Spring is here and it’s time to get the rust and spider webs off the bikes. I’m helping out in a local organisation called Cycletastic that promotes cycling by fixing bicycles, teaching how to navigate the streets, organising workshops etc. There are some really cool people involved and I enjoy taking part in the events put on. I can do the basic maintenance but still got plenty to learn so this way I get to help other people while I learn more about bikes; a true win-win :)
This Sunday we set up a booth at the farmers market in Queens Park and held the first “Dr. Bike” event of the year. Here is one of the guys from Cycle Training UK helping me out with a kids bike.
We had Ann to help manage the queue and with six fixers we had our hands on 41 bikes in four hours. Busy times but it was great to help people get their bikes back on the road.
The cycling culture in London is still not that widespread but there are a lot of initiatives from the city and from non-profit outfits like the Cycletastic, Cycle Training UK and London Cycling Campaign. The people I meet from these organisations are really passionate about getting people to bike and it is great to see the grass-root spirit involved.
The travel agency LastMinute.com has started publishing a monthly top 50 list of travel and lifestyle blogs in London/UK. To kick that off they organized an event they called Oh You Lucky Bloggers at Planet Hollywood. It’s not like Ann or I has made it into the list but it’s always fun to get out and meet other bloggers. The event was great, mingling with the cool crowd of London blogosphere.
I’m not sure how the list is compiled but there are some really cool blogs on it – go have a look yourself.
There is a couple of my favorite London blogs that hasn’t made the list so I figured I’d give them props here:
IanVisits – Ian is constantly on top of what’s going on under and over ground in London events.
London Cyclist – Andreas is really busy creating resources for the biking crowd in London
Ghost signs – Not exclusively a London site but very interesting nonetheless with old painted signs on house.
From The Upper Deck – Another quirky blog where Przemek drives around on the double deckers of London and takes pictures out the window as London life goes by below him.
Georgian London – excitingly writings about life in London in the 18th century
Last night we went to a screening of the movie Storm (DK: Hannahs Valg) which tells the fictional story of a trial at the tribunal in The Hague and how the prosecutors struggle to ensure evidence, witnesses and at the same time make political bargains with the local government of the Balkans.
The conflict of the Balkans is not easy to understand – yet I think it is important that we try. This is a war that happened in our lifetime, right in the middle of Europe and with horrible war crimes of ethnic cleansing, genocide and rape camps.
I found the movie very interesting and it displays some of the dilemmas of trying to achieve justice for the atrocities while trying to rebuild the stability of the region and what one persons sacrifice mean in a bigger political game.
After the movie there was a panel debate with the former diplomat Charles Crawford, journalist Rajeshree Sisodia, Elena Wasylem from a rape victim help group and Lisa Gormley from Amnesty International. They all had some interesting inputs to the different themes of the film and put it into context. One of the things that they mentioned in the debate afterwards was that the bargaining and some of the actions of the barristers were quite unrealistic.
The film is a great example of European collaboration as it was created with funding from three countries and cast from at least eight.
