Amat victoria curam!

Some of my favourite models including Eddie's first Saab, the 99 EMS and our first the 900, Turbo convertible. The museum is tiny- but nice. It is no wonder that Saab is doing so bad lately, seeing that between the 1970's 99 and the 9-3 there's almost no difference...

The locks of Trollhatan date from the early 18 century and span a considerable height with a complex of locks, some of them still in use.

The real Hamlet castle is Kronborg. It is situated just across the water with Sweden and is mighty fortified. Below the surface is a maze of bunkers.The Royal family had a nice view and pretty nice ball rooms.

One of the most famous citizens of Lubeck is Willy Brandt. He was born here, fled to Sweden during WWII, became mayor of Berlin (see above with Kennedy and Adenaur) and later of course Prime Minister of West Germany.

Erich Maria Remarque, author of "All quiet at the western front" has his own peace museum in Osnabruck - which tells about his life and novels.

Our first Stop is in Osnabruck. Famous for the West Phalen peace treaty of 1648. It happend in this Hall - well almost..., the whole of Osnabruck was distroyed in September 1944.

We are on the road again - this time to the very northern part of Europe: The Nordkapp. We will travel through Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway.

David Leavitt was in town invited by the John Adams Institute. His talk was funny and interesting, talking about his writing process, his life and his latest novel (which is published in Dutch this week) The Indian Clerk. I read this novel immediately when it came out in the states back in 2007: its a great story about an Indian Clerk - Srinivasa Ramanujan - who comes to Cambridge in the mid 1910's to solve one of the most important mathematical problems of all time. (And falls in love with a handsome soldier). Based on a true story - and beautifully told.

Eros Rammazotti's new album Ali e Radici is very dissapointing. It's boring, without interesting lyrics: Eros we heard this all before - by the way: this guy really got old looking ;-)

Georges Bizet's Carmen can be a little bit of a drag - it's a sort of classical top 40. Come in Yonghoon Lee - a tenor from South Korea: he blew the audience away with his beautiful powerful voice at tonight's premiere at the DNO.

With my Norddkap trip just days away it is time to decide with books to load on my iliad. Of the 50 books I will take with me (I expect long days because of the midsummer nights...) I am looking forward the most to these titels:

At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream: Misadventures in Search of the Simple Life - Wade Rouse
No Second Chance - Harlan Coben
44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith
The memoirs of a beautiful boy - Robert Leleux
Just too good to be true - E. Lynn Harris
Exiles in America - Christopher Bram
The Book of Useless Information - Noel Botham
Het Diner - Herman Koch
The Works (60 novels) - Charles Dickens
NRC Handelsblad

We had dinner at No & Go to try their brand new teppanyaki grill plate. As dessert No baked one of her famous apple pies... :-)

Cute poster for sale at the kunst actionen Dusseldorf.

A recent reading in Manhattan at the Strand bookstore by David Sedaris, whose most recent book is “When You Are Engulfed in Flames,” may have offered a glimpse of the future. A man named Marty who had waited in the book-signing line presented his Kindle, on the back of which Mr. Sedaris, in mock horror, wrote, “This bespells doom.”

Jarko Witte van Leeuwen was featured on national television with his family as an example of gays adopting children from the USA. There was some (minor) discussion in parlement whether that is desirable - IT IS! ;-)

Anthony Woods (gay, black Iraq vet with a Harvard degree, 28 years old) is running in a crowded Democratic field in California's 10th District, which includes parts of Sacramento and San Francisco's East Bay area. After he came out he was discharged (honorable). He is a guy will a great story and did all the right things to get (inter)national attention so far - let's wait a little bit a hear if he has to say something meaningfull as well... Go Anthony!

Or your back, chest, armpits or head

Because Northern Scandinavia is Mosquito heaven at the time of the year when we are traveling over there - I am looking for some protection. Next to the usual DEET solution I came across this nifty product from Intellectual Ventures: A laser gun for Mosquitoes: No kidding - it really exists! It can recognize mosquitoes and then takes them out in a range of 100 meters...

Because my right hand is still in a cast - my gym routine is quit different: I do more core exercises like the Cobra and Superman movements. You really have to get used to this - but is very rewarding and great for your lower back and abs...

With my iPhone always on hand, audiobooks are getting more and more fun. Audiobookbuilder
is a great program to stitch all the CDs or MP3s together in a bookmarkable format. These are my current favorites:

The Fellowship Of The Ring, J. R. R. Tolkien, read by Full Cast (BBC 1981)
Running with Scissors, Augusten Burroughs, read by Augusten Burroughs
Dreams of my Father - Barack Obama, Read by Barack Obama
Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris, read by David Sedaris
Dear fatty - Dawn French, read by Liza Tarbuck
Babycakes, Armistead Maupin, read by Armistead Maupin
The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Alexander Mccall Smith, read by Adjoa Andoh
Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull, Thomas Mann, read by Boris Aljinovic
Sense And Sensibility, Jane Austen, Read By Juliet Stevenson
Economist weekly audio edition, read by various

From last week's New Yorker

With Google integrating more and more stuff and vox standing still in its development, I decided to move back to blogger and my original blog which you can find at: marque.blogspot.com.
Thanks for visiting this blog here at Vox - please continue reading...

Just a couple of weeks after I visited Buchenwald, Obama did and Elie Wiesel made a very moving speech.

Employee-of-the-month!

He conquered Cairo

The expectations were almost impossible to achieve but he did it again: a water shedding speech by Barack in Cairo about the Muslim world. I feel this is truly the start of a new beginning! Of course he is omitting the inconvenient truths that women are generally subjugated in those cultures, gays are ostracized or killed outright, but hey: we have to start somewhere...

Boris van der Ham of the liberal party (D'66) about europe

Dad & dad

After earlier experiments in separating the homosexual penguin couple in Bremen revealed great difficulties, the zoo decided to let them adopt a pinguin egg - and... it worked! Dad & dad hatched the egg and now are proud parents of a healthy chicken pinguin of the rare Humbold race :-)

Sid

While waiting for Ice Age: The dawn of the Dinosaurs - I have been watching Ice Age I & II in blueray. Sid is still the man! (uh... I mean Sloth!). Johnny Legiuzamo as his voice is great too ;-)

About Author

Twitter Updates

Follow Me

Popular Posts

Latest Post

Total Pageviews

Blog Archive

My previous blogs