Ouch

There is going to be a wedding in the family at the beginning of November. It's not really going to be a huge celebration but somehow we still felt like we should prepare something. They don't want the general wedding progamme with silly games so the only option is to play some music. So I got my guitar out of the box to play a few Irish songs with my cousin (who is totally into Irish music and plays the tin whistle).

The problem is that I have a Western guitar with steel strings and of course once upon a time I had to get the hardest strings for this guitar (because it sounds so much better but the fingers are completely destroyed ... who cares about fingers when you can have the sound eh?). The finger tips of the left hand are so sore now ... and I have to practise every day to manage at least the basics .... I must be am mad .... ouch!

High Hopes

Beyond the horizon of the place we lived when we were young
In a world of magnets and miracles
Our thoughts strayed constantly and without boundary
The ringing of the division bell had begun
Along the long road and on down to the causeway
Do they still LIVE there by the cut
There was a ragged band that followed in our footsteps
Running before time took our dreams away
Leaving the myriad small creatures trying to tie us to the ground
To a life consumed by slow decay

The grass was greener
The light was brighter
With friends surrounded
The nights of wonder ...

Stuck Between

Riverside just write the perfect music for waiting at the underground station. At least I find them very relaxing:

I'm stuck between myself and me
Pretty sure at this time
The more I see the less I feel
But I don't want it to stop

Read my fortune
Now I can
Know you forever will be there
I'm arising
I will stay for you
And I know I will CARE

Please tell me why I still recall
Know it has to be good
It wouldn't be so hard if I
Were not so frightened for you

Read my fortune
Now I can
Know you forever will be there
I'm arising
I will stay for you
And I know I will CARE

Trash

Well, I am more than willing to pay for the music I want to listen to but since I am moving a lot, I favor everything in an mp3 format and not on a CD.
In addition, I would have to order some CDs from other courntries and after some really nice experience with the Norwegian customs I will just not order anything anymore. Anyway, the mp3 provider I usually use (quite decent prizes and well equipped with my preferred music) shows a fantastic error when I want to pay with credit card ... it says: , , (very informative). And it does that since December I've been trying to get music from there since then, I tried different browsers, I made others to try it because I thought it might be the credit card, I wrote them - nothing. Ok I thought, I waited long enough, let's try another provider, the next one just didn't want to add albums to the basket so it was useless, the third one did all that and had even music I'd never expect they would have - I made it to the registration and then it said that I cannot download music because my IP address is not German and they provide their service only for Germans.
AND NOW PLEASE TELL ME WHY PEOPLE DOWNLOAD MUSIC ILLEGALLY?

When it rains ...

... it pours like hell. However, we have some of the lucky days and it is cold enough to snow ;)
But this post is not supposed to be about the weather - it is about the song 'The Gale' which is just awesome although it is too short. I had it on my mp3 player yesterday when I was coming home from a meeting - it was snowing and I was dancing home.
The Gale is a fantastic entrance song for Insomnium's album 'Above the Weeping World'. On their homepage they promise that they work on new material - that sounds really promising :D
Caution do not listen if you don't like metal. I have to quote a friend: they growl into a destorted microphone over 50 dB of background noise.
The video is of course not official so I mainly post it because of the music and they don't growl that much in that song.

Happy New Year

how time flies ...
anyway, I wish you all a successful, peaceful and above all healthy new year.
May millions of legions be behind you:

sorry, there will not be a translation although I tried one but it was impossible for me to express it in a poetic way (I guess one of the reasons why I quit translation and interpretation studies ;)

Frei/Free

'Ich hoffe und ich lache und ich laufe und ich lebe,
ich hoffe und ich lache und ich laufe und bin frei.
Denn ich bin frei von den Schatten dieser Welt
endlich frei von der Fessel die mich hält.
Und ich spür die grosse Kraft
wenn der neue Tag erwacht.
Drum lauf ich weiter, lauf ich so schnell wie der Wind
bis Frieden ich find.
Drum lauf ich weiter, suche ich nach jenem Ort,
wo ich verweil.'

Schandmaul, Anderswelt, Frei, 2008

Approximate translation:
Free

I hope and I laugh and I run and I live,
I hope and I laugh and I run and I am free.
Because I am freed from the shadows of this world
free at last from the chain which holds me back.
And I feel the powerful force
when the new day dawns.
Therfore I run further, run as fast as the wind
until I find peace.
Therefore I run further, searching for the place
where I will stay.

Warum?
Endlich mal wieder draussen wandern gewesen - wollte erst nicht und musste den inneren Schweinehund überwinden, weil es von der neuen Wohnung ja leider länger dauert bis man im Wald ist. Habe mich aber genauso gefühlt wie in dem Lied beschrieben - einfach frei. Bilder gibt es natürlich auch ;)

Why?
Because finally I was outside hiking - first, I didn't really want to and had to convince my weaker self, because unfortunately it takes longer from the new appartment to be in the woods. After all I exactly felt like described in the song - simply free. Of course there are pictures ;)

Es wird grün.
Getting green now.


Das ist wirklich Eis ;)
Ice in May - no joke ;)


Eine Pause an einem See - habe auch prompt Besuch von zwei gutaussehenden Herren bekommen - allerdings waren die eher an meinem Baguette interessiert als an mir persönlich. Das Bein ist absichtlich drauf, um zu sehen wie nah sie waren.

A break at a lake - I was visited by two awesome guys right away - however they were more interested in my baguette than in me personally. The leg is on the picture to see how close they were.




Nachdem sie bekommen haben, was sie wollten, haben sie sich dann verzogen - Männer! ;)
After they got what they wanted they swam away - guys! ;)


In Deutschland blüht bald der Rhododendron und der Flieder aber hier sind es erst die Anemonen.
In Germany it's time for the rhododendron and lilac to be in flower but here only the anemones are out.

Thanks,

Mikko, for the translation - very much appreciated !

Huh hah huh ha

... yeah still listening to that song. Funnily enough people end up here when searching for 'missä miehet rastastaa' what do you expect (especially after all the you tube videos which are found on top of the google page)?
At least my very profound internet research (of 50 seconds) has given me an idea about the title - 'when men are riding' ;).
Anyway that guy has an astonishing voice - I could not sing that high ;)

Missä miehet ratsastaa

No - I can't speak finnish (don't even really speak Norwegian although I should by now) and I just understood that this is something about riding(?). This is just a song of Teräsbetoni. (Warning if you open that you will have to play a crazy game and moving a sheep around trying to eat grass while there are knights coming from right and left and when the sheep is hit 3 times it will die). Anyway why I am writing about this is because we have such a nice word in German which is called 'Ohrwurm' and basically means catchy tune but a word to word translation would be ear worm. But I really love the German word because it is like a worm in your ear which is not going away - catchy tune just doesn't really describe it. And this song is really my 'Ohrwurm' at the moment.
And yeah I lost my mind ;).

Du hast nur dies eine Leben...

... wenn's vorbei ist, ist's vorbei. Nimm's nicht so schwer, denn das wichtigste ist doch, du hattest eine gute Zeit. Ärzte
Das neue Album ist mal wieder klasse und sie schaffen es immer noch so schön unkonventiell zu sein, sich selbst und die Welt auf die Schippe zu nehmen aber durchaus auch etwas philosophisch zu werden. Herrlicher Kontrast zu den ganzen unnützen Teenie und Pop Bands, die einem sogar schon auf die Nerven gehen, wenn man sie nicht mal hört ;)

Well - I guess that is not really relevant for non-German speakers - just about a new Album of a German band called "Die Ärzte". Yeah there are also other German groups besides Rammstein ;). I just like them because they are so different from these boring teenie and pop groups.

Nur manchmal wenn der Südwind weht ...

... und wildes Fernweh durch mich geht wie schauerliche Stürme, dann sehn ich mich ... (Subway to Sally, Auf Kiel, Bastard).

Manchmal da wünsche ich mich ganz weit fort in eine einsame Hütte ohne irgendeine Menschenseele treffen zu müssen ... so etwa 5 Mal pro Tag in letzter Zeit.

I will not translate lyrics because I think that you can only understand the original.
Sometimes I would wish to be far away in a lonely cabin without having to meet anyboday ... around 5 times a day.