Ross, gold for diggers

Ross, New Zealand, West Coast, South Island, was first a goldfield discovered 1864. Became famous as the richest source of alluvial gold in the country. The new town built up here was first called Georgetown, then renamed Rosstown and soon called only Ross. So it is today. 3500 diggers was the peak, but around 1920 there was no more gold to find. They wrongly thought, because 1988 a new successful mining operation was opened.

Old empty houses here and there reminding about the golden era. We can not see much activity. The diggers are spread on the terraces around the township. And some tourism is now built up around gold digging. Don't let the global financial crisis become your personal headache – find your own gold! 

Crail, a beacon is not enough

Crail, Fife, Scotland, we drop off the bus from St Andrews in the pittoresque village called Crail. It's November, streets are empty, the air is peaceful. In the harbour is a beacon helping the ships to find the safe way.

Today is January 27th, an international memorial day of the Holocaust during World War II. More than 60 years have passed. The symbol is maybe too much used, but looking at the beacon of Crail I think of a bigger one, a lighthouse guiding people and humanity in right directions, to avoid inhuman actions. United Nations has become more of a beacon, so please switch on the light!

That day, in November, we took the next bus a little bit further on, to Anstruther, to taste the best fish-n-chips in Scotland.

Toledo, busy children

Toledo, Spain, road signs and other public signs work with simple symbols, pictograms. The point is that people fast and easily understand what it is about. Especially road signs have to be clear, so fast running car drivers will have a chance to read them.

In eastern Berlin the green light man is a real gentleman, okay a little ridiculous, wearing an oldfashioned hat. Here in Toledo car drivers get the message that children are always running – to school or home from school, maybe by happiness, maybe because they are seriously scared. Anyway, they are fast running.

Houses on the way to fall apart are dangerous. If you open the door and get in you have to be carefully prepared by finding out the meaning of a lot of pictograms about what to do and not to do. I wouldn't take the risk to open the door. Maybe it's a good way to keep thieves away...

Stockholm, flowers in grey

Stockholm, electricity is switched off, something has happened and we have no light. It's 10 a m, cloudy and dark outside. What can I do with no electricity? Walking out to do some shopping, food stores closed. Walking home, dark windows everywhere. One exception: the guy selling flowers is there, an old lady looking for money to pay in the tiny light of a candle, I buy some flowers,  don't know which is the color. We talk for a while about what might have happened, how many people around here might be without lights and how many hours we may have to wait. 

Home, cooking coffe with gas, think of places around the world without electricity or with daily interuptions in distribution. There are big and small problems.

Sandemar, a fire makes a camp

Sandemar, Sweden, today out looking for birds, preferably birds seldom seen, for example a white-tailed eagle. It sometimes appears just here, silently gliding along the coastline or circling upwards in the afternoon thermals. A raven is crossing the sky with its power call, about something to someone. A beautiful black bird, smarter than a chimpanzee. 

No eagle is there, and not many other birds either. Winter time is sleeping time. 500 meters away on a rock is a man fishing. I guess it's about the same: watching or fishing is the thing, not birds or fishes. Excited waiting for something to happen is enough. 

I sit down for a while, drinking coffee, looking at strange clouds. 

Where it's a fire, there is a camp.

Dunedin, to give or not to give

Dunedin, New Zealand, some years ago. The boy playing clarinet got his audience. My registrating, documenting camera made his face very concentrated. Performing is a serious thing, collecting money is a bonus. Of course I put some coins in his box, this was great.

Now I think about the moral when giving money away. There could have been for example a drunk, poor maori man asking for help. If there had been any I had thought twice before giving my coins. A wealthy boy playing for fun, no problem. A poor, dirty man and I have to think about it. Shouldn't a poor, needing man get twice? Without thinking.

Helsinki, history passing by

Helsinki, today exactly 200 years ago Sweden lost 30% of its territory. Stupidly we backed up Britain when, at that same time, Napoleon dominated Europe and just had signed a pact of friendship with Russia. The Russians attacked in the east and the Danish threatened us from the south. If they had invaded us we probably had been eaten up. Non existent.

Before this date Finland had been part of Sweden for 600 years. The Finnish got independent from Sweden but remained dominated by Russia. Now we are two free and equal neighbours with much in common – both cooperation and competition. So Kippis! and Skål! great, small nations!

The Picture? I usually first choose the picture, than find a story. Today the story was number on. The photo is from Helsinki, looking out over winter gray, icy waters, part of the Baltic Sea, the one uniting us.

Stockholm, typical or not

Stockholm, June 6th, summer begins, Sweden celebrates its national day. Thousands and thousands of balloons, blue and yellow cover the sky. What is it to be a Swede? Immigrants sometimes have difficulies to identify a sharp picture of the typical Swede – if there is any. Sure, it's stupid to imagine national characters. Still it's nice and comfortable. I guess the human mind always is attracted by simple models for fast and easy understanding – by classifying we get orientation.

The thousands and thousands of balloons sweep around, individually in different directions, and toghether painting a new, still changing picture. Unpredictable, as every step you take?

Beirut, burning tyres, quiet fishing

Beirut, February 2005, the airplane is almost empty. One week ago Rafiq Hariri was killed by a car bomb explosion. People are worried, expecting the worst. Walking the coastline on Avenue de Paris I can soon see the terrible effects of the explosion: a huge crater covering the street, buildings close by are partly destroyed. After three minutes walking I turn my face towards the sea.

Calm down, let the brain be swept by fresh air, all worries fly away and start fishing! It's a paradox – quiet fishing in a city with barriers, blockings and burning tyres. A paradox and a manifestation of human adapability as well as dignity.

A hundred meters away a face on a poster. I guess that man has at least one enemy. Fragments arises questions, who is the man on the poster? Anyone knows?

Barcelona, what's wrong with you?

Why keep building a church during more than a hundred years?

Barcelona, a top number in so many tourist guides, gives expectations. I found a city without character, two rough and dirty old cities, Barri and La Ribera, filled with prostitutes and criminals. Las Ramblas, a kitschy, commercial and totally uninteresting piece of street that can be found everywhere. Unkind people in service functions, restaurants slow and unkind like in Romania 1972, often with bad food. Ugly, bombastic and overestimated Gaudi architecture.

For more than one hundred years they keep on building the Gaudi church Sagrada Familia. For me a church is a place of quiet contemplation – not a neverending, noisy building site. What do they try to build and why?

One good thing to do: turn your back to this mediocre city and breath the glittering Mediterrenian. What's wrong with Barcelona – or what's wrong with me?

Nan, the Mlabri people moving

Nan province, northeastern Thailand, "They used to live deep in the jungles of Thailand and were rarely seen. Banana leaves were used as a roof on their shelters. When these leaves turned yellow a week or two later, they moved to a new place in the jungle to continue their hunter gatherer lifestyle".

This summer I met a small group of Mlabri people. They were now living in some very simple cottages built by another minority people. A governmental aim is to transform this ancient civilisation into modern life. No hunting anymore, no moving to new places for a two week's life under a banana leaf shelter. The old men were sad. The children on the picture had just finished their school. Not comfortable with the clothes someone put on them, they now receive som candies from the teacher – who is not a Mlabri woman.

Times are changing.

London, windows and transparent people

London, exactly one year ago. Like in the forest during late evenings when darkness hides a lot of things away, the artificial lights of a city transform the urban scenery. Lights far away create a focus of interest and questions are arised: Who are in the flat up there and what are they doing? When looking through the camera you already see the picture – real life changed into a coming frozen documentation. And I am not longer sure: did some people walk by or not?

Paris, snow in the air

Paris, New Years Day in the morning. Still quite dark outside, and through the Agora St Germain hotel window I see some snowflakes whirling in the streetlighting. I stand there for a while, glancing out. It's like a movie from times passed...