Even if it is geographically and culturally quite close to Helsinki, visiting Stockholm is always an interesting experience.  The city is much more cosmopolitan, people are generally more fashionable, and the riksvensk accent sounds quite peculiar to somebody used to the way Swedish is spoken across the Baltic.  Always a pleasure to visit, especially now that there is a good Mexican taquería very close to downtown (they even sell corn tortillas!).

I had heard that a proper Mexican taquería had opened in Stockholm recently, and this week I had the chance to visit.  As in any such places back in the land of nopales and chilangos, they don’t serve any of the elaborate traditional dishes like mole and such (which doesn’t make their food any less good), focusing on the humble taco in its varieties.  They prepare bistec, pastor and a variety of quesadillas, as you can see in their menu and they even have a tortilla making machine.

The reviews have been very positive, and I’m glad as the food is great and the real deal.  I wish them well.

The WHO has raised its alert status to level 4. There have been over 2,300 cases in Mexico now, 700 still in hospital, 150 deceased.  There are confirmed cases in Spain and Scotland, and closer to home suspected cases in Belgium, Sweden, Norway & Denmark.  To make matters even worse, there was an earthquake in Mexico City today, although there is no reports of damages.

Although Mexicans are now starting to sound worried, some still cope by joking.  Some people commented that the earthquake was basically another way of sneezing, and the influenza song now has a video.  People are still staying home, following the instructions of the government, and the school shutdown has been expanded nationwide.  If you speak Spanish, the Mexican Presidency has live video coverage of the situation here.

Sámi dress

Originally uploaded by Chiva Congelado

I won’t go into the whole story of who the Sámi (also known in other languages as Lapps) are, where they live and what their culture is like as Wikipedia already does a much better job than I ever could. However, it was very nice to see a traditional reindeer farm while we were in Levi.

Santa’s mounts were also kind of cute.

• The Chinese economy is still expected to grow 7-8% this year
• Islamic banking was relatively untouched by the global turmoil as it’s very risk averse
• The Japanese economy has contracted fiercely as its exports have fallen to historic lows
• U.S. skilled immigrants are going back to China & India
• Many Eastern European economies are in trouble and with them their Western European (mostly Austrian & Swedish) investors
• Latin America will mostly just suffer a slowdown, the Mexican economy is expected to contract this year due to its high exposure to U.S. economic cycles
• Some emerging economies are more vulnerable than others

What does this mean? What we are seeing is the shift of economic power from the United States & Europe to markets elsewhere, and especially China, India and parts of the Middle East are in good shape to reap the rewards.  However, since the system is built around the countries of the G7 with the US as the main motor of worldwide consumption, co-operation between all countries is needed, or else the rise of protectionism will amplify the current situation.

I wouldn’t be surprised if in case the crisis lasts long (hopefully not) China ends up bailing the US so that its own economy can keep on growing…

A few weeks ago we were fortunate enough to visit Stockholm, to finally see Nortec Collective live.  Nedless to say, we jumped around like crazy and enjoyed the gig immensely, especially since instead of Banda samples they actually had live musicians backing them up (who played an encore of their own).  We even ended up backstage with them after the gig, and naturally welcomed them to come to the Helsinki Festival whenever they could.

It was a very welcome pause, and it was nice to see that Stockholm still looks the same.  An interesting note was that everybody spoke to me in Swedish (even though I had a tejana on most of the time), while that seldom happens in Finland with or without funny hats.