7777.7 km net - Scandinavia Aug. 2000

For all of you who are interested in Scandinavia, Lappin Kulta, Sauna and long trips read on - and the others... well - trash the mail or let it be.

16.8. five past midnight - after the Jass and cleaning-up Roflo and me left for our ultimate trip hitting the road to nowhere carrying dozens of CDs, a bit of clothings, guitar and songbooks, a cooling box with food to keep us alive, cameras, and of course a mindful of nostalgic
memories we collected on our northbound-trips in the last 12 years or the like. At 10am we left the continent in Puttgarden taking the ferry to Denmark - the ususal route up north... passing the new bridge to Malmoe - a great construction altough not a very smart idea ecologially as well as economically (there were only about 2 other cars passing it) - and arrived in Sweden, where we spent the night in a rented cottage on the beautiful Vaetten lake (the forth biggest in Europe).

17.8. three hours to Stockholm... arriving on the harbor - the Silja-Line-Terminal two hours before the huge floating shopping-mall called Serenade will take us to Helsinki. But - all booked out! We had to leave the car in a waiting line without knowing if we could make our trip or not. Ten minutes before the ferry left they told us, we have a place. The cabin was very comfortable but the boat-ride a bit disappointing and boring. It's not the same as a few years ago. All the shops and restaurants close at midnight leaving only a dancing club with embarassing shows to stay. - well, times change... But the most impressing is to stand outside on the deck and watch little black islands passing by on a moving watery background with a painted strain by a reflecting close-to-full moon.

18.8. Arriving in Helsinki after the ususal rich breakfast buffet at 9am, weather fine but not too warm. We left the boat, took our natel and phoned up Juha who was expecting us already. So he discribed the way to drive and we drove - found him and went to his flat where we found - a very tired looking semi-russian called Reiher within a terrible mess he left behind - no it wasn't that bad but after we placed our stuff as well into this two-room flat it definitly was... [:-)] In the afternoon Reiher, Rolf and me went to Seurasaari, kind of Ballenberg-museum close to the city center - when it started to rain like hell. So we sat there under a roof of a restaurant eating salmon-soup and drinking Lappin Kulta beer awaiting the sun which was totally in vain - it kept pouring down like hell. At 5:30 we met Juha again - in the sunshine - coming from work and ready for Sauna in his neighbourhood. There's nothing better than a Sauna after arriving in Finland - and a beer and a vodka or two... at 11:30pm we decided go and painting the town, went back to the city center by train. There was really a lot going on on the street - I've never experienced this cold northern city so colorful and alive. There were jazz- and blues-band everywhere surrounded be thousands of people. BUT: Finns are Finns and even in such a colorful athmosphere they stay reserved, just watching the scene and sipping their beer, like in a Kaurismaekki-movie... so let's change the scene and go into the famous Zetor-bar - a Leningrad Cowboys and late Pellonpae hot-spot where you have to queue up for 20 minutes to get in althought it's a quite big place. For those who don't know it: it's worth a visit for it's athmosphere and ambience is taken from a finnish hillbilly pub (where the "Junttis" meet) including farming tools and several tractors. The music on the dancfloor was typical Finnish: hits from the seventies and eighties translated into Finnish language - there was ONLY one language used. BTW - music is always a special topic in Finnland... [;-)] - On the radio stations they play everything - but not a single piece of music without being followed by at least 15 minutes of talking nonsense in a tongue nobody understands - hm, maybe the Finns themselves do.

19.8. 3am - we try to get the last train back - but we were not the only ones, about 500 people tried to get a ticket at the counter - ONE counter for all these people and no ticket-machines. It seems to be the country with the most internet-connections and the highest mobile phone-density, but in some ways things work like in a devoloping country... [;-)] sorry, Suomalaiset! In the end the officials were bored with the situation and opened the gates to the trains for everybody, which ended up in a cool race against time and other passengers - til the last square inch of the train was packed. I never saw such a thing, not even in Madagascar or Indonesia - but it was funny, espacially when you are a bit pissed... [:-)] Singing and waving we arrived back at Juha's place. On the way he had big troubles to keep us silent... There we took one more vodka and went to bed for a few hours. At 3pm Reiher had to be in Vaasa to take the ferry to Umea. So we left at about 10 and drove off. Juha also had to go to Spain that day and I think he was a bit happy to get rid of us again. His loss: one key for the flat, an afternoon of an open door (he was more than lucky there was no burglary), a mess in his flat, waking up the neighbors at 3 in the morning, no sleep at all and a lot of stress with us - poor Juha, sorry again! Anyway Reiher arrived at the ferry on time and Rolf and me took the further trip up north heading to Kemi by Oulu. In Kemi we stayed at the hotel which seemed to be the only place where you could eat a good dinner and something was going on as it seems. And what was going on? - A live band playd very slow and kitchy stuff to an audience of 18-70 years. So we decided, better go for a longer sleep, it's more useful...

20.8. Finally we arrived in Lappland, better say in Pallastunturi - a national park with a mountain hotel and a lot of long hiking trails. There are 14 peaks of which the highest was 800 meters - not a lot, but that means that it's the second highest mountain range after the Halti-Saana area. In the evening we spent some hours on a picnic in the nature and singing. And suddenly we were surrounded not only by thousands of mosquitos but also by a herd of reindeers which obviously became curious of our music playing - so they were whatching us from a distence of only 10-20m... this is Lappland! What's there more to say, it's one of the most beautiful places on earth - the most beautiful is to follow below.

21.8. We took a hike to this Pallastunturi mountains, climbing two peaks and enjoying the increadable view. Here I should say that the weather wasn't that fine all the time - but always when we went out somewhere there was a big whole of blue sky following us. The journey has to go on and so we decided to head for the Sami-town Kautokeino in Norway and further north to Alta where we spent another night in a good hotel including internet! Unfortunatly the mail we sent there didn't arrive... The dinner was excellent - reindeer, what else! But before we were visiting the impressing and world-famous rock carvings (5200-6000 years
old). Less impressive was the ridiculous pseudo-scientific pamphlet they gave us.

22.8. Alta was the place where Rolf finnished his long walking trip from Kautokeino with Pfiff in 1991 where Jenny and me met him on our stay in Finnland and continued our trip to the South. Now as well - Rolf and me took a nostalgic road-trip along the fjords to Kilpisjaervi back in Finnland passing by a huge glacier down to the sea and the most (and this is it for me definitly) phantastic and paradisic landscape on this planet. There was time in Kilpisjaervi to climb the sacred Sami-peak Saana (1024m). Surprise, surprise, there was a wooden stairway to the top and after 300m of climbing up we met the man who was building it. Starting last year, the stairway will reach the top in next year's autumn - a lot to do for this lonely Sami building up his work of life... On the top itself the wind was blowing very strongly and we had to head down soon again. Anyway we saw the nice mountain area and lakes from above which Pfiff, Reiher and me were passing on our big ski-tour about 6 years ago. Lovely!

23.8. Kilpisjaervi-Gaellivare-Kvikkjokk. That was our trip which took us to a national park in Sweden with mountains up to 2000m and a very nice waterfall in the fog-covered mountains. Once we have to return there for a big hike. Now we didn't have the time therefore we stayed in our cottage and were playing music til midnight, drinking some beer. The owner of this cottage- and camping site was very nice and prepared an extra dinner for us. The ingrediences were arriving by bus at 7pm [:-)] 

24.8. Another long road trip by Jokmok and Arvidsjaur, two famous big Sami-marketplaces for centuries, we arrived the Baltic sea again at Umea where we met Reiher again. He was late... and the hotel was packed with congress-people. Rolf and me went to the special alco-shop to buy some strong beer to take to the sauna afterwards. Strange who these northic
countries deal with prohibition. It's a high security tract to buy alcohol for a high price, but if you are drunk on the street, nobody cares... strange policy! Anyway we took our Sauna, some beer and went to two pubs. Again there was nothing going on there but at least we were checking out the "hot spots" once more.

25.8. Driving, driving, driving - always taking the inlands vegen (route 45) down south til we arrived in Sunne, the hometown of Swedish national poet Selma Lagerloef. The night was horrible and terrifying for there was a group of Pakistani(?) making a noise and banging on every door trying to get in and carrying big stuff with them all night... and this was our last night to sleep!!!

26.-27.8. Sunne-Goeteborg, taking the ferry to Fredrickshavn in Denmark and driving through Juetland to the German border (km 6666.6). I always make some strange experiences at borders but this time - the customer looked at my ID, then he saw me and bursted out in laughter, just waving for to pass by!!! Hey, what's that, a few years ago I was beeing searched everytime a crossed a bloody border and now this! Hamburg - beautiful weather and sunset... Lueneburg: a nice little medieval city! We had our dinner there at a place called "Maexx". Not bad, but the Germans don't know any spices or salt on their meals - as the Finns refuse to take vinagar with the salad... At least the German waiters are much nicer and kinder than the Swiss ones - which is not much to say anyway... Leaving Lueneburg at 11pm - arriving Basel 5am, and about 6am we were in Zurich again after 7777.7km of driving - excluding the ferry boat rides!

So much for our last 12 days!! There's more to tell but I think nobody got this far reading anyway...

Table of Contents

Further topics and comments about the Brazilian way of life, April 2002

a brain storming report by Paty Uellendahl & Markus Roth

Barraca: kind of small shelters or snack bars serving the tourists on the beach Caipirinha and different kinds of fish and sea food - yummy! And NO digestion problems.

Carnaval: not only in Rio!! Nobody is running around naked in the streets or is trampled down under foot by masses of paniced people like the media tries to show here. Carnaval is first the summer holidays for everybody, so the beach towns are crowded like hell and the hotels and restaurants charge double of the prizes than ususal. The Samba event is secundary and in special closed streets and clubs, not everywhere, like in James Bond or Bud Spencer movies.

Sorvete por quilo: increadable, the best thing ever!!! You choose between 20 different flavours of ice cream and 15 cruchy chocolate chips, biscuits, marshmellows etc and pay 10 SFr. per kilo - double yummy!! But also the normal food is mostly served por quilo, especially lunch - including rice, beans and different kinds of meat, salad bar, pasta and dessert for about 8-10 SFr.

Water: the mentioned mineral waters of Caxambu BTW were nominated the best in the world long before Perrier had its name.

Cachaça: sugar cane schnapps, you can get everywhere and there must be about 100 distilleries and different flavours in the country. If you are not for alcohol (which also is used as fuel for some cars), you can drink it freshly pressed as caldo de cana, a milk-like very sweet beverage. This is the first step in the process: pressing out the juice out of the canes, then distill it to sugar, then to alcohol and in the last step you have fuel. Caipirinha is NOT served with raw sugar and crunched ice like here!

Pastel: mostly served at the open markets with caldo de cana (see above). It's Blätterteig filled with shrimps, palmherz, cheese, or tomato etc etc fried in hot oil, a good snack for hot days [;-)] 

Beer: THE drink in Brazil apart from Guarana - kind of Rivella with cofeinlike stimulants from an Amazonas fruit. Wine - forget it! Brazilian wine is sweet, served warm and thick - mostly Liebfraumilch (white) oder Sangue de boi (red). Imported wine is too expensive. But who wants to drink wine in a tropical country!!!???? Fruit juices are very common as well - freshly pressed with ice (yes, you can take ice cubes without getting sick [;-)] ), a bit different from our Tetra pack juices...

Patience: you have to be patient in this country. But after you had to wait one hour for the passport controll in the airport you are getting used to do it as well in banks on payment days, post offices (packed with courirers, boys hired by companies to deliver documents and bills - you see them everywher in the city and will recognize them easily by the the big enverlopes they are always carrying) or while waiting for a tourist boat to take you to some island. Also the traffic jam... especially when it rains and the streets are flooded in the city - a sad chapter! But who cares in holidays?!

Change: coins are rare, down to one real (65 Rappen) there are bills. But you need change for the cheap bus tickets or subway machines. If you go in a small shop and they can't change you a bill and 10 or 20 centavos is missing - the change will be given in chewing gum or sweets. That's absolutly normal.

Public Transport: buses are entered on one side, passed by a collector to pay the fair - don't worry if some 20 or 30 centavos are missing, they let you pass anyway - sit in the bus and the exit is on the other side - sometimes from front to rear, sometimes the other way round, depends on the city (exeption: Curitiba, where you enter first in the bus stop-tube to get the ticket and then enter the bus). They are cheap everywhere but always stucked in the rush hours and - there's NO timetable and NO busmap, be lucky! Subways and trains are mostly fast, comfortable and cheap as well as safe and clean. I only saw similar subways in Barcelona. The poorer suburban trains are mostly stucked with people who want to sell EVERYTHING to you, from water to walkmen and magazines. You don't have a place to sit and carry some laguage - give it to some sitting person who is offering to carry it during the trip!

Favela: once a mountain full of squatterings in Rio, today a name for every slum in the country. Be careful: favelas - especially in Rio - are not anymore wood huts and tin cottages but real brick buildings with electricity and parabol antennas! Don't be fooled, these people are still extremly poor and live in horrible conditions but their life in the desert of the north east (Sertao) is by far worse. In Sao Paulo and especially Porto Alegre we saw increadable poor places where people live
on rabish mountains like in Mexico City. Still, as construcion workers or couriers, they earn with their 100 SFr. a month not a lot but try to save most of it to feed their families. The root of this problem lies in the big land owners, mostly politicians in the north who collect their land only for speculation. On the other side thousands of poor farmers don't have access to this land or their land is desertificated so the only way for them is to emigrate to the big cities in the south where
the grass seems to be greener for them - for most of these emigrants it's not at all... There is a big movimento sem terra - the movement of the landless in the north - originally they were fighting for the right to plant in inproductive lands but always failed against the landowners or politicians. Nowadays they are burning plantations and kill cattle - not very wise for the population start to not believe in their targets anymore. Sad!

Police: don't be shy, most of the street police in the city is very friendly and tries to help you to find your way. Mostly the answer will be: em frente, which means: in front of something AND straight, but sometimes also, opposite, right, left and behind. Ask two guys and get three directions to the rodoviaria (Bus station)...

Music: Brazilians are music lover and not everything is Samba and Bossa Nova! Most of the radio stations and musicians play american infuented pop music. BUT there is maybe the best radio station in the world: KISSFM, which plays the whole day only classical rock music from the 50s to 80s including whole Pink Floyd or Genesis suites of 15 minutes or more. A guitar everybody has at home and it was a good idea to bring the songbooks.

Rain: at 4pm - always.... effect: flooded roads - always.... but no cooling down!

Rodrigo: Big Borther is travelling with us through Rio and Minas. You will meet him maybe next winter when he's here to study english. In Ouro Preto we celebrated his 22 birthday... in an Indian Restaurant called Taj. A very nice owner from the Ganges valley was serving us with Nandu-speciallities.

Christ the Redeemer: EVERYWHERE, not only in Rio, he stands on some hill of some city in some state in the whole country with his wide open arms without seeming to get tired - or....

Dengue: one of the ten plagues of Egypt arrived in Rio. People called it the carnaval da dengue when someone travelled to Rio and everybody IS afraid. There is no cure and no vaccination against it - you get it, you survive or die (bleed from the inside) if you get 4th stage disease (5%). It is a disease like malaria by the same mosquito (Aedes egyptis) but the virus is different.

Pao de Queijo, Tutu, Pork skin chips etc.: typical Minas food - only because we didn't write something culinarian in the last page [:-)] The breakfast is always huge including fruits and different cheese, cake and juices. If you think we were only eating as it seems in this reports, go to Franca and visit this family: 9am: big breakfast, noon: even bigger lunch, 3pm: coffee with lots of snack, 6pm: leftovers from the whole day as huuuuge dinner. 9pm: good night tea with sweets...

Alemao: wow wow wow! 17 years and still barking and running around. (Died 21.4. - visit his Homepage)

Santa Ifigenia: look for a new TV, wanna repair your HiFi or buy another walkman, instrument or CDs - you will find it in this poor Sao Paulo neighbourhood - and you will find yourself in the Blade Runner movie.

Sidewalks: be carefull, there's more holes than pavement, everywhere in the country! Maybe a bit better in Paulista Avenue (the SP Bahnhofstrasse).

Hairdresser: go and get your hair washed and cut at 9pm for 8 SFr... and better than everywhere else!

Gringo: foreigners are warmly welcome everywhere and people are even proud to show the gringos around or make special parties for them or give a lot of presents. This is for sure the arabian influence. Brazilians are sincere and honest, warm and friendly people with

"calor humano": can change also the coldest swiss or eskimo [:-)] 

Portuguese: forget English, with French you won't get far and with German only til Porto Alegre or Blumenau. Spanish or Italian is understood but the answer will for sure be in Portuguese, which differs from the European one like Wallisdialekt from Züritüütsch. So don't be astonished if your Portuguese from Portugal will find some obstacles. The conjugation and orthography is not easier than French, but you will get some expressions by learning by doing quite easily - because there's no other way.... There's also dialects: Cariocas (Rio) talk slowly and with a lot of sh. The (always hot tea drinking) Gauchos have a German influence and thus their language is easier to understand. In Minas they always eat the last silable but everything is in the diminutif. And BTW: Rio-SP is like Basel-Zürich and the Argentinians are anyway the "Germans". Portugues are the Austrians for the Brazilians.

Prizes: Food generally is 4 to 10 times cheaper than here, flats and houses (40'000 to buy one in the city) as well, but imported cars, gazoline and books are the same level as here. Restaurants: example - in Canela we were eating in an Italian Restaurant for 8 SFr. including spaghetti with three sauces, ravioli, soup with tortelloni, lasagne, polenta, three salads, gnocci, and dessert bar - we couldn't even finnish our plates, was too much! And we didn't even take the meat dishes that were included.... and we are back to food, think we have to stop now, getting hungry again.

That's all for the moment, boa noite

Read also: Erste Impressionen aus Brasilien, in German

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