Letters from Scandinavia #1: Bohemian rhapsody

There is something peculiarly familiar about Lusitanian tiles, wooden patio furniture, and tea mugs with golden edgings. I have seen this combination before and, when assembled on a balcony either overlooking fin-de-siècle three-storied buildings or opening up into the controlled wilderness of an urban backyard, it has always lend itself to the emergence of an Habermasian public sphere where good food, good people, and good conversations conspire against the gloomy stasis of our time.

And so it happened that on a stunningly warm evening in Norway’s capital city, I sat with a Paraguayan and a Brazilian on said balcony while chatting with them about lofty subjects such as the perennial question of cultural identity, the reality of PhD programs, and contentious dam projects in the southern hemisphere – a huge bubble of critical comments, musings, and ideas, assisted in its creation by the consumption of Nordic beer and salty air. Sometimes life can be as simple as that.