Two more photos from Christmas day

Vancouver Poetry Slam

Monday night, we went to the Vancouver Poetry Slam at Cafe Deux Soleil, Commercial Drive, there is another one every Tuesday at Main Street. You don't know poetry slam? It's a kind of fun competition in writing and rhetoric skills, where each author and performer has 3 minutes (sometimes 5 minutes) to present a self-written poem or story, only with help of his body - including dancing, singing, beatboxing but no guitar, no powerpoint or anything else. It seems rather new, but you might remember that already ancient Greek respected rhetoric competitions as the highest form of competition.

Poetry Slams take place in many big cities all over the world, so Hamburg had some pretty good ones, I still remember the great nights at Fools Garden and later, Molotov, in Zurich there is one at Xtra once a month, though the origin is in Northern America. And here we went, to see the original thing, this Monday feat. Brandan MacLeod (who is a champion for good reason, to tell you already).













Performer at open mic

The night started with the "open mic" where everybody had the chance to perform. To our surprise, suddenly, the quite girl at our table stood up and walked on stage to perform a great poem on cyberspace and all its issues. Afterwards, some already well-known local poets entered the stage to compete in front of a jury of five randomly selected guests. Somebody already suggested us to be judges, but for good luck, this got forgotten. In contrast to Germany, not the poets were booed here but the judges! So, you need good nerves to be a judge... What does this tell about the country? Anyway...

After the break, the already mentioned Brandan MacLeod presented some longer stories of his Christmas time, before the five best poets went into a second round, deciding who will win the green bath-tube-toy-special-price and who will win the 35$. To quote the master of ceremony: "Poetry is the lowest paid art in Canada. Even mimes get more although they don't have anything to say."

To give you an impression of the night, you might watch some of the following YouTube videos, which show two of the regular local poets, we also saw that evening. These videos are actually not from the same night, but same poets and same location.


Francis


Ms Spelt

Quak Quak Quak
If you don't speak Duck,
you're fucked
Quak Quak Quak

Jingle Bells Rock

We went to Jingle Bells Rock before Christmas, seeing The Dears, Tokyo Police Club and Metric with Emily Haines live (unfortunately, we had missed the first band, Sebastian Grainger and...). In contrast to our previous concert visit in an underground venue, this official event took place in a run-down theatre with seating though no heating. Most people stood up to the music later, but still, it was somehow a strange atmosphere. Perhaps, because it was so bitterly cold. At least, the bands made it easy to move to.

The seven, around our age old, members of The Dears presented pretty good craftmanship with a cude keyboarder and a great Murray Lightburn as singer/gitarist.















Afterwards the much younger and hip Tokyo Police Club rocked the younger part of the crowd with their 2-minutes songs. Sometimes, we had problems distinguishing their songs but who cares - they are all good.














Last not least, Metric entered the stage with their "hearts beating like a hammer" and I wondered who that was. How was that possible, I didn't recognize their lead singer and keyboarder (did I mention that I love keyboards?) Emily Haines who is also well-known for her solo projects. Instead, I bet that it was an 80s band, so 80s-like they sounded. But no, it was Canada's famous Indie band Metric! Just bought their latest record a day after.














(Source of the photos: Flickr)

Xmas lounges

Walking through our neighbourhood, I already had noticed the specific style of apartment buildings, all with very representative lounges. Especially now at Christmas time, they are worth a look, so follow me through a short virtual walk through Kits.






In contrast, the last picture doesn't show an apartment lounge but an abandoned shopping trolley as it is used by the many thousand homeless, collecting deposit and other recycable garbage. Maybe, he or she couldn't get it through the raising snow anymore, nobody knows.

The whitest Christmas

We are not snowed in, we have power, we have enough food! The only thing missing are a few christmas presents and cards that still did not make it to our place :-( The road conditions require at least winter tires if not a 4-wheel drive and even Canada post seems to be overextended by 30 cm of snow.

We love the snow and look forward to the next snowfall anounced. Isn't it great to wake up at night and look out, hoping more than anything to see snow falling? Hearing the sound of nothing outside is amazing. The snow is like a blanket that takes away all sounds. It makes you feel like you are 10 again and want to go outside to sled down the hills for hours until you can't feel your hands and feet and then come home to a huge pot of hot chocolate.


View towards downtown from West 2nd Avenue


Robert's Creek cohousing

German accent

I'm afraid, I have to work on my accent. This morning, I ordered a Coffee Latte and was getting a Toffee Latte... Where is your accent from?

sub-zero conditions

The snow and the sunshine drew me outside and I went to UBC to pick up Olaf. We went down to the Tower Beach about 200 meteres from campus. You can see Vancouver at the right, West Vancouver, Bowen Island and even Vancouver Island. Its nice with snow but I can't wait to visit the beach again in summer :-)

Tower beach at UBC, just before sunset


Bowen Island


in the rear: Vancouver Island

The sub-zero condition will probably last for up to 10 days and there might be more snow tomorrow. I think chances for white christmas are increasing.

13% chance of White Christmas

We have had a beautiful day of snow this 3. advent. It started snowing last night, really nice light snowflakes and in the morning there was nearly 10 cm of snow. Some of it melted away during the day but still roofs and trees are covered. The weather forcast is temperature below zero for the next days so there's a chance the snow will stay a bit longer.


Kits Beach before the snow. It only snowed in the mountains until last night.


The beach covered with snow this afternoon.


Stylish dressed Kitsilano dogs at the beach.

One month Vancouverianer – Feedback welcome

We have been blogging about our life in Vancouver for a month now and we recieved very encouriging feedback from a lot of you! THANKS
We have had or still have a technical problem with the comments. Somehow a few people were able to comment but most of you weren't. Please keep trying and if you have any idea what the problem could be tell us. We would be happy to start discussions with you or you can just keep telling us how great the blog is :-)

click on the image und you get an enlarged version!

Yes, this is the view from our roof on a bright perfect day like today was. I had to climb up the neighbours roof though to get the best view. Luckily the weren't home otherwise I might have had a chance to finally meet them, since we have only seen light but no people there.

I went on a bike trip east today and had to stop several times to take photos between the building because the view on downtown and the mountains (with a bit of snow) was so impressive.

Tuesday is Bagel Day (and Heroes Day)

Every Tuesday I go to get one dozen of freshly baked Bagels from Siegel Bagels, probably the Best Bagel place in town. They are only $7.50 on Tuesdays.
A Bagel is a ring of bread first boiled in water and then baked. At Siegel Bagel you can get them topped with sesame seeds, poppy seeds or caraway - with whole wheat flour, blueberrys inside or even pumpernickel bread just to name a few varieties.
I was first introduced to Bagels by my host family in rural Maryville, Missouri in 1991. They were originally from Long Island close to New York which is where the Bagel was brought to by the Jewish immigrants and is until today the most important Bagel City in the world.
P.S. Tuesday is also the day we can watch the full new episode of "Heroes" on the Net!

Advent season in Vancouver

Freshly shopped christmas tree on the way home


What looks like christmas decoration is really a gas station (Petro Canada)


West 4th Avenue an sunset