leonard himself is getting pretty old (75 according to wikipedia) but he’s still got the voice.  for anyone that is unfamiliar with him, he has a very raspy, soulful kind of voice.  he sings a lot of ballad type songs, but also has some more “risque” themes to some of his songs.  he also has some really great poetry if you are in to that kind of thing.  the set itself was almost 3 hours long, which was very impressive.  of course he has a huge collection of songs to choose from, but i did not expect 3 hours worth of music.

with a legendary singer/songwriter like cohen at the helm, you’d expect him to have a great backing band, and that was most definitely the case.  everyone in the band was a very solid performer, but the backup singers (a couple girls called the webb sisters and sharon robinson) and the guy who played 12 string guitar and some other crazy stringed instrumetns (javier mas) impressed me the most.

it’s not everyday that you get to see a world renowned poet, singer, and songwriter all in one night.  i also suspect this will be his final tour so it was great to get to see him.  i just really wish i could write out an adequate review of this show.  all i can say really is that it was amazing and isn’t something i’ll forget for a long, long time.

as far as a relaxing vacation, i wouldn’t say it was that.  traveling overseas requires a lot of time and then you have to adjust to the time change.  on the way back it is the same thing.  this trip was a bit more tiring since i was meeting all of K’s family for the first time, and they had things planned for us pretty much every day we were there.  it wasn’t like we could just sit around one day and relax if we wanted too.  most of the time there were dinners to go to, visiting to do with her family, places to go, etc.

not that i’m complaining.  it was great to have free places to stay and food to eat almost every day.  outside of paying to get there, we didn’t have to spend very much of our own money.  so, all in all i wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.

we left columbus around 1pm on monday and arrived in gatwick airport, south of london at 7am on tuesday.  we had to transfer planes in philly (both on the way there and on the way back).  after we landed in london it was about 3 or 3.5 hours on a few trains to get to the town where K’s cousin lives (just outside sleaford).  we decided the best way to get on the time over there would be to stay up all day and then go to bed that night.  usually i can get a few hours sleep on the 8 hour plane ride over to europe, but this time i couldn’t.  so by the time we went to bed tuesday night i’d been up for about 36 hours.  i couldnt’ remember the last time i’d been up for that many hours straight.  in the end it worked out well though because the next morning we were pretty much on “england time”.

we spent the day on wednesday in london.  i’d been there the last time i traveled to europe, but only for a couple hours between trains.  it was nice to get to walk around some and spend a day there.  we saw st. paul’s cathedral (didn’t go inside though, it was £11 to get in!) and walked around the financial district.  we also walked over the millenium bridge which was cool.  we spent a bit of time walking along the thames and ate in a pretty decent pub on the river.  we walked down to big ben and the parliament building and took the train back from waterloo station.  all in all it was a pretty good sightseeing day.

we flew from heathrow to the airport in oslo where K’s uncle picked us up and drove us down to halden.  halden is the town where K’s mom grew up, and is where her grandmother and aunt and uncle live.  it sits on a river that leads down to the southernmost fjord in norway.  halden is also the border defense town between norway and sweden.  there is a very cool fortress there called fredriksten that we walked up to and checked out.  the history of the fortress is pretty interesting.  since it sits on the mountain looking over the city it also offers some very good views.

norway on the whole is pretty expensive.  the conversion from norwegian crowns to american dollars is to divide by something like 6.5 or 7.  so something that costs 65 crowns is about $10.  at first it is kind of hard to wrap your head around that.  you see something that is like 150 crowns and think “oh my god that is expensive!” but then when you divide it out it’s only like $23.  of course, everything there really is more expensive, so when you are paying like $10 for a glass of beer you really do realize how much more expensive things are.

a couple days before we hiked up to the fortress i took a boat ride with K’s uncle and a few of her other relatives down the fjord to an island where there was a viking burial site.  the burial site is basically a pile of rocks about 6′ or 7′ high.  one the way up to the burial mound there is a carving in the stone of a circle.  it looks like someone ran their finger around and around to make a groove in the rock.  they are not sure what it means, or if it was unfinished or what.  standing on top of the mound was an interesting feeling.  just thinking about the thousands of stones there and how they all had to be carried by hand and placed in the pile hundreds of years ago was weird.  there are native american burial mounds in ohio too, but i’ve never seen those.  now that i have seen this viking burial site, i think i will definately have to check out the native ones here.

the flight back home was pretty uneventful.  we did have our connecting flight from philadelphia back to columbus canceled, so we ended up having to stay at the philly airport for a few more hours.  i was very ready to be home by then, so it was kind of frustrating that we had to sit around and wait that much longer, but in the end it wasn’t that big of a deal.  we were back in our own house by 2am saturday morning.

i’m definately looking forward to going back again someday!

all of the pictures from our trip can be seen here

that said, i’m really looking forward to spending some actual time in another country.  unfortunately we only have 2 days in london, but that’s better than the last time i was there where i only spent about 2 hours in the city, between a train over from bristol (where we flew in to) and a train through the chunnel to paris (where our first “real” stop on the vacation was).

K has family in both london and norway, so we won’t be paying anything to stay over there.  her family also owns a condo in barcelona that we’ll have to visit sometime too.  it’s totally awesome having a gf that has family in europe i’ve decided.

preparing to travel isn’t all that stressful to me.  K finds it exhausting and she gets pretty wound up before we’re even ready to go.  she’s already starting to freak out a bit about the few tasks we have to get done here before we go (having mail stopped, getting someone to come by and water our plants, exchanging some currency, etc).  i find that i get more calm as the depature date approaches.  i try to keep her grounded and focused though, so i guess we make a good team that way.  her seriousness in the planning also helps to balance out my seat-of-the-pants-ness.

marek is going to stay with my p and m, which is also going to save us a good bit of $$.  because he is so large, if we board him he requires his own “kennel run” which basically means he gets a little enclosed yard and crate to sleep in.  this runs about $125 per night at the vets where we board him, so that alone would almsot double the cost for us.  i figure this is the one and only time my mom and dad will be willing to watch him, so what better time than when it’s most expensive?  next time we’ll have to leave him at a friend’s house (they already volunteered and i told them we have a wedding in alabama this winter so they’ll def be keeping him then)

this time around we’re going to take our phones with us.  this is nice becuase last time i made, i think, 2 calls home and they cost me almost $100.  we have iphones (on at&t of course) which is good because they actually work over there.  of course it sucks because we have to pay international roaming charges.  i’m sure i won’t be talking on the phone very much, but it will be nice to be able to have someone call me if necessary and to call back home without having to use my credit card or one of those ripoff international calling cards.  but, that said, we cannot use any data over there as that is where they really rape you.  the guy at the at&t store said under no circumstances should we use data, as the rates are set by the carriers over there, and some of them are like $1/MB (YIKES!)

lamely, i think one of the things i look forward to is deciding what clothes i’m going to take and packing it all up.  i should probably check the expiration on my man card and make sure it’s still good… oh, and reading.  for some reason i always love to read on trips.  i think i read 3 books last time i was in europe (but we did have a lot of train time to read in.  doubt i’ll get that much reading done this time around)

so anyways, i guess i’ve rambled on enough for now.  if any of you have been to london or SE norway (we’re staying in a town called halden) and you have any suggestions on stuff to do/see please let me know.

wish me luck!

let me just say that i really feel for those poor souls down in TX that got completely jacked by ike.  i have a much greater sympathy for them now since i’ve been through this minor ordeal.  not having power sucked for sure, but not having a home at all must be the worst feeling in the world.  so all my love and support to those people that have lost it all in any kind of catastrophe.  also, this is going to seem like minor shit in comparison to their troubles.

that said, here’s my thoughts on our little “adventure”.

for one, it was pretty cool to see the wind blowing like it was.  it was amazing to look up into the sky and see the low lying storm clouds flying by at amazing speeds, but then up above them the higher, wispier clouds just standing utterly still.  i really wanted to see something come crashing down, but i missed it all.  we did have some debris fall near our place though.

debris 1

debris 2

there was some pretty sweet damage other places around town too.  saw this tree brutally ripped basically in two and leaning on another tree next to it.

tree damage

not having power is definitely very shitty.  of course, K and i had just bought groceries the day before we lost power.  by tuesday (almost 72 hours without power) we had eaten what we could and thrown out the rest.

i didn’t really miss tv all that much.  i really only watch a couple of things on it, so i didn’t feel like i needed it to be entertained.  you think “oh, i can read or play a board game or find something else to do” until you are actually in the situation.  have you tried to read anything by candlelight recently?  it fucking sucks.  it gives you a headache after a few minutes.  games are ok but they can be hard to see by flame also.  what we ended up doing was either going to other friends who had power, or else going to bed at like 9pm.

losing power also made me realize just how fragile our society really is.  at first it’s kind of fun.  you get to “camp out” in your own house and burn candles and all that shit.  after a couple of days it starts to get old.  after a few more you think that you’ll never have power again.  i started to think about what it would be like if we lost power for a longer time (or even forever).  it would be hard to feed yourself.  you don’t realize how much food you have that needs to be refrigerated until you don’t have one anymore.  peanut butter (but no jelly, because it needs to be kept cool after opening) and bread gets old fast.  so does slightly cooler than room temperature beer.

let me explain how our little condo neighborhood is arranged.  there is a road that runs around a cluster of buildings, with other buildings around it (see my oh-so-awesome mspaint diagram below).  what happened was, one night while K and i were out running errands the power came back on.  we drove by and saw a neighbors porch light in.  in elation we decide to go get dinner out one last night. this was on weds night, around 6pm.  by the time we made it back home at 7 the power was out in our building and a few others (in black below) while other buildings in our area had power (in yellow below).

let me tell you how annoying this was.  from our back window i could see buildings on the other side of the back street  with every goddamn light on possible. i swear these people went into every room in their condo and turned on every fucking light possible.  it was like they were flaunting their power to those of us a mere 20ft away.  i really felt bad for the people directly across from them that didn’t have power.

powah

so since we saw other people around us with power we knew something must be up.  K calls the power company and lets them know we don’t have power, our neighbors do, etc etc etc.  they tell her that we should have power.  she assures them we do not.  they tell her they’ll look into it and get back to us.

by the next day, we still didn’t have power.  this annoys us greatly, so we call again.  again we get the “you should have power” line.  we tell them again that we do not.  we even go so far as to say we saw someone outside (a neighbor possibly, we weren’t sure) with a flashlight checking out boxes on the poles.  we’re afraid someone is going to try to fix it on their own.  the lady at AEP tells us thanks for the info and she’d put a note in our account.

that same day one of the neighbors comes by while i’m out back grilling.  he introduces himself and asks if we’d called the power company.  i tell him yeah we just did and also that we’d called the day before.  he then tells me that his wife had called, got the whole “you should have power” story so they decided to go around to every neighbor they could find to tell them to call AEP to let them know that there actually is a problem here and we don’t have power.

a few minutes later the previously mentioned wife comes by and tells us that one of the other neighbors she talked to was told that there weren’t enough units out in our area for it to be a “high priority” and that we shouldn’t expect power until early in the following week.

this news disheartened us greatly because we were planning on having a bday party for K on the next day (friday).  we decided that power or not, we were having the party and started to plan accordingly.  we went out and bought about 66lbs of ice and filled our coolers with beer.  we had already gotten rid of pretty much all the food so we went out and stocked up on snacks and stuff for the party.  we came back home around 830 or so and started getting everything packed into the coolers.

of course, about 10 minutes after moving coolers around, filling them with beer, getting candles out and ready what happens?  the fucking power comes back on!  the next day (friday) we had our party, with power, and all was well.

all in all it was an eye opening experience.  dealing with the power company during an emergency can be a real pain in the ass.  the worst part about it is, they’re the power company, so it’s not like you can threaten to get your power from someone else.  you are totally at their mercy.  i’m just glad we didn’t have to go for a full week without power.  the 5 days we did go was bad enough.