Travel blog by Päivi & Santeri Kannisto

Our latest quarterly newsletter is out: Happy Next Gregorian Year (Q4/10). Enjoy!

We stopped by in Greece for a few weeks before heading to the south and witnessed life in the middle of the financial crisis. There is no denying that the country is suffering despite the bailouts and international donations. So far people have been denying the gravity of the problem but now the reality is slowly sinking in. One can clearly hear and feel the downbeat atmosphere when speaking with people.

We have been collecting books for our Global Nomad research. It’s been challenging as local libraries don’t offer much literature in English, and on the other hand getting rid of piles of books ordered from online book stores before heading back to the road is not an easy task. We discovered an Internet service called BookMooch that seemed to offer a solution.

We have posted our latest quarterly newsletter to all subscribers. If you want to receive and/or read our letters, please sign up here. Enjoy!

The Italians have many similarities with the Chinese. In both countries family ties are strong, government corrupted, there is trash everywhere, but people are most warm-hearted and hospitable. Moreover, in both countries people love to eat pasta (or noodles) and they feel strongly about their religion. The Chinese worship money and the Italians the Pope.

Today was our sixth wedding anniversary (Pasta-Peanut-Pistachio) and we celebrated it in Sicily, Italy. Here is a set of photos we took. Tomorrow we will celebrate Päivi's birthday and next week begins our 7th year on the road on our everlasting honeymoon trip.

After our previous laptop was stolen in Spain, we bought a new one. We trusted German quality and chose Fujitsu-Siemens. The laptop has worked otherwise fine, but in warm weather (25°C or more) it shuts down automatically because of overheating.

Trapani became quickly one of our favourites, and we ended up staying half a year. The city is nice and small with both the Mediterranean sea for lovely seaside walks and jogging and a mountain for hiking. Local lifestyle is laid-back, people friendly, vegetables good and reasonably priced, and there are lots of lovely stray dogs running around. What more could one ask for?

Last autumn a Finnish TV crew visited us in the Southern France making a documentary about previous economical depression in Finland in the beginning of the 1990’s. The documentary is called Lamastalgia and the last 8th episode will come out today on Finnish TV. Lamastalgia is a series about experiences of the previous depression and bank crisis in Finland. Santeri introduces the theme as software entrepreneur and also talks about the it-bubble and its bursting. Päivi accompanies Santeri and in one scene we are together writing our newest book, an IT-thriller called Takaportti.

[Suomeksi]We saw various good luck charms, charts, cards and amulets in Cambodia. Santeri has now developed a software with which you can generate your own lucky pattern. Good luck charms are not just myths. In many Asian countries they have an important cultural and religious role. In western countries people tend to ridicule them as Eastern mumbo jumbo, but we believe that you don’t lose anything by trying.

We have now lived and travelled two years in Europe and heard countless complaints from fellow travellers about Europe being too expensive, especially for people coming from dollar-economies. Europe has been expensive, but no more than for example Cambodia, Hong Kong, or Bolivia. It is possible to travel in Europe with US$ 500/month for anyone who cooks his own food, prefers hospitality exchange and renting rooms instead of using hotels, and is willing to give up renting cars and using taxis.

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Are you travelling the world? Do you know any full-time travellers? We are making a survey on travelling people for writing a book. Are you travelling full-time or do you know someone who is? We need 20-30 persons representing different nationalities, who have been travelling continuously for at least four years in various countries.