Stories from Scandinavia, Poland and Beyond
Since World War Two Sweden has been a welcoming harbour for many. Polish submarine crews, a Norwegian army division, Danish jews, suppressed people from Latin America, those fleeing the Balkans wars and a few years ago many Syrians. But in […]
UPDATED 18 December 2020 | Sweden, the country that took a whole different approach to the COVID19 pandemic, is solo surfing as 2021 is approaching. True, the central government in Stockholm has slowly changed its stand a bit and has […]
Many international media, including leading Belgian newspapers, published positive articles on COVID19 in Sweden September this year. But despite their optimism, the Corona situation in Scandinavia’s most populated and biggest country is doing far from good. I gave guidance in […]
How badly prepared Sweden was for any pandemic became painstaikingly clear right from the beginning of the COVID19 outbreak. Apart from the lack of basic medical supplies in the hospitals, protecting the elderly totally failed. The nurses taking care of […]
At the end of May 2020 I worked with Dutch Nieuwsuur TV reporter Saskia Dekkers, camera man Pieter Nijdeken and editor Luuk Mulder on two reports on Sweden in Corona times. While Sweden kept much of its society running, to […]
Throwing away between 720,000 and one million euro while trying to get the finances under control. A decision by its management has put the Uppsala Academic Hospital, a leading medical facility in Sweden, soon out of a good option to […]
Once COVID19 restrictions are lifted many companies and organisations will be looking for creative ways to cut costs and stay alive. Economizing on staff is one way, but can a smaller crew do the same job in less working hours. […]
Rows and rows of fruit trees dot the otherwise flat landscape just south of Warsaw. Once frequently travelled by Communist government workers to their state holiday resorts, road 801 on the eastern bank of the meandering Vistula river is much […]
(UPDATED 17 April 2020, 09:20 Warsaw Time) Fight the virus, not the women. With this slogan at least hundreds of Polish were protesting on Tuesday 14 April against their conservative PiS government party putting a total ban on abortion on […]
When the Corona pandemic hit Europe there was one country that kept drinking beer at outdoor seating areas, one country where the people were smiling in the sun underneath cherry blossom trees. But despite media mass reporting how “relaxed” Sweden […]