Death: Festival for the Living

I love it down on the Southbank, even though the buildings are ugly and it's so busy. 

There are currently some crazy coffins on display in Royal Festival Hall as part of Death: Festival for the Living, including three coffins  made by Paa Joe's workshop in Ghana.  There's a quote about the coffins from Jack Bell in the display, which made me feel smug since I've met him.

Lion coffin

Cocoa pod coffin

Psychoanalysis in Finchley Road

I had no idea that Freud's famous psychoanalytical couch was here in London, nor that he had moved to Finchley Road to continue his work following increasing harassment by the Nazi party in his native Austria.  I had imaged the couch to be black or red leather so to see the real thing was a bit of a surprise - it certainly looked very comfy! His whole study had quite a comfortable air about it,.

Freud was an avid collector of antiquities and there were all kinds of strange statues around the museum that he had collected over the years

This is the first time I've added an entry for a country relating to a particular person, but the it's my blog, so my rules.

Zarina Bhimji

Zarina Bhimji was born in Uganda but her family were forced to leave during Idi Amin's expulsion of Ugandan Asians in 1972. The Whitechapel Gallery is currently showing a retrospective of her work.

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 Her photos don't temd to show people, but rather suggest human activity through empty rooms, abandoned buildings etc.  I really liked the film and in particular the accompanying sounds in one of the galleries.

Sweet things in Whitechapel

I bought a couple of delicious Indian sweets whilst walking though Whitechapel.  Sooo good! And there's lots of places you can buy them.

French conversation in an Italian Restaurant

I'm getting quite into Meetup these days!

I joined the London French Rendez Vous group and signed up for one of their French conversation workshops.  They've been running for a while in London Bridge at a former French restaurant which is now an Italian one called L'Azzurro.

Pierre Jean the organiser was really friendly and lead the group well.  The evening was a really good chance for me to practise speaking French without being worried that I was going to show myself up in front of my French colleagues.

www.meetup.com/london-french

La Pollera Colora

Sometimes I stumble across places that I have visited in the past in the most unexpected way.

At the time I visited Tito's Restaurant for a Halloween night out back in 2010 I had no idea that  I was visiting a little bit of Peru in London.  Or that Tito's is a restaurant as well as a club. In my defense a few glasses of wine in the Loose Cannon + some of the costumes people were wearing = tiny bit distracting.

Peruvian Halloween 2010

Stammtisch! The London German Language Meetup group

You can find them here: http://www.meetup.com/german-9/

A great way to practise conversational German! Everyone was really friendly and there were one or two other people with a similar level to me which meant we could go at a slower pace than others in the group (in my case much slower!)

London's dining trend of 2012: Brazil and Peru

The London Evening Standard's Nick Curtis claimed in Thursday's newspaper that Brazilian and Peruvian restaurants are going to be the hot new trend in the capital in 2012.

I'm very pleased to hear this, as I've found South American restaurants in general rather difficult to find.

According to his article the following restaurants will be opening soon:

Cabana in Westfields and St Giles (Brazilian)
Ceviche on Frith Street (Peruvian)
Lima London in Fitzrovia (Peruvian)
Sushi Samba (fusion of Peruvian/Brazilian and Japanese) in the City.

I will keep my eyes peeled!

Dutch waffles

A revisit to My Old Dutch, this time to High Street Kensington for some Dutch waffles with caramel sauce and icecream.

The Willesden Bookshop

This little bookshop in Willesden Green has children's books from a large range of countries including some I hadn't yet visited for my blog: Bosnia & Herzegovina,and Slovakia.

Looking though their online catalogue makes me wish I was a kid again so I could read books like this:

http://willesdenbookshop.co.uk/