Yesterday we spent a fair while on trains, we left on the 9:22 am to Odense and arrived at our hotel in Cologne about 9 pm. Today Pauline is working and I am doing admin tasks like visiting the laundromat. It’s good to feel we are well on our way back to France and I’m…

It’s been a busy week or so as we left Uppsala and moved to a small apartment in a suburb of Stockholm. It was midsummer holidays for the Swedes so two days of public holiday. We had a very nice day out at Skansen, the open air museum with our friend Louisa who lives in…

We took a fifteen minute bus ride to old Uppsala where there are Royal burial grounds, a museum, and fortuitously when we arrived there, a Viking festival. It’s an interesting place with history like we just don’t get in NZ. I always thought that places like Sweden were probably discovered by the English in Victorian…

At the risk of editorialising I’m going to give you my thoughts on Finland. What a great country! It’s a lot like Japan in some ways, very safe, hardly any crime, the people are reserved but will do anything for you if you ask them. There’s very little homelessness here because they give homeless people…

Pauline had to give a talk in Helsinki on Thursday so we took the train on Wednesday night and stayed until Sunday, visiting some friends and having a look around. It’s a very nice city and easy to get around what with trams, the metro and buses all accessible with an excellent app on one’s…