Ladies Night

photo by Saga Sig

Musical Monday #14: Chemical Brothers

Wisely, Rachel and I decided to see Hanna at Cinemagic where the chairs rock. This proved useful for bumping to the Chemical Brothers soundtrack. Enjoy.

Musical Monday #10: Annie

If you've been cruising with me in the Ranger lately, you've heard this. To those of you who haven't, you're welcome. Having taught child dance for nearly three years, I was constantly on the prowl for good pop and hip hop with a positive message without profanity. Not an easy task when you take into account I also have to kind of like it/not be annoyed by it. In doing so, I found Annie. I never ended up using any of these tunes for choreography, but I was surprised to discover that her most recent album "Don't Stop" is good synthy pop with better than average lyrics all the way through. Plus she lives in Berlin, where all cool Scandinavians end up going at some point or another...

Happy Socks

I found this website on Neet's blog and experienced a strange sort of recognition while browsing through. I entered to check out the hemp/recycled yarn socks (lower right) but stayed for the bright colors and awesome patterns. The "wait a second, something seems familiar here" feeling was explained when I hit the "about" page. Guess where this company is from. Just GUESS. Hahaha, why? Why do you always tantalize me with your offbeat but not TOO kooky or calculated style, Sweden? Even in SOCKS? They really do have nothing better to do besides think of nice things to make in quality, sustainable ways using perfect proportion and color harmony. How am I supposed to keep up with these people?

www.happysocks.com

Musical Monday #5: Miike Snow

Miike Snow, why are you inside my head? How did you know what it looks like in there? Just in case Matthias sends me home, will you marry me Andrew Wyatt? No? Oh, okay. I still like your music.

May 13th: Adventure Trekkers

I...could probably write a novel about this 36 hour camping extravaganza but, for the purpose of this blog I will summarize it with one humorous anecdote.

Matthias and I can make magic happen if we are both on our game at the same time. Coordinating this takes significant effort from both parties and a load of patience. It is, however, absolutely worth it. After failing to camp on my third to last day in the Netherlands, we refused to fail again. So as mentioned in May 12th, we hit the computer and I wrote ALL of the important times and prices in my sketchbook. We reserved our campsite, destination: VLIELAND (check out the Dutsch Frisian Islands online and you'll want to go too...)

8:17 train to Centraal
8:42 train to Den Helder
9:56 arrive in Den Helder
10:30 ferry to Texel
11:00 arrive on Texel, rent bikes ride 20.4 km to De Cocksdorp
14:30-15:00 arrive in De Cocksdorp
??? Ferry to Oost Vlieland, walk to campsite

Since we both had gear to carry on our backs, I made only one request. Statement, rather. We are not running to catch ANYTHING. We go in enough time to walk.

With nearly everything packed and ready to go the next morning, we hustled it out the door and powerwalked to Muidepoort, bleary eyed and off to a decent start. We even made the rest of our connections with only a few sweaty moments before the first ferry! Upon our arrival on Texel, however, Matthias made an expert suggestion. Let's take the bus to De Cocksdorp. Done. We cruised gently through the grassy knolls of Texel watching sheep and quaint housing pass quietly by. It was nice to sit instead of bike as we had originally planned.

Cool! So it was like, 11:15 and we were already in De Cocksdorp, jumpoff point to the island we were camping on. You will notice on my plan that there are question marks instead of a time. This is because Matthias called several times and could not get ahold of anyone related to this ferry. We figured it would be no big deal. High season is approaching. So we waltzed into this little house of a ferry station and announced that we would like to go to Vlieland, please. The woman behind the desk looked at us incredulously.

Dutch Lady: "Today?"
Caitlin or Matthias: "Um....yes please. (conveying panic through peripheral vision) Our camping reservation is this evening."
Dutch Lady: "Oh. Okay. Then at 5 o'clock you get on the little boat to the beach here and then you take the adventure trekker half an hour to the village in the middle then you rent bikes or walk where you need to go"
Caitlin or Matthias: "We can't....go any earlier?"
Dutch Lady: "No, you go today, you go at 5 o'clock."
Caitlin or Matthias: "It's....not possible to go to the main town, Oost Vlieland directly with the ferry? (The map had shown us a dotted line right there)"
Dutch Lady: "WHAT DO YOU WANT?"
Caitlin or Matthias: (turn to each other, wide eyed) "....two....adults for the adventure trekker at 5 o'clock please. Thank you."

Hahahaha, so she fortunately let us leave some of our gear under a bench there and we were off to kill about five hours in De Cocksdorp. Which actually wasn't so bad. We ate our lunch. We drank our beers on the beach. We realized all Dutch children are blonde. ALL OF THEM. We walked through the village. We chatted with a Dutch guy in German. We ate Patatjes and drank sodas. We postulated about the Adventure Trekker. We looked at souvenirs. We drank hot cocoa and flipped through fashion magazines. We arrived anxiously at the ferry station well before 5 o'clock, but were kindly tolerated and allowed to board.

Turns out we were the only ones headed to Vlieland. Everyone else was on their way back. AWESOME. So we had the ferry to ourselves AND the entire Adventure Trekker. Which turned out to be a ginormous desert beast of a vehicle driven by a seemingly omniscient Dutch man. He even drove us right to the dunes where we could simply disembark into our campsite! No bike renting/middle village debacles. And considering it was nearly 6:30 by the time we arrived, we were grateful.

Vlieland is beautiful. The pictures barely begin to describe what an idyllic place it was. The entire campground was filled healthy, happy Dutch families playing together in the waning northern light. There were miles of unoccupied white sand beach bordered by a navy, brooding sea. It wasn't even that cold. So we pretended that all of the other days we had been planning on camping, it must have been terrible weather. Hurricanes. Floods. Tigers were eating people. So we had to come for only one night instead.

Musical Mittwoch #1

Is it cheating to use the German word for Wednesday for alliteration/convenience sake? No. No it's not is the correct answer.

Something about this video does it for me. It's the original version of Robyn's "Handle Me" from 2005 before they shot the slick, many-outfits-in-a-box-show (which I also like quite a bit). But the lofi simplicity, the darkness, those dudes. This really is the only one I could find, and I kind of love how the resolution sucks. Because Robyn doesn't.

Musical Monday #3: First Aid Kit

I...can't...help...it! They have their claws in me, there's something about them. Their voices really are that excellently brutal; I saw them Friday night at Mississippi Studios. Get behind it.

Musical Monday #1: Wildbirds & Peacedrums

Matthias introduced me to these guys quite a while ago. It wasn't hard to hook me on 2009's the Snake. I am such a sucker for both Sweden and good husband and wife bands (more on that soon...) so with their crazy atmospheric percussion and her witchy, wonderful voice they sort of have it all for me. I even went to see them open for St. Vincent not too long ago and her voice is just as stunning live. Click the pic, listen, love it. Do it.