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Teemu’s town in Lapland, Finland, has more reindeer than people. Around 22,500 reindeer versus 8,876 people, according to the latest census from 2015. The latter number has been decreasing steadily. The town in question, Sodankylä, is four times the size of Antwerp. The province, not the city. That amounts to

A pelican flying over your head when you’re floating in the salty Caribbean Sea. A walk through a toucan forest on the way to impressive temples in Guatemala. Bright red scarlet macaws gliding by in Honduras. A colony of pastel pink flamingos fluttering their wings in the low water of

When I arrived in Sysmä, Finland, two months ago, my friend Janne welcomed me to the darkness. He probably knows — apart from a year in Southampton, where we carried out an extensive zythological study together, he has been living in rural Finland all his life. And yes, autumn is

Travelling is expensive. You need to save up for a year to afford to take a few weeks off. It’s impossible to travel long-term without being either filthy rich or a dirty hippie in rags who sleeps in a car and eats from a trash can. Filthy or dirty, that’s

Rather than one of taking off, 2019 was a year of landing, of arriving rather than departing. We returned to Europe after nine months of tramping around Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico, we visited our home countries and settled (temporarily, as ever) in Antwerp, Belgium. But just like