Fête de la musique! (21. Juni)

Last weekend Toulouse was one big music festival! When the Swedish celebrate Midsommar it is "la fête de la musique" in France! Already during the day there are concerts all around town, but in the evening Toulouse (and all the other big French cities) are one big party! Bands at every corner of the street, people dancing all around the place - a crazy atmosphere!
At the same time, it was the worldmusic festival Rio Loco which presents every year music of a different part of the world, this year the Balkans! So on Sunday evening we could get to know a part of the culture from the regions between Bucharest and Budapest - very interesting! At first we listened to a Romanian brass band called Fanfare Ciocarlia supported by the singer Esma Redzepova and afterwards the clarinetist David Krakauer played Klezmer at its finest! Genau mein Ding!

And yet another shore...

And that is the advantage of Toulouse! BOTH to the Atlantic and the Mediterranean it is just a few hours by car! So when Lorenzo called me at 9 o'clock Saturday morning to ask if I wanted to come to the beach for a day I couldn't help but accept! C'est les vacances (at least at the weekends)!

Atlantic!

Impressive! For me, who has never been at "the ocean" before, that was what I thought when I first saw the Atlantic last Friday! It was quite windy and strong waves where breaking loudly at the shore, the white foamy water pulling your feet powerfully back towards the sea (pardon, the ocean ;-). Perfect for what we came for: surfing! Well, maybe I should rather say perfect for people who actually came for SURFING and not for "somehow trying to get from a face-down position to your feet in a split second while the slippy something under you and the thunderous something around you move at different paces and into different directions while your body just wants to do what gravity teaches it"! ...as you might guess now it was not as easy as it looked and I reckon for most of us actually standing on their feet (ON the board ON a wave) for a couple of seconds was the biggest gratification! But luckily everything else was really nice too, so those who didn't get satisfaction from the surfing *äächchem* could get it from jumping into the waves, succeeding in passing over a volleyball 50 times without letting it fall or simply getting the tan (or the sunburn?!) they should actually have gotten in Toulouse during the last weeks. All in all, a really enjoyable weekend at the OCEAN!

Off to new shores

I left beautiful Mälaren and the Baltic Sea behind to arrive and settle down at the banks of la Garonne (well, more exactly at Canal du Midi). It was not only a journey of big geographical distance, but also regarding mentality it was a journey from one corner of Europe to more or less the opposite one. From not daring to look people into the eyes on the street (much less talking to them on a bus!) in order to not disturb their privacy, to being engaged in 15-minutes politics discussions on the elevator (to name the positive side) and as a (blond!) girl being whistled at and seized by the arm on the street by filthy strangers (to name the negative side).
However, the accomodating circumstances of living in a shared flat with nice flatmates, starting an interesting internship right away and getting to know other trainees from all over Europe as well as a big range of cultural events and activities made it quite easy for me to settle in here. I'm sure I'll have a very pleasant summer in Toulouse!

Festival of Culture(s) on Place du Capitole

Annemie's travels through Europe

Times are changing. Actually, I haven't found the title of my blog appropriate anymore for quite a time. After all, what I was writing about didn't only concern Sweden. Sweden has been the base of my "expeditions" for the last year, but my writing was also influenced by all the other European countries I visited and not least the people from all over the world I met, talked to and became friends with. Moving to France will mean a potentiation of these different (cross-)cultural experiences. That finally made me change the title (and url!) of my blog. "Travels" opens a broad semantic field, including physical and mental journeys which both contribute to the experiences shaping my writing. "through European society/ies and beyond" is also to be understood in those two contexts. I don't forget that those cultural differences I come across are relative in a cosmopolitan perspective. After all, compared to peoples on the other side of the globe, European's share a quite homogeneous mindset, in my opinion an opportunity to move from talking about European societies to European society. And the differences in habits and behaviour which remain plus influences resulting from exchange with other parts of the world ("beyond") give the soup of European culture it's special spice. Exciting, don't you agree?! We'll see what I'll come up with...