The Travels and Life of Päivi and Santeri Kannisto

How many of the products labelled with recycling sign are being recycled? Recycling tricks us to consume more. Do you sort your trash? Where does it end up? Why?

The Finnish nationalist party True Finns is exploiting Finnish racism, that has been an integral part of Finnish culture for ages.

Degrowth would be less harmful, downshifting and reducing consumption, than building more nuclear power.

International Women’s Day is the worst kind of s chauvinism.

There are three main reasons why people travel to Africa: volunteering, charity, and safari.

Buiding an eco-house from straw bales in Héricourt, Franche-Comté, France. Passive energy, using recycled rain water and green materials. Our friends Thomas and Li are constructing an ecological house of straw bales in Héricourt in the province of Franche-Comté, France. We helped them doing all kinds of construction work without much prior building experience and got hands-on with ecological challenges.

An Orwellian vision of air travel: increased fear-driven security procedures make air-travel ever more difficult and uncomfortable. As current, fear-driven security procedures increase, travelling by air will be even more difficult than today. It might not be enough to leave all liquids, arms, blades, scissors, and lighters at home as human bodies may pose an even bigger risk for flight security. Bodies can burst into flames, plastic explosives can be swallowed or surgically implanted, and nerve gas agents can be easily hidden in any luggage. Some mighty explosives contain the same material as human body. Imagination is the only limit how those assets can be used as they have to be boarded in any case. If paranoia and fear of death escalates further, the following Orwellian vision might be inescapable. Sit back and enjoy the ride.

Critical eye on tourism: why travel literature encourage marketing talk and critique is falsely perceived negative? Tourists returning home from their travels are often reciting familiar, positive mantras which can also be read from any tourist guide book or travel agency’s brochure: the weather was great, beaches brilliant, people friendly and smiling all the time, all the sights bigger and better than anywhere else in the world, and the night life buzzing around the clock. Critique does not have a part in this gospel despite the difficulties encountered. This raises an interesting question: Why is criticism silenced? Let us examine two fundamental factors for this behaviour: 1) travel literature and travel-related discussion forums which encourage marketing, and 2) the common misconception according to which critique is negative.

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?

Is time money? People have to sell less time in Buenos Aires to buy the same amount of time than in Helsinki.

Argentinians want to be respectable, but breaking promises and being always very late is considered OK because it is “relaxed”.