Karohemd's World

Friday
Around 2, I went over to raggedyman's where his mother picked us up and drove us to Stansted. There we waited at the Krispy Kreme stand for the others (mansunite, razornet, devalmont, Graham, robinbloke and finally Jon). After a few donuts and checking again we had everything we made our way through customs where razornet was the unlucky one to be picked for special treatment but we made it through in one piece. A quick "pizza" and a couple of shots later, our flight was finally called and we trekked to the far end of the airport (Gate 54, where no handy train thing goes). We waited in the queue for what seemed like ages but miraculously, when things finally got moving the plane actually left on time and arrived in Krakow 10 minutes ahead of time. The two hour and a bit flight was relatively painless and was spent chatting and reading.
Going through customs and arrivals in Krakow was OK, too, although there was quite a queue. The airport is tiny so while some of us got money out of the cash machine (exchange rate was 5:1), others went for a smoke and raggedyman even found a flask of vodka for robinbloke. After looking for the nonexistent hotel shuttle and asking a helpful member of staff we decided to take two taxis to the hotel which worked out quite cheap for the journey (our hotel was at the other end of Krakow). We got to the hotel just after 10, checked in and were told that the bar would close in a few minutes' time so we quickly dropped off our bags and then proceeded to make a good dent into the bar's stock until around midnight because we had an early start the next morning. Nobody asked us to leave and they kept serving us so I guess their opening times are arbitrary (as are other rules as you'll see later).

The hotel rooms were basic but functional and clean (two beds, wardrobe, desk, two chairs, bathroom with shower, loo and sink), all we needed for a weekend.

Saturday
The breakfast buffet had hot sausage and "scrambled eggs" and lots of more continental style items like cold cuts and cheeses, rather good bread and bread rolls, boiled eggs, salads, cereal etc. perfect for providing the base for the day's (drinking) activities.
Our first item was a Crazy Guides tour of the communist legacy of Krakow. Our guides were Yoolka, Kielbasa and Nyzio and we were driven around in the Red Devil (standard Trabant), The Frog (Trabant Kombi and the Polski Fiat. How they managed to fold devalmont into any of them, especially the Fiat was a miracle. We visited Nowa Huta, a huge part of the city build during the Stalin era to house 100,000 steel workers. For communist architecture. this was quite beautiful (if all covered in soot from the pollution) and positively huge and still the biggest district in the city. All communist trappings like the Lenin statue in the main square have been removed so it all looks quite pleasant. In an old restaurant which was the main attraction during the communist era and still makes a lot of business we had a drink (two different shots of vodka) and a bit of a history lesson of the years after WWII until the late 80s. As a centre of heavy industry, Krakow was also one of the major centres for Lech Walesa's Solidarność trade union.
The steelworks itself we didn't visit, just the main gate as there was some celebration going on (some anniversary related to Solidarność. After the steelworks, we stopped at a random street corner where an old Soviet tank was parked which we had a good look around and posed with.

We were dropped off somewhere in town (at the Square of Ghettos Heroes as I now know) from where we wandered around a bit until we found a small restaurant where we stopped for lunch. We had two flavours of pierogi (pork and sauerkraut), breaded pork neck and other delicacies as well as a couple of beers and more vodka (I held back a bit there as I can't drink much during the day without falling over). After finding out where we actually were, we made our way into the old town proper. Apparently because Hitler loved it, Krakow was never destroyed during WWII so there is a lot of historical architecture from all eras, mostly Central European so not much different from, say, Berlin or Vienna. We walked around, watched the fattest pigeons we'd ever seen, visited the very impressive cathedral which among other lush features has a huge altar piece by Veit Stoß, a German sculptor who also worked in Nuremberg and Bamberg and then had a couple of drinks before wandering more to find The Wodka Bar where they didn't serve food so we went around a couple of corners until we found a restaurant where more excellent food and cake for little money (by UK standards) were had. The menu mentioned mushrooms on my veal escalopes that turned out to be girolles so that was nice. This was also when we discovered that tax often isn't included on the price shown on the menu but the added surprise wasn't that big. The rest of the evening we spent at the vodka bar sampling a variety of vodkas guided by robinbloke and the very helpful barman. Having had quite enough around 10, we got taxis back to the hotel where we propped up the bar for a bit until midnight or so.


Sunday
After the previous night's heavy drinking, we had a bit of a lie-in before breakfast. The historic part of the day was Wawel, a castle complex that has been in use since the 9th century and continuously rebuild and expanded over the centuries in a hodgepodge of styles (quote raggedyman, "When you become king, you just stick on another bit to live in"). The whole complex is huge and you can walk around the outside areas and most courtyards. Various inside areas are ticketed but separately so you can pick the things you're really interested in. The weather was rather grey and rainy so we just picked up tickets for everything. We started with a guided tour of the royal apartments which were very impressive and lush. Some walls still had original, unrestored murals around the top edge of the walls. Other items like huge tapestries and furniture were equally well preserved. Our lovely guide covered quite a bit of history during that good hour and I learned a lot I hadn't known about Poland.
The armoury was equally impressive. As Krakow used to be the seat of kings, there were the crown jewels and other items from that era in one part of the building and the armour proper with a huge selection of weapons, armour and artillery in the other. Photography was prohibited in all the inside areas so sadly you'll have to take my word for it how interesting and fascinating all the items were, like the gunblades (short thin swords with double barrelled guns built into the handle) and firearms with intricately carved and/or inlaid stocks. One of the rifles looked like a Dwarven blunderbuss from Warhammer and there was a double-action wheel lock handgun, too. The most surprising aspect to me (remember I didn't know much about Polish history other than 20th century) was the strong Central Asian influence especially in the armour. The day before we'd seen a number of people in armour and uniforms wandering around the city center and posing for tourists who looked almost like Mongols to us which we found strange but was then made clear that it was actually local.
We took a break from all the wandering around the castle and then visited the oldest part of the castle (the "Lost Wawel"). For the most part, this is a walkway suspended above excavated walls and ruins as well as cases with items found in the ruins from arrow heads to shoes.
When we came out the sun had come out and on the way to the baggage area (you couldn't take bags into most of the inside buildings) I retook a few photos as things looked even more impressive. Then we climbed up Sandomierska Tower from which we had an impressive view over the city.
We exited through the Dragon's Den, a natural cave underneath the castle, said to be the legend of a great beast that was slain by Krakus, the legendary founder of Krakow. Randomly, as we came down the winding staircase into the first chamber, a short old bearded man in chainmail came the other way who very much like the old Knight Templar guarding the grail in the third Indiana Jones film and pretty much all of us thought, 'Did I just see that?'.
Outside, beautiful weather over the Vistula greeted us as well as a multi-headed statue that actually breathed fire every few minutes. This was a bit hard to photograph in bright sunshine but I got a reasonable shot, even on the G10. There were enough parts of Wawel we didn't see so could easily have spent another day there but we wanted to see some more parts of Krakow and were slowly getting hungry again so we made our way into town again.

We wandered back into the old town and then found a veritable heaven of meat in the shape of Miod i Wino. The menu outside had things like veal shanks and pork knuckles but we went for the Hunters Feast for 8 which included wild boar, deer pierogi, poached venison roulade, breaded pork, red cabbage, pearl barley, ghoulash, various gravies and potato dumplings. As a starter there was bread and lard with crispy bits which amused my Brit friends greatly but was something I was perfectly used to from Germany (we call it Griebenfett). The whole meal was like a journey into my youth in Germany as I couldn't actually remember the last time I had roast wild boar. Suffering from the meat sweats (raggedyman tweeted "We have managed to give ourselves meatpoisoning by having a "Hunters feast". Currently we are sweating gravy.") we staggered back past the cathedral to the Southern bit of the Jewish Quarter to Singer, a bar raggedyman had found during his research. It was dark and cosy and the smaller tables were all antique Singer sewing machines. Many a vodka, beer and Slivovitz (damson brandy) were had before we got taxis back to the hotel and ended the night in the hotel bar (which again stayed up a lot longer than advertised). I turned in around 11 as I wanted to pack in peace, shower, rehydrate and write a couple of postcards and was in bed just after midnight.

Monday
Up at 6:45, I crawled out of bed and dressed and stumbled downstairs as I felt the weekend's excesses in my bones. Seeing an ambulance outside made the feeling even worse but thankfully none of us needed medical attention and everybody was ready when the taxis arrived to take us to the airport. Tiny as it is, getting through security/customs was rather quick and painless (although the guard looked at my passport/me a lot longer than the others') and as we had been early we had to wait for quite a while. Getting on the plane was more annoying as there was only one bus and by the time the other half of us got on there were seats but no space in the overhead compartments left so I had to squeeze my bag and jacket between my feet. However, we left on time and got to Stansted ahead of time (that fanfare is really annoying). Getting through passport control with a chipped passport was quick as well and we ended where we started at the Krispy Kremes stall until everyone had made it (the queue for standard passports was much longer). Then we split up again, Andy and I got a lift to Cambridge and I collapsed at home, catching up with internet and TV, reheated dinner and processed photos.

A very good weekend indeed and I definitely want to go back to Poland to discover more of this wonderful country. There are many more photos on flickr.

Last night I met up with skorpionuk and took her to Alimentum in Cambridge to introduce her to the wonders of their kitchen. I had mentioned I was going on twitter and as both chefs follow me, they asked me if we wanted them "to cook for us" (which usually involves a tasting menu with some extra treats and new dishes) and of course I said yes. We were also treated to a different glass of wine with each course which, considering we ended up having ten (11 counting coffee/petit fours), made us rather jolly indeed and Ed poured rather generously, too. :D
Mostly in between courses (we were concentrating too hard on the food), we chatted about life, the universe and everything (thankfully not really about work) and it was wonderful to catch up and get to know each other better.
Over three hours later we were done and in a taxi to first deliver skorpionuk at the station in time for her (almost) last train and then me at home. Having arrived home, I crashed out on the bed but couldn't sleep due to too much wine so caught up with a bit of telly and rehydrated.

So, many thanks to the kitchen and FOH teams at Alimentum and to skorpionuk for being a wonderful dining companion. We should do this more often. :o)

Sneak preview shot:

( And here's what we had: )

What a treat, I will never get tired of this place.

I'm on a foodie roll at the moment because next week I'm going to Tuddenham Mill with two twitter friends I haven't actually met in real life yet. :o)

On Friday, pinkapplejam and raggedy_man aka hardcore_genki got married and probably should now change their names to pinkappleman and raggedy_jam as they now carry each other's names. :D I'm so happy for them not just because they are perfect together but also because it was such a perfect day.



All the guests be they friends or relatives from both sides got on really well and everyone had fun. I met many awesome people and all those wonderful drawings by pinkapplejam's artist friends in the wedding book made me feel almost a bit inadequate.
I also had a bit of a pang of envy during the reception when the DJ played some Rolling Stones and raggedy_man's parents stopped mid-conversation to storm onto the dancefloor. My parents aren't that cool. :o(
Mentioning cool parents, one of my favourite shots is the one of raggedy_man's dad channeling Cab Calloway during his speech:



If you click on that photo and then on the link for the set, you can see all the photos from Friday and I wrote about it here.

I left just before 11 because I was knackered and had a headache from fuzzy vision.

Saturday was part 2 which involved drinks at the Pickerel, a visit of the Cambridge Folk Museum, a guided punt tour along the Backs and back, cocktails at The Snug and a dire dinner at Loch Fyne. Blog post here and photos via the following shot:



On Sunday I slept until noon, crawled out of bed, moaned and slowly got going and tackled the rest of the photos on my hard disk, publishing them on flickr, burning them on DVDs for the couple and their families and uploading highres shots for printing to photobox.

Dear pinkapplejam and raggedy_man, thank you very much for inviting me and allowing me to be part of your happy day. I am really happy for you (and I'll see you tonight to pass on your present :D).

Today two of my best friends got married: raggedy_man who's been a dear friend for 15 years and pinkapplejam who I've known since they started going out and it was fantastic.
The wedding was held at Hotel Felix in Cambridge and as it was such a nice day, the ceremony was in the garden in, fittingly, a gazebo. The disadvantage of this was that it was quite noisy with traffic, tweeting birds, binmen and, just as raggedy_man was saying his personal vows, an ice cream van (which actually was rather appropriate). However, these issues only affected the audience and the official bit went along without a hitch. As the couple (now bearing each other's names in double-barrel fashion) emerged (pinkapplejam in a beautiful, scintillating red dress and raggedy_man in a more traditional morning suit with an appropriate top hat), their smiles couldn't possibly have been bigger:



There were cheers and confetti from all sides as people mingled and congratulated the newlyweds and photos were taken.



After lots of mingling and chatting, we were ushered upstairs where tables were laid out named after various cats (I was on Hector) with a great mix of people from both sides, friends and family) on each table and name tags, menus and tags designed by pinkapplejam. The menu consisted of a reasonable ham hock terrine (which could have done with a bit of either mustard or horseradish), a very well cooked piece of chicken with pomme boulanger and cabbage and a lovely choc mousse served with raspberry coulis, a hazelnut biscuit and creme fraiche. The slightly minty chocolate truffles served with the coffee were excellent. I usually can't stand mint chocolate but these had just the right amount of mint that left you with a clean, fresh taste in your mouth.

Then, the speeches: pinkapplejam's dad did a lovely, briefish speech on how much his kids meant to him, raggedy_man and pinkapplejam about how much the other meant to them, Nayyar's Best Woman speech was lovely and kind while robinbloke's Best Man speech picked out more fun (and embarrassing) memories from their friendship. raggedy_man's dad was last with more fun and "interesting" tales from Andy's youth and provided one of my favourite shots of the day:



Then we were ushered downstairs again where we mingled on the terrace and in the bar while the upstairs was prepared for the reception.
That was good fun as well, the music wasn't objectionable (they had trained their DJ well), a cake was slaughtered and a buffet (which included some rather fine roast beef) demolished. Nobody kicked up a fuss, nobody got excessively drunk, nobody behaved embarrassingly.
I don't think it could have gone any better.
As I'm knackered, I'll close this with a shot of the first dance:


More photos on flickr. A lot more tomorrow. I was glad I wasn't the official photographer as I woke up with fuzzy vision and had two brief technology failures and the light on the dancefloor was so weak it was very hard to focus properly. :/

So, congratulations again to pinkapplejam and raggedyman. I am very happy that you are so happy together. Long may it continue.

ETA: The album with edited photos is now up on flickr.

belak_krin kindly gave me a lift to Bar Hill where we met the rest of the party (robinbloke, devalmont, davywavy, twentypence and Alan) and set off in glorious sunshine in three cars to "Location X".
On the A14 we passed a Mitsubishi SUV of the "paranormal investigation team" WTFWT which caused some giggles.

Our destination was Thetford Forest, specifically the Go Ape! assault course. We signed in, signed our waivers and waited for someone to arrive (who didn't) and were then strapped into our harnesses and shown how the safety lines worked (you were always attached by at least one point every time, while you were crossing an obstacle by two). Having been apprehensive all week, I was surprisingly calm until I climbed up the first rope ladder. I (or rather, my knees) really didn't like the wobbling but I made it up to the first (training) platform from which you had to cross on a 1cm steel cable while clipped onto a wire overhead. There were ropes to hold onto and the wire was under high tension so didn't wobble and I was fine with it. That wasn't bad at all. On the other side of the target platform was the first zip line. These I thought would be the worse for me because I really don't like not seeing where I'm going to land, at least not with little control over my speed. However, this turned out not to be a problem and was a lot of fun and I actually felt really safe.
Then, the first proper obstacle, a platform quite high up, then a tarzan swing into a cargo net which you had to climb up (while still being connected to the tarzan rope) and traverse to the next platform. I realised how unfit (or at least lacking in body strength) I am when I realised how difficult that long rope ladder was. Climbing the cargo net was even worse as it was far too wobbly for my liking. It took me ages to get across (guided by robinbloke who told me how high I needed to go as I couldn't look around much because I was holding on for dear life) but I made it. The next two bits (crossing a wire, a rope bridge consisting of stepping planks just a step length apart and another bridge that was basically a net) were no problem for me. The zip line at the end of that bit gave me a real rush. :o)
All the others are a lot fitter for me and had little physical problems. davywavy was probably the bravest of us as he suffers from quite severe fear of heights but he did really well.
Looking at the next row of obstacles, I chickened out of completing the rest because there were too many wobbly bits for my liking so I followed the group on the ground and took lots of videos and photos. I wish there had been a lift up to the zip lines because they were a lot of fun but I couldn't get there. :/
The next bit consisted of a cargo net to traverse and various stepping and wire bridges, ending with another zip line.
After that was another tarzan swing with quite a drop, landing at speed in a cargo net and then across a series of swinging bits to another zip line.
The final bit was more swinging bits and the longest zip line back to the start.
Everybody had a good time, especially the groom so the first part of the day was a huge success. The beautiful weather obviously helped a lot, too.

We drove back to Bar Hill, stocked up on supplies at the super tesco's and convened at robinbloke's house to recover with drink, delivered curry and more booze. There were silly cartoons and YouTube videos, games (Zombie Dice) and then lots and lots of Karaoke on raggedyman's Lucky Voice machine. Various people dropped out or went home over the next few hours but devalmont, robinbloke, belak_krin and I held out until about 3am.

I slept reasonably well on the squishy couch and started shuffling about around 10, helping clear up a bit. robinbloke cooked us bacon and egg breakfast and we spent the rest of the time until just after midday chatting.

 
  
 

( Bigger and more photos plus a couple of videos )

Yet more photos and videos (finally all of them are up) on flickr.

was cool indeed. Varied selection of music (even technotom's set was less goffic than I feared ;P) Considering it's summer, the turnout was excellent, too, and people seemed to have a good time.

A huge thanks to all my friends for feeling xambrius welcome, he had a good time. :o)

I'd picked him up earlier from the station, checked him into Westminster Collage (I hate not being able to offer crash space), then we had dinner at Tanh Binh and took a leisurely walk through town past Reality Checkpoint until we ended up at the Dev. After a pint of Sparta, razornet joined and we had a good chat about stuff and another pint or two.
Then xambrius was being silly and called martinhesselius, handing his phone to me (in revenge for the same thing Glas did at ICC a few years ago ;)

This afternoon we'll be doing the touristy thing in Cambridge (incl being lazy and have us punt down the Backs). Anyone who would like to join us is more than welcome.
We'll probably end up doing a little pub crawl in the evening, again the more the merrier. Probably Cambridge Blue, Dev, Elm Tree, ending at the Pickerel because that's closest to Tim's abode. ;)

Photos to follow.

Sunday started with Psycho. A new digital print combined on the big screen was perfect for appreciating the superb cinematography properly. Absolutely wonderful.

After that, I watched too bits in TV Heaven (Children of the Stones - sadly only two eps - and Dark Season - which was very 80s cheese by RTD).

Patrick was next, excellent thriller with a psychokinetic coma patient.
Is it just me or did the doctor have a rather striking resemblance to the Albino from Mark of the Devil? I checked on imdb, it's not the same actor.

Then another Screentalk with Stanley A. Long about his career, his films, difficulties with (and bribing of) censors and anecdotes of Roman Polanski and other people he's worked with. Another very enjoyable talk with a great character.

His Screamtime, a collection of three shorts was next and indeed excellent. I will never look at garden gnomes the same way again.

That ran straight into The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue which was hilariously cheesy and a fitting end to the festival.

All in all, an excellent festival with excellent films, good friends old and new (@Crawther, yay!). Really sad it's over.

When someone invites you to help devour their huge amounts of pork, you don't say no, especially when it's a fellow foodie like i_am_toast.
After my huge dinner last night (pork tenderloin, peppercorn sauce, dauphinoise potatoes, wilted chard) I wasn't really hungry (didn't even have breakfast, just a banana) but when the gnocchi starter appeared (very nice indeed for a first attempt and not stodgy at all) so did my appetite.
There was a mindboggling "Gin&Tonic" sorbet while we were waiting for the main event:
Pork roast, THE BEST ROAST POTATOES EVAR (super crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside), sauteed cabbage with bacon and walnuts (excellent combo) and baby carrots. A bucket of gravy, too. Nobody could fit in any dessert so we left that in the freeze.

We shambled upstairs to flop on couches, chat and watch the fab Bubba-Hotep which was just the right fodder.

Thank you again for a wonderful Sunday afternoon!

On my way back I missed the bus by a minute (I was just at the Mitcham's Corner pedestrian crossing when the bus came round the corner. If there had been any people at the stop, I could have sprinted up but this way it just carried on) and it being a Sunday, I walked home (which took me as long as waiting for the next bus so it made sense). Walking off a few of those calories actually did me good.

At home, I caught up with stuff online and watched the interesting first episode of Stephen Fry's Last Chance to See (revisiting and expanding on the places/species Douglas Adams visited in the original). If you didn't see it, catch it on iplayer.

Thursday evening I took many trains to arrive in Brighouse at 22:35 (as scheduled), wandered down to the Old Ship and had Liberal Drinks with miss_s_b, her dad, innerbrat, matgb and someone whose name I don't remember. After closing time, we headed to miss_s_b's for being enthusiastically greeted by the mad dogs of the house, a bit of chat and then an early night.

Friday morning I stopped being able to sleep rather early (a combination of the usual first night in unfamiliar surroundings and the bright light in the morning) so I went downstairs and joined innerbrat in playing LEGO Batman on the wii. After a quick breakfast, matgb kindly gave us a lift into Bradford (parking turned out being cheaper than bus tickets for everyone), we picked up our passes and had to wait for a bit for the first film because Bradford had just been declared Unesco City of Film and the announcement was made at the NMM. We also ran into the usual suspects from the Brit Horror forums.
After Flash Gordon we parted ways as we watched different films, around 10 I had late dinner at Omar's (the largest Naans in Yorkshire and they're not lying), being joined by the BritHorror crowd and then reconvened with SB and the other lot for the fun midnight showing of Shaun of the Dead. Home and sleep.

Saturday morning we went in quite early as we wanted to see the Short Films (which were very good, more in my film post). Dinner was at the Love Apple where I had some lovely griddled halloumi and then quickly back for the highlight of the day, Aliens in 70mm. No midnight film so we drove back and relaxed at SB and Mat's.

Sunday was another early morning which I started with Gnaw, being joined by the others for Call of Cthulhu. Had lunch with innerbrat at the lovely Vegetarian Indian buffet (really tasty dishes, one with chickpeas and paneer, the other was a veg jalfrezi. I didn't have the sweet potato one but innerbrat did, the fried starter bits were great as well, just the dessert was a bit too sticky for my taste (but lovely and cinnamony). Back to the NMM for a bit of wander around before I left innerbrat in the TV section and watched Terminal Man.
After that I listened to Mike Hodges (director of Flash Gordon, Terminal Man, Get Carter etc.) being interviewed by Tony Earnshaw which was really good and funny and I was a bit sad I had to leave before the end because I had a ticket for Star Trek at the IMAX (which was big and actually a bit too big for my taste, despite sitting rather far back).
After a nice bottle of Black Sheep and a muffin at the bar, we parted ways again, me to watch Suspiria and the others for Scar Crow with a Q&A session with cast and crew afterwards (which took quite long to finish).
Back in Brighouse, SB cooked up some fine pasta with tomato sauce and a leaf salad which was a nice end to the weekend.

Monday I got up, packed, had a quick breakfast, sad goodbye to hosts and other houseguest, wandered down to the station in glorious sunshine and had perfect train connections to Cambridge. Went shopping (which will be cooked soon) and caught up with stuff online. I really don't want to go to work tomorrow...