Hi there KJ - It is freeeeezing everywhere in Scandinavia! Enjoyed my two days in Helsinki very much; kind of another blast from the past... things look and feel quite Baltic (duh!) and Soviet-Union-ish, so to speak. Oslo is another beauty, but far more westernized than the Finnish stuff. I'll probably not be a frequent traveller to this spot - almost as expensive as Japan, absolutely over-the-top ridiculous! Small Whopper menu is about USD 12, the tall Starbucks latte goes for about USD 8, and we won't even talk about beer and such... Arrived in Lillehammer yesterday and for all the 1994 Olympics hype it is actually a rather disappointing little town. Continued on to Hafjell and its fantastic ski areas - woohoo! I really am beginning to get the hang of it; nothing but black stuff is off limits these days. Awesome weather today; can hardly walk after snowboarding all day and hanging with the Eurovision Winter Games crowd. Well, I won't have to walk too much during the next few days, anyway - 3 hours by bus to Oslo, then about 27 hours (and two short skipped nights) via London and Singapore and Melbourne to Hobart... a measly eastbound jet lag, who cares!

Hola Señor Frog... greetings from an upbeat and recovering Madrid. It was quite emotionally draining to visit the many oceans of flowers and candles in and around Atocha station and throughout the city but it seems that the place is coping quite well. People are living their usual spring-time lives in bars, cafes and terrazas as good as they can. What a great advantage that I don't have to visit any tourist sites anymore - simply diving into the city life is an amazing medicine. Easter weekend might be best in Paris but Madrid and its parks and avenues are my hands-down favorite for spring-time feelings. I've been walking probably more than 10 miles every day; there are just so many new things to discover here, as always. I'll be back in June for another week, so leaving for Helsinki tomorrow is that much easier. Ooops, yeah, casual note on the side - yet another addition to my little relaxed itinerary here: I felt like three nights in Finnland before heading to Oslo, so here we go. It's that easy, if you haven't noticed yet.

Hola Junior... well, what can I say... I am flying to Madrid tomorrow and it will be good to see my friends after all that has happened there last week. Fortunately, all of them are doing well but some do have people they know that were injured in the attacks. I will spare you another rant of mine on this shit - I really couldn't care less if it was ETA or Al-who or whatever. All that counts is that some idiots exploit open democratic societies for their issues and that they deserve nothing but some of our own aggravated violence to death in return. No compassion with their issues, no mercy with their families and children, just nuke'em. And if I hear one more Christian asking for crosses in schools I will carry a cross myself and hit them with it. And if I hear one more Muslim asking to carry their head covers in school I will personally undress them and strangle the shit out of them with their desert scarves. Buddhists seem to be cool so far - they shut up and retreat into their Zen temples and leave me alone. And ETA? Or IRA? Or RAF? No laws, no mercy - that's how they play the game, so let's play it as well and kill them whenever we see one of them - boom, boom, game over. *** Oh well, by the way, I just spent one otherwise fantastic week of snowboarding in Italy. Austria was just no fun and not very accommodating so we ended up crossing the Alps yet again to refresh the good old memories of Livigno. Tons of awesome snow and I am actually beginning to get pretty good at this snowboarding thing!