The New North: The World in 2050. Laurence C. Smith by Laurence C. Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book raised significant interest here in Finland, and it is not difficult to see why. Reminds me a lot of Joel Diamond’s work (for good or bad) without the hysteria. You can see it started as a climate change study that turned into an exercise in geopolitical prospection. You might or might not agree with its future scenarios, but it was an interesting and not too heavy read.
Most Finns wouldn’t like to remember their country is next to Russia given the checkered history between both countries. Between that and the obnoxious visa regime, a tiny number of them visit Russia especially compared to the amount of Russians visiting Finland. I have been before in both Saint Petersburg and Moscow, and we decided to meet some friends in the Venice of the North for a day now that there is no need for visa if you arrive by ferry and stay up to 72 hours in the city. It is therefore as easy as taking the boat from Helsinki to Stockholm or Tallinn, and the experience is not too dissimilar either. We will have to come back and stay longer later, but for the meantime some pics below and the rest in Flickr as usual.
Sax in the Baltic night
Brass band welcome in St. Petersburg
My family has visited Cancún since the 1970’s. When I was a teenager I loved to hook-up with Argentine and Paraguayan girls my age who would be coming over as it was quite cheap for them back then (in the times of the convertible peso). Now, a quite easy visa regime and direct flights mean that in the Mexican off-season after January 6th it’s chock-full of Russian and Brazilian tourists besides a few Americans & locals. Wouldn’t be surprised if in a few years the Chinese start holidaying there too.
I won’t go into the whole story of who the Sámi (also known in other languages as Lapps) are, where they live and what their culture is like as Wikipedia already does a much better job than I ever could. However, it was very nice to see a traditional reindeer farm while we were in Levi.
Santa’s mounts were also kind of cute.
Some time ago I argued that the middle classes would help the economic and democratic development of emerging countries. Again, the Economist takes this subject on with a special report, and Paco Calderón references it with a cartoon.
Will this positive development survive the current economic climate worldwide?
We were skiing in Tahkovuori very recently and I was wondering about the amount of Russian tourists to be found unlike the previous times I’ve been there. Searching a little bit I found this and this article, where they explain that there is a boom in visits of Russian citizens from last year.
If you are looking for a job in Eastern Finland (currently suffering from difficult times in the wood industry), try hospitality and learn some Russian.
Ленинград (Leningrad) are a Russian ska band that I knew previously, and visited Helsinki a month ago. The gig was excellent, as you can see below, even if I didn’t understand a word.
A couple of weeks ago we spent a long weekend with friends in Moscow (photos here). The city has very beautiful areas and downtown is just amazing.
One thing that surprised me was that clearly the current price of commodities has done wonders for the local economy and you can see it everywhere you go: people dress better that what I saw 7 years ago in Saint Petersburg, the city looks clean and frankly it’s not the cheapest place on Earth.
Another interesting thing was that we were there while the situation in Georgia was developing, and the points of view in the local media were completely different from what you see in CNN or even the BBC.
Finally, as stupid as this might sound, it was very comforting to get past the usual stereotypes and just notice that the people over there are just like everybody else 😉 .
So, last night Spain were crowned (fairly) as champions of Europe. This tournament, in my opinion, was much, much better than 2004 in the sense that attacking football was rewarded, not only for the Spanish, but also for the Turkish, Russian, Dutch, Portuguese and even for moments German teams.
Pity we can’t have this kind of quality football every day.
Funnily enough, I read that Kotka in southeastern Finland wants more Russian immigrants. After the well-known animosities between both nations, and the prejudices Russians face there, it’s quite a surprising turn.
