VHG26

- and it is not the festival we are on. Everybody talking about the festival in Roskilde. Huge music and pee festival that makes me think: hard work. But never mind, we are on something else. We are on brown rice. Brown rice, steamed vegetables and fresh fruit. Water, herb tea, juice, rice milk and rice crackers. But why? Time for a full body rinse and hopefully let go of some of those extra kilos.

And it hurts when my kidneys are rinsing out, my body feels like a sensible flu in waves, my shoulders like spaghetti of rusty iron wires getting electrified and the evil spirit driven out with pain and garlic. So I take warm baths with aromatic salt and pepper. I sleep to escape the pain… and even during this I will rather be in my painful body, than at the Roskilde festival in the pee and the wee and the shit and puke and fuck and punk and extreme letting-go-of-the-limits-pumped-up-atmosphere.

I sit here in my dry home and enjoy the sound of the neighbors fire in the garden and the blue nightsky. I know there are so many experiences out there under our sky, so many things happening, so many people to meet and talk to and be silent with. I am happy and I am on it…

Nimbus was going for a work trip to Vilnius, Lithuania, and I came along. Bringing my work, since there was internet connection at the hotel.

I had never been at the Baltic countries, but I fell in love at first sight. The combination of indo-european and Soviet architecture and culture, the knee-high-socks-shops, the linnen-clothes, a strong drawing culture visible in the graffitti all over town, the sauna at the hotel, the way to combine wood and stone in the architechture, the way they wear crazy clothes with patterns and colours, and the reserved but friendly attitude of the Lithuanians…. I love it.

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Watching World Cup on the street bar, with oldschool televions

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Old empty building in the sunset

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stencils are used a lot in the street-art. This one had to go to the vhg26.dk

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Soviet building in the old city. Old, ancient and new architechture are mixed all over town

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a beautiful sky and light, also at sunset time

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I think this building look a viking ship

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Then we rented bikes and went geocaching and for a TV tower visit

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View of Vilnius from the TV-Tower

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The Vilnius TV-Tower has a turning restaurant (like Alex), but in this place there are only few visitors and low prices. Having lunch and a beer in the turning restaurant 165 meters above ground level is absolutely fantastic

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Huge soviet time concrete suburb, raising from the forrest. Looked crazy.

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The sky was getting darker and seeing this picture after the rainy bike trip home, we should have known how wet we were going to be...

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Geocaching is about finding small containers that other people have placed and described on the internet. his sport takes you places you wouldn have found if you just go as an ordinary tourist. This is a sculpture from a Finnish artist, in a suburb of Vilnius. We did not find the cach though....

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The rain just started. Later we were so wet, driving through the forest, that I could not touch the camera without drowning it...

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All in all a fantastic city. I am sure I want to go back.

When you are going to Vilnius, it is much recommended to rent bicycles at http://velo-city.lt

Vilnius traffic is kind of cute and not to many cars. You bike at the pavement, which makes it pretty safe and bicycle paths are drawn on the pavement and roads many places. This was the best holiday I had for a loong time.

/K.

Some friends are going away in a boat. They are going to be away for a while and had a farewell party at the boat and harbour. A spring day in Copenhagen with a bit of sun, some wind and some clouds. Not much rain though. It was very cosy day. Here are some pictures:

Thank you and have a wonderful trip full of water and love and fresh fish and salt and sun…

We are going to miss you!

Yes!

Nimbus is back in Copenhagen. Wounded knee, but happy. And we are HAPPYYYYYY…..

Happy Valentines Day and Fastelavn to all of you

http://picasaweb.google.dk/KaeDhee7/AfrikaDecember2009#

Tofo Beach December 2009

Det er Aske og Eva og Nimbus ude i vandet

The problem is just that I am in Denmark, so I can’t really make to the court in Maputo.

You ask why? - I’ll tell you..

Well, Mette was going to a wedding in Italy, and I, or we as in Nimbus and I, were going to South Africa, to pick up our friends in just a couple of days and I had to finish that dress for Mette before I left and before she left for Italy. So we had to find some useable material and the shops in Maputo are closed for lunch break between 11, sometimes 12, and 15. So we were in a hurry. I had picked up Mette, and we were, yes I know, bad excuse, but we were a bit late, since her water was all on the floor cause the water mixing battery in the bath were broken and  … yeah, we were late and I drove around 65 on the Marginal road. Police stopped me and gave me a fine. 1000 meticais, about 200 dkk. I did not have the money and they wrote me a nice fine with my fathers name and profession, and my mothers name, and all kind of useable information. They told me to pay the fine at the central police station within 10 days, and finally let us go. Did we get to the shop, I honestly don’t remember if we got there before they closed or not…

I actually finished the dress and went of to south africa, well knowing I would return to pay the fine within the 10 days.  We picked up our friends in Nelspruit, had some cold days in the mountains, our automatic gearbox broke down, left the car in Nelspruit, lended a car from the workshop, next day the car rear window was broken and our things stolen. We got them back and went to the policestation to explain what happened and make a report. One of the thiefs were there and had a slap in the face, while we looked, just to demonstrate their effectiveness. But we got out, went to the workshop and picked up the most important and valuable things from the car, since the car is often robbed at the workshop, cause its open and the workers are badly paid. But we took what we could carrie and got back to Maputo by bus, arriving at night.

If you think you have read this story before, its cause it is here on the blog in a more detailed version.

At this point of the story you might have forgotten everything about the fine from the Marginal. I had!

But when I remembered, I knew that the paper fine was in the car in nelspruit and I could not do anything before it got back. When the car got back, I don’t know what happened to the fine but I never went to pay it at the central policestation. We talked about the possibility to go there without the paper and tell them: I was stopped at the Marginal and got a fine, I dont have the paper but I want to pay the money….

I did not believe it would be possible to find my paper in the police office, and I had so much to do, that thinking of spending a couple of days waiting for them to look through their papers were stressing me shit.

I left Mapto without paying, and honestly, I thought I would never hear about this thing again, but today, a letter was delivered to our house in Maputo, to tell me to be in court tomorrow morning at 8.00, in Maputo. Obviously I cannot make it, and I hope my clever husband and his colleagues are going to get me out on this…

Otherwise I have to steal a jet and fly real fast!

Partyyyyyy….

Or so I would have expected. But Maputo is absolutely dead, sleeping, stoned, lame and quiet. We have been driving around to most bars in Maputo from 22 to 01.30 and we found like 3 out of 15 bars open. Very few people on the streets and absolute zero activity in the open bars.

We went to this cocktail bar, known for its crowded party feeling. It was empty and the well-preserved interior from late 1960’s, stood sharp and crispy with the two black barmen wearing butterflies and the musician singing classics, in the room carpeted with longhaired cosyness and hessian cloth wall paper (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hessian_(cloth) ). We were expecting a laughing dwarf and a beauty in a long red silk dress entering the room, when the musician told us he had just landed in the airport, and put on these dark glasses and started singing like Stevie Wonder. We were timelooping.

But the interesting thing tonight were not that we were the only ones out in town, but where the hell was all the others? Maputo is usually crowded all night long, when it is not freezing cold or the middle of the month, but tonight it was hot and perfect weather for a party, almost fullmoon and everybody should have some money, since it was just payday. But they must be home saving their energy for tomorrow.

Straaaange……

This was your reporter from Maputo from the very last day of 2009 in Maputo, Mozambique

I have been offered a position in Danish Family Planning Organisation (Sex & Samfund) from 15^th of February.

I am going to make financial task in connection with budgeting, implementation and monitoring international projects

The international projects take places both in Africa and Asia.

I am also going to make capacity building also in terms of administration and financial matters at the implementing partner organisations.

Furthermore I will have to build up a reporting and monitoring structure for EU projects

I am looking very much forward to this job.

And most important I am going to be close to my family and friends in DK as well