Brazil on the Baltic Sea!

Brazil, the Baltic Sea. What does the two of them have in common?

Well, two weeks ago a group of us went on a Brazil themed cruise over the Baltic Sea, from Helsinki to Stockholm - that's what!

There are a tens of cruise liners crossing the Baltic Sea between Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Germany and Russia every day. Brazil was (and still is) a seemingly popular theme on the cruise liners Viking Line and Silja Line this spring! I obviously JUMPED on this like the Brazil, samba & zouk fan that I am, and organised a little trip for the group of us dancers!

So what's in a Brazil cruise on the Baltic Sea?

Obviously a big fat Brazilian buffet! The picanha wasn't as delicious as in Brazil (could it really be?) - but at least they had the picanha, yummy. The food was great, the selection was enormous and the company was fantastic!

Samba and capoiera shows! There was a couple shows each evening in the night club by a Brazilian dance goup. The samba costumes were quite beautiful actually!

Report from the First Scandinavian Zouk Congress

Took part in the First Scandinavian Lambada/Zouk Congress in Uppsala about a week ago. The rainy smalltown in Sweden had a very well organised congress with two days packed with workshops and three nights of parties... In our case five nights as a large part of the "Team Finland" decided to take an overnight cruise from Helsinki to Stockholm on the way there and back. And we did indeed terrorise the cruise passangers with zouk where ever they played something zoukable!

At the congress we were 14 Finnish zoukers there, with about 120 participants altogether. The rest were mostly Swedes and there was a small group of Dutch, a couple Norwegian, one Danish and one from Australia. Teachers included Pasty & Josta, Olaya & Papagaio, Tania & Marcelo, Kwok and a number of Swedish teachers of which my favourite was Sanna Nilsson.