Copenhagen to San Francisco

I’m in need of a home exchange in July, and thought I might see how far a blog post gets  me. You never know.

If you know of anyone who might be interested, do me a favour and send them this link, would you? I’ll be sending buckets of karma your way (alternatively you can send them the link to Home Exchange).

The deal is this. My wife (Danish) and I (English) and a friend (Danish) are going to San Francisco from July 14^th to 28^th. We need a 2-bedroom place to stay, in San Francisco. Of course, the more central and close to everything the better, but we are quite capable of taking public transport.

The flat we can offer you in exchange is a 130m² loft flat, with wooden floors, white walls and all the other obligatory Scandinavian things, rounded off with a nice English touch (this means pointless objects scattered here and there). It can sleep up to 6, but it’s probably more comfortable for 2 or 4; a couple or a young family.

It has a balcony that comes off the kitchen, which gets sun until about 4pm, and when that’s gone, you can just mosey up the stairs to the rooftop terrace which, although shared, is practically private as no one else can be bothered to hike all the way up to the top of the building (there is no lift). The views are spectacular, so spectacular in fact that we held our wedding reception up there.

It has all the things you’d want; dishwasher, washing machine, gas oven, TV, stereo, wireless – you name it.

It’s situated in Vesterbro, which is one of the 6 main districts of Copenhagen. The area is made up of 30-somethings, and young families, making it a youthful yet not too youthful area. There are enough bars, restaurants and cafés to make you sick, not to mention the proximity to parks and an open harbour pool (Copenhagen’s harbour water is so clean you can swim in it, so they built pools directly into the harbour). The flat is in an old hotel at the end of a dead-end street, which means no through traffic. At one end of the street is an ‘s-train’ station (underground/overground light railway) which takes you all over Copenhagen, and a bus stop. At the other end is a huge dual carriage way which was closed off many years ago, so only a smattering of cars use it. The central reservation has been turned into a kind of park, with basketball courts, ping-pong tables, a children’s play area, and lots of grass where you can sit, eat pizza and drink beers until the cows come home.

It’s about 10 minutes walk to the main train station (the airport is 10 minutes train ride from there), and 15 minutes to the City Hall (famous from The Killing), and to the main shopping street.

There’s not much not to like about it really.

Copenhagen is of course a wonderful, wonderful city. There’s even a song about it that goes something like that. Full of beautiful design, architecture and people, and with a café culture to make Parisians green with envy, it’s a city for all kinds of people. I’ve always thought of it as London stuffed into a town. It has the vibe of a much larger city, but is cosy enough to make you feel like you know it all.

I could go on and on about it, but I won’t. I will add though that London and Berlin are just 90 minutes away by plane (and cheap too, what with EasyJet, Norwegian and Air Berlin), and Sweden is just a 30 minute bus ride away.

That’s it for now. If you’re interested, drop me a mail at lara.mulady@gmail.com, and let’s see if we can work something out.

12½ Books in 2 Weeks

I've just come back from 2 weeks in Goa, where I ate a lot, lay on the beach a lot, swam a lot, and did nothing a lot. I also finally began to love my Kindle, as there's no way in hell I'd carry 13 books to India and bring them home again (yes, I could do the traveller thing of leaving them and reading others' left books, but have you seen the books people leave?). 

I thought I'd let you know what I thought of them, as some were brilliant, and some were crap. Here goes (in no particular order):

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - I posted the trailer to the film on Facebook a while ago, and someone told me to read it, and I'm so glad I did. It's a beautifully written book, with an ecentric and fantastic 9 year-old trying to understand and come to terms with why his Dad died in 9/11. Made me chuckle and (almost) cry. Loved it.

The Winter of our Discontent - Steinbeck is one of my top three authors, so needless to say I loved this. Funny, but full of despair. 

Day of the Triffids - Classic. The film cared the shit out of me when I was little, but the book is just as good, if a little dated. Flesh eating plants on the rampage. What more do you need?

Chocky - The cover scared the shit out of me when I was little (I'll save time and say that all of John Wyndhams books scared the shit out of me one way or the other. My parents had a whole bunch of them and I'd stare at the covers and freak myself out), but the book is oddly sweet (if rather unnerving). 

The Midwich Cuckoos - Great old school alien-mind-control stuff. They should make a film out - oh wait, they did. Incidently, all his books are also rather sexist and worth a read if only for a bit of a laugh. 

101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising - Really liked this. A lot. But I'm not that surprised as I enjoy his blog a lot too. To the point, no nonsense, and truthful. Great stuff. Makes me laugh at some of the tweets I read, the people I subscribe to on Facebook, and even some of things my FB friends post (even some of things I've posted, come to think of it). Advertising will always be advertising. The sale comes before social. People don't want to have to chase a woman around their computer screen, hunting for a bloody ice-cream. They want to know what the ice-cream is like. Full stop. 

Confessions of a Mad Man - Huge mistake to read this straight after 101 Contrarian... Was hoping for more wit and good writing. But no such luck. Really disliked this book. Comes across as a total dick, full of shit, and pretty daft really. Perhaps that's what it took to succeed in advertising back then, who knows. Highly repetitive, not particularly funny, and in no way entertaining. The only good point is that he's as straightforward when it comes to traditional advertising as Bob Hoffman.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Pretty messed up. Incredible that people once thought that way. Disgusting, really.

Forgotten Voices of the Somme - Anyone who knows me probably knows I'm fascinated by the great wars. This book is a collection of short transcripts from the Imperial War Museum's sound archives, all describing experiences from the Battle of the Somme. Some funny, some sad, some horrific, but all touching.

ReWork - My boss told me to read this and I was pleasantly surprised. No blow-your-mind moments, but a good read all the same. 

Curation Nation - This was pretty crap. Basically the book takes a long time to say that everyone is a curator/publisher today (no shit), but uses a lot of trendy terms and nonsense lingo reaching this conclusion. I've got a post coming where I'll talk more about this. Buy 101 Contrarian... or The Revolution will be Digitalised instead.

The Revolution will be Digitalised - Enjoyed this a lot, which rather surprised me. I wasn't even sure what it'd be like. To be perfectly honest, I don't even remember buying it. I learnt a lot about Wikileaks, digital law, copyright law and all that jazz. I particularly liked the way she takes both sides of the 'openness' argument in to consideration and doesn't just stand about screaming that everything should be free and open to anyone, anywhere at anytime. 

Social Marketing to the Business Customer - This is my ½. I'm not sure I'm even going to finish it, which I'm really frustrated about as I hate not finishing books (I've only not finished two books. One was Da Vinci Code, and the other I can't even remember). I might skim the rest of this one. About one page I realised that this was for people who've never heard of Twitter. Ho hum. 

So there you have it. My reading for the past two weeks. I'd really recommend all except the last, Confessions of a Mad Man, and Curation Nation. 

Summerhouse Bliss

Last weekend we went off to a friend's summerhouse for the weekend. Summerhouses are funny things. I suppose in the UK they'd be known as 'holiday cottages' or something, but they're essentially a house you use in the summer for long weekends, holidays, and general relaxing. Some people have massive mansion-type summerhouses, which in my opinion, defeats the purpose. There should be dust, a musty smell, a wood burning stove, and clear evidence of multiple different family staying there over a long period of time. 

Anway. So off we went. It was lovely. Lazy days, lots of chocolate, bad TV, duvets on sofas and long walks on a chilly beach. These weekends work wonders. I highly recommend it. Here are some photos. Oddly enough we didn't take any photos of the house. Not sure why, it was beautiful.