Blogging from Outer Space!

[image: Hobby Space]

This post is dedicated to one of the people I follow on Twitter. He’s a Dutch astronaut. That’s right! His name is  André Kuipers. Right now he is on board of the International Space Station, orbiting around our planet, and he blogs and tweets from outer space. Crazy, uh? I still cannot wrap around my mind around the fact that this is possible. In his Flickr account, blog and Twitter, André posts photos taken from the spaceship. I love them. They give me the feeling that our planet is so small – and so beautiful.

[photos by André Kuipers. Credit: ESA/NASA].

Above, in orbit around the Earth. Below: a photo of Somalia. And this is André…

One of my favourite photos is a view of Quebec with the title “From the warm waters of Polynesia to the cold plains of Canada in 30 minutes” (below). The ISS satellite orbits the Earth roughly every 90 minutes! That’s a tour around the world 16 times a day.

[Photo André Kuipers. Credit: ESA/NASA]

What about this view of the northern lights over the polar region (below) and André’s Russian colleagues performing a “space-walk”?

[Photos André Kuipers. Credit: ESA/NASA]

I love this photo of the crew celebrating New Year’s “every hour somewhere on the planet” [Credit: ESA/NASA]

I heartily recommend that you take a look at André Kuipers wonderful photo-diary from space. You can find his Flickr here, and this is his Twitter. His blog, in Dutch, is here. Enjoy!

Time for some update

The picture above is from a small pension in Berlin, Pension Funk. It used to be the house of a silent movie star from the 30s, Asta Nielsen. I’d love to stay there sometimes… Today we were daydreaming about our Easter holidays. We went to the Arnold Busck bookstore downtown, got two coffes and sat down with a bunch of travel guides: Armenia, Spain, Germany and a city guide of Berlin by Taschen (amazing stuff).

And….at the end we’re just probably going to Italy! But it was nice to get some ideas for future trips. We’re especially fascinated by Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, and the countryside around it. We also decided that it would be cool to do the camino of Santiago de Compostela, in Spain (a 700+ km walk). I love to think about new places to explore.

[illustration: Oliver Jeffers]

In the last month I have been very busy, that’s why I barely blogged. We had guests, we travelled, I have started going to Danish language classes every morning and I have also started giving Italian private lessons. I’m more motivated than ever to finally become fluent in Danish. I like my teachers and our current course is very interesting too – we talk about various topics concerning the Danish society: the school system, the Welfare system, the job sector, parenting etc. Every new thing I learn in class makes me feel like I come from a Third World country.

I’m also trying to watch more Danish movies and TV shows. This should help me learn this really, really hard language. (…And for the first time I watched a Susanne Bier movie. In my opinion you’re better off watching Mexican soap-operas, I’m not kidding! I guess she’s not my cup of tea…).

In the coming week I’ll try to go back to my blog “routine”…I have so many things I want to post, and photos I want to share. I’ll make some room for that, too! Have a nice weekend :-)

Buy a share of Christiania for your Valentine :-)

Ok, in reality I have never been crazy about Valentine’s day! Let’s say I use the Valentine excuse to talk about a really cool project that we discovered a while ago. And to style a photo with heart-shaped candies…

As many of you may know, Christiania is the self-proclaimed autonomous neighborhood in the heart of Copenhagen, founded 40 years ago when a group of people, hippies and dreamers, occupied a disused military based by the canal. Christiania has been ever since a Freetown, and one of Denmark’s main tourist attractions. Recently, however, Christiania had to face the government’s new plans for “normalisation”: in other words, the status of Christiania as a Freetown was threatened. The goverment wanted to force the construction of new conventional housing development over the autonomous area. Luckily, a solution has been found in order to “maintain the Freetown as the property of everyone and none”.

The community was offered the possibility to buy the area at a sub-market rate, maintaining their autonomy and their system of communal land ownership. So the Freetown has issued Christiania shares (Folkeaktier), in order to raise money to buy Christiania free.

(shot of my Christiania share certificate with Sweethearts candies!!)

When you buy a Christiania share you are contributing to the survival of a unique town, a sustainable, self-governed community with a thriving social life. Christiania residents explain that, unlike stock options, Christiania shares “promote community, sharing and autonomy in contrast to the financial speculation currently causing great harm to communities all over the world. . .it is our modest hope to inspire the development of social models of investment, that value common wealth rather than profits”.

The Freetown is simply lovely in spring and summer…

You can buy shares for as little as 20 Danish crowns (around 3 euros) in bars around Copenhagen, and from 100 to 10.000 Danish crowns (from 14 euros up to 1300) on this website. The shares have a serial number that you can register officially – and as a donor you’ll be invited to special social events. The shares are actually really beautiful! They are printed on FSC-certified high quality paper from Sweden: the wood comes from Swedish forests and waste from the sawmill is used as raw material and biofuel.

The design is by a local artist, and they are individually signed. Here you can even see two cool videos on how they produced the shares.

As of today, Christiania runs “five childcare institutions, renovates and develops 100 acres of mixed housing and green areas with a focus on ecology, and houses a number of cultural institutions, live stages, café, restaurants, workshops, collectively run businesses”. Besides the concert-halls, Sunday jam-sessions, vegetarian restaurants, organic grocery stores, bars and cafè, what I love about Christiania is the eclectic mix of building styles:

(source: Tiny House Blog)

(source: Dave Gorman)

It’s beautiful to just walk around the canal, looking at how different people built their own houses with reclaimed materials. And if you are in Copenhagen during the spring, you can also explore the interiors of most houses during the Open House day.

(The interiors of a Christiania house from Danish lyfestyle magazine Bolig Liv)

Naturally, Christiania is also really cozy during the winter. You go there, and you find hygge! The canal freezes and is covered in snow, and you can enjoy a hot chocolate or a hot hyldeblomst (elderflower drink) in one of the many little cafè. Or a Christiania beer, obviously! Just go past the over touristic Pusher street, explore the surroundings, immerse yourself in nature and climb on a treehouse.

This is the link to the Christiania Share website (English version): http://www.christianiafolkeaktie.dk/index.php

And an article on the current situation of Christiania from the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/24/christiania-community-big-society-40-years

Walking in Nørrebro

So much has happened lately! Now I’m busy with Danish classes every morning, and in the afternoon I keep looking for jobs, or go to meetings organized by my union. Andreas’ mom came visit, and soon we’re flying to the Northermost tip of Denmark in order to celebrate Andreas’ grandma 90th birthday.

But in the meantime I’m really happy I got the new lens I wanted for my NikonD60. I had to go to Sweden to buy it, but now I have it! So take a walk in Nørrebro, Copenhagen, with us…few blocks away from our place.

The days are getting colder but also longer and lighter…soon it will be spring, and I cannot wait. Have a really nice week!

-10 degrees and we got offered a diamond

Yeah, it’s -10 degrees in Denmark right now! The perfect weather for biking downtown: I really wanted to buy a new lens for my Nikon, but it’s sold out everywhere – I’ll have to wait. In the meantime, while walking around in the freezing weather, we casually found the H&M Home shop. Bed sheets, tablecloths, pillows, curtains…all very cheap, all very colorful. I have never been in there before!

After a nice hot chocolate and a burger we stopped by the lakes close to where we live. They are almost completely frozen, soon it will be allowed to skate on them…Considering it’s -20 degrees at night, they may be totally frozen really soon. In the meantime I’m perfecting the art to take photos with mittens on…

But what about the diamond? Well, Andreas is trying to sell his MacBook Pro online, and so far he’s getting very interesting offers. Somebody offered his old HP laptop instead of money, another guy an IMac (really?!) and today a man wrote offering a diamond in exchange for the computer. Can’t wait to know what comes next. I hope a pony. We’ll keep you posted.

Have a great weekend :-)

Making the unreal seem real: Eleanor Hardwick

What if one day a famous magazine, browsing through Flickr photos in search of fresh talent, would choose your work to be featured in a special online column? This is what happened to a very talented teenage photographer, Eleanor Hardwick, when she was 15. Since Dazed & Confused showcased her work (here), Eleanor has been working full-time as a fashion photographer. Today, at the young age of 19, she has already shot for Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire Enfants and several others, and is signed with an agency.

all the photos above are by Eleanor Hardwick

I’m very impressed by her work, which I discovered through Monki’s website (Monki is a fabolous Swedish clothes store). Browsing through her portfolio online is like being transported into a dreamlike, personal world. You are carried inside ghost stories and fairytales.

photo: Eleanor Hardwick

So…if you would like to take a look this is her website, and this is her flickr. Monki TV has some really cool videos featuring Eleanor preparing an Alice in Wonderland photo shoot (here). I hope you’ll be inspired to use your camera a little more this week!

A good, dark crime novel for the winter: “Murder by the Circle” by Dan Turèll

This month’s book review presents a gloomy Danish murder story written in 1983 by poet Dan Turèll. This is a crime novel I truly enjoyed. It was fast to read – mostly because I couldn’t put it down – and quite thrilling: the perfect book to accompany your nights in the deep of winter. I must confess I’m not a great fan of contemporary crime novels, and I’ve tried to read Stieg Larsson’s books but gave up after 10 minutes – the writing was not that good, and I didn’t find it compelling. Dan Turèll is a complete different story. He was an experimental Danish poet, who is sorely missed after his premature death in 1993. The city of Copenhagen, where I live, has even named a square in his honor: Onkel Danny Plads (“Uncle Danny’s” square). So, if I was to read a Scandinavian crime novel, it had to by by Uncle Danny, the excentric, humorous poet whose style – as Wikipedia puts it, is “delightfully difficult to fit in a box”. Plus, this book is set in Nørrebro, my neighborhood, during a gloomy and cold month of January…and the murders in the book take place about ten minutes away from where I live. That alone made the book extra creepy.

“Murder by the Circle” is a beautifully written novel inspired by American pulp novels. As a poet, Dan Turèll is a keen observer of human nature. He gives us a dark-humored, anthropological account of Copenhagen at the beginning of the 80s, with its squatters and biker-gangs, immigrants and barflies. And lots of dry, Danish sarcasm. At the same time, though, the book is deeply human, which makes it even more compelling. The narrator is a nameless reporter working for a fictional Danish tabloid, who is unfortunate enough to keep stumbling in the victims of a mysterious serial killer….I can’t tell you more. But one thing I really like is the deeper meaning of the book, a sort of reflection on what “home” and family means in Denmark. It’s highly recommended!

And this is a photo of Uncle Danny (via lionblog2544.blogspot.com). A detail you cannot see is his signature dark nail polisher manicure.

Thanks to Italian publisher Iperborea for selecting me as part of their blogger contest: I won an ebook of my choice from their crime novel selection to review – and I was so pleasantly surprised to find this novel by Turèll! The title of this book in Italian is Assassinio di Lunedi, from the Collana Ombre by Iperborea. You can find it here. I really hope they are going to translate more of Turell’s work – pleas do!! In the meantime I may just try in Danish. No English translations of Turell’s work are available yet, as far as I know, that’s just not right!