Joshua Radin

Two nights ago I was at a Joshua Radin concert. Josh is a singer/songwriter guy from Ohio that is most famous for having a song, "Winter", on a episode of the TV show Scrubs. Here in Europe he´s not that famous which makes the concerts smaller and more personal. I went to the concert on my own but standing in line waiting to get let in started talking to some girls that had seen him in Cologne a month ago and now came to see him again. We had the most fantastic night! The venue was really small and there was about 200 people in there. I got a pretty good spot right by the stage just 1 meter from Josh

His first line was " Are you ready to rock??!!" that got everyone screaming and cheering. Then he said " O Im just kidding, we´re not gonna rock. Im joshua radin and Im here to play you some songs"

He played songs from his old album, from the new one and songs that has not been released yet. The last song was Sam Cooks Bring It On Home To Me, and the whole crowd sang with him. For one accoustic song we walked off the stage and stood right in the middle of the crowd.

He is just the typical singer/songwriter kind of guy, I think 3 or 4 songs of the ones he played that night was written to girls to make them fall in love with him, another 2 or 3 was written after break-ups. In a way, all of the songs were love songs, that might be why 70% of the crowd was girls between 20 and 35.

Iv always loved music and concerts, especially small ones like this. After the show I got to hang out with Josh and the band until 3 in morning, that just made this the best concert ever. This is the best way to spend a summer night, good music, new friends and just alot of fun.

Josh´s boots.

Bass player Jonny Flower and the girls I was standing next to

Pitti Uomo 2

Pitti is one day too long, on the last day there are no visitors at all and it feels like all the exhibitors are just waiting for it to be 3 o´clock so they can pack everything and leave, I think it would be much better if it was just for 3 days. Since we didnt have a very big stand it didnt take longer than a couple of hours to have everything ready to go in the transporter. Our original plan was to just leave it and pack it up saturday morning, but for some reason we changed our minds and went to the apartment to get the transporter so that we could be done. Florence is small, a lot of one way streets, narrow streets, just not made for big cars. I guess the drive to the fair was supposed to take 20 minutes, but for us it took at least 1 hour.. and then we didnt even got in on the fairgrounds, so we drove all the way back again.

Hard to see how narrow this is, but we got stuck on this corner with the transporter.. it was thanks to an old italian lady that we managed to get us out of it. Grazie mille!

The Pitti Uomo was a good week, one day too long but still a good week. It felt like we belonged there with RM and I hope we will go back to next years shows! We have been there once now and have a pretty good idea on how it works so next year will only be better!

Mr Williams was with us the whole time.

Pitti Uomo

Last monday I left a rainy, cold and windy Frankfurt for a hot, dry Florence. For 4 days, we worked all day at Pitti Uomo. It was our first time there and it went really well! Our stand was in a good hall and right by the exit, better air-condition there, and a lot of people passing by all day.

There were swedes, germans, austrians, dannish, americans, japanese, british...very international crowd.

Emma and Molina had done a great job with the stand, it looked real good! It took us about 3 days before we got any electricity in there, we kept going to the information desk asking for help, but you know...its italy...you cant just ask for electricity and expect something to happen...nooo...like 6 different people has to be involved in getting an electrician to your stand and fixing it...it takes some time, but 3 days later, we had light!

Pitti is huge! its a lot of buildings with many exhibitors, and since I can hardly find my way from my apartment to the grocery store, it took me a few days to know my way around Pitti..and I could just forget about knowing the way from Pitti to our apartment.

At Pittis opening day I met a few people that I met earlier this year while travelling through Germany visiting just about every major city in the north and middle part, it was nice to see some familiar faces and hopefully I will get to meet them properly next week in Berlin during Bread&Butter and Premium. Also got to see some new faces that Im touring around visiting these weeks days before Berlin. Busy as always. It seemed like the opening day was the most busy day, we didnt have a quiet minute in the Urban Panorama hall during the whole day, it was a real good way to start off the week!

We had an okay-view from our apartment on the other side of Florence, every day we walked through the city to get to the fair..I can think of worse cities to go for a weeks work at a fair.. day 2 and 3 was pretty much the same, not as much people as day one but it still kept us busy. We also got company from denmark, norway and sweden that came to work with us for a couple of days.

13 hours...

3 red bull and 2 coffee...it was a long drive but Im finally here! Frankfurt-Hahn airport. It is supposed to take only 10 hours here but the traffic was real bad in some areas and it was raining really hard in the north so I couldnt drive fast at all. I actually dont mind driving as long as its not dark, im not tired and i have music to listen to, so most part of it was okay, it was the last hour or so that was a bit hard, good thing I didnt have to drive all the way to Florence! The fligh from here to Pisa is just 2 hours, I like those kind of trips a lot more that driving 13 hours!
When I told the guys at work that i was a Ben & Jerrys fridge they laughed at me, wonder what they would think bout this Ben & Jerrys boat in Amsterdam??

on the road again

Im on my way down to Frankfurt, its just about 10 hours and 45 min from my apartment.
But I dont really mind, I can leave my horse knowing she will be well looked after, the sun is shining, I got the car packed with music, water and fruits and tomorrow I will be on my way to Florence! Im flying out from Frankfurt Hahn airport to Pisa, from there I will take a train to Florence which should not be a such a long trip. Ill be at the Pitti Uomo, men´s fashion fair, until saturday. Im really excited about it!
But now I better get going if I want to get there before tomorrow...

NRHA European Futurity Champion 2009

Bernard Fonck from Belgium and Sail On Top Whizard wins the first ever European Futurity in Kreuth/Germany in march this year. I was there and as always in a futurity final, it was crazy! great runs, great crowd and just a great time. This is reining when its at its best! When Boris (announcer) says "THEEEEEE SCOOOREE.." everyone knows that it was the best score so far, and the crowd goes wild...

Köln!

I love this city! I like it more than Dusseldorf, and I like Dusseldorf a lot. The good weather did not stay for very long, right after lunch time it started to rain and it even was a little thunderstom, but maybe that means the warm temperatures is on its way? I sent a text message to a good friend in Bremen telling him how much I loved Cologne, his reply was "Sorry, but I have an inexplicable hatred towards Cologne. These people (he didnt actually say "people" here but it sounds nicer than the word he used) are so awfully proud of their goddamn city that it's all they can talk about. Drives me up the wall."
Well...it is nice city..so I can understand why they are proud of it.
Im not exactly the best person to at parking cars..I actually suck at it. I was in a parking garage in Cologne today, wanted to park at the womens parking spaces, its a lot closer to the exit, I just didnt get that my car was simply too big for the parking space I wanted. I was blocking the way while I still was trying to park in this space, he stoped, got out and came up to me and said " you know, your car in this space. will. not. work" in a friendly way. then he asked where I was from, I said Sweden and he said " oh, so that is why you are so blonde" Im not really sure if he ment my hair or the fact that I suck at parking... Anyways, he was really friendly and told me where there was more spaces..

Another sunny day

YES! Finally the good weather is on its way back, and it is more than welcome! I had this good plan on getting a bit of a tan before I go to Florence next week, but that has not been working out very well..

Today I am in Köln, a bit bigger and more exciting than Essen, I got a feeling that today will be a good day, no near death experiences at auto bahn or anything..
Good music helps the feeling of a good day too, Im over the country thing and now and today Im on swedish music..

Autobahn

Scary Place..I was close to getting into some trouble on autobahn today.. A truck was gonna overtake another truck but he didnt see that I was in the middle lane and I was driving pretty fast. I had to stear very quickly to the left so that the truck wouldnt run into me but there was a very fast audi coming behind me in the left lane, I had to stear onto the grass or the audi would have driven into be. He hit the breaks but had to pass us between me and the truck.. pretty scary.. The truck driver was the one to blame here, he obviously did not look in his rearview mirror before he changed lanes, and seeing that huge truck coming agains you its a reflex to stear the other way. Bad timing that the audi was coming right then.
But everyone is fine and alive, although I was a bit shaken after.

Iv spent today in Essen, not a very exciting city, and Im happy to explore Köln tomorrow.

Musicwise Iv been in a country mood today and have only listend to country.. I have those days.. They come every now and then but never last for more than a day in a row

When you know everything will be alright

I got a wall post on facebook at 7 am today from the guy who is looking after my horse. just one line.

"Underbara Wunderbara GRACE!! :-)"

Thats when I knew everything will be alright, if he likes my horse he will do a good job with her. Feels very very good. Its a lot easier to be away knowing she is alright and liked by the trainer that has her! I bet he knew that I was worried so he is doing a bit extra work with her, thats what a trainer is supposed to do. Its hard for a horse owner to leave your horse with someone else.

When I worked in a stable here in Germany we had about 20-25 different horse owners at the same time..it was very important that even if we had so many horses, every one of them got taken care of in the best possible way.

Today will be a good day, my horse is finally doing well so this will be a very good day!

Andy and her horse Snazzy. A happy owner and her horse where I used to work. Andy would come every weekend, to ride and just hang out in the barn. While it was our job to ride and look after the horses, it was the owners free time so it had to be nice and relaxing for them. I think we did a very good job keeping our owners happy, we were all like a big family.

Back in Germany

So Im back in Bremen. I had a nice relaxing weekend in stockholm. I went shopping saturday and went to urban outfitters, would not have been surprised if i would have spent a lot of money there but I only fould one thing that I wanted! Good thing for my economy I guess...


On my way back here I bought a book at the airport. I decided that I need to have something to do at evening when Im on my own. The new one from Marian Keyes, cant remember the title, but it has 800 pages so it should keep my busy for a few nights..





My horse has arrived in the new barn where she will be staying safe and sound.. I will go see her on the weekend to make sure she is doing alright and being better taken care of this time.




Graduation day for Jesper (tall guy in the back)

6th of June

The Royal Family! I feel so patriotic

Urban Outfitters

Yesterday was the graduation of my dads wifes son. We had a big dinner here at home and because of the bad weather we had to stay inside.. a bit crowded but very nice to meet people I havent met in a long time. Today Im going into town! I "need" to do some shopping and stockholm is a real good place for that! My favourite store here is Urban Outfitters, it is by far the coolest shop in stockholm and carry mostly their own brands but also some others. Its not cheap there, but its at least worth a visi

zuruck nach deutchland

"back to germany"
yes, today I go back to Germany for a couple of days. I really miss it! Germany that is. I cant say what exactly Im missing about it but it feels good to go back today! One thing is the traffic, it moves much faster in Germany than here but its so much easier. Here in The Netherlands its really intense and a lot of cars on the road... But in Germany is not as much traffic so its easier to change lanes and stuff...
I go to Munster, a university city just 2h and 25 min from here. University citys are usually really nice with very good shopping. Then late tonight I drive up to Bremen, I fly to Stockholm from there tomorrow.
Yesterday I was visiting customers in Utrecht, Leiden and Rotterdam, they were all really nice stores with very friendly people and it was nice to see something else than Amsterdam.
Soo still very excited about going back to Germany today.. Hope the weather there is as good as it has been here!