Orange-mania

The world cup mania has already reached fever pitch here in the Netherlands and we only played our first match today. Needless to say, there is a tsunami in the making and it’s going to leave loads of quaint pubs, cobbled streets, skew houses, glass offices, ring-roads, and brown canals strewn with orange flags, orange boas, orange hats, orange shirts, orange TNT vuvuzelas and the odd free orange condom as well.

It was my birthday again last week, so this blog is not so much about the sunny Amsterdam as about “joli” Paris. Francois surprised me with a weekend-away-in-Paris as birthday present and, as if that is not already good enough, 2 tickets for the finals of Roland Garros. And just to make sure we would not be bored on Saturday night, he added two tickets for the final night of the world tour of Black Eyed Peas into the deal.

There is a new fashion in the city of fashion, Paris, and it has taken the young crowd by storm: The new trend in town on a sunny late afternoon is a pick-nick on the banks of the Seine. It is totally amazing. The quays of the bourgeois Ile de Cite and the stately Ile Saint-Louis are covered with revelers. You really have to battle for the nicer spots. It varies from a good bottle of French red with carefully prepared sandwiches to a cheap rose wine with a few cold cuts from the traiteur on the corner! There is something so improvised, yet so absolutely manicured and chic, about it. So terribly French!



Oh, come with me and I’ll show you
Oh yes, do come with me and I’ll show you
Do you hear that buzz?
Yes, see all those people there?

Oh, come with me and I’ll show you
Oh, yes, do come with me and I’ll show you
No, nothing special, just a summer’s evening
No, nothing like that at all, just fun

Oh, come with me and hold my hand
Oh yes, come with me and kiss me under the Pont Neuf
Yes, like when we were students
No, not at all, why would you say that?

Oh, come with me and hold my hand
Oh yes, do come and with me and kiss me under the Pont Neuf
No, watch, just for a while
Yes, yes, such great, great times

And then there is another new trend in the city of trends: rent a bike! As in most European cities Paris has bikes dotted around that you can rent. And unlike most other European cities, they are enormously popular – both with the locals and the visitors alike. Except for the instructions that are only in French, it is really is piece of cake to rent them and a real pleasure to ride them around the city of love. There are beautifully laid our bicycle paths all along the Seine and you can get to all the famous jaw-dropping sights with the greatest of ease. None of the usual parking problems, no fighting for a spot on the rambling metro, and loads of time to stop and take that favorite pictures. I saw the Eifel Tower from angles that I never though existed! We even hopped onto our rental bikes in the evening to cycle down to the stadium in Bercy where the Black Eyed Peas were performing. Does this sound very Dutch? Oh la la ….

The Black Eyed Peas gave a roaring performance and the 60,000 odd spectators were there for a party of a lifetime! Their latest hit, “I gotta a feeling”, together with the French DJ, David Guetta, have rocketed them to levels of popularity never seen before. Judging by all the jumping up and down and the balled fists and waving arms in the arm, the crowd was there to hear that song above all. I also like their more recent song, “Meet you halfway”, which they opened up with. I was rather intrigued to hear from a friend that it is about death and meeting each other on the other side. Macabre! Well, whatever, for me it’s all about meeting a beautiful somebody in a luscious jungle setting and swimming across a cool stream meeting each other naked halfway. I leave the rest up to you! It would be a huge lie if I said I liked everything. There was a lot of bland rapping and tedious thumping that is really not my scene and never mind how hard I tried the only rap words that stuck to me is “It’s hot in here; it’s really hot here in Paris tonight” as I swiped my hand across my clammy brow again. You see I’m much more of a party boy. Well, there were loads of other party boys and girls around. Not the least was a sweet French couple that is obviously huge fans of David Guetta, the Black Eyed Peas, everything Ibiza and the party scene. They danced in and around their seats in the most sensual of way, with so much caring and enjoyment for the music and most of all for each other. Most infectious!!!



Well, the highlight was definitely my first ever grand slam final and that at Roland Garros of all tournaments. The first hurdle was the rain. François was frantic and the forecast was an overcast morning and heavy rain all afternoon! To top it all we were woken up at around 6 in the morning with torrential rainfall on the sink roof of our minute rooftop hotel room. The gods were on our side, however, and the afternoon turned out to be intermittently sunny, with a refreshing breeze. The red clay court of the main court shone brightly in the afternoon sun and the grand stadium, filled to the brim, made a beautiful sight against the dark purple clouds in the distant background. Rafael Nadal, “el tigre Espanol”, was there to take revenge on cannonball Soderling, the fastest server around. Soderling had upset Nadal, struggling with a knee injury, the previous year at Roland Garros by beating him in the fourth round. Nadal was there to show the world and, seemingly even more important, himself that he was back in full grueling strength. The big hitter, Soderling, was no match for the finesse and agility of Nadal. It was short and sweet match and Nadal was holding the trophy in his hands in just over 2 hours, with straight 3 sets victory! He rolled in the mud like a joyful piggy and cried a little like a spoilt brat that finally got what he wanted – his 5th Roland Garros title. Talk about ambition! The Spanish supporters were happy, the French supporters were noisy, our neighbor had finally finished his blackberry messages, but most important of all I was as happy and content as when I blew out that first little candle now 45 years ago in Cape Town!

Take a picture of me while the sun sets
Ah yes, take a picture of me with the Eifel Tower
Now, take a picture of me with my French beret
Quick, take one with my new sun glasses

Let me take a picture of you in front of Roland Garros
Ah yes, look at this one with Nadal on his back
Now, quick a picture of the cup high up in his hands
Quick, yes, now, snap the minute, the second, just as it slips away …..

Bring on “la demence”

If all was not so emerald green, one would hardly notice that its summer. Except for a short boiling respite over the Pentecost weekend, the temperatures have remained in the disappointingly low teens. Ah, that remind me, remember to plan your weekend in North Europe over the Pentecost weekend! As it should, Pentecost is a blessed weekend and without fail turns out to be gorgeous. And it is gorgeous, to see the northerners take to the green parks, unpack their cute pick nick baskets, bare their shocking white bodies, and ogle at their curious neighbors - smoking a joint, covered in dreadlocks or beating a couple of dissonant drums.

This merry month of May has been a sweet mixture of spring culture and late night debauchery. Well then, as you wish, let us start with the twirling debauchery: La Demence is a dancing institution in the equally crazy gay world. It was started by a inspiring Belgian student now more than 25 long years ago - and that in itself is a monumental achievement as you know just how terribly fickle the gay crowd is. Remember that first quartile of innovators in your marketing classes at university, well they are gay! It is just amazing that La Demence, free translated as the lunacy, has been able to remain innovate and exhilarating and break the jolly gay party merry-go-round. The thumping music is great, the bare-chested crowd is diverse, the door controls are relaxed and if it tickles your base fancy, the sex is great. Part of the success is that it is a true European Commission, with beefy boys flocking in from all concerns of the Europe. There is truck load that come with the high speed Thalys from Paris. There are droplets that fly in with the budget flights from Italy and Spain. There is the party bus from Amsterdam and Cologne. There is a legendary story about the time the party bus from Amsterdam got stuck in a heavy snow storm in November and apparently had a La Demence all by themselves on the highway as the spirits lifted – they finally had to turn back to Amsterdam! The world standard DJs are great too. There are a number of regular features that I grew up with. Steven Redant, now a very good friend of mine, is one regular that keep the crowds going in the wee hours of the morning. As the party peters out at on the ground main bottle strewn dance floor, the late night owls re-group on the second floor to shake the wooden beams! I love this more intimate late night part when the Latin rhythms come through softly, the dark room crowds give up and start dancing, and the galleries start filling up with the wannabe go-go crowd – myself included! As now is increasingly the fashion, they made a marathon party weekend out of La Demence for Pentecost. There was the normal party on Friday in the Fuse Club, on Saturday there was a party in the amazingly decorative and cute Theatre Vaudeville in the Galerie de la Reine, and the final bash was in huge old movie theater with a revolving stage in the middle! Just imagine yourself in 3d! Fun, fun, fun!

As you might know I lived in Brussels for five years and let me assure you it’s a great place to live. When you arrive by train it looks like you have just hit the outskirts of bombed Baghdad, but that is very misleading. In any case, one should never arrive by train! If you sweep in though the tunnels with yoru BMW, swirl around the Cinquantinaire’s Arce de Triomphe, speed down the Wetstraat - past all the European Commission buildings, across the Parc Royale and then end up parking on the Place de Grand Sablon, you quickly realize that this is completely another city. I once heard a statistic, admittedly while living in Brussels, that the outskirts of Brussels is one of the wealthiest parts of old Europe. You need to take a lazy drive out to white Chateau de la Hulpe or the sandstone Royal Palalce of Tervuren to see the true “la dolce vita” of Brussels. Folded in between the brown and green hues of the foliage you will catch glimpses of lazy private chateaus basking in the spring sun. They jump from the pages of a Tintin novel and you expect to see the limousine of Madame Bianca Castafiore driving out any second on her way to a shopping spree on Avenue Louise. La Hulpe is a Chateau that the Solvay family kindly donated to the public to wonder through, complete with its rolling hills. The fringes of the forests were alive with the yellows and reds of the azalea bushes when we were there. And in just a couple of day’s time the Rhododendron bushes will be a sea of bright purple. Tervuren is just a touch more grandiose and pretentions: it is a mini Versailles with the sole purpose of housing the elaborate collection of Congolese and African artifacts of the infamous Belgian king Leopold III. What I did not realize is that it was already a “domaine” of the Lorraine kings long before the good old Leopold and that the impressive waterways already date back from their time.

So what about the cultural part? Well my husband made sure that there was some balance! We saw an amazing an amazingly good and fast rendition of Prokofiev’s second piano concerto, a Dutch cabaret portraying the last days of Dusty Springfield and a magical performance of Trijnte Oosterhuijs, one of the best voices in Dutch popular music in a church-turned –theatre. The Dusty Spingfield production strung quite a cord with me. It was quite interesting factually: she died of breast cancer, she spent her last days in Amsterdam, she had the expected traumatic childhood with alcoholic parents, she had a dysfunctional relationship with her brother, and she could never really bond with her life partner-manager. Rather sad all in all! The songs were well sung and the acting was very acceptable. What stuck me most was how different Dutch and English society is. The writer of the cabaret had obviously been Dutch and he had translated Dusty into his own cultural background. Wry expressions became screaming matches. Understated longings became garish crotch scratching. Sugarcoated cynicism became scud missiles. Poignant rhetorical questions were completely absent, replaced by provocative statements. The two cultures look so deceivingly similar, yet they are so totally different.

And the final bang, last weekend, was the Euro Song festival. It a beautiful, colorful, mulit-cultural spectacle that constantly increases in size. Israel is part of Europe for those that did not know that! So is Azerbaijan, but Egypt and Lebanon not yet! With 120 million viewers during the finals, it seems to be one of the largest television extravagances globally! It has a very faithful gay. It is huge in Australia that does not even participate and people are prepared to fly in all the way from South Africa, Argentina and Australia just to be sprinkled with fairy dust! From being a rather cozy Western European club, it has exploded after the cold war. A myriad of colorful East Block countries now join the annual parade and makes it an excellent occasion to brush up on your geography. And they are colorful: this year it ranged from a tall Amazonian from Armenia to a hooded doomsday nun from the Ukraine. All eight of the ex-Yugoslav countries also were represented – with acts ranging from a rocker in traditional clothing to the male version of lady Gaga! Well, like last year the best song won and to end this blog I leave you with the beautiful lyrics of the winning song, Satellite, sung by Lena from Germany:
I went everywhere for you
I even did my hair for you
I bought new underwear, they’re blue
And I wore ‘em just the other day
Love, you know I’ll fight for you
I left on the porch light for you
Whether you are sweet or cruel
I’m gonna love you either way
Love, oh, love, I gotta tell you how I feel about you
‘Cause I, oh, I can’t go a minute without your love
Like a satellite, I’m in an orbit all the way around you
And I would fall out into the night
Can’t go a minute without your love