Timewarp festival in Mannheim, Germany

Saturday 6th April 2013

As a fervent listener to techno music (to not mistaken with what the American call any electronic dance music genre), Timewarp festival is the holy grail festival of this pounding genre.

La creme de la creme djs play in this huge market hall temporarily transformed into a techno heaven.

Having already been to a dance festival in Germany, I knew the organizers would not disappoint. 

The country simply provide the best sound system, light effect and organization when it comes to hosting a music event.

With a capacity of 15 000 techno vikings, you would think there would be an endless queue to get in, horrendous toilets, frustrating bars waiting and mountains of litter...well, if this was in the United Kingdom, that would have been the case...however, the Germans are simply efficient to their tasks.

We did not queue longer than 10/15 minutes, the toilet was never an issue and in fact clean even towards the end of the event, and if you pick the right bar, you would just not queue.

Also, the Germans have a "recycling system", which means they give you a voucher when buying your drinks and..if you return your glass/bottle with the voucher, you will get some money back. A very clever way to encourage people not to litter the dancefloors (take note UK festivals!).

As for the atmosphere, people across the globe travel for this event, of course most of the crowd are European and you can easily spot the Italians... Considering the amount of beer flowing in Mannheim, it is surprisingly well behaved. Again, if this would have been in the United Kingdom, there would have been undoubtedly several fights.

So overall a no drama, good nature and fun night out with top quality music.

Simply imagine the best and longest running techno djs playing hours (not just a naff hour set) of finest techno and house and you will see what I mean.

 we are ready to party!

The night officially started when my friend Alex and I went to stage 1 for Carl Cox. Imagine a room bigger than a football pitch of incredible light effect, with thousand of people stomping to Carl's beats. Needless to say that he simply was phenomenal.

stage 4 playing deep house

Carl Cox

Following him was Sven Vath in stage 2 (slightly smaller than stage 1). Now the few times I have seen Sven, although good, his sets were always kind of mellow. Not in Mannheim. In Mannheim, he revealed his darker and dirtier sound and my friends and I simply could not get enough of him!

Unfortunately, after hours of playing superbly, he sort of slipped and lost it (forgiven as it was his last half hour of his long set) so my friend Andy whisked us to another stage, stage 5 he said, "it is time for you to go there". We were rather intrigued...

 Dark vathor

 Clowns reunited

As we finally arrived in stage 5, not only we discovered the stage was in fact a glass sphere which allowed the sun rising and shining through it, but Laurent Garnier was on the decks playing an incredible set mixed of tech house and electro. To be honest, I am still not entirely sure what was the exact genres he was playing, but despite our tiredness, we were stomping as hard as we could with the biggest grins on our faces. The french veteran was doing a 5h set in this magic sphere, and no doubt he could have played even longer.

Alas, we had to leave as we wanted to catch a glimpse of Richie Hawtin.

Laurent Garnier playing the magic sphere as the sun rises

So there we were, back to stage 2, it was now 7.30am and we were rather tired, as most of us (me including) were pretty much sober. We thoroughly enjoyed the first 45 minutes but past 8am, we decided to call a day as our bodies started giving up on us, and we had a long road to hit back to Koln.

Good bye Mannheim!

We got back to the hotel in early afternoon, had a swim, sauna and well deserved sleep before having a lovely dinner.

I could simply not recommend this event enough, everything from start to finish was fantastic and we all flew back to London with a smile on our faces.

Want to know how many days did it rain in 2012?

I have been living in England for over 8 years and I have always wondered how many days it rains in a year as it always seems to rain!

After being deceived on internet searches, I thought "how about I do a database myself" so I scribbled on a calendar every day the weather forecast and here it is!

So in 2012....

We had...

68 sunny days

85 sunny intervals days

101 cloudy days

108 rainy days

and 2 snowy days!

So actually, it does not rain as much as I have thought, still seems a lot though!

Happy New Year!!

Hope you all had a marvelous Christmas and a festive new years eve and/or day!

This year I had decided to have a proper break so went to France with my boyfriend for Christmas, and make a surprise visit to my parents!

After a rather traumatic experience the last Christmas I went to France, thanks to the tiny snow on the runway which resulted to cancel all the flights and had to rebook on Christmas eve, this time I thought I would try the Eurostar.

A much longer travel (9h instead of 1h30), but certainly less stressful.

We only had to check in an hour before the travel and absolutely no restriction of weight and no liquid ban!

Needless to say that, when your suitcase is full of warm clothes and presents, it is rather handy!

The seats are comfortable enough, with a decent legroom for tall people like me, however the sleep (it was a night train journey) was nearly non existent, between a crying baby and a man who thought that it was OK to listen very loudly to his ipod...

Plus the neckache due to the awkwards and restricted sleeping positions!

After a strong coffee in the bar/restaurant carriage and a quick freshen up, we finally arrived in Moutiers at 6am.

I had booked in advance a bus to Brides les Bains (my nearest hometown) and after confusions and wait, we finally boarded the bus and arrived at 7am.

There, we had a funny moment, after ringing my mum's mobile and my parents's landline numerous times, we came to the conclusion that we will probably end up freezing the whole morning! As there were no bars opened yet, we were standing outside the bakerey.

THe baker, who went outside for a cigarette, offered a lift after his shift at 8h30, bless him!

Thankfully, my mum eventually rang back, panicking after looking at the number of missed calls from my number!

I told her that nothing was wrong, that we were here and if she could pick us up.

She obviously was in shock and rather very confused, eventually sank in that we made a suprise visit.

After being picked up and finally got in the house, despite the big bowl of coffee, my boyfriend and I were totally shattered and went for a nap.

The rest of the holiday went splendidly well. My boyfriend made incredibly more effort at trying to speak french and so is my mum with English. We still had funny moments of confusion and lost in translation.

We went cross country skiing on the Sunday, had a lovely Christmas eve meal and went skiing on Christmas day.

The following couple of days were rather very quiet due to the poor weather and went to visit my grandma on the Friday.

Saturday, the last day, the sun eventually appeared and we went skiing, we were lucky some snow settled over the night so the slopes were fantastic.

We took the eurostar back at 11.30pm, and yet again, another noisy carriage, in fact, worse than the outbound journey! 3 snorers and 1 incredibly annoying moaner. I somehow went in and out of sleep.

Arrived in Kings Cross at 7am and the tube journey was smooth, we managed to stay awake the whole day!

As for new years eve, we spent it at our friends Ellie and Tom, who live literally 3 minutes walk from ours so very very handy!

It was exactly how we expected, quality and fun times with close friends and a very wonky walk back to our house.

Today,  I am seating at work obviously gutted the holiday is over but nerveless with a big smile on my face.

The festive holidays were spent as I imagined, if not better.

As for resolutions for 2013, I am not kidding myself but being more realistic.

All I want is being happy and so the people surrounding me.

I want to lose weight but certainly not going on a stupid crash diet, but by eating sensitively and going to the gym more regularly.

I want to cut more parties to focus on more cultural things and also saving more money to finally pay off my credit card.

I am also doing the dryathlon, which is not touching a drop of alcohol during the whole of January, and this for a good cause, for cancer research!

Budapest!!

On the first weekend of November, me and 9 lovely ladies went to Budapest, one of the girls found an offer with groupon and we just all got involved!

Now, my last and only girlie trip was when I was 18/19 and me and two others girls went to southern France for beach holiday.
Needless to say I was excited, yet nervous to be going abroad with such amount of crazy hormones ;o)

So despite some big personalities, complete unpunctuality when meeting, some mouthy heads when intoxicated, two nearly police arrests, one girl being mugged by gypsies, we had an amazing time!

We managed to see enough of the city, admired the beautiful buildings (particularly the synagogue and the castle with its magnificent church) via tour and cruise tour, enjoyed the thermal baths on Sunday after a heavy Saturday night and had a mind blowing dinner the last night.

We still have mixed feelings about the people, we did come across some really nice Hungarian (some were very helpful) but most of them still seem to adapt to the rise of tourism in their country, the language barrier make it difficult to communicate so I wouldn't say it was the warmest place I have been to.

Photos will be followed very soon :o)

Soup season has started

Yes sadly, we have said goodbye to our (short and premature) summer.

Now the temperatures are dropping down and it is getting dark too early, we all want nice, warm, comfort food and one of my favorite is soup, and what is better than soup? Homemade soup!

I was going through this month's good food magazine and saw this delicious recipe of parsnip soup.

To make a big pot, all you need is heat 25g of butter in a large saucepan, add 600g of peeled parsnip cut in chunks, one chopped onion and because my boyfriend hates celery, I replaced it by 400g of mushrooms.

Cook over a low heat for 10 minutes stirring occasionally.

Sprinkle a tablespoon of curry powder, stir, then cover the pan and cook over a very low heat for 15 minutes.

Add one litre of veggie stock and bring to simmer, then cover again and cook gently for 30 minutes.

Blend the mixture, and reheat gently, stir in 200g creme fraiche.

I did not season as I thought it was already well flavored, especially with the curry powder.

They also suggested to add olive oil and coriander, so up to you!

I have made quite a few soups and I must say, this is so far my favorite!!

See below a poor quality photo of the result :-)

Climbing the O2

On a crispy sunny Saturday 29th September, we headed to the O2 in North Greenwich to climb its roof!

I must say we were happy the weather was good as we couldn't imagine being a nice experience in the rain.

After checking in, filling a form that basically says if anything happens they would not be responsible and a quick cheesy video explaining the climb, we were ready to go.

We put on a climb suit and harness and after following the instructions from the guide, we were on the roof!

I must say it was steeper than I thought but with my french alps legs, it wasnt so difficult.

Took us about an hour to climb up and down and stop at the top for beautiful view of the Docklands and beyond.

While we were admiring the views and taking photos, the guide gave us a few interesting facts, one that surprised me if that apparently, the Thames is so clean these days that there are now sea horses in the river!

I would definitely recommend to anyone!

After the climb, we took the Emirates flight aka the cable cars crossing to the Thames to the Excel center before heading back to the city.

It takes less than 10 minutes to cross the river and again, a great opportunity to gaze at the beautiful city.

Roller Disco!!

To celebrate her birthday, my friend Ania had the awesome idea to go to roller disco in Renaissance rooms in Vauxhall. It is something we had been wanted to do for a while so we were all looking forward to put our roller blades on and show everyone how it is done! Ha ha, not so much, most of us felt like bambi on ice after putting them on! Eventually, a couple of hours and jager bombs later, we felt a bit more confident!

Look wise, shops were lacking of neon or disco theme clothes at the time so opted for a "hippie" look whilst my friend Jolanta totally embraced the 80s pop look and Ania and Gosia were neoned :o)

The boys didn't join the dressing game booh, my boyfriend Graham and his brother showed their experience on heels although they are better on roller skates! Gosia's boyfriend rapidly gave up after a few falls and opted for beer drinking and watching us!

It was so much fun! Funny to see us struggling keeping our balance and the shows off were funny too!

Not everyone agreed with me but the djs played a great selection of tunes I used to dance on! Old hip hop, GOOD rnb and disco and 80s classics, well yes of course there was cheese but thats why its so much fun!

Only downside for me was the rollers were poor quality so rubbed my inner sides of feet and got painful blisters now!

But the upside is I thought I would be much worse on the wheels and did not fall!