Bored in Copenhagen

It's 2AM and I just got done bullshiting with James.

June 2009

So, last December I bought a ticket to see Morrissey in Paris. Well, he fucking cancelled. Anyways, I convinced Noah to meet me in France—and we stayed at his dad’s flat above Republique. This was my first time in Paris, so Noah and I just checked out the city—Notre Dame, Renzo Piano’s Centre George Pompidou and the Louvre. I went by Piano’s workshop. Every time I go to mainland Europe, I realize how stupid it is to live in England. We spent a lot of time outside. I was back in England for another week before finally leaving for the summer—we went out in Sheffield for Ken’s birthday, down to London to see his band and even shot some hoops.

I went up to Manchester to meet up with Phil—I was catching a ride to the Netherlands with him and some other guys to see TrashFest. We spent the night out drinking, before driving to Dover early the next morning for our ferry to France. We grabbed rations in Calais before heading to Gent, Belgium. Everyone was pretty tired, so we hooked up with Steeno from A Den of Robbers for a place to crash. I had met Steeno during my first week in England when his band played Sheffield. The next day we continued to the Netherlands, stopping in Antwerp for waffles.

We were staying in Steenwijk—a small town just over an hour from Amsterdam. The fest was pretty sick—Graf Orlock, Fast Point, Damaged Goods, Reproach, and Limp Wrist.

I spent a night walking around Amsterdam on my way south to France—I had a 3 week course in Rennes with the kids from my course. Rennes is a medium sized city, but there wasn’t a lot of time to do anything besides some of the projects assigned. I got to know the city pretty well—ate oysters, checked out the markets around town and went to Mont Saint Michele. Troy and a friend were traveling Europe and they came and hung out for a couple days—including my birthday. Oh yeah—I shaved for the first time in over two years.

Snoop Bloggy Blog

Can you believe Simon said his blog was boring? Well, yeah, I can too. Truth is, writing about traveling really isn't that fun. I'm basically just trying to get through all the photos I took this summer, so that I can post some of the cool stuff to do around Copenhagen.
In the meantime, I've posted a couple things on a group blog with Matt from Check Please. This is pretty rad, since he's one of the funniest people in Ontario-- especially after Si and the Heat left.
Check out the new new: CanUFlyBobby.

May 2009

In May, I think it hit me that I going to be leaving England pretty soon. I had a handful of assignments to turn in, but still found some time to get out a bit. Here's a couple things I done did:
- Tom and I started heading out to the Peak district during the weekends. In early May, we checked out a couple cool areas to take advantage of the decent weather.
- I ate a lot of fish & chips-- damn, I miss it. In May, I took over Si's room-- sharing a flat with Jamie, Tom and Gus. This meant I was just around the corner from Two Steps Chippy-- this spot has been in the same location for over 100 years.
- Craig is from a town called Whitley Bay, near Newcastle. The football team reached their conference final, the Vase Cup, and Craig wanted to go down to the match at Wembley. Naturally, we took a limo. I guess Whitley Bay won; I got housed on mimosas.
- Wetherspoon's introduced a new menu, but the Ploughman's stunk.
- Tom and I went to Leeds to see the Specials reunion tour. I lost my phone at the concert, but the show was good.
- It's English tradition to have a 'football do'- or a night out with your team- at the end of the season. We went out for dinner and to a couple pubs for beers.
It was a good month; but, I realized summer was around the corner and needed to get everything sorted.

Westcoastical: the personal diary of Simon Q. Bruyn

Most people who read this already read Simon's blog; it's linked on the right side of the page. However, finally, Simon has picked something interesting to write about: Me.
Check it out, ya big doy-oy!

April 2009

Now that I am getting settled in Copenhagen, I think back to some of the stuff I've done over the past year. It's been intense: 16 countries in 13 months. But, when I look through all the photos from April, I remember what a particularly hectic month it was-- among the busiest of the year for me. I had most of the month off of school and spent a lot of time traveling.

I had planned a trip to Europe for most of April, but managed to do quite a few other things before leaving town. As I mentioned before, I went up to Newcastle with Craig at the start of the month. I also got to see Cirque du Soleil's Quidam and catch the Sheffield Wednesday-Derby match.
Then, I left for Milan. Writing about this in hindsight is kind of difficult; partly because the next 10 days were a bit of a blur. After landing, I took the bus to Central Station to meet up with Noah and his friends, Camille and Ania. Camille agreed to put us up for the night so that we could play around in Italy for a bit before heading into Switzerland. He and Ania had a pretty wicked place and sorted us out with breakfast in the morning. Noah and I left our stuff at Central Station and checked out the city. I had my first taste of Italian pizza and did a bit of site seeing. We ended up seeing a lot of the city before catching an afternoon train out of Central Station. The ride through the Alps was beautiful and we got to Zurich pretty late. Noah made breakfast the next morning before we rushed to catch our train to Bern-- he had worked out a way for me to travel through the country for next to nothing. We went to Leah's house for dinner and out for some beers. The next morning, I checked out the city-- it was great to see Bern after hearing Noah talk about it for years. Noah's girlfriend drove us to Biel in her Porsche for a show that turned out to be pretty fun. Biel is a pretty small city, but there were a lot of kids partying at the bar.

The next day, we helped set up for a party that some of Noah's friends were having. It was one of the last parties at the club-- the owner lived upstairs and let us party on the roof into the next day.

Otherwise, Noah and I just kicked it around Switzerland for a while and hung out by the lake. We went back and forth between Zurich and Bern a couple times, and up to Basel for a night. I saw Renzo Piano's Paul Klee Museum, Corbusier's Heidi Weber museum, the Freitag building and went for a hike in the Alps.

Being in the Alps was pretty nuts-- we hiked around for a bit, wandered through some farms and ate some massive meals.
Julia flew in from London and surprised me in Zurich. She showed me some of her favorite places in town; took me to a flea market, made pizza for us and drank Bloody Marys with Noah and me as we watched the trains roll by.
While there, I ate a lot of great Swiss food-- and even went to Noah's mom's house for fondue. On my last night in Switzerland, we went to Basel to watch Mimi blow fire at some motorcross show, and snuck a bunch of champagne from the VIP room to go kick it with friends.
The next day, I flew to London. I stayed a night with Julia and Tim, before a busy day in the city: I had my first blood pudding, drank a pitcher of Pimm's with the Heat and saw Amadou & Mariam perform at the Jazz Cafe. The next day, I flew to Inverness, Scotland. By planes, trains and buses, I made it through Portree and onto Duntulm. This was a really cool trip, and just not a place I would ever think to go on my own. I did some fishing off the Isle of Skye and saw a really cool sunset before heading back to Sheffield. I spent the week seeing friends, before heading back down to London. I got to hang out with Julia & Tim, and also went to St. John restaurant for Brooke's birthday-- then, I spent the next couple days with Tom.

March 2009

I'm really tired of writing about Tom and watching football-- so, these photos could be a bit monotonous. However, I want to post them, so I can move onto some of the other cool stuff I did this year.
Anyways, March was a pretty good time. The weather started to turn so I spent a lot of time outside, walking around Sheffield. They opened a new bank in Sheffield and had the Premiership trophy on display.
I made a trip up to Manchester, got to experience some more Smiths' nostalgia and spend time with Phil and his girlfirend, Xavia.
The highlight of March was definitely a quick trip I made to Liverpool-- I got to tour Anfield, which was amazing. Football stadiums, even for the biggest teams in England, are pretty bare bones; however, we had access to pretty much any part of the stadium.
Craig and I finally got around to checking out the Sheffield Steelers-- pretty B-rate hockey, but still a good night out.
For (English) Mother's Day, Tom and I went down to Nottingham for some fine dining. In fact, it's the only Hooters in all of England-- the wings are equally as bad.
I went up to Manchester with a bunch of guys because Gray was putting on an all-day show. This was a pretty rad trip-- tons of bands, lots of partying, got to hang out with the Manchester kids and Si's band played their last show. Tom and Gus were partying pretty hard. It seemed only fitting that, on this trip, I would have the best Spoony's Ultimate Chicken Burger ever made.
We got back to Sheffield just in time to spend Sunday relaxing.