. These days, there are even long-weekend, direct charter flights to Beijing from Stockholm, so that Swedes can go on shopping esprits. I was taught by my friend and former colleague Abbas and his Tai Tai (=wife) Christina, who have been living in Beijing for the past two years now, that bargaining is customary at Chinese clothing and silk markets. If you can get the price down to 1/6 of the original price mentioned by the seller you have done a very good job. You should never pay more than 1/3 of the price. They took me to Pearl Market, where they showed me the ropes and I made some really good bargains on silk bed-covers, table cloths and dresses. They also took me to a place where you could buy fake (but good-quality) Omega, Swiss Patek Philippe and Gucci watches.

Drink stand outside Pearl Market

Abbas & Christina at a Sizzler’s

Me at the Sony Ericsson shop in a modern department store

Band playing in a department store

The day before my departure, I went to the Yashow Clothing Market which was very close to the Beijing City Hotel and I managed to do some decent bargaining on my own. Normally I hate bargaining but it turned out to be quite fun, like a challenging sport which gave me a few good laughs. The sales persons always try to tell you that your counter offers will not even cover their manufacturing costs (“C’mon, no joking!”) in order to make you up the bid, and sometimes even pretend to be angry, but no matter what your rock-bottom offer is and you turn around and start walking away, they almost always call you back and eventually say ok. If they don’t, you at least knew you have reached as low as they can or will ever be willing to go – anything above it is just a game. I am sure they have a very good profit margin on what they sell to all the foreign tourists who come to Beijing for the first time, and I am sure I paid over-price on a lot of the things I bought, but nonetheless it was good fun and much cheaper than back home.

Yashow Market

The Place – a new shopping area with one of the world’s largest outdoor electronic advertising boards. As you look up, you will see swimming sharks and dolphins in the “ceiling” – very cool!

Preparing for the Olympic Games in Beijing 2008
As a foreigner you may be a little disappointed to see so few traces of ‘the old China’ in its capital, and apparently many older buildings have been torn down to make room for new, modern buildings and skyscrapers, like the World Trade Center with its ice-skating rink below.

World Trade Center

There are a lot of construction sites and restoration work going on in Beijing right now. This is part of the overall face-lift that the city is undergoing in preparation for the Olympics next year. Similar to the Japanese, it’s very important to the Chinese not to lose face. One interesting aspect of this is to keep up appearances, and in construction business it means putting up a facade with a nice glass front and lots of shiny windows so that people won’t be able to tell that the building is just an empty concrete skeleton that may never be finished, or that it takes years before it’s completed – that is, if investors are long-term enough to see the project through, which apparently is not always the case. It seems a little strange to me that the finances for a whole building project have not been secured before the actual construction work starts. This seems to indicate very short-term thinking.

SoHo Beijing

I’ve heard of the “Leaning Tower of Pisa” in Italy but didn’t think that anyone would be adventurous enough to construct a building that is leaning from the beginning… On the photo below you can see one of many construction sites in Beijing and an example of some new, innovative architecture. These two towers are leaning towards each other and there will be a walking bridge between them to offset gravity and keep them from falling. Interesting – hope it works…

The leaning towers of Beijing
Modern business center

In some back streets you can still see some remnants of the days when millions of Chinese bicycled to work every day, but the streets which have several lanes and broad sidewalks are not new and are probably so broad thanks to the bicycle history when a lot of room for all the people to pass was needed. Today, there is a growing middle-class which can afford to buy brand new cars. There are few cities in the world where you see so many new cars of the latest model.

There are about 16 million inhabitants of Beijing. Unless they work for an international company and are used to traveling abroad or entertaining foreign guests, the Chinese are in general very poor at English, as can be see from the photo below.

The merchant handing me this business card must have used one of those online automatic translation tools which typically turns text into incomprehensible nonsense English

Taxi drivers don’t know any English apart from “thank you” and “bye” so you have to hand over a written note or a business card with the destination address in Chinese characters in order to be understood.

I can’t really blame the Chinese for not knowing any English since I don’t know any Chinese. The only few words I’ve managed to learn and remember from my 8 days in China are (and apologies if the sounds are not written correctly in Latin characters):

Ni hao = Hi / Good day
Xie xie = Thank you
Bei = North (like in Beijing = Northern Capital)
Xi = West (like in Xi’an =Western City; but it was actually the eastern terminus of the Silk Road)
Dong= East (like in Dongdu = Eastern Capital; old name of Luoyang)
Nan = South (like in Nanjing = Southern Capital)
Li = Street

I had heard stories about the, in Westerners’ opinions, generally bad table manners of the Chinese with loud slurping, burping and passing gas as a normal part of enjoying a good meal, but I was glad to discover that this must be a myth. One interesting observation I made, though, was that Chinese don’t push in the chairs when leaving a restaurant; they just stand up and leave. When calling on the waiter or waitress, Westerners typically sit silently and wait to catch the eye of the person waiting the table and then discretely sign at him or her to come to the table and take an order or bring the check, whereas the Chinese call out in loud voice and wave their arms, and if the waiter or waitress does something wrong or is too slow to serve, they simply yell at them. It seems that the service trade is part of an ancient hierarchical structure where the waiting staff is treated as inferior of the customer and that it’s accepted behavior for the customer to demonstrate this difference in social status in various ways. Of course this attitude also exists in the West but it’s not quite so blatant or widespread. Also, it’s not customary to tip in China, which is quite a relief for a Swede who finds the American way of having to tip for just about everything in the US somewhat tedious and discomforting (because you never know how much and you’re uncomfortable because the receiving party never seems to be grateful, just expects to be tipped without having to do anything extra for it).

The government has started campaigns to encourage the Chinese to improve their English language skills and general manners in time for the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008, of which they are a very proud hosting nation. My boss had someone jump into his cab from the airport asking to practice his English during the ride, and apparently just went back and forth to the airport talking to different Westerners to improve his language skills. Talk about determination.

Count-down to the 2008 Olympics at a local police-station

The five mascots of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing

The Chinese are quite entrepreneurial and are always trying to find ways of making a quick buck. However, they don’t strike me as the most long-term planners. I am not sure if this is due to some historic reason and inherent culture, or just due to new opportunities of the recent economic transformation which people simply don’t trust will last. The Chinese are very fond of gambling and various sorts of lotteries. In an effort to make people pay taxes and report business operations, official Beijing parking and taxi companies use receipts which have a silver-marked scratch area. By demanding a receipt and scratching the silver marked area, you can win a cash award or read the words for ‘Thanks’.

Beijing taxi receipt

Going out in Beijing
People away from home seem to always bundle together and find their own water holes where they can bond with other foreigners and feel more like home. Expatriates (meaning Westerners) in Beijing are no different. During the second part of my stay in China, I was staying at the very central Beijing City Hotel. On the street corner there was a very popular pub and nightclub called The Den. This was a loud place where you could go to enjoy a beer, a mixed menu of fish ‘n chips, Italian pasta, pizza, Chinese pork and vegetables with sweet and sour sauce or an American steak while watching soccer, American football, basketball or baseball on TV.

Even though I am usually keen to try more local food and customs when I travel, as you can guess by now, even I succumbed to the Western temptation, perhaps due to the fact that it was 50 meters from my hotel entrance and just too convenient after a whole day of exhausting sightseeing, or perhaps because being in a country where you can’t make yourself understood and you’re left out of regular conversations make you more tired than you realize and you just want to go someplace where you are among ‘your own kind’. Or perhaps I just couldn’t resist the sign with the Swedish flag talking about Viking Football hanging on the outside wall of The Den, naturally speaking to my Scandinavian patriotism…

Luckily for me, on my last night in Beijing Abbas took me to a typical Chinese restaurant with excellent home cooking. I had a Tiger beer and thoroughly enjoyed several courses of very well-prepared food; broccoli with garlic, sweet pickled cucumber, potato shreds, pork with peanuts and parsley, omelet etc.

Abbas at a Chinese "home restaurant"

It was good to walk off all the food later and we went for a drink on San Li Tun Street which was very close to the hotel. On a street with several popular bars like The Loft, Comfort and Rock Roll young people go to party. In this area you also find Beijing’s biggest salsa club, Salsa Caribe, which I’ll tell you more about in one of my other reports.

China for the first time

2007-05-11T18:23:00.001-07:00

I just arrived to China with FinnAir to Beijing. It's my first time to China ever so I'm excited. I actually had a very pleasant flight, despite being totally exhausted after a few weeks' late-night working. Firstly, I flew Business Class and therefore received pretty decent food and got several hours' good sleep (God knows I needed it) in a seat that stretched out fully. Secondly, I sat next to a sun-tanned Russian hunk, a rare specimen. :-)

I haven't had a chance to read up on China in general nor Beijing in particular, so my only three, correction four, planned must-do's except for work in the coming week are: the Great Wall of China, the Ming graves, the Forbidden City with the Emperor's Palace and, last but not least, testing the Chinese dance scene at some salsa club. :-)

Stay tuned!

Stockholm 155m from above

2007-04-26T13:02:00.000-07:00

We have just finished a two-day quarterly conference with our department at work. It’s been a productive team meeting but we also got the opportunity to visit the hub of all TV and radio transmission in Sweden, the Kaknäs Tower (brief info in English here) and get a guided tour by Teracom, the state-owned company who manages all the terrestrial TV and radio broadcasting in the country. The reason for the visit was a presentation on Mobile TV so it was good to see how “regular TV” is distributed. The Kaknäs Tower also has a restaurant and café up there and we had a nice dinner with the whole team there last night.

No – we’re not sisters! The red-haired lady to the right is my colleague Agnes :-)

The Kaknäs Tower was built in the 1960’s and is located on Gärdet, part of the Östermalm area in Stockholm. It is a 30-story high (155 meters) building with a fantastic view over Stockholm City and its surroundings – see photos below. The tower has its name after a medieval village called Kaknäs which was located here once.

Djurgårdsbrunnsviken

Lovely Lovisa

2007-04-26T03:06:00.000-07:00

This past Sunday I visited my friends Malin and Jesper and my god-daughter Lovisa at their home in Vasastan in central Stockholm. Lovisa is such an adorable baby! Please note the red hair - I wonder if this was the reason I was trusted with the honor / responsibility as god-mother...? She could have been my own. Time will tell if she's as strong-willed and temperamental as me. ;-)

Gabriella's birthday mingle

2007-04-20T17:23:00.000-07:00

I'm at one of Stockholm's most popular Schlager bars, Lemon Bar, on Kungsholmen. I've been to a fabulous mingle party at Gab's apartment with incredible and successful women (where were the equally successful men?!).

I heard great stories from Gabriella's ski friend Pernilla who just came back from three weeks in the Swiss Alps which were much different from my own Engelberg experience this year. She had the most fantastic time with great puff powder, so now there is a plan for next year's skiing. I must convince Eva - who's currently bumming around in Australia for 3 weeks sending me SMS reports from Sydney and Surfer's Paradise - and our Kittelfjäll friends to go for a long weekend in Verbier (apparently good for partying after skiing) and then a week in Andermatt, lots of snow guaranteed! :-)

Gabriella - Thanks for a fab night!

Birthday lunch for Henke

2007-04-18T19:41:00.000-07:00

Today I had lunch in the Kista Center foodcourt with my friend Henrik to celebrate his recent birthday. We ran into Camilla, one of our very good university friends, her two kids Signe and newborn baby Anton, and her parents from Gällivare. The baby was a real cutie!

Henrik and Camilla

Camilla, new-born Anton and Signe

Salsa party in Älvsjö

2007-04-14T16:27:00.000-07:00

I've just been to a very nice salsa party arranged by Octave and Elisabeth with 30-40 people in a residential area in southern Stockholm. The photo shows Lena, a South-African lady, Fredrik, Helena, Pernilla and Enrique.

Easter visit in Värmland

2007-04-10T11:18:00.000-07:00

Testing mobile Blogger... The photo below shows my Mom and her dog Wilma, taken with my K810 Cyber-shot phone.

Mom in black and white

Miami South Beach – salsa y playa!

2007-04-09T11:30:00.000-07:00

I decided to spend last weekend in Miami after the business trip to Orlando. It didn’t start off well. My morning plane with American Airlines from Orlando to Miami got cancelled without explanation so all the passengers were forced to go claim their baggage and go back to the check-in counter again. After spending two hours waiting in a line with surprisingly cheerful co-passengers – it must be all the sunshine that makes them so happy and relaxed so that no stress or let-downs can affect their good humor – I was rebooked on another flight in the afternoon. This one got delayed 1.5 hours due to an overloaded plane – one of the engines wouldn’t even start before they had offloaded six of the passengers and their luggage! Once we finally got on the runway, we had to wait for a thunderstorm to pass... ‘Thunderstorm’ sounds scary to Europeans but the captain said it like he had a slightly annoying fly in cockpit. A poor French (or French Canadian, perhaps) woman sitting next to me and who didn’t speak English, must have been afraid of flying because she was noticeably worried over the engine issue and the thunderstorm and was fiddling about in the seat. I was mostly irritated that my whole first day of only 2.5 days’ weekend vacation in Miami was getting ruined.

Six hours later than planned, I finally landed in Miami and took a cab to South Beach. My brother’s girl-friend’s mother (the cat rescuer) has an apartment on Washington Avenue, on the 15th floor with a marvelous view of a good part of South Beach. She had been kind enough to let me borrow the apartment over the weekend while she was in Los Angeles. This turned out to be only a few minutes’ walk from the beach (poor me!) and a couple of blocks up from Lincoln Road, so I was all set.

South Beach area
Washington Ave.

Lincoln Road is very good for shopping and has plenty of outdoor restaurants and cafés on the boardwalk. It looks a lot like Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica (CA). After dropping my luggage in the apartment, saying hi to the one remaining cat residing there (the rest are now all in Los Angeles), I went straight down to Lincoln Road, sat down at a café and ordered a cold beer. I let the irritation wash away and started enjoying watching people, the fact that I was in flip-flops in late March (usually winter with snow at this time of year in Sweden) and that I was going salsa dancing that night.

Lincoln Rd

The first night I had dinner on my own at a Thai restaurant on Lincoln Road. The second night I met up with some Canadian and Swedish colleagues at Ocean’s 10, a very popular and happening outdoor restaurant with live music performed by two musicians playing paso doble, salsa, merengue and Gipsy Kings songs with a female dancer basically doing the same moves regardless of music genre but in different costumes. I liked the atmosphere here, though. It was nice to sit outdoors with a lot of people around you, rhythmic music, good company and absolutely fantastic food. This place served delicious pasta!

Johanna

Rob, Fahrad & I at Ocean’s 10

Johanna, Rob, Christian, Fahrad & Andreas

The South Beach area was a funny place with lots of gay people with wimpy dogs, fancy people going out at night along the fashionable and nightclub dense Collins Avenue (next time I’ll try this; it looked fun as I walked north after dinner at Ocean’s 10), tourists and local originals like the patriotic old man on the photo below with the dog. Common for all the locals in Miami seemed to be that they spoke Spanish first, and some of them didn’t even know English.

I mainly had two objectives with this trip: to unwind at the beach and to go salsa dancing.

Salsa clubs

Salsa Mía is a social event that happens every Friday and Sunday at Yuca Lounge. You can take classes and then stay for Latin nightclub. Yuca Lounge was conveniently located on Lincoln Road, so it was very easy and close for me to walk there. This was a quite decent place with good music and a mix of beginners, intermediate and some more advanced salsa dancers. I met two nice fellows, Hiram and Juan, who invited me to dance and then we started talking. It turned out that they go out dancing regularly so they know the best salsa places.

For Saturday night, Juan and Hiram had actually recommended Bongos, a club owned by Gloria and Emilio Estéfan in downtown Miami, which apparently has an outdoor patio where people dance salsa, whereas inside they play a mix of reggaeton, merengue and rock en español. Since I didn’t have a rental car, and the mixed music description didn’t sound too great to me – it usually means “Latin disco” type of crowd, not salsa dancers – I however decided to stay in the South Beach area and try my luck with Café Nostalgia on Collins Avenue and 34th Street. I had read on the web that this "plush little club [...] draws crowds with guayaberas and tight glitter tops while sipping mojitos next to A-listers like J. Lo and Marc Anthony. It's business as usual with top-notch live bands (regional and national acts) until 1:30am or so. After that, the dance floor fills and the DJs spin latin-tinged hip-hop and salsa." After this description, I thought that this would be THE place to go and I anticipated a good salsa crowd.

I arrived to Café Nostalgia fashionably late, after midnight – and after spending $12 instead of $7 because the cab driver couldn't find the place and ended up driving around the nearest blocks 5-6 times ‘til I told him to just stop and let me out and I would find the place on foot. Café Nostalgia was a hole in the wall on 34th Street but when I walked in it revealed a very dark but decent-sized and authentic Cuban place. I immediately saw that there were only a few people, spread out in the bar and at tables waiting for the next set. I considered leaving again but thought I needed to give the place a chance. The Spanish-speaking only waitress asked me if I wanted a table and I sat down, ordered a Mojito and waited for the band to start. The band for the night sounded more or less horrible the first 10 minutes until someone in the band helped the keyboardist find the right buttons on the electric piano. Then all of a sudden something clicked into place and it started grooving. The singer was quite good. A few more people arrived but nobody (!) was dancing – the waitress admitted that this was more of a “sitting down and watching the band” place than a place for dancing – so after a second Mojito I gave up and left.

The waitress recommended me Mango's Tropical Café on Ocean Drive and 8th Street for best salsa dancing. Since she was Hispanic, I figured she should know. I guess the place would have been fun if you’re into watching scantily dressed girls dancing on top of the counter. I am not. Mango’s was a two-story nightclub with Latin hiphop and disco played in the front room and a salsa live band playing at the back. Upstairs was a small room where they played salsa and merengue. There was also a walkway, like a balcony, along the walls so that you could look down on the crowd and the bar in the bigger room downstairs. I met Johan, a nice Latin guy with whom I had also danced at Yuca Lounge the night before, and who actually knew about Sacuye (a well-known dance company from Stockholm and salsa friends of mine). He was about the only decent dancer there that night, so I ended up dancing with him almost all the time until the place closed at 5am.

Miami Beach

I went to Miami Beach for a few hours both on Saturday and Sunday to enjoy sunbathing, reading a book and watch people. The weather was beautiful the whole weekend and close to 30°C. As I stood in line to buy a lunch salad from the kiosk on the beach, I was rather amused by the gay guy in a thong in front of me. I pretended to type an SMS and then slid open the lens cover on my Cyber-shot™ phone and took a photo (see below). I didn’t dare snapping a picture from the front but what he wore was just a fabric pouch – well, the best way to describe it is really a cotton condom! It wasn’t the beach wear I would have chosen but to each his own…

I was left alone most of the time – perhaps because I was probably snoring loudly in my sleep out of sheer exhaustion after many travels – but there were two men approaching me. The first was probably not more than 16 or 17, who walked by, looked down and tried starting a conversation with the opening line, “You’re very cute.” He noticed my disinterest and commented, “So you don’t want to talk to me?” I started laughing and had to tell him “I’m way too old for you!” to which he replied, “I like older women!” Hmpf!

The second man who approached me simply sat down in the sand next to me and started talking. He was an old, semi-alcoholic Cuban who had gotten his American citizenship by joining the American army. He gave me a very long lecture on war history and politics, from Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba, to the long US presidential line-up since the Second World War. He was clearly a Republican and mostly talked about the presidents who had taken the nation to war, from Roosevelt to John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan to Bush Senior and Junior. He was of the interesting opinion that the best (or rather only) way to win a war was to go in and make sure you wipe out everybody in the enemy population, otherwise the survivors will spend their life retaliating. Since I didn’t know if he was on drugs – on the whole he seemed rather harmless, but you never know – I didn’t dare arguing too much with him. Granted he had more experience of warfare and politics than I do, I therefore took the opportunity to listen to his opinions, historic analysis and conclusions from all the wars – World War II, Vietnam, Cuba, the fights over the Suez Canal, the Gulf War, Iran/Iraq, etc. Quite interesting but a tad longwinding for a tired Swedish girl in need of rest.

Me on the beach

Jellyfish
Beach walk

Although Miami turned out to be somewhat of a disappointment from a salsa perspective, I thoroughly enjoyed the weather, the beach, shopping and restaurants. In this Hispanic Mecca, I had expected to find the same class of dancing as at international salsa congresses where you really find the crop of best dancers from around the world, but maybe I just didn’t find the right spots. Downtown Miami is perhaps the place to go to find the best local dancers and salsa clubs. Next time, I’ll give Bongos a shot. There will definitely be a next time. I have only begun to discover Miami.

Tradeshow in Orlando, Florida

2007-04-09T10:44:00.000-07:00

Last week of March I went to Florida (US) for the first time in my life. The reason was a business trip to conduct press interviews and talk about the next-generation Java™ umbrella standard for mobile during the three-day tradeshow CTIA WIRELESS 2007 on March 27-29th at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando. CTIA is supposedly the world's largest convergence marketplace with over 50,000 attendees (I don’t think it draw that many), 20% international participation from over 100 countries, and representing a global industry with 2.3 billion subscribers worldwide. However, those who have been to this show before said it seemed much less busy and had less product announcements and news compared to previous years. The location, i.e. city and state, has varied over the years. It seemed that CTIA had been overshadowed by 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona this year, and many American companies had chosen to go there.

Straight off the plane from Europe, hardly getting any sleep after the ski trip to Kittelfjäll, I went to work at a big press event at the Peabody Hotel on Monday night. There is a company called Pepcom that arranges Mobile Focus cocktail receptions for press and analysts the night before all the major tradeshows in the US where various players in the wireless industry book a table and showcase their latest phones and applications. This is a good way for media to be updated on the news of the show and meet the key players in one focused place for a few hours. When the event was over I must confess that I was glad to go to the hotel and sleep. I met my boss at 7am the morning after to finalize presentation material for an analyst session, and then I had a number of press meetings at the Sony Ericsson booth during the show.

The second night I attended a Sony Pictures Television Mobile Entertainment party at the Hard Rock Hotel’s Lobby Lounge & Velvet Bar. It was a nice mingling party but I am pretty sure that the house/techno DJ was disappointed that noone was dancing. I met Art and Gerardo from a former partner company and had a really good time.

I stayed at the Portofino Bay Hotel on Universal Boulevard. This was located on the Universal Orlando Resort properties and you could actually take a boat ride for free from the hotel ‘harbor’ to Universal Studios. I must say that the Portofino was a rather nice hotel – granted artificial, reminding me of the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas but with a more relaxed style. The Portofino properties were big and everything was built to imitate an Italian fishing village with the same name. The hotel and restaurant staff greeted you in Italian, all the signs were in Italian and the architecture was ‘Mediterranean-looking’ with colorful facades (not that old buildings normally are very colorful in Italy, but I suppose that different shades of pink, yellow and orange are prettier at sunset). I love Italy so I thought the concept was great! It helped you relax after a hard day’s work at the tradeshow and feel like you were on vacation.

Hotel entrance
Portofino Harbor

Every night after sunset, there was a Musica della Notte show on the balconies overlooking the Harbor Piazza. A spotlight was switched on to highlight the singers as they performed old romantic Italian serenades, pieces from operas or Dean Martin songs in English. I’m a romantic fool so I wished I could have danced on the piazza with some dark, handsome stranger… ;-)

Harbor Piazza

I visited four different restaurants located around the Harbor Piazza at the Portofino, mostly together with colleagues:

Bice – high-class Italian restaurant with good service, excellent food and wine; a place where people dressed up to eat.

Mama Della’s Ristorante offered a more family-style dinner with incredibly good pasta dishes and live entertainment at the table.
Trattoria del Porto – excellent pizza and a good place to sit and listen to the Musica della Notte with a view of the whole harbor at the outdoor tables.
The Thirsty Fish – nicely located with outdoor tables next to the water in the harbor but with terrible service and only “nibbles” to eat.

The weather was beautiful and sunny. Coming directly from skiing in Kittelfjäll, I found Orlando quite hot, 25-28°C, and humid. The Portofino had three different pool areas. On my last afternoon in Orlando I spent a few hours at the Beach Pool where all the families with small kids had gathered. I laid down on a sun bed, ordered a beer, read a book and within minutes fell asleep…I wouldn’t mind more work days like this.

Beach Pool

I took a walk round the hotel properties and passed also the Villa Pool which I would imagine is used by adult parties and older people who want a little more piece and quiet. This pool area also offered a hot bath and Jacuzzi.

Villa Pool

Everyone I talked to in Orlando, from the limo car driver to the hotel cleaning lady, the waiter at the pool, the Trattoria bust boy who brought me a double espresso without even charging for it (just said, “Don’t worry about it!” when I tried asking), the store clerk at the Universal Orlando Resort gift shop – whom had taken a cruise with her husband in Scandinavia last summer and “loved Stockholm” – to the female janitor with bad teeth at the Convention Center who complemented my high-heel Betsey Johnson shoes, were very down-to-earth friendly and laid-back. To me they appeared sincere in their happy politeness and seemed content with their lifestyle no matter where on the social ladder they found themselves, and who can blame them when they get to live in a piece of paradise with sunshine every day.

Heliski and giggling in Swedish Kittelfjäll

2007-03-29T19:10:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I went to Kittelfjäll in northern Sweden with my three crazy and highly entertaining friends Eva, Henrik and Thomas. We had a blast!

We arrived by coach from Stockholm with a travel guide company called Active Ski after a long ride over night, with some interesting sleeping arrangements. During a stop to eat supper, all the seats in the bus were rearranged to form two long rows of bunk beds along the long sides of the bus. It was very intimate and cozy, as can be seen from the picture below…

Kittelfjäll is located in southern Lappland, about 130 km from Vilhelmina. It is generally perceived as one of the best offpist ski resorts in Sweden with its varying terrain with a mix of ravines, forest as well as clear-cut forest areas, corridors and drops, and of course the helicopter rides to surrounding mountain tops.

When we arrived to Kittelfjäll we had breakfast at the Kittel Hotel and then went heliskiing with the Kittel Guides. I heliskied twice last year and at the time had the good fortune of skiing after a whole day and night’s snowfall – which kept me smiling happily for days afterwards – but this time around there was rather little snow since it hadn’t snowed for weeks (too warm winter here just as in the Alps and Sierra Nevada, if you remember). We couldn’t have asked for nicer weather, though. The sun was shining, we had clear-blue skies and 6-8°C on the ground in Kittelfjäll and around freezing point up on Risfjäll and Marsfjäll where we were dropped down on three different spots and skied all the way down to the pick-up points. Our guide Magnus Nordström was the same as we skied with last year, a very nice and friendly guy who describes the ‘best runs’ down the mountain to the group of people he brings down and asks people to spread out so they don’t spoil each other’s snow. There is usually a mix of alpine skiers and snowboarders on these heliski trips. A number of photos below showcase the experience of the day (click on them to see the hi-res versions).

Hitting the slopes and making excuses for coffee breaks and a beer in the sun

Kittelfjäll only has four different lifts but none of them are very long, nor are the slopes very challenging. If you’re in decent shape you generally don’t have any problem skiing down in one go without stopping to catch your breath or rest your muscles. You definitely spend 4-5 times longer time in the lift than actually skiing. Given that there was so little snow this year, it didn’t make much sense to go offpist in one of the ravines to vary the skiing either. If you did you ran over rocks or twigs that the thin snow layer didn’t manage to cover. After every ten or less rides on the same slope(s), we therefore found it a legitimate excuse to visit the ‘Summit Cottage’ (Toppstugan) for a coffee, hot chocolate, waffles, chocolate cake or whatever presented, or having a beer on the hotel balcony terrace in the sun. We just enjoyed sitting talking and laughing hysterically at just about anything.

I don’t know if it was the general atmosphere in Kittelfjäll of all down-to-earth people who work and visit there, memories of fun episodes from last year’s trip, the general relaxation and fresh air, or the company that made us all so giggly, but we basically laughed constantly for 3.5 days.

Hilde and Rut, two cool chicks (not mine, I might add) coming along for the ride…

HiQ invasion and Pink Hink after ski band
In the late afternoons and later at night, a very popular and entertaining after-ski cover band with the creative name Pink Hink (“Pink Bucket”) was playing in the bar at the Kittel Hotel. This particular weekend, there were probably a hundred HiQ consultants from Stockholm in Kittelfjäll for conference and teambuilding activities. They actually brought their own band, The HiQ Experience, who altered on stage with Pink Hink. The HiQ Experience was what Swedes would call “hellre än bra”, which basically means that their willingness to play wildly exceeded their skills… The HiQ consultants nonetheless partied and danced like crazy, regardless of who played, so there was nothing wrong with the party mood of the pack and we all had great fun.

“My skis are stolen!” Eva exclaimed when she came out of our ski lodge on day two, and she went to call the rental shop in Stockholm and file a police report. A couple of stressful hours later she suddenly ‘discovered’ the supposedly stolen skis on the same spot she had left them the day before, i.e. before she entered the after ski party… She had not undertaken the same adventurous way of transporting our heavy luggage downhill to the ski lodge as Thomas and I did after the after-ski – see photo below…

Eva and I also ran into an old friend, Peter, from a ski trip to St. Anton six years ago, which of course brought up more skiing memories and topics for conversation and laughs. My friends Anneli & Bosse, who own the apartment in Engelberg where I skied in February (see blog posts 1 and 2), are now married as a result of meeting each other during that trip.

All in all, this was a great and fun ski trip to the north of Sweden. I am looking forward to the planned photo and video viewing evening with Eva, Henrik and Thomas, when the giggling will continue… :-)