Today I’ve been hanging out with David who’s from Guatemala. He barely knows any English so I’m forced to speak Spanish with him and that certainly helps me to learn a lot more Spanish in a short period of time. I need to refine my skills, otherwise I will fail to impress the family who runs the café right across the square where I always have my daily espresso. It’s good to have a place to go to, but I must be their most boring customer since I always order in the same things, a cup of espresso and a bottle of water sin gas. They’ve started to prepare my exquisite order every time they see me crossing the square so it’s ready by the time I enter the café and take a seat. First I wasn’t sure as to whether I should feel offended, but I guess that it’s some sort of act of endearment (hoho!) since they’ve started to smile at me instead of frowning ever since I told them in Spanish that I’m here to learn the language.

At any rate, my head feels like a frisbee after today’s conversations! I’m off to bed now. One day left and then I’m leaving for Örebro where I am to spend a couple of days before it’s time to travel south again.

I guess I might have to go back to Seattle to find the gems, but as I feel right now I’m not too keen on going back for a while. I rather go back to Portland. At least our hotel room was awesome.

This time I got to see a bit of the central parts of Portugal, including a visit to Coimbra, which is the third largest city in Portugal. We travelled south from Oporto to Pedrogão Grande where we were to play at the open air party. The party itself wasn’t the best I’ve experienced in my lifetime, but I met some old friends there from Oporto and it’s always great fun hanging out with Renato and his friends. I wish, however, I had a better grasp of the Portuguese language. Not as many people as expected showed up, though, and I felt sad to see the disheartening look on the promoter’s face for he had worked hard to pull it off. We had a good time, but sadly I learnt afterwards that my friend Colin had his laptop stolen at the party. Bastards!

All in all, I had a good time in Portugal. I really like Oporto. I hope I can make it back to Oporto again before the end of the summer. The coffee, the people, the atmosphere. Oporto rocks.

The police here are a little different from that of Sweden. Here, the riot police take off their badges before they go into battle, hence they cannot be identified afterwards should they have violated any laws  in the case of an unsuccessful action. People got beaten up badly, young and old, fans and Joes, and the more aggressively minded part of the crowd responded by throwing glas bottles at the police. We were in the middle of the chaos, sitting peacefully on a curb on Plaça de Catalunya, hoping they wouldn’t beat us since we didn’t do anything whereas others were throwing bottles some 50 metres away from us. They spared us during their first round, but by the time they came back for the second round of beating up they decided that we had lost our innocence. Two of my friends got beaten up by the police but they were just standing on the street buying beer from a random guy. In other words, they didn’t act in any way that might have been perceived as aggressive by the police. They were just the unlucky winners of the night. Someone else wasn’t as lucky, though. It was said on the news that a young adult later died from his injuries caused by the police brutality. Mossos d’Esquadra, that special department of the police force, aren’t to be bothered. They’re crazy.

I recorded this video while standing amidst the craziness on Las Ramblas:

We spent about a week in Portland and made a couple of excursions, checking out Mount Tabor, Cannon Beach, Rockaway Beach, Twin Rocks and much more. I definitely want to go back to Portland in the future. Also, the people there are so laid back and the place had indeed a good effect upon me. I miss you guys!

We had to make it to another concourse at Denver airport, having to take trains and stuff, but luckily we made it just in time for our flight to Portland since that one had been delayed by some 40 minutes, for which we were very grateful. Our baggage didn’t make it, however, but it arrived the day after.

At any rate, before we left Atlanta we headed off to Stone Mountain, which is one of the largest granite mountains in the US. That was pretty cool! We took the skylift up to its summit and enjoyed the view from there, 251 metres above the ground (513 metres above sea level). Check out the pictures! Oh, by the way, Charlie if you’re reading this, we hit up a Waffle House and we were thinking about you as we chewed on the greasy waffles! Needless to say, everyone got sick afterwards…

We’re leaving for Seattle tomorrow and on Wednesday we’re heading further north up to Vancouver and Canada! We’ll be back in Portland by 6 pm on Friday and then we’re flying east on Saturday. I guess that we’ll be back in Örebro by Sunday evening.

I woke up quite early and heard gusts of wind outside and walked to the living room to check out the weather forecast. Meg was up as well and we checked out the forecast online and it said that there should be mild winds, mid-50s temperature and some clouds. A few minutes later a tree fell over our house. It’s a duplex kind of building, so our neighbour’s kitchen was completely smashed whereas ours was pretty bad too, although there was merely a large hole in the ceiling through which one could see the cloudy sky. Windows were shattered to pieces, the power went out and there was a large boom as the tree debris was spread about, flying in through the door and the windows. The tree fell across the building and landed on the driveway in which it made a large dent (probably a foot deep). Our car is probably totalled, being nothing but metal waste. Our neighbour’s car survived with a mere scratch. Luckily no one was hurt. Our neighbour had decided to do the taxes in the back of the building instead of watching tv, which he’s probably very happy about today because his favourite spot on the sofa was punctuated by a large branch. At the time when it happened I was sitting in the living room just about to rise from my seat and get a slice of pizza from the kitchen. Had the tree fallen two or three seconds later I guess I might not have been here now.

They don’t know yet if the winds that morning were part of a tornado about to touch down, but some 100 trees fell in the county (in Decatur) that morning and one person has been reported dead. At any rate, we’re fine and no one has been injured. After the accident, we stepped out onto the parkway down which a wheelchair lady came rolling. She was awfully nice, really, but she kept on talking about the end of the world – not exactly the kind of make conversation talk that we longed for at that point – and she summed her story up by saying “when you can’t tell the seasons anymore, the end of days is near”. How positive, thank you, M’am. She invited us over to her place while we waited for 911 to arrive, and she tickled our senses by making coffee for us – decaf – so now it’s official: I’ve had my first cup of decaf. Needless to say, the espresso I had today helped me put everything in perspective: decaf is nothing like the real deal. Period.

After the storm, most parts of Atlanta were out of power. We headed over to a friend’s place where we stayed for the night. It was a little difficult to fall asleep after the events of the day. We sat in the dark gazing into nothingness and passed out. In the morning the next day, we woke up one after another and by 10 am we were all lined up by the window as we were watching a dozen police officers breaking into an apartment right across the street. Everyone was wearing kevlar and had full automatic rifles. Someone was handcuffed and the CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) – yes, the real CSI! – arrived and it was crazy.

Georgia is crazy. There are waffle houses everywhere, black widow spiders, tornados and lots more.
We’re leaving for Portland, Oregon on Thursday. More updates soon!

Upon waiting for the elevator to go to the top, we met people in the hallway who had just been to the top, all of whom had sombre faces. We were wondering whether it was really worth the $20 to go up not to forget the two hours we had spent in line. However, retrospectively I must say that it was worth it. Just check out the incredible pictures, which Åsa took because I wasn’t very keen on becoming knowledgeable as to the ledge and its architecture. So everyone if you’re ever in NY, I recommend that you hit up the Empire State Building, preferably on a nice and sunny day since the building gets struck by lightning more than 100 times every year.

After our little adventure in the sky we decided to head north to Central Park. It was nice just to walk around, sit down on benches a few times resting our legs, talking and enjoying the sunshine. The serenity was disturbed at the Reservoir lake, though. Two families made a scene as one woman decided to punch another woman in the face, yelling at each other, pronouncing words that weren’t contrived for kids’ ears. Some people really do know how to make a scene. That wasn’t the end of the disturbance, however, because when we took the subway south we had to put up with two awful sights: a man slapping his son(?) and screaming at the kid, and a woman who treated her daughter as though she were a monster. What’s up with people? No wonder this nation is full of violence. Speaking of violence, since I got here I’ve seen several tragedies on the news. A few days ago a lunatic went on a rampage killing 13 people at a civic centre some 200km from here, and another guy killed three police officers in Pittsburgh, which is just an eight hour drive from here. Violence, violence, and more violence. It’s worth noting, though, that Swedish newspapers say that Talibans were behind the attack at the civic centre barely mentioning the fact that this information comes from Sky News and it hasn’t been confirmed. Sky News, which I consider being a channel full of biased news, isn’t a very reliable source if you ask me. Moreover, not even one channel that we’ve seen here in the US has said that Talibans were behind the attack. Talibans have not been mentioned and all not even on Fox News, a channel known for its biased news (remember that the vast majority of Fox News’ viewers believed a while ago that Iraq has been liberated, schools are open for everyone and the people has never been as happy before as now).

Before he left, however, we paid a visit to a jazz club. We were supposed to hit up Blue Note, one of New York’s most famous jazz clubs if not the most famous,  but we had missed the last performance of the evening. We decided to hit up a place right across the street called The Zinc and arrived just in time to catch that evening’s last performance. Hercules something and his friends heated up the place as their Latin American jazz tunes spread about the venue. That was awesome! I wish I had taken my camera with me for the place was so cosy that I would’ve loved to have caught it on picture, small tables which were good for two located in front of the scene, dimmed lights and quite cheap beer for being in Manhattan.

Jazz parties haven’t been our sole source of entertainment, though. Last Thursday I myself played at Sullivan Room (on West 3rd Sullivan St). The party was all right even though not as many as expected showed up, probably because of lack of promotion. Who cares, we had a good time and I got to meet some old friends, whom I’ve met in person before, and some new friends whom I’ve previously only been talking to over the net. A couple of friends came out from Philly as well, my dear Unwasted Tomato(es), who by the way are just about to release their debut album. For what it’s worth, the party where I played at was called Swedish Fish. The name comes from a particular type of candy that they have over here which is a different version of our pastellfisk candy that, unsurprisingly, has been adapted for the American market. Not only do they rip off on brilliant series such as The Office or boundbreaking films like Ringu but also on our candy.

Hey what’s up with you guys back home? What’ve you been up to and what are your plans for the summer? Spice up my Saturday with a little correspondence, will you?