The web supports creativity

Look and see!

A good friend's blog:
www.mazed.de

A funny idea:
www.thisisindexed.com

To be continued...

web 2.0 and beyond...

Just a quick note: Attended a refreshing presentation with the title "La blogosphère politique en France - et en Allemagne" yesterday. It was more than interesting to hear about the different blogging behaviour in France and Germany. We learned that French politicians have been actively using blogs a lot longer than their German counterparts. According to Mr Wittmann, the lecturer, this is amongst others due to the fact that for a French politician the support of his regional basis is a lot more important, so they keep their people updated about what's going on in faraway Paris. Gives me the feeling that there is a lot more to explore and discover in our good old German "Internetlandschaft".
But Mr Wittmann went even further: From the blogging phenomenom itself he moved on to social networks and the whole range of web 2.0-possibilities reaching from commenting and recommending tools to micro-blogging (ever heard about "Twitter"?!) and even subsequent "real-life" meetings such as "barcamps". He showed us some pages analysing the "blogging landscape", pages providing analysing tools theirselves, pages where you can look for blogs and pages rating blogs ...
Of course we also discussed the wiki hype with its advantages and disadvantages and last but not at all least the dangers and manipulative traits of this development. Because after all, the one who knows a lot about programming or simply some tricks has a lot of manipulative power on the web as we saw with "google-bombs" or "google bowling". (By the way, did you ever think about using an alternative search engine?)
Questions that remain concerning this whole development are in my opinion: How come so many people spend so much time on the web communicating with and helping people they hardly know (if not don't know at all)? - I'm thinking of things like "leo.org", "netdoktor.de", "chefkoch.de" or facebook/studivz-groups. And even further: how come so many people like the idea of turning their inside out on the web, publishing stuff that they would only tell their best friend under a duvet in "status boxes" (facebook/studivz) or everyday-activities through that "twigger" thingy?
Of course I know that I'm part of that whole thing, my blog is long beyond its initial intention of "informing my friends at home about my experiences abroad". I'm still using it to keep people updated who are interested in how I'm doing, but still I have to admit that the self-disclosure aspect gained in significance. Question back to me: Why am I blogging - and most importantly how come I write four long paragraphs after the introducing sentence "just a quick note" ??!!??
...The bottom line is that the answer might be found in highly complex psychological patterns resulting from the complexity of the time we're living in itself ... but maybe it's also just our childlike curiosity of exploring new stuff and seeing what happens ... I do have fun doing so and that is the main thing as society teaches us - isn't it?!

The infinite is in the finite of every instant...

Yesterday I was at a nice funk-jazz concert of a band called Ronin. Very inspiring. If you like that kind of music and are open to experience something new look up their myspace page and visit their concerts if you have a chance to do so!By the way and kind of suiting: Did someone recently watch "The Drummer" (Die Reise des chinesischen Trommlers) by coincidence? Quite liked it as one could take something from it even if the story itself was a bit too stereotypical...

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!

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...

St Petersburg & Moscow (2.-9.4.)

Every now and then we thought: Why for god's sake did we sign up voluntarily for that roadtrip to Russia? 50 (!) hours on the coach in a period of 7 days including two overnight drives (St Petersburg--> Moscow--> St Petersburg) where the coach's continous bumping up und down due to the amazingly poor quality of the "motorway" between the two main Russian cities didn't actually really rock us to sleep. But then again, what the cities had to offer compensated all the stresses and strains of the journeys and we learned to appreciate the advantages of travelling Russia in a large group and with professional organisation by experienced people. Because Russia IS different!
Here some photos and I'll write more about our impressions and experiences later. First evening in Russia - trying Russian food: Ucha and PelmeniBallroom at Catherine PalaceThe Hermitage Monument to Nicholas I on St Isaac's squareView from the top of St Isaac's cathedralThe impressive Church of the Saviour on BloodQuai of the kissing couplesSt Basil's cathedral in Moscow
Red Square (Krasnaya Ploshchad)
Maria, Matt, Emile, Renske, Michael, Pierre, Christine and IInside St Basil'sAt the Kremlin The Churches inside the Kremlin
Statue of Peter ICathedral of Christ the SaviourLocks to protect the love of freshly married couplesMoscow metro "underground palaces"Red Square at night before our departure

Lapland (20.-25.3.)

Stockholm - Narvik by train: the longest (20 hours!) but most beautiful sight-seeing-tour I ever had!View from Narvik towards the Lofotes (68° N)Exciting cross-country skiing trip in Abisko (Vi såg två älger!)Highlight of our trip: the dog sledge tour in Abisko

Hur gulliga de är!Kiruna church on Easter Monday morningOne of the suites at the Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi

Travel mates! Too cold to be true - inside the Ice Hotel it actually felt warmer than outside! What an experience!

Min första svenska lunch

Finally! With all that Swedish people around me these days I'm getting more and more used to Swedish habits. Today was the first time I actually prepared a lunch in the evening which I will warm up tomorrow in one of the microwaves they have at many places at university! At least something to look forward to ;-)!

Oslo (8.-10.2.)

Spontaneous weekend trip to Oslo with Maria. So much to tell, but first some visual impressions...

Climbing the (grit)hill up to the Royal PalaceAt Holmenkollen ski jump + ski museum (exibiting Sabber-Ole's winning skis!)
At Oslo's Skansen, the Norsk Folkemuseum
Sun and the sea - what else do we need?!

At the Nordic circusfestivalBeautiful sundown after a beautiful weekend