MY SISTER AND HER CAPE

This week my SISTER arrived in BERLIN, to stay, for almost half a year. It feels FANTASTIC to have her here after almost FIVE years not living in the same CITY. The other day when we went out she was wearing this beautiful second hand AUBIN & WILLS CAPE that she bought a week before she arrived here  ...in a second hand store at the PORTOBELLO MARKET in NOTTING HILL, LONDON. She told me that as she was paying for the CAPE an older british man walked in. You could tell by the way he looked that life hadn't been too EASY on him, but that he still had a GREAT sense of STYLE. A soon as he came in to the store he looked at what my sister was buying and exclaimed in a (of course) perfect BRITISH accent; OH, IT'S PUURFECT FOR SKIING! Coming from Norway, the ultimate land of skiing, this of course sounds pretty much just hilarious, but still, just puurfect, coming from this man.

SUNNY PINK FRIDAY, STRAUSBERGER PLATZ, BERLIN

NEW FLOWERS FOR THE WEEKEND

SUNLIGHT ..STILL VERY EXCITING

WHAT CAN I SAY, I ♥..

               

 GALLIANO for DIOR, SS 2011,  photo: SCANPIX

APRICOT LIGHT, OUR BEDROOM WALLS

KINO INTERNATIONAL, BERLIN

PLANES CROSSING THE SKY

BEAUTIFUL WOODEN BOTTEGA VENETAS, KURFÜRSTENDAMM, BERLIN

TOWER AND TREES

PASSED THIS SOL LEWITT THE OTHER DAY

SOL LEWITT, Modular Cube, 1993

ANYONE KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THIS BEAUTY..

One time when I talked to my DAD he asked for more picture of CARS on my BLOG. I have always been a big fan of CARS, maybe I don't know that much about them, but I really like how they LOOK, and I therefore thought that my DAD's request was a reasonable one. Unfortunately most of the nice cars here in BERLIN are in the western part, and not the eastern where I live, so there haven't been any car photos.. until last week.. when we went on a trip to the WEST to buy some CHAMPAGNE for E's birthday ..and my eye fell on this old VOLVO ..and I thought to myself that this was a nice opportunity to photograph a car (even though I think my dad was more hoping for a picture of maybe a BMW or a MERCEDES BENZ). So here they are.. my blog's first car pictures and hopefully not the last ones, even though I must admit that I don't know much about this car ..other than it's red and with a fun shape.. . and that it's a VOLVO..

...and that it has a BEHIND looking like this.. If anyone know anything more about this CAR, like when it's from or something, feel free to COMMENT, then maybe this can be the start of me learning more about cars..

AT THE NEWSSTAND, LEHNINER PLATZ, WEST BERLIN

THROUGH SUNGLASSES

ERLEND has taken a new step on the PHOTOGRAPHY LADDER; coming up with his own photo ideas, like shooting trough his SUNGLASSES. I have always been a FAN of doing that so I didn't argue.

SUNREFLECTIONS

The other day the SUN was shining, not the teasing kind of shining, but the REAL DEAL ..and the sun hit some of the things in our bedroom and created beautiful SHADOWS. Some of the shadows fell on some CARDS I had bought a couple of days earlier ..with motives by the two artists GERHARD RICHTER and WOLFGANG TILLMANS .. I thought the shadows and the motives on the cards looked really nice together and wanted to capture it, to save it ..maybe for a rainy day.. anyway ..that is the STORY of how these photos came to LIFE.

LIGHT

SUN & STRIPES

AN ACNE BAG, A CHINESE CERAMIC BOWL, A HERMÈS BOX AND DIRTY WINDOWS

A BIG FAT GLOWING TEASE

After I came to BERLIN I have given the SKY a lot of attention. Coming from BERGEN, the sky seems a lot bigger here and there are fantastic SUNSETS. In that manner the Berlin sky is very different from the one I grew up with. But they do have something in common, and that is the HEAVY GREY CLOUDS which more than often COVER the city ..and sometimes the minds of the people who have to live under it. This winter has been no exception and there has been days and days with this gray lid.  With EXCEPTION of some tiny seconds.. just before you get up and most often just before sunset (these days that's around 4) the sun decides to come out. It BURNS its way through the lid that covers the city and appears as a FIREBALL just above the horizon. It is without a doubt a SIGHT FOR SORE EYES and it fills me with happiness ..just to CRUSH me feelings seconds later as it disappears under the horizon. This resulted in a rant, by me, the other day. It just PISSED me off how the SUN comes out almost just to tease me, to make me aware of the fact that it is always there, behind the clouds, just not accessible to me. Like the other day, when the sky looked like in these pictures; you can see that there is a lid of clouds over BERLIN and that the sun is all the way over there in some distant beautiful place. Maybe it should make me optimistic.. knowing that that the sun is actually there.. and of course it gives me enormous JOY when it comes out...I rush for my camera to capture it and there by the window, looking out, the sun and I share a moment, but it doesn't take away the fact.. the obvious fact that the BELIN SUN is a TEASE, a big fat TEASE.

ERLEND'S FIRST TIME MAKING AND EATING PAELLA

A couple of days ago we bought a lot of MUSSELS. Most of it we used for a tomato and mussel pasta dish, but we had some left so we decided to make PAELLA. As many of you might have understood E is the main chef around here, while I contribute where I can ..one of those ways are with ideas. Good ideas, and this time the idea was PAELLA. We decided to go for a mixed paella with both CHICKEN, SHRIMP, CHORIZO (lately we have come to the conclusion that there seems to be few things that can not be improved by a little bit of chorizo.. a similar conclusion that others have made before us about bacon) and MUSSELS. The other ingredients were risotto rice, SAFFRON, garlic, stock from cooking the mussels, water(ideally you are not supposed to use water.. first chicken stock and then fond from the mussels, but we didn't have chicken stock and we made it on a Sunday), shallots, onion and carrot. The dish is made in a very similar way as the RISOTTO, only without the parmesan and with saffron.

Paella being a spanish dish and E being a PURIST when it comes to cooking, we of course had a spanish wine with it. About half a year ago we discovered the WHITE RIOJA from the SPANISH winemaker R. LÓPEZ DE HEREDIA. Ever since we tasted it it has been one of our favorites. E found out about it on a wineblog where the guy who had the blog described his feelings for this wine to his feelings for MEGAN FOX. Both very positive. I don't have strong feelings about Ms FOX but I do have for this wine. It is absolutely delicious. The wine smells oxidized but with a LOT of deep yellow fruits, and the taste is FRESH, but very complex with lots of ACID and MINERALS and MORE FRUIT but also OILY in the mouth and some taste of HONEY that gives a long after taste.The one we had with the paella is their VINA GRAVONIA from 1999. LÓPEZ DE HEREDIA believe their wines need a lot of time so they release all of them very late.

(I just googled Ms Fox and found this picture of her were she is both sweet, fresh, hot, sunny and oily.. maybe the wine blogger was onto something anyway..  at least I can relate to part of his parallel looking at this picture.)

HAPPY

CHEZ MAURICE, FRENCH SATURDAY IN BERLIN II

FRENCH SATURDAY IN BERLIN

KARL-MARX-ALLEE, BERLIN

PARIS BERLIN: JUERGEN TELLER AT JOHANN KÖNIG, BERLIN

JOHANN KÖNIG