Vårkonsert!

Today the Lund University orchestra (Akademiska kapellets) played our spring concert -Vårkonsert. It was in the main hall, and there was a good sized crowd.
The hall is great a great space to play in, the sound is huge! The last chords ring for several seconds after the release.

For anyone who remembers what the music building looked like back in January, here's what it looks like now! So beautiful!
My friend Andrew and me out in front of the mail building before the concert. Andrew is from North Carolina and plays trombone in the orchestra.
After the concert, we had a BBQ with all the orchestra members outside the music building. It was so much fun to get to hang out with all the people from the orchestra. We grilled burgers and had a roasted marshmallows. I'm getting really really excited for the orchestra tour to Washington D.C. next week!

Lundakarnevalen 2010!

On the second day of the carnival, there was a parade with lots of marching bands and floats devoted to this years theme- Right vs. Wrong.....


The volcano, and the chaos it caused was a common theme....
This was a pirate ship (pirating music.... I thought it was clever, the ship was called the Napster)
After the parade, we all went to the circus! It was such a great show, and all the performers and organizers were students- I recognized a few from orchestra.
The show was complete with live music (orchestra above the circus sign...) featuring arrangements of Mozart and Bizet operas, as well as other classical works and several pop songs. There was a storyline (mime falls in love with clown, evil woman steals him away and mime searches for her lost love....) that went through the whole show.
And they had an electric violin player, which was cool. Overall it was such a great show, we were all really glad that we got tickets early (they had to get extra benches out to make room for all the people who came).

The festival basically shut down the city for the weekend, the streets became public walkways and there were more police officers there than I've seen in my whole 5 months here in Sweden. There was a lot of energy in the city, and it was great to see all the people who came from all over to experience karnevalen.

Lundakarnevalen 2010, Musical Acts!

Every four years in Lund, there is a big carnival in the center of town. One of the big attractions is the main stage where they have concerts all afternoon and into the evening. I got to see some great bands and I thought it would be good to do a separate post about it. The first night (after I had taken a nap to recover from my 8am flight back from Scotland), I met up with some friends for dinner and then we went to see Rufus Wainwright play.
His set was really good, but it was kind of more mellow than the crowd seemed to be feeling, and there were a lot of people talking and laughing during his set.
The next day, we all went to the fairgrounds, and heard a band playing that sounded pretty good. We went to listen and they were a really great band! It was a band from Iceland called Retro Stefson, and I bought a CD after their set (two of them signed it for me, which was cool). The band is made up of high school students who formed the band when they were in middle school.
Later that night there was a Brazilian/Swedish singer named Simone Moreno, and her set was a lot of fun. She had dancers and a great band, and the crowd was loving it.

The last day of the carnival, a singer named Pauline performed, and I loved it! She is a R&B singer from Sweden and her songs were smart and fun to listen to.
They set up these risers around the fountain so people could stand or sit there and see the main stage.

Earlier on the last day I saw a woman named Lisa Lövbrand did a great jazz set. I felt bad for her because there was a really small crowd. She had a great voice, and her band was very good. I wish there had been more people there to support her! We tried to cheer as much as possible....

Scotland: Day 5

After much debate, we decided to go to the beach for the day. It was so great to got to the beach, it was so warm! The sun was out, and Helen and two of the girls who live on her floor went swimming in the sea. I didn't have my swim trunks, so I only went in up to me knees- but it was freezing!!
For lunch, we had fish and chips on the beach. We got a whole fish!
We made a sandcastle and then ran and jumped into it.... lots of fun!

Proof that I was actually in the water!! It was much warmer that we realized and when we got back, we realized that we all had gotten a little sunburned.

That night, Helen and I went to Dave's flat for dinner. It was really fun, and Dave made a great meal for us!

Scotland: Day 4

In the morning, I figured out that I could call the travel agency using skype, and I sat on hold for over 2 hours before being connected to the Danish airline that I had originally booked with. After a few minutes talking to the representative, she was able to re-book my flight without any hassle! It was great to have it that easy after all the time and money I spent on the phone just trying to talk to a live person. Having that out of the way, I was free to fully enjoy my extra time in Scotland!

We took the train out to a small town called Queensferry, a nice little town by the sea. We got off the train, and walked through the town and down to the water. Since the tide was out, we walked along the tide pools looking for shells.
We walked across the Forth bridge to the other side, stopping for lunch in the center. It was so cool to look out over the water and see for miles. When we got all the way across, we hiked up a hill looking for the train station.
At the top of the hill we found a playground and had a great time pretending we were still 8yrs old! The picture below is of by far the most fun piece of playground equipment I've seen in a long time.
After the playground we stumbled upon the train station and took the train back into Edinburgh. In the evening, I went to hang out with Dave for a few hours. It was so great to catch up with him, there was so much to talk about since we hadn't seen each other in four years. When I got back to Helen's dorm, we watched Braveheart to fill out my Scottish experience!

Scotland: Day 3

In the morning, Helen and I walked up Aurthur's Seat. From the top, there you can see the whole city. It's such an amazing view, and it was nice to take a hike.

We met up with Dave for lunch on the Royal Mile. We went to a fairly touristy restaurant, and I tried haggis which I liked quite a bit.

Dave and me on the Royal Mile.
Helen and I walked down the Royal Mile tot he palace, where there was a rehearsal for the arrival of some kind of government official the next day. It was so great to see them all marching along to the bagpipes.
That night, we went to what's called a Ceilidh (pronounced kay-lee) which is a traditional Scottish dace. It was so much fun! There was a live band, and everyone danced. It reminded me a lot of contra dancing in New Hampshire, a hot stuffy room with lots of people running around. There was one dance where we did a step called the "basket", where there are two couples and the girls put their arms over the guys shoulders and the guys lift them off the ground and spin in a circle as fast as they can. It was a really fun night, and Helen said that at that point I had experienced pretty much every Scottish thing.

Scotland: Day 2

I got up at 5:45am and took a taxi to the airport, only to find that they had shut down the entire airport for the morning. I waited in line for almost an hour before someone came by and told me that there wasn't anyone from my airline there to re-book, or even talk to. Since my flight was canceled, I took a bus back towards the city center. I got off the bus when I saw the view of the castle below. It was such a nice day, and there is a nice park under the castle that I walked around for a while.
I spent the rest of the afternoon napping and trying to figure out my flight... basically I sat on hold for extended periods of time and used up all the money on my phone without talking to anyone. The next flight out on the airline wasn't till Friday, so there was the possibility that I would have an extra four days in Scotland.

Scotland: Day 1

My first (and only planned) day in Scotland Helen and I set out to do some touristy stuff along the Royal Mile. We went to Edinburgh Castle, which is an amazing castle, and is still used as an active military base.
We took a guided tour, which was really fun. The tour guide told us all about the history of the castle, and all the battles and regimes that the castle has seen. Since it is up so high, the views from the castle are really great.
Me and Helen in the "Great Hall", where kings would hold their banquets and meetings.
The basement of one of the castle buildings used to be a prison for holding prisoners of war. The picture above is an American flag carved into one of the original prison doors. It was carved during the American revolution by an American soldier being held there.
We walked down the Royal Mile to the Cathedral, which was really beautiful. When we walked in there was an orchestra rehearsing at the far end. It was so nice to hear the orchestra is such a live space, it sounded so big!
After the cathedral we went on the Scotch Whisky Experience tour near the castle. The first part was like a Disneyland ride, where we rode in a barrel and a projected ghost explained to us how whisky is made. Next, we went to a room where a guide explained the differences between the different regions where scotch is made. Each region had a scent in a bottle for us to smell (general things like vanilla, flowers, smoke, and herbs), and then we got to pick our favorite smell, and from that the guide would give us a scotch that corresponded with that scent.
Then we got to take our scotch into the showroom where they have the largest collection of scotch whisky in the world- around 3,500 bottles! There the guide told us how to try our whisky and what to look for when tasting different single malts.

Grandpa Gordon, there were four bottles of your brand in the collection! I thought you'd get a kick out of this....
The last display case had all the unique bottles in the collection (all bottles are unopened, which is crazy!). My favorite was the chess set in which each piece is a bottle of scotch- the white pieces are English royalty and the black pieces are Scottish royalty. Our guide commented that "you'd need a drink for that game!"

In the evening, we went back to Helens' dorm and had dinner with some people from her floor. We had a great time, and I kept checking my flight status because I had heard that there were some disruptions. By the time I went to bed, there was still no concrete word about whether or not my flight was canceled because of the ash cloud....