From a travel diary entry from May 4, 2004 from Stockholm, Sweden
 

Departing from Heathrow airport for Stockholm airport and all seemed a bit strange with rising at 5:00 am and dawn already breaking. Scrabbling through the previous day's work load, I didn't pack till 11:00 pm the night before. Arriving in Stockholm mid-day, from an uneventful flight we took the fast train into the city from the airport and a cab to our long time friend and Ehrman/ Rowan distributor for Sweden, Eva Wincent, who has a new apartment in the city centre.
We dropped our bags and trotted out to walk the city. Both Kaffe and I had forgotten what an amazingly beautiful city it is. It has the feeling of a large town rather than a sprawling city, with the buildings right up to the water's' edge like toasty biscuits - all having interesting roof lines and painted warm tones of ocher & yellow. There are easy walking streets, some cobbled, broken up by the tram lines buzzing between the old and new architecture. Old galleon ships are moored up alongside mock Viking ships and other wooden vessels that are either privately owned or turned into restaurants and bars. Because of the warm toast-earthy colours of the buildings with little or no high contrast painted around the window ledges, there is a radiating comfortable feeling around the city as if the buildings were lined with old beaten leather and worn velvet. Many of the roof lines have the magnificent details of turrets and towers of copper-lined paneling, giving them a high green-blue finish.

    Click for more...

 

 From a diary entry emailed on April 10th, 2003 from Chennai
 (formerly Madras City, India.)
 

Hello from Chennai,

  We are here safely after arriving at  4a.m. Slept until 8a.m.....itching to get on the streets and wander. The hot perfumed air from the Jacaranda flowers is mixed with pollution and broken with constant horn honking.   Everywhere are stick stalls with corrugated iron roofs where fruit, flowers and chi are sold and whatever else the merchants can sell! Every surface is littered with textures! 
 

  Ladies wafting along in their saris, men in their lunges patterned in faded checks weave their way through cyclos and taxis in a constant stream of traffic all with their own right of way!

  Street children pester for money.  Kate (Kate Buller...merchandising manager for Rowan) is charmed by the flower sellers. We found a four story store for the local ladies to buy saris.   Wall to ceiling glass fronted cupboards are behind large wooden counters where plenty of male shop assistants with jet black hair, combed and shiny, are all eager to smile and assist.

  After lunch the three of us crammed into the back of a cyclo to go four kilometers to the beach.         Click for more...