Tuesday 22 July 2014

Harry Potter: The Exhibition

Today was the day! I have finally been to Harry Potter: The Exhibition at the European premiere in Norrköping here in Sweden. Since there was no photography allowed at the exhibition I will post photos from the Studio Tour in London to give you a hint :)

I was both really nervous (the trains, bus and tram had to be on time!) and extremely excited today. I felt like I was 10 years old and I couldn't sit still. I was like that yesterday too and was so fidgety that I couldn't concentrate on one thing for more than an hour before I had to do something else. The bus and train to the big train station were all on time and the train from Södertälje was on time too. The trip to Norrköping took 1½ hours and when we arrived there the tram was on time too and I found my way perfectly (very proud of myself, I have a lousy sense of direction).

We went inside and after recieving our audio guides (we both picked English over Swedish - I can't stand the Swedish names on stuff) I got in front of the green screen and had my picture taken.

Then the exhibition began. In the first room there was a lady with the Sorting Hat and three children got sorted. Two of them (of course) wanted Gryffindor and only one little guy wanted Slytherin. When no other child volunteered the lady picked one of the adults and she ended up in Hufflepuff. Then we got into the exhibition proper. Portraits, costumes, items and furniture. The first part of the first room was basically dedicated to the Gryffindor common room and the boys' dorm along with clothes and possessions of Harry and his friends. Then there were items, costumes and furniture from the Potions classroom, Divination classroom, Defence Against the Dark Arts and Herbology. I was not pleased that the form of the Boggart that they had chosen for the exhibition was the big jack-in-a-box clown :( But it was a lot of fun to pull Mandrakes, and I think I stood there pulling them up about 10 times, trying all of them a couple of rounds xD

Then there was the Quidditch room. I have never seen the Nimbuses so close up before :) I would've loved another riding-a-broom segment like they had in London, but instead you got to throw the Quaffle through hoops. There was a lot of children there throwing over and over and having real difficulties going through the hoops. When there was room for me I went up to try. I threw four times. There were three hoops and I first tried once in every hoop and then one more time in the middle furthest one. No problems whatsoever for me. Either I was tall enough or I did gain something when I played basket ball all those years ago. But holding a Quaffle was fun :)

Then there was Hagrid's Hut and the Forbidden Forest. Getting really close to Buckbeak was cool :D There was a segment where you could try to sit in Hagrid's armchair but the crowd of children around it proved too long of a waiting time so I decided to skip that one. Instead I got up and close to a baby Thestral. Cutie! :3 Being really close to the Hungarian Horntail's head was awesome too. There's so much detail on it. The audio guide said they made it life-size, which made me rather disappointed cause I thought it looked bigger than that on screen xD

Then there was the Dark Forces part. The first thing is the Angel of Death statue which looked really plastic and small compared to the one in London, but the Dementor prop had me creeped out and I stared at it for quite some time. I also liked looking at the Philosopher's Stone and Bellatrix Lestrange's dress. The glass case with the Horcruxes was also really interesting. The diadem was so beautiful! *_*

Then there was the costumes from Bill and Fleur's wedding along with Hermione's beaded bag. And then there was the Great Hall. Glass cases of all sorts of wizard snacks and sweets along with Yule Ball decorations and costumes. There were also the Triwizard Cup and the case of the Goblet of Fire and a glass case containing the three Deathly Hallows. Fawkes was there too, and the sword of Gryffindor.

And then it was over. The website said the approximate time for the exhibition was 1½ hours and thinking of how much time I spent at the Studio Tour I counted that the exhibition would take about 2 hours for me. Instead I was done in 45 minutes. I was so happy there and when Toni (who went slightly ahead of me) declared that that was the end I felt so disappointed. That's it? I loved it. It was amazing. But it was so quick. So to make up for it, I spent 15-30 minutes in the souvenir shop. I had heard about stuff from there via friends and looked for some things that I had considered buying on before-hand. In the end I didn't buy any wizard coins, which I previously thought I would, and I still didn't buy a Time Turner although I really want one. Instead I got the Official Exhibition Guide (which is how I remember all the things and what order they came in), my picture that I took in the beginning (which looked very fake compared to the London one, which looks much more real), a pink pygmy puff and a chocolate frog. The chocolate frogs from here weren't as big as the ones from London, but at least these ones weren't made of British chocolate (which isn't even half as tasty as Swedish chocolate) and the cards didn't look like in the first movie (like the ones from London) but I still liked it. I got the guitarist from The Weird Sisters :)


I really, really liked the exhibition. It was very different from the Studio Tour in London. In London I hadn't booked any audio guides since they cost extra, but here they were included. So most of the exhibition I spent with the guide pressed to my ear. Most of what they said was interesting but some things made me giggle. One thing that bothered me, however, was that it says clearly on the website and on the tickets that there's no photograpy allowed at the exhibition and still there were so many people there taking pictures. That's partly why it took forever by Hagrid's armchair, cause all the parents wanted pictures of their children in the big ass chair. If that had been at a no-photography-allowed-museum in Japan the guards would've checked our phone photo galleries and camera memories before leaving and make us delete the photos. I almost wish they would've done that here too... I also wish they could've sold Butterbeer on the outside here too. A glass of Butterbeer in this heat would've been amazing.

After the exhibition we walked back to the central station and bought drinks there. Then we went to the park close by and chilled in the shade from a big tree. That's when we heard a clock tower nearby start chiming Hedwig's Theme. It was amazing and so random that I just couldn't help smiling.
"Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home."

Wednesday 16 July 2014

Top 35 favourite songs made before I was born

I was born in the end of 1990, sometimes I feel like I'm born in 1991. My best friend and I are born the same year. She turns 25 in 6 months. I turn 24 in 4 months :P But anyway, here's my top 35 songs made before I was born, i.e. 1989 and backwards, in no particular order other than alphabetical of group names. I was going to go with 10, but I couldn't choose only so few, and tbh it was hard picking these 35 as well...


Tuesday 1 July 2014

Vampire craze

I've always had a thing for vampires. For as long as I can remember. Maybe since I was 5-7 years old? Don't know, really. I was always a vampire on Halloween as a child. I loved every version of Dracula that I could come across (except the original, how's that for irony?). I loved the first seasons of Buffy and Angel. I taped the Vampire Night that one of the TV channels showed when I was 13, just so that I could watch Nosferatu and Bela Lugosi's Dracula. I was a huge fan of the movie Interview With the Vampire (I really should read that series). But my craze died down a bit when Twilight became such a huge hit. Because when that happened, if you're a girl and you say you like vampires people automatically assume that you're referring to Twilight.

But now it has flared up again. It started about two years ago when I got my hands on The Vampyre by Tom Holland. Which was amazing. It told the tale of vampire stories by having Lord Byron as a vampire in the book :) The Vampyre caught my attention and I finally read John Polidori's short story from 1819, which is said to have been Bram Stoker's inspiration for Dracula. After that I got the book Vampire Forensics, which tells the real story of vampires and it's place in common folklore and history.

Now I'm writing a story about vampires. I've finished all five seasons of Vampire Diaries, and I just finished playing a point-and-click puzzle adventure game called Dracula: Love Kills, which was a lot of fun.

I was sceptic towards Vampire Diaries. I was a little wary that it would be like True Blood or all the other "sexy vampire in the city" stories that are so popular nowadays. It has that, I won't deny it, but it actually has the darkness too. The thirst for blood, feeding on people for fun... All that stuff that makes a vampire what it is. And that part, the darkness part, makes up for all the sexy vampire shit that's in it. And I love that they make fun of Twilight in it.
"Howcome you don't sparkle?"
"Because I live in the real world where vampires burn in the sun."

I remember when I was 9 years old and read the first Harry Potter book that when Hagrid told Harry that Quirrell never was quite like he used to be after he had a run-in with some vampires, I thought that it was so cool that there were vampires in the story. 

I was also a huge fan of the cartoon Ketchup Vampires. Back when I still liked ketchup I used to pretend that it was a substitute for blood :P

Do I even have to mention that I loved Hotel Transylvania and that one of my Sims is vampire? ;)

I love vampires. But it's supposed to be the darkness and the blood and perhaps trying to be functional in the real world. Not the sex. And for gods' sakes no sparkles!