Over the hills, under the moon - and off the beaten path

    - This is the end, my only friend, the end. Of our elaborate plans, the end. Of everything that stands, the end... The lyrics come to mind as we stand next to   the grave of Jim Morrison  in the poetic Cimetière Père Lachaise.   It's late afternoon and  the last rays of the sun find their way around the gravestones, the pillars and monuments in all kind of shapes which comprise the largest cemetery in the city of Paris, where more than a million souls are put to rest.   Pyramids, towering monuments, elaborate miniature chapels and beautifully carved lime and granite headstones display the history of death as we walk through the yard.  Some could almost serve as inspiration for horror films like the one, where a pair of bare arms stretch up through the lid of a closed sarcophagus or the one, where  a bronze corpse try to slither  through the cra...

  Whenever we visit Paris, we tend to stay in the Butte Montmartre area, but this time we've borrowed an apartment in Rue des Poissonnieres, which, even though we're still in the 18. arrondissement, could better be placed somewhere in the sub-Saharan Africa. The surrounding  area, Goutte d'Or, is a multitude of exotic grocery shops, beauty stores, fabric stalls and hallal butchers and the streets are filled with stout, black men and women dressed in colorful kaftans and flat kufi hats. We've now lived in the area for several weeks and we enjoy it a lot At the small  market in Rue Dejean you find fishmongers selling capitaines and other exotic ciclids from Senegal - and at the green groceries you find an abundance of plantains and sweet potatoes Some Parisians think of 'Petit Afrique' as a dangerous no-go zone, but besides meeting an occasional, heavily armed police patrol, we've in the last few weeks only encountered joy and kindness when...

There is one question that we've been asked a lot: When visiting Rio de Janeiro, the marvellous city - why choose to spend a couple of months inside one of its favelas? We have several answers. One is the answer you can give when asked about climbing a mountain. Because it's there! Because you want to find out if it's climbable and more important: If YOU can climb it. To find out if it's at all possible for two senior Scandinavian gringos (with hardly any knowledge of Portuguese and with no prior experience of travelling in Latin America) to live in a Brazilian favela. But a more important answer: The favelas of Rio have for many years been notorious as sites of drug wars and disenfranchisement, but they are also known as the vibrant cradles of much of the Brazilian culture and in the last few years several of the favelas have undergone an immense transformation. They have blossomed into vibrant communities and a few are eve...

For many years Vidigal was a closed community - ruled by drug gangs and dangerous for  visitors. In 2012 the heavily armed UPP (the Pacifying Police Units) seized control of the favela, and in the last few years 'The Asphalts' (the common expression for the people living in the more formal parts of Rio) have been venturing into the favela on some Friday and Saturday nights. On these nights party goers are lining up outside the few clubs that are arranging midnight raves on their rooftop terraces. We (perhaps now almost considered as fellow favelians - or perhaps just considered so strange, we're thought of as a kind of local mascots!), were invited to one of these parties, and we were even offered free VIP tickets to be picked up at the entrance. Yeah! What's not to like about THAT! When we arrived, we jumped the lines of the waiting cariocan playboys and their scantily clad girlfriends and climbed up the stair...

This weekend we went far outside Rio - and we even had the feeling of visiting a place far back in time. The small island of Paquetá, situated in the north eastern part of Guanabara bay,  has for centuries been a summer refuge for Brazilian royalty and wealthy cariocas. There is still a ferry running between Rio  and Paquetá, but while old timers described the Guanabara bay as a vast surface of clear water, broken by jumping pods of dolphins, the bay today is a polluted mess of raw sewage coming from the millions, living in the  Rio suburbs. The black spots on the surface of the bay are certainly  not dolphins but rather floating tires or other trash - and the beautiful beaches, which in the last century were filled with sunbathers during the weekends, are now empty, as the risk of getting infected with viruses is high, if you swallow just a few teaspoons of bay water. With this in mind, a weekend outing on the ...

  Todays outing led us to one of the buildings at the very top of our architectural bucket list - the fabled Flying Saucer made by Niemeyer. The saucer, also known as Museu de Arte Contemporânea  or for short: MAC,  landed twenty years ago just outside the city of Niterói,  and to get to it,  we had to cross the Guanabara bay by ferry. The hundreds of busy commuters on board probably sail the bay twice daily and they seemed lost in their newspapers, laptops or mobiles, while we sat marvelling at the splendors of the Rio skyline, the mountains and the skyscrapers, diminishing across the water. Arriving at Niterói, we weren't that impressed. The town is supposed to be the wealthiest city in all of Brazil, but - as far as we could see -  it has not that much to brag about, beside its vast condominium complexes with fabulous views of Rio across the bay. We walked along the coast, passing a few fish...

The Arpoador rock, jutting up at the border between the Copacabana and the Ipanema beaches, is a favorite place to be in Rio, when the sun sets. We sat there tonight, together with hundreds of cariocans, watching the sun setting down in all its splendor behind the mountain ridges west of Rio. Guys climbed around the rock, selling long drinks to the spectators, and when the sun finally vanished in blushing red and orange, like everybody around us, we applauded the fantastic spectacle. A few times during the summer you can actually from Pedra do Arpoador see the sun set directly into the sea - a rare sight in  the Rio area.  Normally you see the sun setting behind the mountains and you have to arrive in good time, as nighfall is a least half an hour before the official sunset time of Rio.

I wonder as we drove through the landscape along the coastline: where do Brazilians grow their vegetables? I know nothing about the quality of the soil but with around 206 million inhabitants and a country the size of North America, there must be a market? Actually Brazil is one of the world's major breadbaskets, and Brazil has been the largest producer of coffee for the last 150 years. When I shop food in the local supermarkets here in Vidigal, I can only find what I regard as a small selection of vegetables. Maniok, potatoes, sweet potatoes, green pepper, chuchu ( in the family of cucumber), carrots and onions. I know I live in a favela and that the selection might be limited, but I found the same limited selection of veggies, when we stayed in Itacare, a relatively wealthy town. Is it simply supply and demand or is there another explanation? Also: I have watched many street kitchens, cafes and restaurants. All kitchen staff even in the street kitchens are wearing hair...

Some of our experiences here in Rio are like stepping between the most beautiful and the worst. Like it was today, when we arrived at Centro, the city center, and saw rows of torched and burned out city buses and lots of smashed up shop windows after a night of violent demonstrations. Thousands had been protesting against government plans for cuts by making a general strike during the day - and during the night mayhem had beset the streets and police had thrown tear gas and  had been shooting on protesters with rubber bullets   Photo: Reuters & AP Even when we passed through the area at noon, many hours later, armed policemen patrolled the streets and cleaned up the barricades, which were put up by the protesters during the night. And then - in the midst of the devastation - we found a picturesque alley, Arco de Teles, where we were attracted by the sound of distant, gentle bossa nova It was a strange feeling to walk from the remains of...

Photo: Rio tourism Rio is visually a strange place to visit. Looking at the city from above,  you see the deep blue ocean, the endless strings of golden beaches and the multicolored favelas clinging to the steep foothills of lush, jungle-clad mountains. Seen from above, Rio is for sure a Cidade Maravilhosa, the most marvellous city. But when we came closer and actually walked the streets, we started feeling somewhat disappointed. A not so tall girl on Ipanema... The areas next to our own - Leblon, Ipanema and Copacabana - are (just behind the fabled, bustling seafronts) mostly streets  with quite drab buildings and not that interesting shops. Just some areas which seem a bit faded since their heyday in the 1950ties.  Whenever we returned to Vidigal, we confirmed each other: This favela has the excitement, the sexiness and the samba, which we didn't find in the neighboring residential areas.   After a couple o...