IAAF World Championships Daegu 2011

Last week I made a list of all the countries left to visit for my blog.  As I was making the list I started to get a bit discouraged: where on earth was I going to find something to do for Antigua & Barbuda? Or Guinea Bissau? And I like to consider myself a fairly educated person but I´d never even heard of Kiribati.

Today I've been watching the IAAF World Championships.  I´m not even into sport really but it was really inspiring to see all the athletes pushing themselves to win, to better themselves and to represent their country.  It was also brilliant to see ´the bladerunner´ competing.

It´s given me a sense of what the atmopshere might be like at the Olympics next year and it´s made me really want to go for it with my little project.  I think I'm going to have to get some advice where to look when I get to the final countries and I'm still not sure if it will be possible to do a 'world tour' in London but I'm going to give it my best shot.

Red Pig

Red Pig is a Polish shop up in Willesden Green that sells a range of products, including meat, cheese, vegetables, alcohol and books.

I gave this chocolate wafer bar a try as it was on sale at 29p.  Very tasty!

Italian Delicatessen

Olga's Stores up in Islington has my friend Marco's favourite biscuits so I bought him two packets to have for breakfast (not all in one sitting of course).

My Old Dutch Pancake House

My Old Dutch Pancake House has several locations but it's not really a big chain so I'm allowing it into my blog. On Monday nights they have an 'all pancakes are £5' offer, which is very good value for money if you choose one of their £9.95 pancakes.

These pancakes are huge things too and very filling.  I had to hold my stomach a bit when I'd finished to stop it leaving the restaurant without me, it was sticking out so much....

This had better be my last restaurant entry for a while as I can see that I am getting a little bit of a belly...  Maybe I should try some more bellydancing.

Bolivian BBQ

As soon as I arrived in Parradillas del Sur on Old Kent Road I felt like I'd traveled very far from Zone 6.  In fact, I felt more like I was a foreigner on holiday here than any other place in London so far.

Quite a few people stopped to look at us when we went into the restaurant and it felt like we might have been the only non Bolivians there.

The waiter was super nice about explaining the dishes to us in Spanish (for my friend Dani) and in English (for Elisa and I).  

I had pique macho which is essentially a big pile of beef, sausages, chips, egg, tomato and onions. I had mocochinchi to drink which I've since learned is made from peaches.

There was some dancing going on at the bar at the back of the restaurant and an awesome mix of South American music - reggaeton, merengue, salsa.

Garlic and Shots

I'm not entirely sure if Garlic and Shots is supposed to have a theme.  If it does, then is it Sweden? Metal? Garlic? Shots?

My colleagues and I had some horrifically spicy 'blood shots' which would certainly have been the antidote for any flirting/pulling if that had been my aim for the evening.

An odd experience altogether in this bar really; as I was leaning to take a photo of this curious looking person a girl told me that I shouldn't be in the bar because I was wearing the wrong kind of clothes.  I'm not sure what she thought would be the right kind of clothes to go with garlic/metal/Sweden.  I've found so far whilst doing this blog that I've felt welcome everywhere that I have been to (apart from maybe the Gargosian where I felt a bit like I was in some kind of peeping tom experience).

Of course it could be that she objected to the fact that I had forgotten to switch off my MASSIVE chainsaw....

Then later in the evening I noticed that our table appeared to be a flat rectangle of wood placed on top of a wooden box and that if I lifted it slightly I could put my fingers in the box because it was hollow.  At which point I told me colleague 'this box thing appears to be hollow.' and he replied 'it's a coffin.'

Eat Tokyo

By the time I'd finished my meal in Soho I really did feel like I had the whole of Tokyo in my stomach!

My friend and I went for a (very) late lunch and the place was pretty quiet.  By the time we were finishing our meal it was just us and the staff eating there.

Memoirs from a Cold Utopia

Edmunds Jansons created a short animated film called Little Bird's Diary based on the recollections of a Latvian girl called Irina Pilke.

Memoirs from a Cold Utopia

Kęstutis Grigaliūnas' series 'About Love' shows photographs of prisoners who were executed in the Vilinius Secret Service Prison in 1944 - 1947.

Memoirs from a Cold Utopia

Parts of the series '366 Liberation Rituals' by Croatian artist Igor Grubić.

Memoirs from a Cold Utopia

Ivan Moudav from Bulgaria has created his own portable art gallery which he can carry around in a briefcase whilst he continues in his quest to set up Bulgaria's first ever modern art gallery.

Memoirs from a Cold Utopia

Vit Klusák and Filip Remunda presented their art 'Czech Dream : A Documentary Super-Comedy about the Superstore that Didn't Exist' to an unsuspecting public whilst they were still students.

They essentially created an advertising campaign for a fake hypermarket. 4000 people turned up for the grand opening to discover that there was no hypermarket and not all 4000 of them saw the funny side....

More here if you are interested:

Memoirs from a Cold Utopia

Bleeding Homes by Estonian artists Anu Juurak and Marko Mäetamm represent the evictions of people from their Soviet homes once the pre-Soviet era owners were allowed to return to reclaim the buildings after the collapse of the regime. 

Memoirs from a Cold Utopia

The London Print Works on Harrow Road currently has an exhibition of work from artists who used to live behind the iron curtain.  Their art will be on display until 18th November.

I'm going to split the exhibition up into several posts again.

Here we go....

LEGO concentration camps by Polish artist Zbigniew Libera.

A journey through Central Asia

No, not the Ibizan superclub, Pasha is a restaurant/hotel/hamam in Camberwell. It serves a range of reasonably priced food from lots of different Central Asian countries.

The restaurant itself is at the back of the building, past a tantalizing glimpse of the hamam, down a long carpeted corridor and past two slighly eerie mannequins. 

The dining area is divided in two by a small bridge over a pond, with chairs and tables on one side and low tables and cushions on the other. This was another of Bibby's great dining events and since she was the only person there I recognized I got chatting to the people around me. In fact the comfortable cushions and good company meant that not only did I not notice the slightly slow service but that when the food did finally arrive it was a pleasant interruption.


I had Funchoza as a starter, which is rice noodles mixed with fried diced lamb and vegetables according to the menu.

For my main course I had Besh Barmak - dumplings with beef and onion, cooked in broth.

As we left we were given a voucher for a 60 minute session in the hamam so hopefully I'll be back at some point to take advantage of the offer.  My photos really don't do the whole experience justice and I finally rolled back home, sleepy and content at about midnight.

http://www.hotelpasha.com/

Bar Gansa

I had a lovely evening out at this Spanish restaurant in Camden Town with my favourite Anglo/French family the Fergusons.  We had more tapas, paella and sangria than we could manage in the end and it was all so yummy!

National Geographic Society

The National Geographic Society has a shop, cafe and gallery on Regent Street.  You can buy all kinds of things there from children's toys to furniture, have a look at the photographs on display, watch a documentary upstairs and then have a drink in the ground floor cafe. I even remember something about a really cold room downstairs which I didn't venture into.

I have to say that I was a bit put out that this shop is so close to my night bus stop and it's still taken me nearly a year and a half to notice it.  I think this must be because I'm usually busy staring at cakes in the cafe right next to the stop.

On the wall of the staircase down to the lower floor there is a display of notable National Geographic figures.

At some point round the shop I noticed there was a sign that said 'No photography' at which point I stopped taking photos.  I'd already taken these two though, and it seemed a shame not to use them.

Fast Red Italian Cars!

Ok so the Ferrari shop on Regents Street doesn't actually sell the cars themselves, it sells merchandise, including (you can't see too well in the photo) little Ferraris with teddy bears inside.  I'm not sure why you'd want to buy a Ferrari with a teddy at the wheel, but then I'm not sure I'm really the target market of this shop in the first place.  

Bar Prague

After a lot of walking around the Tate Modern in an ill fitting pair of summer shoes, my poor feet were feeling very sore.

Fortunately for me, Bar Prague was waiting up in Shoreditch.  I'd tried to go once before, but arrived at 11.30, not knowing that it doesn't open until 12.  So I wasn't expecting such a wonderful welcome in the form of several fat old armchairs to sink into whilst I read the newspaper and drank a coffee.

This bar/cafe also has artwork on display and a selection of Czech beers (which you might well expect from a Czech place).

Red/At Dusk

The photographs in Boris Mikhailov's Red series were taken in the artist's home town of Kharkiv, Ukraine during the Communist era.  I was particularly struck by the one below of a group of people wearing gas masks (I imagine as part of a drill).  The red colours really stand out when you first enter the room and look at  all the photos together from a distance.

In At Dusk, Mikhailov returns to his hometown after the collapse of the USSR and uses the colour blue in this series of photographs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Mikhailov_(photographer)