DIARY: The Tønder Festival

The Festival is over...

4 days of working as a volunteer bartender all the while having a few drinks, meeting all the old friends, and, of course, sampling the superb folk, folkrock, and jazz programme on offer.

I managed to take in most of the Thursday concert with Scottish Runrig, as always the most popular band at the Festival, got into some very (very!) rough pseudo-satanic folkrock with English Levellers, and my personal favourites this year: Canadian drink-singers Great Big Sea.

There was torture to be had as well, as my old friend Janne dragged me out for a "Polka Rave" late at night on the plaza. People who know me will not have missed the fact that I'm no fan of dancing (so much in fact, that I have never verbally uttered the words: "Do you want to dance", at least not while sober enough to remember!). But but, you have to make an absolute arse of yourself once per year, and I definitely got the chance here, displaying an amazing lack of motor skills despite the fact that I was the only sober person in the tent!

Low Alcohol Policy
The Festival was the Litmus test of my new alcohol policy, and it went quite ok, which leaves me optimistic that its now a permanent feature. Thursday to Saturday I had between 2 and 5 drinks per day, Sunday i believe perhaps 6 or 7, before refraining completely at Mondays Volunteer Party.

Its quite different I must admit, especially for the people around me, and it will take a bit of adaptation to "party hard" while being all ascetic...

The "Traditional" Sing-song
Sunday nights have turned into a personal highlight for me. Everyone from Tent 1 gather together to "take stock" of the remaining bottles in the bar, and last year I had the chance to follow my passion for singing, going through a repertoire of Irish and Scottish songs, urging people to sing-a-long.

This year, I had to do it sober, which was definitely more difficult (apparently the only two things that can make my nervous is singing in public and asking out a pretty girl!). After a rough start with the warm-up "talksong" General Munro, I had to abort "Fiddlers Green" as I could not make it work. After a brief interim in which Jannes musician friend, Alain entertained with Blues Songs on his guitar, I had warmed up sufficiently and it was with great glee that I observed most join in on Molly Malone, Whiskey in the Jar, Wild Rover, Loch Lomond, We Shall Overcome, and a few other songs that I now forget. More glitches jumped in surely, such as our botched attempt at "Rare Ould Times" (too pretty for that hour of the night), but overall, great fun, and I will be practicing some more tunes for next year, as I think I have finally gotten Boulavogue down right after 5 years of fighting with that old anthem honouring the men of 98.

The musical entertainment did not end there, the first love of my life, Signe, and her girlfriend Camilla (who are getting married, congratulations!!!), arrived and sang a song that can not be described as "dirty" but more "pornographic"! After that the girls went on to entertain with some Danish songs, before we all filtered back to the Volunteer bar for a long night session. As I thought the night had ended, my oldest friend David staggered in from the darkness and we chatted away until the first rays of Sun broke over the flatlands of Tønder.

Sick but on to Aarhus
I have started running again, but today I have fallen slightly ill and am desperately trying to recover my strength for Saturdays 30th Birthday party in Aarhus with my friend Kristian, or "Kedde" as he is known on these parts.

Him and Michael "Miv" bartended with me and Janne throughout the festival, and it will be intersting to see how much energy remains for the next big party.

I will be posting the pictures from the Festival shortly.

DIARY: A Return to the Old Land

Things may be quiet here for a few days, tomorrow I'm flying home for a two week holiday in Denmark.

It's my first holiday since March, real one anyway, so I'm naturally chuffed. I'll be bartending at the Tønder Festival, and not only that, going to Århus to celebrate a friend's 30th birthday and run the traditional Marselis Run.

Reports to follow!

DIARY: St Pats vs. OB

Our HR guy from work, Gareth, an ardent Shamrock Rovers fan, told me that OB, a club I supported from 1991 to the early 2000s, were in town to play the UEFA Cup 1st Round game against St. Patricks, or St. "Pats" as they are colloquially known.

Sure enough, my ex-colleague Steen, who know plies his trade with The Irish National bank, aka Danske Bank in disguise, called me up and asked if I wanted to brave the trip out to Inchicore and watch the match.

See all the pics here.

Glories of Yesteryear
Odense Boldklub, or OB as they are known, have long been one of the 5-6th best clubs in Denmark, and have won numerous Danish championships, the last one tracing back a long long time, however.

I used to support them, spurred on by their glorious victory over Real Madrid back in the early 90s when they overturned a 3-2 home deficit to clinch a last minute 2-0 victory at the Santiago Bernabeu, before being cruelly defeated 1-0 on aggregate by a strong Parma side in the Quarter Finals.

So while today's opposition was less than stellar, it would be no walkover. Danish club football is not what it used to be, and while it's still a few levels above Irish, all Irish and British teams know how to sell themselves dearly at home.

Richmond Park
Steen and I arrived early in the little neat stadium of St. Pats, currently Richmond Park, a stadium that has also served as the home of Shamrock Rovers. St. Pat's are known as the "Pride of Inchicore", and their fans did them proud singing heartily throughout the game clad in their red and yellow colours.

The match itself was a mixed affair, glorious sunshine and a well-kept pitch, meant that there were signs of good football, mostly from OB, while Pats got their chances from a few counter attacks and set-pieces.

All in all, OB didn't look to sharp, and on a good day would have hit Pats for 5 without reply (we'll come back to that).

In the stadium, Steen and I ran into Niels and his IBM comrades, and catched a glimpse of Kristian's mates "Anders and Anders". Oh yes, the Danes were out again!

The Return Leg

0-0 it finished, a good quiet night out with no incidents, but the EUR20 charged was a bit exorbitant for the quality of football at display.

St. Pats were buoyant, a freak goal in the away leg could secure progression.

Personally I was confident that OB would go through, though, barring a disaster. The difference in technical ability was quite pronounced, and St. Pats did not have a striker capable of creating chances on his own (he's injured I hear!).

And so it proved, two weeks later, OB won 5-0 at Fionia Park in Odense, Denmark's third biggest city at about 150.000 inhabitants, slightly smaller than Cork, and progressed to the 2nd round.

DIARY: Oli's Visit

My old friend Oli, who's real name is of course Oliver, was over a few weeks ago, just for a prolonged weekend.

We somehow couldn't be arsed to take too many pictures, but the few I got are here.

He's been touring the world with his girlfriend Juliane for the last year or so, and has only recently returned to Denmark. Chances to meet up have therefore been far and few between.

Family Pic: Julle, Oli, Laila, Vibs, Janne, Mathilde

The Good Ol' Dorm
I've spend some of my funniest (but also most chaotic!) times at Otto Mønsteds Kollegium, in Aarhus Denmark, a dorm with some 100 souls living there. I spend almost 6 years in that place, and in the final years we were a small clique of people who turned into somewhat of a surrogat family.

Oli is a member of this extended family, being an exchange student from Germany, and so is his girlfriend Juliane, Brian whom I visited in Madrid earlier, and of course, Mathilde, who was my well-organised host for the snowy holiday in Canada.

Now, I'm fortunate enough to go home on holidays on the 22nd of August, and on the 1st of September I'll be in Aarhus, hopefully reacquainting myself with all these faces as we all gather to celebrate my friend Christian "Kedde"'s thirtieth birthday, the end, I mean beginning of his life! But before that Oli and I had a chance to catch up with the usual stuff....

Whiskey, Pool, Good Food, and Scrubs, Scrubs!!!

It's somewhat of a testament to our common obsession with the tv-show Scrubs that we actualy got through 16 episodes in the three days Oli stayed here (before you yell "Gewalt", the episodes are 20 minutes long!).

No wonder that we can laugh ourselves to death to the show, let's face it, it's perfect for men: Dr. Cox is the man we all want to be, Ted is the guy we're happy we're not, J.D. is probably who we are, and The Todd says all the things we wish we could get away with saying everytime there's a hot female around!

Now, our friendship wasn't build solely around an American sitcom (it was in fact build around endless lines of Fisherman's Friend shots in the Dorm bar, but that's another story from my alcoholised past!). Oli is a bit of an amateur chef, having a big idol in his namesake Jamie Oliver, so when we weren't wining and dining downtown, he took the chance to cook up not only two excellent breakfeasts but a great dinner as well!

I wondered for a second if that was how marriage would be, but before dismissing that a dream, I couldn't help sending a wish to my atheist gods not to tie me up with a blackhaired German guy down the road!!!

Back at the Table

We spend a few nights at the Palace as well, a great pool place on Camden Street, playing good old rock classics from your untroubled teens (Metallica, there ya go!), while Oli, a terrific poolplayer, handed out his usual beating.

I had to notice with a slight tingle of sadness that I just can't invest my usual competitiveness into other sports than running these days: Or in other words, I play as well as I can, but I don't invest the "extra" anymore, maybe it's passion, maybe it's something else. Hard to say. Losing or winning used to be life or death for me, but now it's just a game. For much the same reason the bowling ball lies dusty around, my poker book hasn't been opened for months, and Liverpool defeats just don't hurt quite so much anymore.

Is there a limited amount of passion in every person? I think that's a very good questions, but not one I will attempt to answer, and while it would be scary to have it all set aside for running, I find that's not the case. I'm just saving the rest of mine for something that's really worth it, and that doesn't involve cues, darts, or balls. It's still (or perhaps finally) a fun game, though, and a great way for us to reminisce as we spend several nights every week at the dorm playing pool while having a few bottles before sleeping in and forgetting to study! (there's the drinking again!).

Porters and Whisky

Back to the present again, another common hobby of ours has been good beer and whisky. In the past we've shared some good bottles of both from Belgian Chimay to Scottish Ardbeg whisky and Irish Connemara. This time we started out by sampling the special homebrews at Porter House where I had taken Brian and Jens a week earlier on their stopover for the American roadtrip.

On the final day we decided to give the whiskys a look-in and went to the Jameson Distillary (which I haven't visited in my 2.5 years here!). The tour was quite interesting, especially since I've previously visited the Whisky Museum in Edinburgh and this tour highlighted the differences between the two whiskey productions.

We had a few samples at the end, and I must say the Jameson is much smoother than it's given credit for, and I got to take a good Gollum-lookalike picture of Oli with his 12-year old in hand!

All in all, a good fun weekend, but nothing more than a warmup for my holidays. In the meantime I make a promise to all my friends to try and practice my ability to party without being hammered! It's a bit of a change, to give it time alright!

SITE NEWS: Finally Updates!

That my life revolves mostly about running, would be apparent to anyone who compares the post count on this blog (17!) with that on my running (73!), but this weekend I finally have a bit of peace and quiet all for myself, and can be completely lackadaisical in my approach.

While I'm putting in huge mileage even in this weekend of course (gotta train!), I've managed to catch up with my running posts, and now I'm ready to add a fileshare to my Blogs, so I can share documents with those interested in them.

Second, I'll be posting an update on my old mate Oli's visit to Dublin. He came over two weeks ago, and we had a great time, and shot some photos...

UPDATE TO FOLLOW...