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Excerpts from postcards sent in July 1986, Dean's World Tour I:

Landscapes, map and a family sauna, Finland

Fjords, Norway

Helsinki, Finland, 09 JUL 1986:  The U.S.S.R. ranked up as one of the greatest experiences of my life!  I wish that everybody I love could have experienced the feelings I had while I was there.  I met some of the most terrific people, and we were treated at times like kings.  Our whole experience was recorded for broadcast possibly on public television in the U.S. and is definitely set to appear on cable television in Boston.

Finland seems to have some of the warmest and friendliest people I've met in Europe, which is saying a lot, since I have met so many warm, friendly Europeans.

Oslo, Norway, 20 JUL 1986:  Vi hatter du?  (How are you)?  What makes people want to go to the edges of the earth just to say they've been there?  After hitchhiking from Northern Finland to Nordkapp, Norway (as far north as you can go by road) and coming back down part way through Norway, I was unable to catch a ride (1 car passing me every 15 minutes), so I caught a bus to Narvik, took a train to Stockholm where I spent a couple days, and now to Oslo, where I'm sitting on the wharf soaking up sun and having a beer with thousands of other tourists.  Scandinavia is an incredibly expensive place to travel (i.e. a basic McDonald's hamburger costs about $2.00).  I spend over my $30.00 daily budget and I'm not even sleeping in youth hostels.  I stay overnight riding on trains.

(A few hours later)  I'm now on a train bound for Copenhagen.  I was beginning to feel a little depressed -- "tourist burnout" -- from seeing too many things too fast.  Also, I haven't been able to connect with SERVAS hosts in Scandinavia like I did in Germany and Poland.  I haven't felt up to giving the extra energy and enthusiasm required of being someone's guest either, so I haven't tried that hard to connect with the hosts.  Still, I feel my primary goal in Europe is to meet the people, not to walk through 1001 castles or museums, and not even to spend all my time in the backwoods looking at a fjord.  Anyway, I felt much better after I met a young Norwegian who sat down and had a beer with me, and then showed me some of the finer points of Oslo.

Leif Erickson

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