Johan Bergström

...but I'll be back. Probably in June...

Looking forward to tonight's champagne onboard the Air France Boeing 747.

Today we are back in Porto Alegre. The beach vacation did not really turn out as expected. When we got to the island Santa Catarina, supposed to host the best beaches in Brazil, the weather changed. After 6,5 hours in a really nice bus we arrived to a cloudy Santa Catarina (the main city Florianapolis) on the Friday evening. From there we took lokal buses to the little village Pantano do Sul in the southern part of the island. There we found the pousada that we had booked in advanced. It was really cheap and in terms of standard... well, we got what we payed for. The pictures looked nicer than the place smelled...

So on the Saturday we were up for spending some time on the local beach - a really nice one. The southern part of the island has kept its nice atmosphere of small fishing villages rather intact. Turist restaurants for at the beach, sure - but still a nice genuine feeling. However the weather was not suited for burning scandinavian skin. Instead we spent most of the afternoon…

Just a short stop-and-go in POA between the trip to the national park and the beach trip. To find bus connections between Cambara and the island Santa Catarina was not easy, so we took the bus back to Porto Alegre, spent yesterday night with Eder and in three hours from now we are on a bus towards Florianapolis on Santa Catarina. There we will take another bus towards our Pousada (shack): Pousada Pescador near Pantano do Sul.

Attaching some pictures from the last couple of days. Canyons, flowers, waterfalls with falling hight of 600 m, cool guide... nice!

Life in Brazil continues...

How nice it was to finally pick up Maria at the airport yesterday evening! Now it is vacation!
Today has been a day for Maria to recover from 22 hours travel time Arlanda-POA. Thank's mom and dad for all your help! We took a trip to the city centre to by bus tickets for tomorrow and show Maria around. Now she has crashed on the bed for an hour before dinner.
Once again we went to Santa Cruz for the weekend to see Eder's parents and some nature. Once again they tried to kill us with meat. Once again it was absolutely delicious. Once again we survived. On the saturday afternoon we made a short climb to the top of a beautiful mountain some 30 kilometers from Santa Cruz. A nice and rather challenging climb (both upwards and downwards) in the steep slope. Not many exotic animals, until we were just about to leave. Pictures are attached.
We came back to Porto Alegre yesterday afternoon - just in time for the final football match of the season which we watched at Eder's uncle's …

...is painful.

This has until today been a week in front of the computer. Swamped by work as writing a research proposal, peer reviewing papers and supervising from a distance. But today I went to the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul to give a presentation about my research in the field of crisis management. The researchers in safety management (Eder's main supervisor Tarcision Saurin) and Ergonomics are also interested in topics suck as crisis management, team performance and non-technical skills.

It was nice to present my work and I got some good feedback. My slides are available on the leonardo website.

Now back to writing the research proposal. Two days of work left - then vacation!

Just came home from a really nice trip to the town in which Eder grew up: Santa Cruz do Sul - a beautiful little town (yes 100 000 inhabitants is a little town compared to Porto Alegres 1,5 million). Lots of green trees, cobblestone and nice nature surrounding the town. The town is really a German settlement. If your Portuguese is not that good (mine is not) you'll be just fine speaking German (I am not).

So, on Saturday morning we left Porto Alegre early with two cars heading for Santa Cruz. It's about a two-hour ride, mainly through rice- and tobacco fields. At around ten we arrived at Eder's parents' (and parrot's) new house. They recently sold their big house in which Eder grew up for a smaller house that better serve their new life as retired.



































































A walk around the city soon reveals the German roots of the inhabitants. They look about as fit for the sun as I am (skin color as a pig). The main attraction of the walk was the park in which the yearly Oktoberfest take…