What a month with so much great stuff! First of all there were two zoo adventures: I visited the Gaia Zoo in Kerkrade, in the Netherlands and it was a very nice. The zoo is beautiful, the animal areas seem vast and enriching and one can see the animals from various positiond. The next zoo visit was Zoom in Gelsenkirchen. A friend celebrated her birthday there with a nice picknick and an exclusive zoo tour. How nice, my first zoo birthday! The tour Was great, it was about 90min, we learned some things about the inhabitants and had an exklusive look at some wolves.
The biggest thing in July was my trip to London for visting my friend again. I visited the musicals Hadestown and The Book of Mormon (my second time), both were awesome and I choose very good (and cheap) seats. Since the weather was constantly perfect, I also managed to finally visit some outdoor places: Hampstead Heath, Richmond Park and Kew Gardes (including Queen Charlottes Kew Palace). Every location was so beautiful and nice, yeah, I am the person going to London to enjoy flowers, woods and the countryside.
The highlight of this trip was the concert of The Killers, with Travis as special guest. I listened to The Killers about 20 years ago, I didn’t know that they were still so big to fill the O2 arena for six nights in a row. And of course it was nice to see Travis again, for the first time in a big venue. Travis were delightful as always and did a beautiful set with some of my fav songs. Then The Killers came on stage and a party erupted, there was glitter, light shows and a handsome singer called Brandon Flowers in a glitter suit. The guitar player looked like someone from ACDC and the bass player like a typical metal-medieval guy with long hair. The show was awesome, the band is from Las Vegas and I felt like watching a Las Vegas show. Then suddenly they switched the monitors to the live football game where England was playing. The band didn’t miss during the concert that people were watching their phones and since England was on the verge of winning, they showed the very last minutes. A bold choice, I was so anxious that England would loose last minute. But they won, the arena errupted in roars and the band started to play Mr Brightside which turned the arena into a whole happy party. Really great concert, I will definitely see The Killers another time if possible.
Gaming:
Not that many boardgames but we managed to play Twilight Imperium 4 again, three players, we were bitterlich crushed by my partner and his space pirates. And on another we had a nice, long gaming session with Maracaibo, too.
Books:
I finished 7 books. It was not the best reading month. I read „Sorrow and Bliss“ by Meg Mason. It has some Eleanor Oliphant vibes but I didn’t like the main character at all. „The Stars too Fondly“ by Emily Hamilton was an okayish space opera but the 20/30s characters sounded and behaved like teenagers, it was very annoying. „Throne of Glass“ by Sarah J. Maas started off soooo slowly. But at the end it got interesting and my friend promised that the second book is way better. „One of us is lying“ by Karen McManus, I thought it would be like „Pretty Little Liars“ but it lacked the bite. The suspense to the incoming murderer reveal was rather declining than growing.
Films:
Only three films this month. I watched „Finding Dory“ for the first time and liked it way more then the first movie. Then we watched „Whiskey Tango Foxtrot“ on Netflix. It was very weird but kind of interesting? Last movie of the month was „The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare“. I hate films with Nazis (especially when one is played by Till Schweiger) but this one was quite okay because it played on the sea and the island Fernando Po (Now Bioko), different locations than the standard WW2 films.
TV Shows:
I finished Kaulitz & Kaulitz and now I am ready for a second season. The I finished the Walter Boys which I quite liked. Next up was Emily in Paris, despite not really liking Emily and Paris, I watched all three seasons this month. I also finished the 4th season of The Boys, why do shows always feel the need for gory violence? But besides that I also liked that season. Then we went on to watching Gen V, a spinoff of the Boys, that I enjoy so far. And I started watching Mr & Mrs Smith, the new tv show, also quite good.