Let’s think of some Thursday inspiration. The cold continues and we keep dreaming ourselves to faraway lands and the sunsine. Maybe we should make more of an effort to be happy with what we have (ie cold and dark Nordic winters), but it’s extremely difficult when Facebook os filled with sunshine selfies.
Let’s talk about inspiring people and places – real and fictional. These days a lot of people can take sunny pics on the beaches of Thailand, but there are some travellers who are more inspiring than others. In my book, the most inspiring people are those who have shown a wide array of other skills than just being in the right place. They are the writers, the linguists, the philosophers. Who has inspired you?
Thursday Inspiration – Famous Travellers
The first name that comes to my mind when thinking of travellers is Ryszard Kapuściński (1932-2007), a Polish historian and journalist known for his reporting from all around the world. Many of his works are translated into English, my personal favourite being Imperium. His writing grabs the reader’s attention, holds it, keeps it. It teaches the reader about places and people – it ignites a will to go and see for oneself.
Culture.pl writes about Kapuściński:
Kapuscinski saw more, and more clearly, if not always perfectly, than nearly any writer one can think to name. Few have written more beautifully of unspeakable things. Few have had his courage, almost none his talent. His books changed the way many of us think about nonfiction and made many of us want to travel for ourselves and see for ourselves.
Thursday Inspiration – Famous Places In Literature
Every book, every story, is told within a context. The physical surroundings and all the characters that form part of the story leave their traces in the reader. Russian literature is one of those examples – read Dostoevsky and you might like it, read Dostoevsky while learning about Russian society and history, and you enter a new world. One novel that is very closely connected to its surroundings is Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. This dark satire tells us a lot about a certain time of Soviet history, but it also invites us to one of the most amazing cities in the world, Moscow. Actually, I think that whoever translated the book into Finnish came up with a wonderful title: Saatana saapuu Moskovaan (in English: The Devil Arrives in Moscow”)”.
And so the story begins:
At the hour of the hot spring sunset at Patriarch’s Ponds two citizens appeared.
That first chapter is aptly named «Никогда не разговаривайте с неизвестными – Never talk with strangers»… Welcome to the magic worlds of Bulgakov and Russia!
Thursday Inspiration – Famous Heroines
Let’s write a word or two about Nancy Drew. Yes, Nancy Drew, or Kitty as she is named in Swedish. Nancy and her friends were probably the first ones to teach me about exotic places all around the world. Whenever I got a new book about Nancy, I’d check up all the information about the place where she was solving her mysteries. Anchorage and Papeete were on my “places to discover”-list for a very long time. All thanks to Nancy Drew.
