I know that it's high time I finally post some photos from New Zealand and Australia – and I promise I'll get to it one of these days! But there are so many of them, it's kind of intimidating… 🙂
Therefore I thought I'd share some of the pics from my last visit with my German friend Märrie this November. We had, as always, a wonderful time, with lots of talk and laughter – and a couple of special highlights.
Me in front of one of the buildings of the university there, and Märrie on the old city walls.
The church of St. Servaas was very impressive – I have never seen so many holy relics in one place! On the other hand there was this one church that had been converted into bike parking – and some really cute houses.
So I really liked Maastricht – but the climax of this visit was the day we spent at
We even dressed up (as Eowyn of Rohan and an unidentified dark Elf) – but ours were by far not the most original costumes, as you can see.
The con was also an opportunity to get to see and meet some people involved in the making of the movies.
Bruce Hopkins plays Gamling (King Theoden's right hand) in 'The Two Towers', and I had a nice chat with him. I also had the special task to give some of the guests tiny braids for the Fellowship of the Wee Scarvies, as a way of showing them our appreciation – so that's what Mark Ferguson (Gil-Galad from the 'Fellowship of the Ring' prologue) and Roger and Carola from Weta Workshop (while turning a harmless girl into a really evil-looking Orc) are holding in their hands. 🙂
In the evening there we got to see the star guests. John Rhys-Davies (Gimli the dwarf) was amazing, and Craig Parker (Haldir – the Elf who dies at Helm's Deep) managed to crack us up in his show with Mark Ferguson. I filmed a couple of short .avi clips from their panels: Two clips of John Rhys-Davies, about a boating accident with a certain Elf, and one of Craig Parker trying (and failing) to get out of saying Haldir's line “The dwarf was breathing so loud, I could have shot him in the dark!”
There were many more experiences, of course, but I think that's more than enough. Except that I still want to post the pic from the birth house of Beethoven, which stands in Bonn:
Now that that's done, I promise to post pictures from down under soon! But first – a wonderful holiday season to all of you! *hugs*