Yesterday we were at a barri festival in Vall d’Hebron, which is a type of town festival where the locals in that particular borough celebrate their area by blowing up fireworks, setting up a flea market and getting drunk. I took a few pictures, some of which you will find attached to this post, while the others ran around blowing up fireworks. We had great fun! Check out the pictures, will you?

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.

Here’s a flashback post on our recent trip to Seattle, WA. I was very excited to go to Seattle, having heard stories of the city being a haven for vegans and anyone who has a predilection for unique music, keeping in mind all the artists that hail from Seattle such as Chris Cornell and Nirvana. Upon leaving for Vancouver, however, I felt disappointed. We had been running around trying to find at least one vegan restaurant downtown but without success and, later, I learnt that supposedly the place to be is King’s Hill (or something like that, the name of the area escapes my mind for the moment) which we had no clue about. Next time, I guess… At any rate, we hit up the Experimental Music Project which is supposed to be an awesome museum-like place but unfortunately they had closed at 5 pm (!), which we thought was a little early. Listless with nothing to do, we decided to hit up the Space Needle so we at least could say that we’d done something during our one day visit. We went up to the observation deck 160 metres above the ground and it felt almost ridiculous after having been up in the Empire State Building just a couple of weeks before that, where we were leaning on the ledge some 380 metres above the ground. Moreover, it was swaying a lot. Whatever they say to you to calm you, it does sway!

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.

I was in Portugal from the 2nd of May through the 5th to play at the Not Too Cheesy 2009 open air party in Pedrogão Grande. Previously I’ve only been to Oporto (and Lisbon airport, if that counts) so I was excited to see a little more of Portugal, a country which I really like. Had it not been for the language, for learning how to pronounce things like a Portuguese isn’t very easy, I could easily see myself living in Oporto in the future. Plus, the people there are 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.

A couple of days ago we went to a bar to see the Champions League semifinal between Chelsea and Barcelona. It was absolutely crazy to watch it here in Barcelona, cheering amidst a chaos of fan and beer. Chelsea got an early goal and was in the lead up to the 93rd minute when Barcelona tied the game, thus paving the way for Barcelona to the Champions League final where they’re going to play Manchester United. After the game, we went to Las Ramblas andPlaça de Catalunya to celebrate with the other fans. The atmosphere there was incredible and the celebrations went on for hours. The police, however, were not too happy about the celebrations and decided to attack the happy fans at around 2 am.

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:

On the flight from Denver to Portland a woman seated next to me and I got into conversation as she noticed that we were Swedish. She told me that her great-great something had emigrated from Sweden to the US in the late 1800s, and had settled in Oregon. She kept on praising Oregon, saying Oregon is “God’s state”, and retrospectively I concur, however without the religious touch to it. It really is a beautiful state!

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!

The last stop on our journey was Vancouver, Canada. I’ve always dreamt of going to Canada so I was very excited to leave Seattle to travel up north to a city about which almost all my friends in the US have been talking, saying it’s supposed to be a great place like nowhere else in this world. Retrospectively, I arrived at the conclusion that so is the case – it’s true – Vancouver is indeed an awesome place. It’s such a laid-back city and the atmosphere is completely different to that of American cities. If you have the chance, hit up Vancouver as soon as you can. You’ll not regret it.

Here’s a brief update from Portland, Oregon. After having spent a little more than a week in Georgia, it was time to fly out west. We nearly didn’t make it, though. We had spent some two hours waiting for our turn to make it for the runway when the pilot announced that because of the mess at Atlanta airport, we had to go back to the gate and get some more fuel, and because of an approaching storm in Colorado, where we had a layover, we had to take another way round the storm and therefore needed more fuel. Because we’d have more fuel, the total weight would increase, thus they asked if anyone could consider staying in Atlanta so that we’d lose a bit of weight. A good number of people applied as volunteers and we were ready for take-off. It was late in the afternoon so we were quite sure that we’d miss our connecting flight in Denver. However, as we were approaching Denver the pilot announced that the ground staff had rerouted our trip (for the 100th time) and we were about to take a shortcut, which would save us an hour or so.

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.

We’ve just arrived at Dallas, Georgia where I’ve finally had the opportunity to take a shower and enjoy the luxury that comes with electricity. The festival was cool, no doubt about that, but what will probably be the most memorable moment – however not a particularly happy one – must be the morning the day after the party.

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!

We just got home after having spent the day checking out various parts of the city. After having had some super waffles and strawberry pancakes, we, at full capacity, decided to head north along sixth avenue to Empire State Building. We had promised ourselves not to be spending our times in line for various tourist attractions, but we just couldn’t miss out on this one. Thus, we spent some two hours in line to make it up to the 86th floor of Empire State Building. The ones of you who know me well are aware of the fact that I’m afraid of heights, but I felt quite confident that I could do it. Everything was going OK up to the point where we stepped into the elevator and went 320 metres up in the air (it measures 443.2 metres up to the top of the rod). I stepped out of the elevator and glanced out of the windows, realising that it was a long way down to sea level. I felt my legs swaying, but I convinced myself that I had to do it. I know that it sounds a lot more dramatic than it actually was, but it wasn’t that easy either. I simply couldn’t put on a cool face pretending I was not feeling lightheaded.

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).

The pain in my legs is back, thus I’ve been unable to sleep this night so if my spelling is flawed you know why. Åsa arrived in New York last Tuesday after having flown with Icelandair, an airline that we wouldn’t recommend anyone flying with because the passengers weren’t given any food even though it was a transatlantic flight. One could purchase sandwiches but come on, that’s no food to be offered on a transatlantic flight regardless if it includes a layover. Another airline has been added to our constantly growing blacklist. She was kind of jetlagged in the first couple of days but I think that she’s back on track now. And while she came, Anders, who’s been travelling with me for some nine weeks, took his leave. I must say that it feels kind of strange when someone’s been by your side for such a long period of time and suddenly isn’t in the room anymore when you wake up in the morning. Yeah, I know that it sounds like a love story but please, bear with me, he’s the buddy closest to my heart (and one of the unlucky few who really knows me).

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?