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This weekend I made a much-needed visit home. I saw this film at Toronto's new cultural film centre (heavily corporate but at least we have one). The influence of Xavier Dolan's favourite directors like Almodovar and Wong Kar-Wai are pretty obvious, but he's still offering something new. I think he is the first director to truly create moments on film (and not patronizingly) that are descriptive of 21st century youth. It feels like a plot - however trivial - straight out of mine or my friends' lives. And he makes use of some pretty killer songs, like The Knife's "Pass This On".
Support French-Canadian cinema. Support young directors. Go see it!
On another note, recently I have been thinking a lot about What I Am Going To Do After School. I am still utterly absorbed with my thesis, but school life is starting to feel a little dull. I'm hit by the realization that I need to be doing more things that make me feel like I'm living a real life. It may also soon be time to change the name of this blog...
Settling in for some bedtime reading. Why is Lefebvre so cool?
You may have guessed correctly that school is in full swing. What you may not have guessed is that I am writing my undergraduate thesis (or maybe you did, but anyway - YIKES!) Getting film developed from the summer is getting piled under a longer and longer list of group meetings, pseudo-intellectual conversations with dearly missed friends, 2304982340932 books from the library and unnecessary spending sprees at farmer's market (it's harvest time!).
The closest I got to Iceland was Keyflavik Airport. I know now more than ever that I must go back.
Two hour transfer at CPH on my way home. I pretended to write my paper while really I tried not to cry.
It feels so strange to be home. Been floating through the last few days; cleaning out my teenage bedroom, eating chilean japanese chinese and mexican food, avoiding my very near birthday, hiding at my parents' house, sleeping way too much. Don't feel like I'm fully here yet...
Two artists I discovered during my travels that I really like and two books that I would really like to read.
p.s. I'm home.
Even the subway cars in this great city are functionalist. Been living in a borrowed apartment in a traditional working class neighbourhood with a great flea market, cheap beers, sweet trams and lots of drunks. Been commuting to days full of lectures in amazing Aalto buildings and wanting to steal E stools. Been sweating in saunas and jumping in the gulf.
Note: I will be taking a break from blogging for two weeks or so as I work on a case study in suburban Helsinki.
Also, there are 5 rolls of film are burning a hole in my backpack. Can't wait to develop them! (poladroid stand-in).
Hello good coffee! Hello Helsinki! Cappuccino and americano by Tuomas at Kaffeecentralen.
It feels like we are always in grocery stores, perpetually roaming a new fluorescent aisle that is totally different yet exactly the same as the last one. I have read (or struggled to read) packaging in Danish, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish.
I have a growing guilty conscience about the inefficiency of buying for single meals and the number of plastic packaging we have inevitebly disposed of (despite considerable conservation efforts). At times, the inability to eat salads and warm meals, the excesses of white starch and müsli. We have become masters of assembling swiss-army sandwiches on trains, buses, park benches and steps.
I dream of pear and gorgonzola pizza, potato wedges, quinoa salads, toronto takeout and my mother's cooking. For now, at a friend's apartment in Helsinki, we have permanence.
I have never been so excited for domesticity in my life.
We just finished a week in Norway with no computers, half our luggage (not much to start with), minimal showering and life in a tent (without a tarp). The week was very beautiful and very wet. I think it was the best week I've had this year.
We took the Oslo-Bergen train and stopped at Myrdal, where we hiked 21km down the Flåm valley to the town of Flåm. Having not hiked in a while, I had no idea what kind of time we would make so we were in a bit of a rush. We ended up getting far under estimate and 10 minutes before the grocery store closed to boot! There is really no dinner like the dinner you have after a long day of walking (no matter what the food is).
Luckily, I still managed to snap a few pictures in our haste. Most people take the Flåmsbana, an hour-long scenic train ride down, but the views from the train are incomparable to the hike (we took the train on our way back up a few days later).
While the valley is spectacular, Flåm itself (in the distance) is a bit of a tourist town, a sightseeing cruise and train hub with little to experience and not much of a fjord view. So, the next day we hiked to Aurland (from where this photo was taken). Somehow we made the seriously steep and curvy 8km on what seemed like an unmarked path.
I'm still not sure if we were even on a marked route, seeing how we didn't have real maps our entire time in Norway... but we found lots of wild raspberries! Enough said.
Aurland is much more of a town, filled with friendly faces and pretty houses, so we made it our base for the next few days. From Aurland we had another very vertical day hiking 2/3 of the way up the mountain Prest (Note: Norwegian mountains are very small) to a lookout over the Aurlandsfjord.
Always lots of sheep (and flies) to keep us company through the Norwegian woods. and everywhere else.
The Aurlandsfjord, which is really only the tip of the Sognefjord, longest fjord in the world. Doesn't a kayak trip through the fjords sound perfect? One day, a must.
There is also very elegant lookout structure designed by Canadian architectsTodd Saunders & Tommie Wilhelmsen. This picture really doesn't do it justice. For brilliant craftmanship, a feeling of vertigo I could honestly describe as "beautiful" and other reasons, it really must be experienced.
The Norwegian mountains. So much beautiful rock, it reminded me of home.
Girona is a very pretty little town we stayed in for one night, somewhat in transit between London and Barcelona. It has no beach, which is what usually entices holiday-goers to small Spanish towns, but I highly recommend visiting it nonetheless.
Girona has a lot of other things to offer. For instance, you can walk all along the city's original walls, which rise to give you a ridiculously beautiful panorama of the Catalonian hills.
Interesting Fact: Lance Armstrong lives here. I wonder why...
We happened to arrive during a cultural food fair part of the city's summer festival. There were tents set up under the great cathedral, offering international foods. I had an empanada, which was pretty good, but not quite up to Toronto standards (I miss you, Kensington).
They seem to have the perfect mix of history and modernism going on; the old town has been well-preserved with contemporary (but tasteful) rennovations and is just as lively as the rest of the city (if not moreso).
Lots of pretty architectural details to stumble upon...
Old and new!! In Harmony!! It is possible! Take note, North America.
This weekend I made a much-needed visit home. I saw this film at Toronto's new cultural film centre (heavily corporate but at least we have one). The influence of Xavier Dolan's favourite directors like Almodovar and Wong Kar-Wai are pretty obvious, but he's still offering something new. I think he is the first director to truly create moments on film (and not patronizingly) that are descriptive of 21st century youth. It feels like a plot - however trivial - straight out of mine or my friends' lives. And he makes use of some pretty killer songs, like The Knife's "Pass This On". 
