Photos from New York and Surroundings

New York, USA

Photos from New York and surroundings on a beautiful, sunny September day.

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Are we guests or tourists?

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We have been told a few times in travel-related Internet discussion forums that when we travel outside Finland, we are guests. Therefore we must refrain from expressing any opinions on that country or its people unless our view is positive. Criticism and especially trying to right wrongs is not seen as acceptable behaviour of a guest. Are we guests or tourists? Let us consider a bit more deeply the concept of ‘guest’. Traditionally it refers to a person who is invited to a country or a home by a host. How many people have actually been invited to visit a country? Certainly diplomats, visiting governors of other nations, some sportsmen and other celebrities. But what about regular tourists on their holiday?
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Trans-Siberian Railway, Russia

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Travelling the trans-siberian railway all the way from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok, Russia. And visiting Voguls on the way. We started our Trans-Siberian railway ride from Kuokkaniemi, a small village situated near Sortavala and Finnish border in Karelia. The trip ended in Vladivostok near Japan and Korea totaling well over 10.000 kilometres. It would have been possible to do the trip in about eleven days, but we wanted to stop every once in a while and look around. We bought our tickets one by one, just to the next destination, and got this way a lot of experience of Russian bureaucracy, despotism of the police (militsiya), and the lack of any kind of logic in Russia. We knew right away that our Experiment would at least be challenging. In Santeri’s words: Russia should be avoided at any cost.
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An Open Letter to Finland’s President Sauli Niinistö

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Dear Mr. Niinistö, I am deeply concerned about the current state of affairs in Finland. We left Finland in 2004 to travel the world. We have been living in 102 countries around the world, and travelled through countries devastated by the US, NATO, and Russia. The last three years we lived in Georgia , which is at war with Russia . There is a ceasefire agreement, but a peace accord was never signed. Russia – the second biggest arms exporter in the world right after the US – benefits from such instability.
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