Pearl Street

Our final day in Colorado was spent on a visit to  University of Colorado campus and the rest of Boulder, Pearl Street specifically…

I have to say I love the place. It’s mildly European in nature with a pedestrian zone full of various entertainers and odd characters, people using bikes rather than cars… y’know… a compact city fit for a human not a machine.

Non-residents might think of Boulder as a place for people that don’t want to grow up and get serious. It’s supposed to be full of whackos, die hard hippies, artists, progressive liberals and such… I just felt it could be a place worth spending some more time in.
People actually socialize here; they don’t keep to themselves locked up in some housing community in the suburbs.
Instead of pushing people into the suburbs (as most other US cities do) Boulder tries to keep the social life concentrated in the center. Ray Oldenburg wrote a book on this subject called  The Great Good Place that makes… perfect sense actually.
And to top it all, there are mountains right next door! What more could one ask for? Well, an ocean would be nice but let’s not get picky.

The End

12 days on the ground, estimated 4400 – 4600 km or more (in the neighborhood of 2800 miles) and a decent experience. When I look at the map and the tiny portion of the country we covered it seems a bit surreal. It certainly didn’t look that way in reality.
I’ve had a great time and I’m definitely repeating it sometime in the future but first… let me give you a hint – diving in False Bay, Drakensberg, Kruger NP etc.
That’s my next objective; hopefully it will happen sooner rather than later.

Here’s a rough sketch of the main route we’ve driven (using fabulous  Google Maps ). Several detours and details are missing of course.

(800kb file)

An article in some architecture magazine reminded me of a design I’ve seen before.

 LoftCube is just the thing I need (err, want) The only problem is… where could I put it? Rooftops around here aren’t exactly flat (very few anyway)

photo by Studio Aisslinger, via MoCoLoCo

Took some fairly decent photos yesterday at the Trnfest 05 @  KUD France Preseren and I thought they might go down well with another invitation to see the festival ( here’s the schedule).
There’s always plenty of good music (from bands you’ve most likely never heard of), theatre perfomances and various creative workshops and it’s on every night through the entire month of August.

Yesterday I arrived towards the end of a performance by a band called  Levitan. I only heard one song so I won’t comment on that (they’ve got some mp3s on their site for you to make up your own mind).
However what I would like to say is that the drummer in the second band ( Moonlight Sky ) was great. Their frontman was a bit weak but the drummer sure knows his stuff… He was fun to photograph as well.
BTW They’ve also got some mp3s online.

I’ve seen  Teater Narobov on Ana Desetnica 04 street theatre festival and was really looking forward to seeing them perform again. Improvisational theatre was always one of my favorite genres and they didn’t let me down. They will perform every sunday night at 23.00 on KUD FP stage. Be there.