Safe Sex Around the Globe

by Iva Skoch on

So Western Europe, particularly the Nordic countries, are ‘all that’? Maybe not, when it comes to safe sex.

There’s a very interesting graphic in this month’s Foreign Policy magazine regarding which countries practice safe sex and get STDs (sexually transmitted diseases).

The study (more parts of which appear here) was sponsored by Durex condoms and put together by Miguel Fontes of Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. Over 317,000 people in 41 countries were surveyed about when they first had sex, what the rates of STD infection are, and whether they practice unsafe sex without knowing their partner’s history.

The worst of those surveyed? Norway. That country gets the worst record in terms of STD infection rate and percentage of people who practice unsafe sex. Sweden, Finland, and Denmark are also on the wall of shame. Subsequently, those are also the countries with the highest standard of living. Is there a correlation here?

Climate-change Tourism: Warming Planet Unveils New Tourist Destinations

by Neil Woodburn on

“Climate-change tourism” is something we’re going to be hearing a lot more about in the near future. In fact, it’s already here in some parts of the world.

What is climate-change tourism exactly?

That’s when a traditionally frozen arctic wasteland like Greenland suddenly starts to warm up, shed its ice, and become hospitable. As a result, tourists who used to shun such frigid environs are now beginning to explore far more northerly than ever before.

In fact, according to a recent article in The Herald, Spitzbergen (Norway) has now “become the Tenerife of the north” as more and more wealthy tourists flock there to enjoy calving glaciers and warming environs. As a result, tourism has doubled in the last ten years.

Tragically, scientists estimate that the “melting glaciers and icecaps” along the Svalbard archipelago where Spitzbergan is located are “responsible for 0.3mm of the 2.2mm annual rise in sea levels.”

Hello Svalbard, goodbye Micronesia!

Photo of the Day (6/19/2007)

by Erik Olsen on

Gonna draw again from a series of my own photos today for the Gadling Photo of the Day. This one comes from Norway, from where I recently returned after a glorious ten-day trip exploring fjords and cities and lovely little Scandinavian villages.

The shot here of a rainbow over the fjord was taken late one afternoon after a very satisfying nap.

I actually shot it right from the balcony of the hotel (the Hotel Balustrand) where we were staying. I thought perhaps it was just a lucky moment, but we saw like four more rainbows that day, so this area is now officially dubbed “Rainbow Alley”.

World Heritage Sights Rated

by Erik Olsen on

My wife and I are planning our upcoming trip to Norway and we’re trying to decide whether it’s worth the effort to take a boat called the Coastal Steamer up to the Western Fjords…places with pretty much unpronounceable (and unspellable) names like Geirangerfjord and Naroyfjord (names, several letters of which, do not seem displayable here because they are, well, weird-looking letters). Well, there I was contemplating whether these places would be worth seeing, and I discover that they are both top scorers in the World Heritage Site rating piece over at National Geographic.

The whole World Heritage Site system is wonderful. Think of it as the original 1000 Things to Do Before You Die…even though there are only 833 of them currently. The process of giving places around the planet World Heritage status began back in 1973 when UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) was entrusted with administering the program in an effort to identify and protect places of “outstanding universal value.”

The list of sites ranges across a wide spectrum of both natural and man-made places from astonishing ruins like Angkor Wat to, well, as I pointed out here, the Norwegian fjords.

Anyway, these places are always worth pointing out and the nicely done ranking system here at Nat Geo is a helpful guide for anyone putting together their personal “life-lists”.

Norwegian Customs Handled By Machine

by Jonathon Morgan on

Next time you’re traveling through Norway and have goods to declare, chances are your transaction will take place at one of the world’s first automatic customs tellers.

The Finance Minster is excited because the move leaves his “personnel to fight more serious smuggling,” and I agree. You can always tell with customs officials are bored — they grab the first shaggy-looking college student they can find, haul him off to the side, and rifle through his stuff. Just because he’d had an 8-hour layover in Amsterdam and looks (and smells) a little inebriated. (Just to use a completely hypothetical example.)

Good news for travelers is that the device appears to work. The first woman went through customs using the automated teller this weekend, declared an extra bottle of wine, and paid her fee with a bank card.

Hopefully we’ll be seeing more of these worldwide in the months ahead.