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Tim Guy at Serge Gainsbourg’s house, 21.8.2010

This week I was lucky enough to host Tim Guy for a couple of nights in Paris. Tim is a New Zealand-based singer-songwriter and is currently touring his solo show through Europe alongside Sam Prebble (Bond Street Bridge).

Sam and Tim played to a small but dedicated audiance at Espace B in the 19th arrondissement on Thursday. They’ll be making a circuit of the open mic nights in Paris over the next few days, before heading on to Switzerland and Germany. The objective of this tour is to get their music out there and make some contacts for another trip next year.

Although born in Australia, Tim has lived in New Zealand for the past five years, and calls our islands home. His music has developed over that time to carry many the traces of other great kiwi musicians such as Don Mcglashan, the Finn brothers, Anika Moa and Bic Runga. Here’s a taste:

Here are the next European dates for Sam and Tim’s tour. If you’re nearby, these are two musicians who are both well worth checking out!

26 Aug 2010 21:00 Cafe Kairo Bern, SWITZERLAND
28 Aug 2010 21:00 Cafe Galao Stuttgart, GERMANY
2 Sep 2010 21:00 Hafen 2 Offenbach, GERMANY
3 Sep 2010 20:00 hasenshaukel hamburg, GERMANY
14 Sep 2010 21:00 east of eden berlin, GERMANY
18 Sep 2010 21:00 The Royal Oak Prague, CZECH REPUBLIC

Tim Guy mp3s (amplifier.co.nz)
Bond Street Bridge mp3s (amplifier.co.nz)

Fishing boats at Gamborg. Fyn, Denmark

Looking back over the photos I took in Denmark, one would be forgiven for thinking that the country contained little except small fishing boats and wharves. Somehow, nearly half of the images relate to waterfront, watercraft and jetties of various descriptions. Perhaps this islander has been missing the sea while living in Paris?

Wharf at Moesgard beach, south of Århus

My three days in Denmark only provided a short glimpse of the country, but I liked what I saw (OK, I’m an avowed Nordophile). Apart from anything else, the Danes seem to be the best drivers in the world – I didn’t see a single speed camera or cop, but everyone stuck to the speed limit.

Countryside in central Jutland

The real highlight of my visit was meeting up with Sigurdór and his family. We’ve been friends on the internet for something like five years, but never met in person. Somehow it turned out that the midpoint between Paris and Reykjavík was a trampoline in the garden at Hingeballe.

Copenhagen

A short few hours in Copenhagen on my last day was not enough time to really get a feel for the city, but sufficient to convince me to return for a longer visit sometime. Although I’d probably come home with another bunch of photos of little boats.

Sailing boat at Svenstrup. Fyn, Denmark

Beside the Norsminde Fjord. Jutland, Denmark

On the beach at Løkken. Jutland, Denmark

A compilation of Jazz Club with Louis Balfour sketches from the BBC’s The Fast Show (1994-1997)….

…Nice.

There is nothing new in stating that Norway is one of the most spectacularly beautiful countries on the planet. Fans of the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy will know, of course, that Norway was in fact designed by the Magrathean engineer Slartibartfast, who won an award for it. I can confirm that the award was well deserved.

There’s not much more to say about our short trip to Norway’s western fjords in July, except that the photos and videos we made don’t do the landscape justice. And it’s important to note that it’s not just the fjords that are beautiful – the drive there and back from Oslo was  equally spectacular.

On the way north, we drove up through Hagafoss and over the Route 50 to Aurland – one of the most scenic drives I’ve ever done. And on the way back (via the Lærdal Tunnel, the longest road tunnel in the world at 24.5km), we crossed through the equally beautiful Hemsedal, over 1000m plateaux that reminded us of the central North Island or the McKenzie Country in New Zealand.

It also helps that Norway is ridiculously prosperous thanks to offshore oil, a small population and wise investment. The Scandanavian social model of high taxes, state-supported infrastructure and generous welfare system finds its apogee in Norway. It also has some of the lowest speed limits in the world – all the better for enjoying the scenery!

If you’ve not been to Norway before, save some money and make the time. You will never regret it.

If you spent a couple of days in Helsinki as a tourist, the city might well seem a little austere… the imperial Russian architecture of the central city with its wide, windwsept boulevards are a real contrast to the cosy, canal-side ambience of other Nordic capitals like Stockholm and Copenhagen.

I was lucky enough to be staying with friends who live locally, who showed me a different side of the city, despite the overcast rainy weather. If you know where to go, Helsinki is quirky, friendly and just slightly surreal.

The central city is very compact, but the suburbs stretch for miles in all directions… Helsinki really only started growing in the late 1960s, and intelligent city designers have interspersed housing with parks and an extensive network of cycle tracks. Getting around by bike is a breeze.

Cycling into town on Saturday morning we came across a most un-Finnish sight… an American football team practicing in a park in Kumpula.

On Sunday we took the ferry to the fortress island of Suomenlinna and I tried out a traditional Finnish game called Möllky, which (unsurprisingly for a country which is mostly covered in trees) involves throwing a bit of wood at other bits of wood.

Unfortunately, some of the best Helsinki experiences couldn’t be caught on camera. There are DEFINITELY no photos from Mari and Jacob’s sauna!

And unfortunately it was too dark in Siltanen (a bar on Hämeentie near the centre of town) to document one of the weirdest nights out I’ve ever experienced… the entertainment included a DJ in Native American headdress telling us all to play football in the afterlife, a novelty folk duo from Jyväskylä singing about buying pot plants, an apparently-very-famous Finnish movie star performing karaoke to classic early 70s rocksteady records, and a nostalgia DJ who played Finnish disco hits. Apparently the words to the Finnish version of “I Shot the Sheriff” translate as “I’m taking the train to Mikkeli“. Well, I don’t know about Mikkeli, but I’d like to be back in Helsinki one day soon.

One of the mainstays of any restaurant menu in Paris these days is le café gourmand, a sort of feel-good dessert replacement (basically an espresso accompanied by 4-5 little samples of cakes and desserts), which normally sells for between 6 to 8 Euros.

As Olivier explains on his excellent blog, there are all sorts of obscure Parisian rules regulating when you’re allowed to order a café gourmand. But basically it’s what you order when you want dessert but don’t want to be seen by your dining companions having a dessert. It’s still just as fattening, but strangely un café gourmand is thought of as coffee, not dessert, so this makes it socially acceptable to diet-conscious Parisians.

You can now find the café gourmand in many places in France, but this particular symbol of Parisian civilisation doesn’t seem to have spread to Belgium yet. But this may be about to change…

We were in Brussels today for a business meeting, and we went out for a rather nice lunch at Le Quai (a restaurant in a converted railway station in the southern suburbs).  When it came to time to order dessert, one of our companions absently asked for “Un café gourmand, s’il vous plaît“.  The waitress stared back and asked quizzicly “C’est quoi un café gourmand?“

Having explained to the waitress what was involved, the chef agreed to make us all café gourmands. I had to immortalise the moment – just in case this turns out to be the moment that the café gourmand crosses the border into Belgium. Here’s the photo:

So if you’re in Brussels later this year, and see café gourmand on the menu… well, I’d like to think that me and my colleagues can take some of the credit.

The blog has been silent this week while I’ve been travelling in northern Europe. Now I’m back home, I hope to write several catch-up posts about the experience, including photos and videos. I’ll just need a few days to get it done!

Morning on the Aurlandsfjord, Norway

The eastern suburbs of Paris are not generally reputed for their beauty or their sehenswürdigkeit.  One exception is the town of Joinville-le-Pont, sitting astride the Marne river just on the far side of the Bois de Vincennes.

The town includes the Ile Fanac, a wooded island in the middle of the river, on which stand a number of fine fin-de-siècle homes.

The calm, regulated waters of the Marne make this area an ideal place for rowing, and Joinville-le-Pont has become something of a French Henley-on-Thames, with rowing clubs sprinkled along the riverbanks.

Joinville-le-Pont was an early centre of French film production, and just across the river you can still see the studios of Pathé Frères, regularly used by film-makers such as Jean Renoir and René Clair in the years before the Second World War.

Finally, a wander up the river and under the A4 autoroute brings you to Chez Gégène, one of the last guingettes still operating in the Paris region. These riverside restaurants and cabaret venues were originally set up outside the city walls to escape the taxes and prohibitions of Paris itself.

From the end of the 19th Century until the 1950s the guingettes were popular places for eating and dancing. But today, like the old brick Pathé studios, they stand as memorials to an earlier age of  entertainment…

It is a rare and exciting day when you hear a musician of the calibre of Eddie Palmieri in concert. One of the founding fathers of New York salsa and a great innovator in the Latin jazz of the 1970s, Palmieri brought his Afro-Carribean All-Stars to New Morning in Paris last Friday, and they blew the roof off.

Eddie Palmieri, Concert Pique-Nique, Reims France, 17.07.2010. Image: Eulsteph

Two hours of music stretched out over a pair of sets, suffused with humour and generosity. It was hard to suppress a giggle when Palmieri threw a quote from Salt Peanuts into one of his famously overblown solo passages. The grinning complicity between Palmieri and his bass player, Luques “Salsa” Curtis was evident throughout the gig.

Brian Lynch, Concert Pique-Nique, Reims France, 17.07.2010. Image: Eulsteph

The presence of trumpeter Brian Lynch in the touring band was a particular pleasure – an incredibly technically accomplished player, Lynch has been a regular collaborator with Palmieri since 1987, and directed the Grammy-winning album Simpàtico in 2006.

The music traversed Palmieri’s jazz catalogue (including tunes from Simpàtico and 1990′s Palmas) and included a steaming Latin version of Monk’s In Walked Bud, a nod to one of Palmieri’s own stylistic influences on the piano.

Palmieri apologised that the band wouldn’t be playing his salsa hits (Vamonos pa l’Monte, Cuidate Compay…), because of a lack of vocalists in the group. But with the energy on show last Friday, nobody went home disappointed. This is a gig I’ll remember for a long time.

I was busy as a bee in Brussels over the weekend. It was basically my Belgian baptism: beer, bandes dessinées and bilingualism. It was, to be blunt, bloody brilliant.

Saturday morning sun among the guildhalls in the Grote Market

Hanging out at the Centre Belge de la Bande Dessinée…

…and finding parallels between Hergé and Breugel at the Musée Royal des Beaux-Arts

When in Rome…

Saturday night with the guys from Batucada Sound Machine…

Sunday morning confronting the colonial past at the Musée Royal de l’Afrique Centrale…

…before a Sunday afternoon lost among the glass towers of EU officialdom…

…all achieved in less than 48 hours!