Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category
Alright-Airlines
Sweden is where detective stories are made. Since the roaring success of Stieg Larssons Millennium trilogy even the last person on the planet has been confronted with the dangerous pleasures of the Swedish underworld and it sometimes seems like a Swedish name has become a quality- or at least sales promise for chief inspector so-and-so’s latest adventures.
Håkan Nesser is one of Sweden’s best-selling authors – producing detective stories of course.
Together with a couple of friends, he now starts and airline: RAUK AIR, to ensure they all get to their summer- writing- or family houses on the island of Gotland without the hassle of a car drive.
Håkan Nesser has been lying next to my sunglasses for a couple of days now. Read the rest of this entry »
News from the North
Next farm: 278 km
Two fantastically nordic news alerts came in yesterday, very much qualified to illustrate this remote part of Europe. To start with I should provide those not familiar with the local conditions with some cornerstones: Norrland is Sweden’s most northern state. With an area of 261 292 km² it covers 59% of the countries’ surface but is home to only 12% of its population. Which in return means: very few people per square meter. A common joke is Read the rest of this entry »
Malin for President
Happy birthday!
“Malin ended up being a member of parliament”, I read in Dagens Nyheter. It is her birthday today and the newspaper congratulates her with a 1 pager to 65 years of a Swedish life and 45 years of making people fall in love with her. Read the rest of this entry »
Midsummer, Quincy Jones and a banned Ikea commercial
Small frogs dance
Midsummer weekend is over. Celebrating the longest day of the year, the shortest night, light in the sky until the sun rises again. Midsummer is also a celebration of fertility, which is hard to miss considering the shape of the midsummer tree. Read the rest of this entry »
Impressions with mirrors
You can never leave
I have now officially had the most remarkable hotel experience ever. Adam & Eve claims to be heaven on earth and the song they have on eternity loop in the lobby confirms that “you can never leave” either. Their concept is to take their guests to another world i.e. confuse them to the max and start with using mirrors instead of wallpaper. Read the rest of this entry »
Loving Stockholm
Love
When in our mid-end-twenties many of my friends packed their suitcase and CV and walked into offices in San Francisco, Tokyo, Sydney and New York, I took a timeout where no one would find me and have been stuck in Stockholm ever since. The question “why” has been asked a thousand times, verbally or using small muscles in friends and colleagues faces. Swedes tend to think I am weird, Read the rest of this entry »
Three shortcuts to enlightenment and one Hallelujah
Postcards from the edge
I have been back home for a while now. Got back into my shoes, bought a subway ticket and ironed my shirts. With all wisdom collected during the past weeks, I did however not want to leave you unaware of the newest developments from the universe of salvation. Read the rest of this entry »
Hello Kitty, Manga Margarine and the secret of crema
Continental spread
Butter, toast and jam come in threes, at least in the UK. The years as a colony have successfully planted the idea in Indian heads, that every foreigner wants cardboard with sugar mousse to kick off their day. I usually don’t belong to this category, but learned on a trip to Martinique, that countries with amazingly ripe tropical fruits can make a so called continental breakfast quite delicious.
India has not yet Read the rest of this entry »
Been there, done that. Recycling and flowers for Gowalla
Developing country?
People talk about the arrival of plastics like about the beginning of a new era. The garbage era. Times in which tourist guides are ashamed of showing their villages to guests because they lead Flipflop-feet through piles of plastic bottles. Westerners driving by nod knowingly: it’s a developing country after all. At home… – at home we either burn or bury plastics, providing soil for some fine toxic tomatoes. In India, it is in our face – developing in which direction?
As it has become my habit, I question Marina about this. Read the rest of this entry »
Naked, no sheets, rice puffs and Dr. Bindu
This way, please.
The first question I was asked in Kerala (apart from “Taxi, Madame?”) was “Are you doing treatment?” No Sir. I had considered strolls through crowded Indian towns, beach, sunset, green coconuts, the finest of fabrics, coffee, backwaters, tea plantations and spices. No treatment.
After discussing Ayurveda over dinner, P. and I decided to get an herbal opinion on our typical western immune systems, shattered by a bouquet of different antibiotics.
