Walking around Stockholm, I saw this statue, which I believe is that of Jean-Charles Bernadotte, the Gascon sergeant who rose to the rank of general during the French Revolution, and who then married Napoleon’s old girlfriend Desiree and went on to become King Karl XIV Johan of Sweden, founder of the present line of Swedish […]

We are in lovely Stockholm.  This involved 13 miserable hours on a ferry from Turku, though the misery was mitigated by glorious views of first the Finnish, and then the Swedish, archipelago.  By the end I didn’t care about the archipelago, I just wanted to get off the damn boat. Stockholm’s series of islands is […]

This week we’ve been looked after by my Finnish friend Kari Salo, who I’ve known since he came to stay with my family when we were both fifteen. Kari and his lovely wife Anneli invited us to her lakeside summer cottage, where we enjoyed kicking back with a beer and a sauna after our busy […]

We’ve left Russia behind and are back in Finland for the next week or so. Finland has some of the most complex rules in the world for alcohol consumption.  Those of you coming to the Helsinki Worldcon might find them confusing, so here’s Ismo Leikola to give you a briefing.