There are lots of beautiful things to see and visit while in Copenhagen, but if you have merely a day there are a few things I personally think you should not miss.

In chronological order I suggest that you start at The City Hall Square, in front of Palace Hotel.

If you have a lot of time you could pass by Rosenborg Castle, where the Crown Jewels are protected by the Royal Guard. Otherwise just walk down through the main street (strøget) until you get to Kongens Nytorv. Here you will see the beautiful Royal Theater, world famous for its Royal Ballet.

Go to Nyhavn which is the colourful canal district right by Kongens Nytorv. Here I suggest you take a boat tour. If you go to the boats on the right side of the canal a boat tour only cost you 30 kr (5 $) for one hour. It is really worth your while.

Afterwards take a stroll along the waterfront to Amalienborg Palace – winter residence of the Royal Family. Here we have the opportunity of seeing the changing of the Danish Royal Guard. This should be followed by a visit to the Gefion Fountain and The Little Mermaid, inspired by H. C. Andersen’s fairytale. At the moment she is, however, on vacation and not there.

Go back along the water front and head over to Christiansborg Palace, home to the Danish Parliament and the Old Stock Exchange. After that I suggest that you go to Christiania – the freetown. It’s a lovely artist village established in the 1970s where you will be able to see an alternative way of living and eat some lovely (vegetarian) food.

Tivoli Gardens is a lovely place to end the day and spend the evening.

Have a lovely visit.

Please sign the petition at the top of this website: Save El Palmar Beach.

You can also join the Facebook group here: Save El Palmar on Facebook

In December 2009, the local council of Vejer de La Frontera announced a deal with property developers to build a giant 600-bedroom concrete monstrosity of a hotel right on El Palmar beach. The PELP group, who set up the initiatives to prevent this (and whose links I have included above for the petition and Facebook group) strongly believe in the following:

…that the Playa del Palmar, and by extension, the entire Sea around Cape Trafalgar could become an international example of ecological and rural tourism of exceptional quality. An example of real sustainable development, responsible tourism and awareness.

…that the few miles of unspoiled beaches left in our country should not succumb to the concrete development that has already decimated the Spanish coastline.

…that the preservation of natural resources and virgin wilderness areas is of paramount importance.

Sign the Petition and Show Your Support.

But more lives can be saved and the infection rate reduced if treatment start earlier according to the World Health Organisation WHO.

Compared to the total number of HIV-infected. assumed to be at least 33 million, the 5.2 million is far from enough. But it is 12 times as many as in 2003, when WHO launched a special effort against HIV. In 2008 there were 4 million infected in ARV treatment.

WHO now recommends that treatment is started even before the immune system is weakened and HIV develops into AIDS.

” An earlier treatment allows people to live healthier and longer with HIV,” said Dr. Gottfried Hirnschall, Head of WHO’s program on HIV / AIDS.

According to WHO, it would be possible to reduce AIDS mortality by 20 percent between 2010 and 2015 if these guidelines for early intervention is implemented.

Early treatment will also make it possible to prevent many infections, including tuberculosis (TB), which is the leading cause of deaths among people living with HIV and AIDS (PLWHA).

According to WHO deaths from TB can be reduced by as much as 90 percent if people with both HIV and TB gets treatment earlier.

‘In addition to saving lives, the earlier treatment also helps in terms of prevention. The treatment reduces the level of virus in the organism, and this means that HIV-positive people are less likely to infect their partners with the virus.

WHO guidelines will expand the number of people who should be on ARVs from 10 to 15 million.

The AIDS epidemic was discovered in 1980/81. In the first 14 to 15 years there was no effective treatment and an AIDS diagnosis was basically equal to a death sentence.

The big breakthrough in the fight against HIV and AIDS came with the introduction of combination therapies (ARVs) in the mid-1990s. Several different drugs used simultaneously were found to have a good effect.

The change was so great that AIDS in large parts of the western world was transformed from a deadly disease to a life-long infection.

But the HIV treatment is expensive and it requires both money and a relatively well-organized health system to establish and maintain lifelong treatments against HIV and AIDS.

It is still my hope that one day ARVs will be available to everyone who needs it.

He stressed, however, that it remains important to continue the fight and prioritize efforts. If the international community chooses to spend less money on the fight against AIDS, there is “a risk that we have reversed the progress of a recession,” said Ban Ki-moon as a comment to that one result of the global financial crisis is that some governments now choose to spend less money on the fight against AIDS than ever before.

But you don’t have to look out into the world to see that there is less money spent on combating the spread of HIV and AIDS. We can just look at Denmark and the capital Copenhagen which has already budgeted less money in this area.

Copenhagen Municipality health and care Committee has decided to entirely abandon the continued support for counseling for HIV-infected and their families (400,000 DKK in 2010) from 2011 – an advisory work performed HIV-Denmark.

This decision is completely counteracting a study from 2009 which shows that Denmark and Copenhagen in particular has had particular success in preventing a massive increase in the number of newly infected due to the personal counseling of the people potentially infected with HIV.

However, it is said that the politicians in Copenhagen in 2011 will continue to support distribution of free condoms. But seriously, I work within the field of HIV/AIDS and I have never noticed free distribution of condoms in Copenhagen and even if they exists it is the personal counseling of HIV that causes us/reminds us to use a condom.

I urge the politicians in Copenhagen to eradicate its decision on HIV-Danmark’s 2011 counseling work. The health of our people is a stake. Do you care?

The UN estimates that 2.7 million people became infected with HIV in 2008. This corresponds to 225,000 every month – or nearly 7,400 new infections every day or just over five every minute.

Worldwide 33.4 million people are infected with HIV. That’s why I still work in this field!

Retirement planning is like making a life insurance. It should be viewed as nothing more than a small plaster on the wound if worst case scenario should happen and you become physically incapable of working and need a reservoir of capital to survive.

Timothy Ferriss makes a strong case for this in his book “The 4-Hour Workweek” and I must say that his arguments are hard to beat. Here goes:

Retirement as a goal or final redemption is flawed for at least three solid reasons:

1. It is predicated on the assumption that you dislike what you are doing during the most physically capable years of your life. This is a nonstarter – nothing can justify that sacrifice.

2. Most people will never be able to retire and maintain even a hot dogs-for-dinner standard of living. Even one million is chump change in a world where traditional retirement could span 30 years and inflation lowers your purchasing power 2-4 % per year. The math doesn’t work. The golden years become lower-midlle-class life revisited. That’s a bittersweet ending.

3. If the math does work, it means that you are one ambitious, hardworking machine. If that’s the case, guess what? One week into retirement, you’ll be so damn bored that you’ll want to stick bicycle spokes in your eyes. You’ll probably opt to look for a new job or start another company. Kinda defeats the purpose of waiting, doesn’t it?

“Someday” is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you!

This is the reason why I have chosen to spend all of my 20s and half of my 30s travelling. This has always been my dream – to see the whole world. So by now I have lived most of my dreams and have travelled more than 50 countries in the world. I don’t dare to postpone.
And I don’t take life or “tomorrow” for granted. I don’t take for granted that I will be old or even live until I am 50. And should I be so blessed to have 70 years to experience the world, I can’t take for granted that I can even walk by the time I “retire” and so how can I travel the world if I am not physically well? There are no garantees in life and certainly not on time. I am not a pessimist – I am realist.

I will never say that I will travel when I get retired – because by then I have seen it all. For sure!

This video gives you an idea about the yoga teacher training course I did with Chaitanya Nitai Das at Yoga Inbound in Cuzco. I really loved the training and can truly say that yoga has had a life changing effect on me.

In this video you will see parts of the lessons – yoga philosophy and training and Chaitanya will tell you about his training and the idea behind Yoga Inbound and finally I will tell you why I enjoyed it so much.

For more information about Yoga Inbound in Cuzco – please visit the website: http://yogacusco.com/

SLOW DANCE

Have you ever watched kids
On a merry-go-round?

Or listened to the rain
Slapping on the ground?

Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight?
Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?

You’d better slow down.
Don’t dance so fast.

Time is short.
The music won’t last.

Do you run through each day
On the fly?

When you ask “How are you?”
Do you hear the reply?

When the day is done
Do you lie in your bed

With the next hundred chores
Running through your head?

You’d better slow down
Don’t dance so fast.

Time is short.
The music won’t last.

Ever told your child,
We’ll do it tomorrow?

And in your haste,
Not see his sorrow?

Ever lost touch,
Let a good friendship die

Cause you never had time
To call and say “Hi”?

You’d better slow down.
Don’t dance so fast.

Time is short.
The music won’t last.

When you run so fast to get somewhere
You miss half the fun of getting there.

When you worry and hurry through your day,
It is like an unopened gift….

Thrown away.
Life is not a race.

Do take it slower
Hear the music

Before the song is over.

I made this podcast around Easter on a 1500KM road trip from Barcelona to the Basque Country (País Vasco), then on to the beautiful Ordesa and Monte Perdido National Park in the Spanish Pyrenees. The trip takes in various locations including San Sebastian, Bilbao, Mundaka, Biarritz (in France), Torla, the Cola de Caballo trek and Cañón de Añisclo.

Ordesa and Monte Perdido National Park (in Spanish Parque Nacional de Ordesa y Monte Perdido) has been included since 1997 by UNESCO in the Biosphere Reserve of Ordesa-Viñamala. It is also part of the cross-border Pyrénées – Mont Perdu World Heritage Site.

Location Map

View Larger Map

Links

Photos of the Basque Country, Spain.
Video showing MONSTER surf in Mundaka, Spain
Wikipedia article on Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park.
The Basque Country
Cañón de Añisclo (in Spanish)
San Sebastian
Bilbao
Eduardo Chillida

Photos of the Basque Country, Spain

Kanyakumari is the ‘Land’s End’ of the Indian subcontinent, where the Bay of Bengal meets the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. It is the place to experience simultaneous sunset and moonrise over the ocean.

Kanyakumari has great spiritual significance for Hindus, and is dedicated to the goddess Devi Kanya, an incarnation of Parvati. Pilgrims come here to visit the temple. Kanyakumari is worth a visit 2 days/1 night.

In this video I have filmed Kanyakumari and the temple on my arrival day. Next morning we got up at 5 o’clock to watch the sunrise while the moon was still in the sky. It was very special.