Travel plans

Life is difficult when you have as many dream destinations as I do. Not only is it hard for me as a travel-addict to be at home for a longer period, but it's also not easy to select a destination for your next trip. In the past few weeks I have been thinking a lot about where to go this summer. Below you will find a summary of the destinations I have considered for this summer.

Places I won't visit this year

South-East Asia

Initially my intention was to do volunteer work in South-East Asia this summer. The first problem I encountered here was that the Dutch volunteer organisation doesn't send volunteers to South-East Asia this year. I quickly managed to find another organisation that does send Dutch volunteers to this region and I already started looking for interesting projects to work on. However, when I started to look for more information I found out that during the European summer it's rainy season in these countries. It's not a lot of fun to do volunteer work outside in the rain, so I had to make a new plan.

Zambia

On the website of that second volunteer organisation I found another interesting project: working on the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Victoria Falls in Zambia. I already pictured myself working in nature, with a view like in the picture above. Wouldn't that be an amazing experience? Victoria Falls is quite far away from the capital cities though and it's either really expensive (by plane) or really time-consuming (by bus) to get there. Moreover, I have already been to Africa last year so this summer I would prefer to go to another continent. So Victoria Falls was also not the ideal destination for me in 2013.

Central Asia

As many of you may know by now it's my dream to go to Uzbekistan. "Uzbekistan?!?" you may wonder. Yes, Uzbekistan. If you google Samarkand, Bukhara and/or Khiva (or just look at the picture above of the Registan square in Samarkand) you will understand why. This country has a lot to offer to tourists and most western tourists are still unaware of its beauties. Since I am the kind of guy that would not make a long trip to visit just one country, I was seriously considering joining a group trip that would go from the huge empty boulevards of Ashgabat in Turkmenistan via the most beautiful cities in Uzbekistan towards the mountains of Kyrgyzstan where the traveler would get to stay in a traditional yurt for one night. This trip still sounds absolutely amazing to me. However, when I looked at the group composition of what would be my fellow travelers I got a bit disappointed. Age group 18-35 was represented by 0 people so far and most of the people were in age group 55+. I figured it would not be so much fun for me to travel around for 3 weeks with a bunch of old people, so at the moment my plans to visit Central Asia are still on hold. But one day I will go there for sure!

Places I will visit this year

Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina

I have already visited a lot of countries in Europe, but somehow I never got to Bosnia & Herzegovina yet. This may not sound like a typical holiday destination, but it's certainly worth a visit. Ever since I was a teenager I have been amazed by the famous bridge in Mostar, so I just have to go there some time. I will start off my trip (which will take place from 14 till 21 May) in Zadar where I will meet a close friend, then visit Split, move on to Mostar where I will also visit a soccer game of the Bosnian premier league club Velez Mostar together with a bunch of local hooligans and finally I will spend one or two days in Sarajevo. This trip is going to be legen... wait for it... and I hope you're not lactose-intolerant because the second part is da(i)ry!

South America

When browsing through the websites of some travel agencies, my eye was caught by an announcement on one website that this week was "Peru and Bolivia-week". Mmm, I thought while looking at the pictures, maybe this would be a nice destination to go to this summer. I couldn't really stop browsing pictures of Macchu Picchu, Lake Titicaca and Salar de Uyuni (see the photo above) and got very excited about this trip. But then I made a nearly fatal mistake. I started comparing prices at different websites and found out that one website offered an even greater trip that also included a few days in Argentina as well at very little extra cost. Suddenly a trip to just Peru and Bolivia was not good enough any more: I wanted to go to Argentina as well. However, it's not really colleague-friendly to take off 4 weeks during summer. The solution was easier than I thought: why not go to South America in autumn? In October it will be spring in South America 

Germany

And on top of all these travels to exciting countries I will also spend a week with my parents, my sister and my (to-be) brother-in-law in Germany. After all those travels on my own to less-traveled countries it will be nice to spend some quality time with my family again in a country similar to my own. Because taking time for your family is also important in life.

The journey continues...

As you have noticed I stopped with my "International Music Journey" on my blog already after two "stops". I realized that the frequency of posting was too high to maintain a high quality of music. So I kept myself quiet for around a month and now I'm back with only the best (or most special) music from all over the world.

Zara Larsson - Uncover (Sweden)

We start off in Sweden with a young girl named Zara Larsson. Little miss Larsson was born on 16 December 1997 (man, I'm getting old) so she's only 15 years of age, but she already has the voice of an experienced pop artist. Just 3 months after she posted her first music video called "Uncover" on YouTube it has already been watched more than 3 million times by people from all over the world. And when I'm listening to her music I'm not wondering IF she will become an international superstar but only WHEN she will become an international superstar.
Just remember where you heard about her for the first time. :)

The Young Professionals (TYP) - Be With You Tonight (Israel)

Usually I'm not really into electronic music. I'm able to count the exceptions on this rule on one hand. One of those exceptions is the band TYP from Tel Aviv. The band focuses on a target audience of young urban professionals (what's in a name), who go to work in suits by day and head to the hippest clubs at night.
Besides music, both members of this electronic pop duo are very much into fashion and design as well, as can be seen in their music video.

Nikki Ponte - Remembering The Summer Nights (Greece)

Since the weather is still so horribly cold this Easter-weekend I thought that you all could use some warmth in your life right now. And what better way is there to do that than to think back about a hot summer night with a happy party song on the background? Enjoy!

NRG - Mayday (South Africa)

If you are a big fan of boybands, then continue reading. I now present you with South African boyband NRG. If I understood my sources correctly this band was created after a television show in which several men were put together in one house to form a successful band together. According to their own website, NRG is as commercial as Westlife and as revolutionary as the Beatles were. To me they're just another typical boyband, but nonetheless this song is pretty good.

Bonus track: Jgufi Bani ft. Sopho Toroshelidze - Me Miyvars Racha (Georgia)

This next song may not be the best song you have ever heard, but the video is certainly worth watching. I have absolutely no idea what these people are singing about, but this song is a musical masterpiece. It starts off as a pop song, then switches to folk-dance and then changes genre pretty much every 30 seconds. And if you don't enjoy the music, just switch off sound and just enjoy the folk-dancing and the traditional outfits the people are wearing. If you make it to the end of the video, you will be rewarded by some fantastic video footage of the beautiful landscapes of the Caucasus.

Gosh, this last video really made me want to travel again. In my next post I will write about my travel plans for the spring of 2013.

International Music Journey, part 2: rock

H.E.A.T. - Living On The Run (Sweden)

We start off with some "light" rock from Sweden. This song by H.E.A.T. reminds me a lot of the rock-music that was made by long-haired rockers in the 1980s. Lead singer of the band is Erik Grönwall, who won the Swedish version of Idols in 2009. Immediately after winning this talent contest he recorded some pop-songs, but he quickly decided this was not the kind of music he wanted to make. In August 2010 he joined rock band H.E.A.T., after their old lead singer decided to leave the band. Two years after the change of lead singer H.E.A.T. scored their biggest hit so far with this song.

Shanon - Broken (Estonia)

Shanon is a pop-rock band from Estonia. The band announced to split up on 1 April 2010, but this turned out to be an April Fools Day prank, because one month later the band released a new single called "Broken". Like all of their previous songs, "Broken" became a big hit in Estonia. The band never reached any success outside of Estonia, but they are certainly good enough to be shared in this post.

Wig Wam - Gonna Get You Someday (Norway)

If you are (like me) a big fan of Bon Jovi, you're going to love this next song. Critics say that the idea for this song was stolen from the song "You Give Love A Bad Name", but one can't deny that this song rocks. Even though the video makes it look like this song is from the 1980s, it was made only a couple of years ago. Interesting fact: Wig Wam represented Norway in the Eurovision Contest of 2005 with the song "In My Dreams". After a great rock performance that reminded me of KISS they finished on a respectable 9th place in the final.

Ewa Farna - Cicho (Poland)

Ewa Farna is a talented singer who started singing at a very early age. At the age of 13 she already released a first album in Czech Republic (where she was born). In 2009, at the age of 16, she recorded "Cicho" which is about a boring relationship in which both partners don't have a lot to say to eachother.
Unfortunately, like with most teenage pop stars, things went from bad to worse with Ewa in recent years. She was arrested in May 2012 after having caused a car accident while driving drunk. Let's hope she gets through this period in one piece and continues to make good music.

Volbeat - Still Counting (Denmark)

This last song may be a bit too much for some of you, but I felt I needed to include a hard-rock song as well for all those real rockers who are reading my blog and were looking forward to this post. :) Try it out, and if you don't like it, then in two weeks I will write another post with a theme that may suit your taste better.

International Music Journey: Kickoff!

Since I'm not travelling so often any more I need to find something else to write about on my blog. After travelling, music is my second big passion so the choice for a new topic was an easy one for me. In this post I will introduce you to a new series on my blog. Every two weeks I will share music from all over the world that is not known to the big crowd (yet), but should certainly be shared. Every post (except for today's one) will be related to a certain theme. The list of themes is mentioned at the bottom of this post, now let's start with the music.

Lolita Jolie - Non Non Non (Poland)

To start off, I present you with Lolita Jolie (real name: Claudia Cislek). She's from Poland, but living in Germany and she's singing a song in French. Are you still following? Good. Lovely Lolita got her passion for the French language from her grandfather and is now conquering Europe with her music in this language. Her music is addictive from the very first minute you listen to it and is likely to stay in your head for the rest of the day.

Are you still hearing this last song in your head now? You can't say I didn't warn you for that... You can try to get it out of your head again by listening to this next song, which is something completely different.

Molly Sandén & Christopher -  A Little Forgiveness (Sweden + Denmark)

We move on towards a beautiful duet of ISC-winner Christopher and Swedish Molly Sandén. I have no knowledge about musical compositions, but you can hear in this song that the producer of this song is extremely talented and knows what he is doing. This is the perfect modern pop song: it's catchy, sung by an attractive singer (Christopher received 36 of his 41 points in ISC#4 from females, even though there were more male than female voters) and the listener can easily get captured by the beauty of the song. The highlight of the song is when Molly and Christopher sing the second chorus together at 1:40.

Click here to check the song out. The link will open in a new window.

Linda Hesse - Ich Bin Ja Kein Mann (Germany)

I discovered this next song only last week and I love it already. Young and pretty Linda Hesse sings about her response to the tough break-up with her ex-boyfriend who didn't seem to care about her feelings at all. Her first response was to cry (after all: she's not a man), but she quickly realized that it made no sense to cry over a man. She then decided it's more fun to deal with a break-up by going to a party in a tight dress and flirting with random guys all night long.

List of themes:
1. Introduction (3 February)
2. Rock (17 February)
3. Foreign languages - traditional music (3 March)
4. South Africa (17 March)
5. To be announced later (31 March)
6. Foreign languages - pop (14 April)
7. Asian pop music (28 April)
8. To be announced later (12 May)
9. Covers of internationally known songs (26 May)
10. To be announced later (9 June)

If you have any internationally unknown songs from your country (or any other country) related to one of these themes, please let me know. If the song makes it to my blog in the end, I will mention your name in that post to thank you for your input.

Results of ISC#4

After a very exciting voting process, the results of ISC#4 can now be announced. The differences are smaller than ever, also due to the fact that the amount of voters in this edition was smaller than ever. However, I am happy to announce that the 9 voters represent in total 8 different nationalities, which makes this a truly international song contest. :)
You can click here to see the full voting process in Eurovision style. The only thing that is missing are the pretty ladies and excited gentlemen that are announcing the votes, but I'm sure you can do without them.
A big thanks goes out to all people who have voted in my contest! Without you this contest wouldn't have been possible and without you the results would have also been different. Unfortunately I have decided that this has been the last edition of ISC. From now on I will share my music in a different way. Every two weeks I will write about 3-5 unknown songs related to a certain theme. More information about the themes will be available in my next post.

For those of you who actually enjoyed this kind of online song contest, I can recommend that you take a look at two online song contests that I participate in: World Song Contest On Net and Planet Earth Song Contest. My role in those contests is usually the same role as the Netherlands play at the real Eurovision song contest: I'm usually eliminated in the semi-finals, although unlike the Netherlands at Eurovision I actually do send in good quality music. However, I really enjoy participating in these contests and finding new music from other countries.

ISC #4

Ladies and gentlemen,

The moment has arrived again. It's time for the fourth edition of the International Song Contest on this blog. This time I took a bit more time to collect only the very best songs for you. I found most of these songs via the online song contests I participate in, however this time I also had a little help from my friends. So a special thanks goes to Laura (Estonia), José (Mexico), Līna (Latvia) and Tiina (Finland) for helping me select a song from their country!

Unfortunately some reasonably good songs didn't make it through the strict selection procedure, such as the Swedish modern-day equivalent of the band Europe (you know, those guys from the Final Countdown), the Kazakh Amy Winehouse and the Uzbek Shakira. Below you can find the list of all 22 songs that did make it, the links to YouTube and a recap video with a fragment of each of the 22 songs.

If you want to help decide who will win this edition of the ISC, I kindly ask you to make a top 10 of your favourite songs and submit them via the form at the bottom of this post. You can vote until 24 January 9:30pm CET. You can vote for your own country (or even the song you helped pick for this contest), as long as you vote honestly. After the voting has ended I will publish the results on my blog and make a fancy animation of the voting process, to give you the feeling like you're watching the results of the real Eurovision song contest. Thank you in advance for voting!

Recap video:

 
I had some issues with uploading the video to YouTube which did't allow me to place the video on my blog due to a copyright claim. You should also be able to access the video without ads on my YouTube-channel by clicking here.

List of participants:

1.	Norway	Tone Damli	Never Look Back
2.	Czech Republic	Verona	Hey Boy
3.	Netherlands	Nielson	Beauty & The Brains
4.	Switzerland	TinkaBelle	The Man I Need
5.	Germany	Revolverheld	Keine Liebeslieder
6.	Sweden	Paulina Starborn	Never Gonna Let Me Go
7.	Italy	Modà feat. Emma	Arriverà
8.	Slovakia	Celeste Buckingham	Run Run Run
9.	Lithuania	Marijonas, Mantas & Mia	Celebrate Basketball
10.	Romania	Connect-R	Vara Nu Dorm
11.	South Africa	Elvis Blue	Lighthouse
12.	Estonia	Greip	Vihma Loits
13.	Slovenia	Atomik Harmonik	Choco La
14.	Portugal	Aurea	Busy (For Me)
15.	Australia	Sam Clark	Broken
16.	Latvia	BrainStorm	Lantern
17.	South Korea	Yisabel	I Wish I Can Fly
18.	Finland	Satellite Stories	Family
19.	Mexico	Julieta Venegas	Me Voy
20.	Greece	Demy	Poses Xiliades Kalokairia
21.	Faroe Islands	Eivør	Undo Your Mind
22.	Denmark	Christopher	Against All Odds

Voting is over!

Top 200 of my all-time favorite music

It's the end of the year, which meant a lot of work for me this time. I was trying to put together a photobook of 2011 and 2012 containing all my travel photos because I had a discount voucher that was valid until 31 December 2012 and also I was working on a list with my all-time favorite music.

I listened to more than 500 songs and ranked them with the initial idea to make a top 300. However, due to time constraints and the feeling that the songs after song number 201 were not really worth being in the list of my favorite music, I decided that a top 200 would be enough for this year.

Since Blogspot makes it impossible for me to post the list on my weblog, I had to put it on another old website I still have. Click HERE to view the list, which for the first time contains hyperlinks to the music videos of some songs.

I wish you all a happy and productive 2013.