On Monday I went to a few lessons and might have also bought some things in preparation for Finland on Wednesday. In the evening I realised I had to wash some clothes right then because it was the last block of free time I'd have to do it in. When I went out to do it I saw that Frederic was there. They'd all come over to use the fussball table. European people seem really into the game. At least these European people. I decided I'd have a few drinks with them while I waited for my washing to finish. They had to close it all up by 11 so we walked over to the Portland building where they have another place you can buy some drinks and hang out a bit. Amongst the crowd were two english people. They were pretty cool. They'd been to Adelaide! I was amazed. After that place closed we went back to Charlotte's room and hung out there for a little while until people decided it was time to sleep.
Tuesday:
This day I was starting to get a little worried about how unprepared I was for Finland. I really didn't want to get frost bite or be really cold in general. I wasn't sure if I was over reacting or under reacting. -20 degrees celsius is something I have no knowledge about. It's complete outside the range of my experience.
I walked to the Beeston shopping centre and found an outdoor store. There I got a waterproof jacket that is a really basic one that just goes on the outside of everything and also folds up very small and is quite cheap. I also got some pants that have an extra lining inside for warmth in colder places. They are also water resistant. Now I think all my body regions were covered against cold except my hands and head. The store had pretty much sold out of gloves except for some expensive (30 pounds) gloves made out of seal skin. They were supposedly completely water proof and windproof. Except they were really designed for people going sailing or something like that. Not really very stylish for casual use. I decided that in the morning before catching the train I'd see if I could visit a different shop to get gloves.
I went home and printed out a whole bunch of stuff I needed for the trip, such as train tickets, a map so that I could find my hostel, plane ticket, etc.
Time got lost somewhere and eventually I had to leave to meet Matthias. We were going to a concert to see an accoustic guitar player called Andy McKee.
The concert was really good. The guy is very talented. You could hear that he'd spent a lot of time transcribing the cover tunes and coming up with his own arrangements. His big thing was that he made it sound like lots of individual sounds were happening at once. He did a lot of tapping on the guitar with his right hand, sometimes in complex drum patterns, while strumming and plucking the strings, and doing chords and melody with his left hand. Sometimes the left hand would alternate very quickly between fretty the notes and also tapping the body so that more complex drum patterns could be created. It was very technical and elaborate.
He seems to have achieved fame mainly through exposure from youtube in relatively recent years. Although he was also saying that he did lots of guitar competitions since age 14. He seemed really happy to be there performing for us. He was very entertaining between songs too. Here's one of his youtube videos with 36,000,000 views. Wow.
As well as the more innovative, technical stuff, he also does slightly more traditional playing techniques. I really enjoyed it. I would recommend going to his shows.
I forgot to take my camera, but Matthias had his and I was able to get some of the photos from him:
After the concert I went back home and frantically packed my stuff. I didn't get to sleep until quite late.
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