yesterday i made a trip to hamburg, to visit two friends and to attend a concert by eläkeläiset (meaning: the retirees), a humppa band from suomi. their concept is simple: they sit at a table, drinking beer and vodka, playing with their instruments, covering lots of pop, rock and metal songs, playing them in a faster humppa style, with different lyrics which are mainly in finnish. sounds strange, but they collected a pretty huge fan community in particular in germany (whyever). we really had lots of fun there, even though we weren’t drunk like most of the other people there (including the band).

on monday, before barbecuing, my friend and mine went out another time to fly with his quadcopter. this time, i brought my not so new anymore toy. here’s a small excerpt out of the tons of pictures i took:

its fascinating to see the quality of the pictures, compared to the ones from last time: almost no blurring (mainly because of faster shutter speed), way less noise (which, if happening, is not as disturbing as the resolution is way higher), better zoom, and so on…

fire, sometimes so beautiful. flames, licking upwards. sparks, flying around. the beginning of barbecue unfolds its beauty.

today’s weather was beautiful again, as it was yesterday, but today i wasn’t busy mowing the lawn, so i took the chance to cruise around a little with my bike. here are some of the photos i took.

i also drove by by a swimming lake nearby, which i’ve never managed to go to in the last few years.
not that it is time for bathing, at least not for me, i prefer little warmer water :-)
anyway. next time i should make a tour somewhere else, not always the same area.

sitting there, almost asleep, killing time by listening to music on youtube, finally getting the idea to go sleeping, saying good night, playing a last song, one from anathema, called a simple mistake. starting slowly, then, after one half, exploding into a masterpiece of emotions, feelings, grabbing me, tearing me along. so intense, so powerful. this will keep me awake four hours, i guess, not allowing me to rest, to sleep. i hope they really do a tour this year, headlining it, as they promised last year…

yesterday i was visiting a friend who built a quadcopter, and we went to a nearby meadow to let it fly. well, i didn’t had a chance to let it fly, i would have probably wrecked it anyway, but my friend spend some time flying with it and could do it pretty good. the quadcopter is equipped with gps and an altimeter and, if in the right mode, tries to keep it’s position, despite the wind. quite cool. it also has a compass to ensure that it’s orientation won’t change unintentionally if you tilt it or fly forwards. anyway, it produces a lot of wind and can fly upwards pretty fast.
maybe i need another new toy… :)

today, i took some photos of the cats. i could stay outside for hours, or whole days, playing with them…
enjoy!

red & white.

they’re not always this nice to each other :)

the red one.

the white one.

the second one this year i attended, to be more precise. this time, in bremen’s tivoli, the so called paganfest tour 2008 launched, featuring the finnish bands ensiferum, korpiklaani and moonsorrow, the swiss band eluveitie, the faroese band týr and local support ctulu.
well. apparently, it’s impossible to start a concert (or even, start letting people in, before they get soaked wet in the rain outside) in time, i.e. the time which was published before. i’m really sorry for the ones who probably have to spend today in bed, being sick. and then, when they started letting people in, they did it in an incredibly slow way. i mean, what the heck, how hard is it to organize such things?
anyway, the local support started playing probably when the first people were let inside, i.e. we missed half of it, and some others probably most or everything (if they didn’t die before). well, anyway, they didn’t missed anything but awful noise. you could replace the singer by a barking dog without changing the result. sorry, this sounds hard, but that’s the truth… well, the sound quality sucked a lot in the beginning anyway, so it’s probably not just the fault of the band… after a short break (the openers played for like 30 mins), týr entered the stage. i was expecting a lot, but was heavily disappointed. it seemed that they also experienced heavy technical problems, so i might try them again once… but then, i’ll try some studio recordings.
anyway. they stopped after like 20 minutes (less than the opener!?) and we took the chance to eat something. after that, swiss pagan metallers eluveitie entered the stage. filling the stage with eight musicians, they are probably the largest (in this sense) band i ever say. eluveitie features a variety of instruments, including lots of different fluetes, vielles, hurdy gurdies, bagpipes, uilleann pipes and bodhráns. i also was expecting a lot from them, and this time, i was blown away. they are really good. mixing heavy black metal with beautiful folk melodies and themes, they deliver a complex, hard to digest but extremely beautiful (even though the sound quality still wasn’t too great) stream of music. (now i’m listening to their newest album slania, whose release party in the knochenhaus i missed… it’s definitely worth buying, if you’re wondering.) a very, very sad thing was that eluveitie had to stop after 30 minutes. :-(
then, after another break, moonsorrow started playing. as you may know, moonsorrow is one of my favorite bands, so i was expecting a lot. well, they were good as usual, but this time i didn’t like the songs they selected too much. one of the songs sounded quite unknown to me, maybe it’s from the ep which will be released soon? well, sounded a bit too black metallish for my taste. at least, they could play for 45 minutes… still, way too short, but better than just 30 mins… (hey, really, which idiot got the idea to restrict great bands such as eluveitie and moonsorrow to 30 resp. 45 minutes?!)
after moonsorrow, it was time for korpiklaani, a bunch of guys making “old guy music with heavy metal guitars”. well, after eluveitie and moonsorrow, it became obvious how simple their melodies and songs are, well, of course relatively. anyway, if they would have played earlier i would have liked them more. apparently, they covered a king crimson song, at least so said a friend of mine who knows the king crimson discography by worlds better than me. as moonsorrow, korpiklaani also just played for 45 minutes.
finally, after yet another break, which we spend sitting in the food compartment of the tivoli, ensiferum began conquering the hall. well. they’re really good, but again, in my opionion, moonsorrow and eluveitie are better. at least, their guitarist was feeling better this time, so they played probably for one hour. probably, because we decided we were too tired and had enough after, say, 55 minutes, and after someone working at the tivoli decided to chase us off the stairs where we were sitting (because of some fire regulations, probably)…
anyway. the festival was definitely worth going there. but, the next time, it would be way better if they would reduce the number of bands (to, say, moonsorrow and eluveitie :-) ) and let them play a lot longer!