Archive for April, 2010
How I Met Your Mother
How I Met Your Mother is usually hilarious, but this little scene just cracks me up every time. LOVE.
Tunin’ Tuesday on Monday
So.
I haven’t been posting my weekly guitar progress as I said I would. Big surprise there! lol
I actually stopped taking guitar lessons. It turned out I didn’t have the time or money for it. Go figure. I had to choose.. tennis or guitar lessons.. since there are lots of youtube and printed guitar lessons on the internet I decided to stop the guitar lessons. Doesn’t mean I’ll stop practicing though.
I made a little video of my latest progress. It’s crap. And I’m crap. But there you go.
I don’t really have anything else to talk about. It’s been a boring week.. been working on my thesus.. and hating every second of it. The weather has been brilliant though! I’ve been enjoying some cruising in my scimitar with Muse blasting from the speakers. (they’re song Uprising is the BEST listen-to-while-driving-in-the-sun-with-the-wind-in-your-hair-kind-of-thing song!) Had some lovely walks with Murph in the sunshine and of course I enjoyed some beers in the sun with my friends 
. So yeah.. when I say I have been working on my thesus, I mean that I’ve spent little time working on my thesus and loads of time thinking about how I should be working on my thesus, while doing something else entirely.
I’m really looking forward to Queensnight/day. It’s next thursday and at the beginning of the evening I have to fulfill my barkeeper duties at the tennisclub, but after that we’re going to Amsterdam to partaaay.
Bruges. It’s in Belgium
Living up to my New Years resolution of going to a country I had’t been to before, I went to Bruges, in Belgium.
I was supposed to go with Niels, but he canceled, so I went with Mirella instead. We had LOADS of fun!! Bruges is a great city. Like they say in the movie: it’s a fucking fairytale! And I’m just glad we got to see it.
We started the weekend by taking a wrong turn in Belgium and ending up in the center of Antwerp. Oops. Wrong city. After that it went smoothly though and we drove straight to our hotel. The hotel was terrific! It was close to EVERYTHING. Which is not that hard, since Bruges is quite small. But it really felt like we were right at the center of things.
We reserved a spot for our car in the hotel’s parking garage. It was quite narrow. But we got it both in- and outside without a scratch
After we arrived we walked a bit through the streets and then took a boat ride on the canals.
How’s the boat ride? Errrrr. IT’S FUN! (y)
According to a myth, the swans never leave Bruges because of a curse.
The houses and buildings are all so beautiful.
The bridges are verrrrrry low.
After the boatride we drank our first Belgian beer on the big square, with a perfect view on the Belfort tower.
We ended the day with a big bag of ‘Vlaamse frieten’ aka Flemish fries and a long walk through the shopping streets.
Oh wait.. no we didn’t. After that we went to the cinema. They have the cutest cinema’s in Bruges. The ones in the centre only play art-house films. They have a big blockbuster one just outside the centre, but you can only go there by car. So we went to the one that was practically next to our hotel and watched The Ghost Writer. Which is an excellent film. But the experience was kind of weird. The cinema had no bar, so you couldn’t get anything to drink or eat (what? no popcorn?!!). Then, when it’s time they first start the movie trailers (lights still half on). Then, they show the commercial reel, followed by some more movie trailers. And then they just stop, turn on full lights again and let you sit there for 10 minutes before they start the actual movie! It wasn’t a mistake either, because everybody just picked up their paper or started chatting, like it was normal. I thought it was the weirdest thing.
Anyway. For anyone who thinks Utopolis Lelystad is stuck in an old building. Think again.
(that’s the cinema we didn’t go to btw. i don’t have a pic of where we went)
The next day we started off good by climbing the Belfort tower. It’s about 80 meters high and you have to walk 366 very narrow steps to get to the top. You get a nice view on Bruges from the top. Too bad for us they were renovating the place, so we only had two view points, instead of all the way around the tower.
We’re ready!
And getting redder with each step..
Watch out for the paparazzi!
About halfway up you can see the bells hangin’. They’re huge! You don’t want to stand next to those at 12 o clock.
And up we go again.
Until finally we reach the top
The walk downstairs is actually more challenging than the journey up (in my opinion anyway). Because when you go up you’re not going fast enough to realize how bad you’re walking in circles. Especially because you have to wait every few steps to let the people going downstairs go through (the steps are too narrow for two people to normally cross each other). But when you go downstairs you’re walking really fast and everybody lets you through first (because like we were when going up, the ones going up are happy to just stand for a second to catch their breath). I ended up getting reallllly dizzy! lol
We made it downstairs safely though.
After this joyful experience we took a 2 hour Segway tour. How fun is that? I can tell you, it’s LOADS OF FUN!! It’s the thingy where you stand on and when you lean forwards it goes forwards and when you lean backwards it goes backwards. It’s so much fun!! In the beginning it feels kind of weird and especially the fact that you can’t ever step off of it (because then it will just leave without you) is a kind of scary thought. But after 5 minutes it feels so natural that it doesn’t even feel like you’re doing anything to make the thing move. It’s a really fun way to see Bruges. I’d recommend it to anyone!
We saw loads of cool stuff during the tour and even though it’s not very tiring since you’re not actually moving, we still felt like chilling out and having a beer afterward .
After a couple of beers we walked around some more to see if we could find back some spots we went by with the tour. Especially the spot where they supposedly make the best hot chocolate ever. But we couldn’t find it 
. We did find another place they sold hot chocolate though. We also bought some chocolates to bring home and some yummie marzipan. We also went to the holy blood chapel where they have a vile with a few drops of Jesus’ blood in it. We lit a candle in the chapel, but didn’t go up to touch the vile with blood since, you know, we don’t worship Jesus. It was a pretty chapel though.
Random Bruges street
We ate at a very cute and posh restaurant. With chandeliers and everything. We tried our best to look posh, but failed miserably. We ended up with an uncontrollable laughing fit. And the worst thing is.. everybody speaks Dutch so you can’t even pretend they don’t know the weird ass things you’re talking about!
After another stroll to see the beautifully lid up buildings we ended the night by going to a pub. Or started the next day by going to that pub. It ended up being a long and eventful night, with lots of beer, lots of Flugel and lots of British bachelors.
The canals looks pretty spooky during the night
See, there’s a ghost already!
Pretttyyy
The building on the left is the holy blood chapel.
They made this house so that it looked on fire. It even had fire coming out on the top of it. It’s all make believe though. (I hope.)
Much later. In a drunken state.
The next morning we didn’t do very much at all. We had a couple of more drinks and bought some more chocolates at this cute store.
We spent most of our chilling time on the ‘Beiermarkt’. This is also the place to go pubbing. We spent the night at the pub on the left, because it had happy hour lol.
Cute chocolatier
All in all, I had fun. We saw loads of cool things, partied, met nice people, didn’t have a drop of rain all weekend and got back home safely. What else can you ask for?
Next month it’s a week of beach and sunshine in Spain. Then in June it’s time for another city trip that I’m reallllly looking forward to: Budapest!!
Tunin’ Tuesday
So. I’ve decided to make a weekly vid of my guitar progression/lesson. I’m doing this for me because I think it’ll be fun to see the progress in a while (let’s hope for progress). It might be embarrassing now, but you know, maybe someday it won’t be as embarrassing because I’ll be fantabulously good!! :p
So… if you think it’s stupid than just ignore my vids and.. you know.. stop visiting this site 
.
This week I feel like I took two steps back instead of one forward. Apparently I didn’t practice the last bit right. Well, I did it somewhat right, but I muffled the highest (in tone) string with my fingers when I strummed the lowest string. Which my teacher has now forbidden me. Since then, I have been struggggggling to find the right string when I have to strum the low string with my thumb.
Anyhoo.. he also gave me a new rhythm to practice. Which is the one in the vid.