I'm sorry for not having finished my story about Huaraz - I seem to have written lots about a very small part of the trip and nothing about guinea pigs, llamas or glaciers so far. I am now back in Sweden, and naturally the utter translation drought that haunted me for the last month has vanished - I am up to my eyeballs in dental implants, great!
Half the time here you expect small animals to float by, since mostly it's raining cats and dogs. Still, I'm enjoying the wet smell of forest, the lush green surroundings and, of course, a properly insulated house and a lack of fungi in the wardrobe. And rain means more mushrooms in the forest for me to pick, but more about that another time.
My suitcase is gone!! I'm confident it was lost at Heathrow, and when I saw this article on BBC, I could'nt help but wonder if I was unintentionally causing major disturbances to holiday makers: Heathrow hit by luggage backlog
But it does, after all, say a package; not a yellow hard-shelled suitcase found to contain exotic fruits and yellow chili sauce, so I'm still hoping. It's looking more and more as if I will have to go back to CPH myself to talk to the people, as there is no way getting through to the baggage handlers, and I'm starting to get fed up with the friendly automatic messages in a mix of Danish and Irish on the telephone.
This evening I briefly escaped from work to watch a Swedish journalist investigating the arms trade, more specifically corruption in relation to the sale/lease of Gripen, the fighter planes made by SAAB and BAE to the Czech Republic. Depressing, but not surprising. Apparently the Austrian agent hired as a "consultant" with the task to bribe Czech politicians into voting for the proposal to buy was to earn over half a billion British £...David Leigh, who writes about the same subject for the Guardian (read the most recent article) said that this matter should cause public outrage in Sweden. I think I have to say that sadly it is not the case; most people are used to the dodgy dealings that accompany one of our largest export goods...like shipping lots of pop stars to Africa to promote Sweden and hopefully sell a dozen or so of planes...
The program followed up with another issue, namely Sweden's basic law and how it states that Sweden should not sell weapons to countries that risk entering or causing a conflict. As usual Sweden is one up on the EU, where the only guidelines consist of a code of conduct for arms trade, nothing as solid as a bound, blue book with lots of paragraphs.
How nice it would be if our legislation were to be heeded, and our "freedom of alliance" respected (Sweden is about as neutral as the Swiss navy is vast). In reality, we have exported at least 6.5 billions worth of weapons, munition and explosives to the countries involved in Iraq, an invasion which both the late Foreign Minister and the former Head of the government classed as "contrary to humanitarian law". The politicians did not wish to comment, so the reporters spoke to the export council who said that Sweden is involved in the arms trading system to such an extent that we cannot get out. Smiling arms traders from the industry (UK and US) happily confirmed that Sweden is a great friend because we never say no (we just name the price, I suppose). Hmmm, that is why the Germans liked us too.
The program faded out with images from Kuwait as the first bombs dropped across the border, four years ago. I felt as sick as the first time I saw those images.
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