Andante

Last year in Helsinki, I heeded the advice of my German friend Carsten and followed Fredrikinkatu down to a small café which seemed taken right out of Seoul or Tokyo. Located next to a florist with no dividing wall, the café smelled of fresh flowers and different coffee beans being grinded. The café called Andante was a true escapist dream space, yet sufficiently unpolished to avoid being listed in the next issue of Monocle.

Today, as I try to escape from writing a somewhat tricky journal review for Ecological Economics, I pick up the latest issue of The Escapist and an old favourite from my backpack. Being trapped in an Umeå mall, it feels a bit like those people who spend thousands of euros on a new kitchen and Italian regional cookbooks only to end up eating prefab lasagne.

In this issue, post-oil boom St John’s meets surfers in Lima. However, for some reason, my next real world destination of Chernobyl is not mentioned. In any case, it looks now as if Jon and I will be joined by members of the secret German pro-nuclear resistance movement in our effort to experience first-hand what it means to normalize nuclear risk.