Next place we arrived to was Merida. Though instead of staying there we immediately took a tour to Los Llanos, the Savannah plains east of Merida. Los Llanos is a great flat area rich with wildlife. Much of the plains are used for agriculture mostly cattle farming. There are both huge farms with thousands of animals and smaller family run places with 100 cows or less. But in Los Llanos there are also a lot of other animals. Many of them seem very exotic to us North Europeans. All we have at home is moose, wolf, bear, lynx, wolverine and muskox. [View Full Entry]

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We have now started our vacation trip. The destination this time is Venezuela. We first arrived in Caracas. We have heard a few horror stories from Caracas such as people getting robbed already at the airport, Caracas being the city with the highest murder rate in Latin America and taxi drivers being criminals. Well, the last statement maybe isn´t a surprise. Taxi drivers are criminals all over the World. But the over all crime rate is supposed to be very high and not even in the airport a tourist can feel safe. We decided to play it safe and stay only [View Full Entry]

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We have mentioned it before but we say it again. Emma likes beer but Ake doesn't. Consequently when we are in a restaurant Emma often orders beer but Ake orders juice. When the waiter or waitress arrives with our order they more often than not give Ake the beer and Emma gets the juice. If your aim is to save money here in Lithuania it is better to drink beer than to drink juice, because beer is cheaper. Well strictly juice isn't very expensive either. Heck, probably nothing is expensive here! [View Full Entry]

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One day we made a trip to the city Šiauliai in northern Lithuania. Outside this city is one of Lithuania's most remarkable places, the Hill of Crosses. This is a place we have wished to visit for several years and finally we now had the time to do it. In the countryside a few kilometers outside Šiauliai is a a place called the Domantai Hill, though it is known better as the Hill of Crosses. There are actually two hills there and they are practically covered with crosses. Nobody really knows when people started to place crosses on this hill. It [View Full Entry]

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We had four days off from work and decided to go on a trip to one of the lesser known neighbouring countries to Sweden, namely Lithuania. Lithuania is the southernmost of the three Baltic countries. Up until 1990 Lithuania was part of the Soviet Union. The formerly strong ties to Russia is something you can notice still today when you visit Lithuania. For instance the hotel we stayed in has furniture that looked like it came from a storage house in Novosibirsk, the supermarkets sell several different brands of Russian vodka but only rarely Western ones, in the restaurants you can [View Full Entry]

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I have just come back from a quick visit in Tallinn, Estonia. Strictly this was not a holiday because I was there for a conference. But I had the opportunity to spend a few hours in Tallinn and tried to make the most out of them. I decided on spending the time on visiting two different sights. First Pirita, an area on the coast of the Baltic Sea just north of the City Centre, and then the Old Town. The Old Town is easily the biggest tourist attraction in Tallinn. Most parts of the Old Town dates back to the Middle [View Full Entry]

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Chongqing, Chengdu, Dazu and Hobbit Town (?) On a bus one day I talked to a man and I asked him where he was from. He said "I am from a small town called Jingmen". It turned out that three million people live in Jingmen making it more than twice as large as Stockholm, the largest city in Sweden. To put things in perspective you need to know that already in 1989 there were actually not less than 28 cities in China that had more than 8 million inhabitants each. It's fascinating that several of those cities are barely known outside [View Full Entry]

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The Three Gorges are Gorgeous Still I could add. But I guess they aren't what they used to be. Let me explain: In the south of China the Yangtze River flows though a mountainous area. The river has over millions of years cut out a series of deep gorges through the mountains. These gorges are well known for their scenic beauty. The combination of the fast flowing water of the river and the more than one kilometer high mountains towering on either side makes a scenery that is absolutely breathtaking. Add to it a little picturesque hamlet here and there, a [View Full Entry]

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Yemen part IV - The south and the west First I'd like to write a little about the habit of chewing khat. Khat is in most countries in the World considered a drug and consequently illegal. In countries where it is legal however, for instance in Yemen but also in Ethiopia for instance, it is used by a very high percentage of the population. The male population I should add. I'm not sure but I don't think women ary very big khat chewers. I'll get back to what I know about the women in Yemen later on. In the afternoon in [View Full Entry]

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The northern regions First I'd like to try to give you an idea about how it looks in Yemen and what things that strikes me as different from home. I find this a bit difficult to describe things like that but I hope you get an idea from this list * In the smaller towns the streets are sometimes unpaved * The land is mainly very dry and dusty * There is often a layer of dust on the streets and on buildings * Some days the air is thick with dust * The main roads are paved but there are [View Full Entry]

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