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There in spirit
Isn’t intelligent voice radio something special? We recall a moment when it really seemed that Martin Luther might open the door and ask if he might drop in for a cuppa.
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Exploring Europe by rail
We never planned to write about trains. But it just sort of happened and then we developed a curious niche writing about railway journeys. Nicky Gardner and Susanne Kries reflect on a serendipitous opportunity.
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Untold tales
There were the journeys planned, the journeys made, and also the journeys never made. And our list of likely topics for hidden europe just grew and grew. Whatever will happen to the untold tales?
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The Tyre Man
With the unreliability of the very first cars, motoring was a stop-go process. Bibendum, the remarkable tyre man from Michelin, was always on hand to give advice in the event of breakdown or an enforced overnight stay.
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Saint-Gingolph
Why would I eat lunch on the Swiss side when a well-cooked plate of perch from Lake Geneva costs so much less in France? We visit Saint-Gingolph, a lakeshore village divided by an international frontier.
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Ireland's coasts
We are quietly in awe of how the editors and publishers ever managed to bring The Coastal Atlas of Ireland to print. This is a magnificent volume, one that draws on geography, geology and cultural studies to present an encyclopaedic account of Ireland’s coastline.
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Bulgaria: cross-border links with Romania
The Danube marks the shared border between Romania and Bulgaria. But, with just two bridges crossing the Danube to link the two countries, the Danube also separates Bulgaria and Romania. New ferries are however forging new connections.
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From slow boats to slow trains
If you have some time to spare, don’t take the fast train when there’s a slower option. The latter will almost certainly be more interesting. We share some of our favourite slow journeys, citing examples from Calabria, Danish Jutland, Spain and Germany.
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Literary refuges
What will become of the former home of the late Jan Morris, who lived for many years at Trefan Morys with her lifelong partner Elizabeth Tickniss? Jan Morris died in 2020, but that book-laden Welsh farmhouse remains as a shrine to Jan’s creative instincts and a strong marker of her love for Wales.
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Frösön Island
The island of Frösön in Lake Storsjön is the perfect retreat for walks and bike rides. We follow part of the traditional pilgrimage route over Frösön, passing the most northerly rune stone in the world.
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Fast cats
The current record for the fastest Atlantic crossing was set in 1998 by an Incat catamaran capable of carrying 600 passengers and 200 cars. That same vessel is still in day-to-day service as a ferry. We'll go in search of the Skane Jet.
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All change for 2023: New rail links
A new daily rail link from Warsaw to Lithuania, direct trains from Bordeaux to the Black Forest and new night trains from Genoa, Dresden and Stuttgart all feature in Europe’s 2023 train timetables which come into effect on Sunday 11 December 2022.
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Adventures of the Jadran
The Jadrolinija shipping routes of yesterday saw sailings from Venice to Piraeus with half a dozen stops along the way. It was possible to sail direct from Opatija to Corfu or from Venice to Rijeka. We take a look at inshore shipping down the eastern shores of the Adriatic.
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Branding Glenlivet
Rarely has a beverage gained such a boost from a royal namecheck as when George IV arrived in Scotland and requested a glass of Glenlivet. At the time, the distillery at Glenlivet was an 'under-the-radar' affair operating outwith the law.
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The Athus factor
Never heard of Athus? It's a small town in south-east Belgium through which you must route if you wish to travel by train from London to Poland's Baltic coast for just €120 return.
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Reading Celati
The Italian wordsmith Gianni Celati, who died in January this year, was not best known for his travel writing. It was for Celati a sideline in a career that mainstreamed on literature and culture. We take a look at some of Celati's work.
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10000 steps
The EU-funded EXCOVER initiative reveals how lesser-frequented regions of the Adriatic coastline have real potential to alleviate pressure in tourist hotspots. One of the EXCOVER case studies is the Po Delta region of Italy.
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Visitor mobility
How far should the local travel requirements for tourists be met by a region’s regular transport infrastructure? Or does it make sense to lay on special services for seasonal visitors? We look at examples from Switzerland and Britain.
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Ukrainians on the move
Not far from Lockerbie, in the hills of southern Scotland, a corrugated iron hut was converted into a simple chapel in summer 1947. It is a remote, rural outpost of Ukraine's Greek Catholic Church.
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Follow the dove
Look for the tell-tale Pentecostal dove that marks out the small chapels dedicated to the Holy Spirit. They are found across the Azores, each chapel the hub of a social network that underpins Azorean Catholicism.
The 17th edition of Europe by Rail: The Definitive Guide is published in mid-April 2022. It includes new routes through the Alps and central Europe, a completely new journey along Italy’s Adriatic coast, new Baltic region coverage and much more.
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New Albanian bus routes
So what is the best way to get from Dubrovnik to Athens? Take the bus, we say, at least for the first part of the journey. Improved bus and ferry services now make it very easy to travel from southern Croatia through Montenegro and Albania to Greece. It is a fine journey, especially if you can make time to stop off in Kotor, Tiranë and Corfu.
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Hiking the Laugavegur
For many young Icelanders, the four-day trek along the Laugvegur is a rite of passage that in summer affords a relatively safe encounter with ‘untouched nature’. It takes in terrain that has helped shape Icelandic culture, memory and identity.
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Polar bees
The news is not great for polar bumble bees, which are well adapted to the Arctic climate. Climate change may not bode well for these bees in the Russian North, but the prospects for adventurous butterflies are on the up.
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Allegro speculations
No rail operator’s international operations were more brutally affected by the pandemic that those of RZD Russian Railways. Links from Russia to fourteen other European countries were suspended in March 2020, and none of those regular passenger services have yet been restored.
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Erasing the tsar
In the Russian town of Pushkin, not far from St Petersburg, there’s a district called Tsarskoye Selo – a sweep of palaces and gardens which was once the summer home of the Romanov family.
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Salers cheese
Salers de Buron is no ordinary cheese. It reflects the richness of the high pastures in France’s Cantal region. The mountain grass is interlaced with Alpine fennel, gentian, arnica, anise and liquorice.
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European heathlands
Dedicated teams of scientists and conservationists are working to preserve Europe’s lowland heaths. The threats to these endangered habitats are many: creeping urbanization, the conversion of traditional heathland to cropland and the planting of conifers.
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Landscapes of immunity
There are some small populated islands off the coast of Sicily which have never recorded a single COVID infection. And, by comparison with many European countries, Iceland has consistently shown low incidence rates.
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End of Shannon stopover
It was never really efficient that wide-bodied jets would take to the sky in Dublin, and then make a brief stop at Shannon Airport near Ireland’s west coast, where Aer Lingus aircraft would share space on the tarmac with planes in Aeroflot or Cubana livery. Now it looks as though the Shannon stopover is being consigned to aviation history.
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The lure of the Orient
Fifty years ago adventurous travellers were heading off from Europe to ride the Taurus Express or to explore a desert bus route which linked three capital cities.
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End of the Ice Age
The last pulses of the wave of Quaternary glaciations in Europe left some distinct glacial spillways across the North European Plain. These short-lived channels were important for meltwater from a decaying ice sheet. Three of the spillways can be traced in the modern landscape of rural Brandenburg.
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War trains
Many railways across Europe were built to satisfy military ambition. In the hinterland of Berlin there is a railway line which was constructed quite explicitly as a military plaything. In the Nazi period, the very existence of this railway influenced the preferred location for German experiments in missile and nuclear technologies.
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New night trains in 2021
The privacy of a cosy compartment is part of the appeal of the overnight train. The pandemic has changed attitudes and travellers are now mightily aware of the importance of space and privacy. So it is no wonder that demand for night sleeper services has rocketed. The coming months will see new overnight trains to the Netherlands, Sweden, the Croatian coast, Lake Constance and the French Riviera.
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Alsace grape types
Do you know your Sylvaner from your Muscat? Your Pinot Gris from your Pinot Blanc? Here’s a quick and easy guide to the nine main varieties of grapes used in the production of various Alsace wines. We would wager that there may be one or two varietals here of which you’ve never heard.
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Budapest transport
The steep topography around the Hungarian capital, especially on the west bank of the Danube, meant that great ingenuity was needed in developing public transport. Examples are the famous funicular up to Buda Castle and a cog railway, both dating back to the 1870s and still well used today.
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Where Europe meets Asia
Pull off the main highway just west of Ekaterinburg and you'll find a fairly new monument that purports to mark the border between Asia and Europe. The design recalls the Eiffel Tower in Paris, a nice reminder that Ekaterinburg iron was used to construct the Paris landmark.
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Tidal islands
There are islands which never lose their island status. And then there are islands which come and go with every tide. Such fragments of land, which are only proper islands at low tide, are called drying islands or tidal islands. We look at some European examples.
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The home of Esperanto
Who was Dr Esperanto (Dr Hope)? He was an ophthalmologist by profession, but he is most remembered for his love of languages. The good doctor’s real name was Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof and he is best remembered as the creator of Esperanto. He came from one of Europe’s most multilingual communities: Białystok in north-east Poland.
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Beyond the Small Homeland
Mishar Tatars and Lipka Tatars have been quick to assimilate into the communities to which they migrated. We discover how they moved through the Baltic region, settling in Lithuania and Finland, with some moving on to Sweden and the United States of America.
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Exploring Europe on foot
A new series of guidebooks from Vertebrate Publishing invites readers to explore some of Europe’s great long walks. We review the debut title which focuses on western Europe and the Alps.
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What's in a name: the Sudety story
Sometimes the name of a mountain range or a region may endure for centuries, only then to be corrupted by politics. This is how it was with the Sudety Mountains which in the 1930s became conflated with the Sudetenland.
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Wuppertal's famous son
The German city of Wuppertal marks the bicentenary of the birth of Friedrich Engels this autumn. He was born in the Barmen district of Wuppertal on 28 November 1820.
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Scandinavian ferry news
The downturn in travel is being felt in Europe’s ferry industry as service frequencies are trimmed on some routes and other links are axed entirely. We take a look at how services to Norway and Sweden have fared during the pandemic.
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Beyond the Marais: Punting Traditions
From the withy boats of the Somerset Levels to the gunboats used on the Essex coast, wetlands have often fostered ingenuity among boatbuilders. Navigating shallow waters takes skill and a special kind of vessel. We survey a range of boats from the punts of Cambridge and Lusatia to the double-ended barquet of the Albufera lagoon.
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Cape Verde Links
Travelling around Luxembourg, one is ever aware of the influence of the Cape Verde islands. Conversely, in Cape Verde one notices the influence of Luxembourg. We explore the reciprocal relationship between the Grand Duchy and the island archipelago in the Atlantic.
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The 21.48 from Aachen
The prospect of an overnight train journey should be something to savour. But Paul Scraton’s thought upon boarding his train in Aachen is to ask “Where, oh where are the beds?” Paul endures a memorable, though not very comfortable, overnight ride to Berlin.
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Untold Riches
Jakob Fugger the Rich was indeed very rich. But his approach to business presciently anticipated many practices which are now commonplace. We look at the life of a man who challenged business cartels and had a canny appreciation of the importance of market intelligence.
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Changing Places
Had you noticed that humble Staines, a riverside town south-west of London, has changed its name? It is now called Staines-upon-Thames. Moving upmarket one might say. But the Canadian village of Swastika is resolutely resisting suggestions that a name change might be in order.
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The Flyer's Dilemma
How would you react if you definitively knew that each flight you took would shorten your life by three months?
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Island Summit
In October 2003, there was an unlikely standoff between Russia and Ukraine in the Kerch Strait. The status of Tuzla Island had been the subject of discussions between the presidents of the two countries just five weeks earlier.
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Legacy Railcards
So you thought the idea of a discount railcard was something new? Think again - the Swiss Halbtax card was introduced in the 19th century.
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Border-hopping Rail Tariffs
We delve into the high theology of rail fares, noting the phenomenon of the extra-territorial tariff point. So Aachen in Germany features in the Belgian domestic tariff, and Schaffhausen in Switzerland is a German tariff point (as well as being a Swiss one). Enjoy.
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The Bus to Imber
Bus route 23A in Wiltshire (England) is a rarity. Buses on this route, serving the village of Imber on Salisbury Plain, run on just one day each year. This year your chance to ride the Imberbus is on Saturday 15 August.
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Unfinished business
In a field near the village of Urbès in eastern France, a stretch of graceful railway viaduct stands alone in a valley. It has never been connected to any railway line. It's a poignant reminder of what might have been.
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Mapping America
How did America get its name? Amerigo Vespucci, of course. But the Florentine merchant never himself suggested that the continent be named after him. It's all down to a cartographer in the Vosges.
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From Swarms and Stings to Slow Travel
From Slovenia to Chile, from Malta to Turkey, bee-related tourism is suddenly in vogue. Honeyed travel opportunities aplenty as tourist boards and travellers realise that bees mean business.
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Admiralty Handbooks: Baedekers with a Twist
Some of the best academic minds in Britain spent the Second World War writing guidebooks about far-flung places. We explore a clandestine area of professional geographical endeavour which resulted in the Naval Intelligence Guides – often called the Admiralty Handbooks.
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Sixty Years of Eurail
2019 marks the sixtieth anniversary of the launch of the Eurail pass. Rail Europe Inc sold the first passes in North America in 1959. We look at how Eurail helped shape perceptions of Europe for overseas visitors and see how the Eurail scheme helped catalyse Europe's Interrail scheme.
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Agrarian Reform in Spain: The Broader Picture
Mussolini's draining of the Pontine Marshes was a landmark piece of colonisation politics. There have been many similar schemes around Europe – one earlier example was King Carlos III's new town programme in Andalucía in the 1760s. To accompany our feature on Franco's agrarian settlement scheme (see 'Spain's Last Settlers'), we look at the broader context for such ambitious schemes.
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To the Urals and the Russian Riviera
Direct trains from the Lithuanian capital Vilnius to such far flung destinations as Sochi and Adler (both on the Russia's Back Sea Riviera) and to Anapa and Chelyabinsk recall the days of Soviet travel. We scan the departure boards for a few exotica.
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New Interrail Passes
Train fares are getting cheaper. As retailer Loco2 launches split tickets in the British market, travellers on longer journeys across the continent are discovering that judicious use of an Interrail pass can undercut the cost of a regular return ticket. Interrail may make sense even for just one round trip.
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Butter Trips
There once was a time when passengers would smuggle butter on trains running from the Republic of Ireland into Northern Ireland. And more recently in Germany, budget-conscious shoppers would go one a boat trip to buy cheap butter. We take a look at the duty-free trade on ferries in European waters.
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Shared High Points
Germany makes much of its highest mountain, the mighty Zugspitze. The frontier between Austria and Germany bisects the mountain. But in Austria, the Zugspitze hardly counts as a significant peak. We look at the phenomenon of shared summits.
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Sketches in Teviotdale
Southern Scotland has had more than its fair share of poets, along them Rabbie Burns, Robert Davidson and James Hogg. But one Borders poet, Thomas Pringle, is far better known in South Africa than he is in his native Scotland. Born just south of Kelso in 1789, Pringle is sometimes acclaimed as 'the father of South African poetry'.
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Fifth-freedom Flights
You could opt for Ryanair when flying from Edinburgh to Dublin, but - if you must fly for such a short hop - why not choose a more interesting option and book with the Chinese carrier Hainan Airlines? We explore the range of fifth-freedom flights now on offer within Europe.
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Summit-level-Canals
Canals which breach great drainage divides are always interesting. There's one, opened in 1992, which links the River Danube with the River Main, the latter a tributary of the Rhine. So today it's possible to travel on a ship through the very heart of Europe from the North Sea to the Black Sea.
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In Search of the Old Believers Today
The Old Believers fled from the tsarist heartland into the remotest corners of the Russian Empire. Some went to Manchuria, moving on to South America and then to Oregon and Alaska. Others found refuge back in Moscow, practising their faith in the city's cemeteries. We go in search of the Old Believers.
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Plain Sailing
With new routes from Toulon to Menorca and Sicily, there's much ado in the Mediterranean ferry scene this summer. Further north, there are new year-round services between Germany and a Danish island in the Baltic and good news for foot passengers taking the boat from France to Ireland.
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Dzukija National Park
Great sand seas seem at home in the Sahara or Namib deserts - or even perhaps on Mars. But in southern Lithuania is a striking sandy landscape shaped largely by the winds. Dzukija National Park is a region of fossil dunescapes.
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A Trio of Leuven Carillons
Few sounds quite match that of the carillon in giving a sense of harmony to a townscape. We listen to a trinity of carillons in the Belgian city of Leuven.
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CityStar Ticket
Discover a special rail tariff which offers cheap deals for travels from Slovakia to destinations in the Alps, eastern Europe and the Balkans.
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Boundary Lakes
A whistle-stop tour of some of Europe's trans-boundary water bodies, from Lake Peipus to Lake Prespa and beyond.
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Central Europe by Night
New rail timetables kick in across Europe on 9 December 2018. There are new direct daytime links from Bratislava to Innsbruck and Zürich, and from the Austria city of Linz to both Halle and Berlin. But the showpiece innovation is a new direct night train from Berlin to Vienna.
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Russians in Bohemia
Where would the spa towns of Bohemia be without the patronage from the great and good? The Romanov family's enthusiasm for taking the water has encouraged generations of Russians to visit the region.
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Bohemian Waters
Here's a hidden europe briefing for first-time visitors to the Czech spa towns. Often referred to as the spa triangle, north-west Bohemia actually has more than just three spa towns.
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Lviv Rail Links
News that a new night train, aimed largely at travellers from Ukraine, will link Przemyśl with Berlin from later this year is a sure sign that Ukrainians are making the most of visa-free access to the Schengen group of nations. The new demand for cross-border trains means that rail links to Lviv from the EU have greatly improved over the past year.
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Reading Matters
Russian Railways (RZD) have launched their Library for Young Travellers programme with a selection of books for kids on trains to holiday destinations across Russia. Hop aboard for fairy tales, classic novels and a wide choice of poetry by Russian and international writers.
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Flights to the Faroes
Are the Faroe Islands perhaps thinking of emulating Iceland's success in attracting North Atlantic stopover traffic? Might travellers a few years hence stop off in the Faroe Islands en route from North America to the European mainland? We take a look at the islands' national airline, Atlantic Airways, as the carrier marks its 30th anniversary of linking the Faroes to the wider world.
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In from the Cold
The thrills and spills of top-class soccer are just part of the appeal of the FIFA World Cup. Sport aside, it's been a chance for visitors to feel the warmth of Russian hospitality. An amiable wolf called Zabivaka has been doing his bit to make visitors feel welcome.
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Lake Geneva By Boat
From the Bodensee in the north to Lago Maggiore in the south, Swiss lakes are blessed with a wide range of scheduled boat services. We take a look at services which ply the waters of Lake Geneva, serving over two dozen ports across the lake.
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The Spinetta Report
In the future it may not be so easy to take the slow train from Sospel to Tende. Or from Clermont-Ferrand to Nîmes. Jean-Cyril Spinetta's February 2018 report to President Macron is not good news for regional rail routes in France. It may be overdoing it to call Spinetta the French Beeching - but the fallout from the report is worth watching.
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Off-track
Route 45 in our Europe by Rail book links Sofia with Zagreb via Belgrade and Brod. That's just the route once followed by the Orient Express. It features in both the 1974 and 2017 versions of the film Murder on the Orient Express. But neither film was shot on location in the Balkans.
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On a Starry Night
To walk in solitude in the company of stars is indeed something special. It's a chance to attend to the beauty of the heavens. In the Austrian village of Großmugl, the 1500-metre long Sternenweg is a gift to stargazers.
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Bradt Guide to Serbia
Laurence Mitchell has written a number of Bradt Guides, including titles on Norfolk (where he lives), central Asia and the Balkan region. We have been thumbing through Laurence's latest Bradt book, the 5th edition of his 'Bradt Guide to Serbia', which was published in September 2017.
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Boat-shaped Graves
Lozenge-shaped graves, fashioned in the form of a ship, are a distinctive element of Bronze Age visual culture on the Baltic island of Gotland. Do these unusual graves, known as 'ship settings' have a deeper cosmological meaning?
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Fishing stations
A number of fishing stations around the coasts of the Baltic islands of Fårö and Gotland recall the heyday of the herring trade, when farmers would become fishermen for a few weeks.
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Hebridean Hostels
The Gatliff Hebridean Hostels Trust gives a chance for travellers to stay a while in some of the remotest communities in the Outer Hebrides. Through the work of the Trust, many casual visitors come to love these island communities. The Trust maintains hostels on Harris, Berneray and South Uist.
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Faking Bruges
The legacy of Leonid Markelov, who in April this year stood down from the position of President of the Mari El Republic, lies in the oddball architecture of the republic's capital city of Yoshkar Ola.
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Smock Mills
The smock mill is a distinctive element of the Dutch cultural landscape. The functionality and simplicity of these simple mills has made them popular exports, and migrants from the Netherlands built smock mills in New England, South Africa and around the North Sea.
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Rail Travel News
Two new high speed rail routes in France, extra trains through the Alps and new services to Ukraine are the headline stories in the summer 2017 rail timetables. We review what's new and what's gone.
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Lutherstadt Torgau
The renaming of towns to honour an individual is commonplace. Nizhny Novgorod became Gorky, in honour of the Russian writer Maxim Gorki who was born there. The town later switched back to its original name. In eastern Germany, towns have been prefixed in honour of a notable citizen. We have Lutherstadt Wittenberg. Why not Lutherstadt Torgau?
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Out of the Shadows
Władysław Szpilman’s remarkable book The Pianist (made into a film by Roman Polanski) reveals the devastation of Jewish life in Warsaw in 1945. To accompany our feature on Jewish Warsaw we look at the city's Jewish community in the immeditate post-war years.
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Taking the Tram
With the success of the Schengen region, local transport links are being extended over international borders. In the coming months, new international tram routes from France to both Germany and Switzerland are due to open.
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Tale of a Tupolev
Shoppers in the Czech border village of Petrovice are inclined to board a Tupolev 104 airplane when they want a coffee or a snack. Find out why this 60-year-old jet aircraft is a good spot to relax.
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Exploring the Butrint Region
Take the back-door route from Sarandë in Albania to Igoumenitsa in Greece to discover a little-visited region of the southern Balkans.
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Socialist Architecture in Yugoslavia
In Tito's Yugoslavia, architects offered an ideological space between East and West - aligned neither to Soviet-style communism nor to the capitalist tradition. The result was some assertively different architecture, not all of it memorably beautiful.
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News from Haidemühl
The Czech energy group EPH has taken over the lignite mining operations in eastern Germany previously managed by Swedish company Vattenfall. What does this mean for the village of Haidemühl, now abandoned for almost a decade, which sits in a area designated for opencast mining?
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Catholic Oxford
December 2016 marks the 200th anniversary of John Henry Newman's admittance to Trinity College, Oxford. Almost 30 years later (in 1845), Newman was accepted into the Roman Catholic Church. We take a look at Catholic Oxford.
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Hebridean Narratives
Peter May's novels set in the Outer Hebrides communicate a strong sense of Hebridean landscapes. May is the latest in a long line of writers who have helped inscribe the islands on the public imagination. We take a look at a number of Hebridean narratives.
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New CalMac Contract
The network of car ferries operated by Caledonian MacBrayne is part of the fabric of island life in Scotland's Western Isles. No trip to the Hebrides is complete without a journey or two on a CalMac ferry. The company has just secured a new contract for operating links to some of the remotest communities in the Hebrides.
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Exploring the Ore Mountains
The Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains) offer excellent possibilities for hiking, cycling and cross-country skiing. But even less energetic visitors can reach remote communities in the region by local bus and train services.
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Visa News
A chance to visit Belarus without a visa, and a tweak to the visa regulations in the Russian port of Murmansk are just two of the latest changes to visa regimes in Europe.
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Hollandries: Dredging and Draining
Europe's most accomplished dredgers and drainers are the Dutch. Settlers from the Netherlands have industriously drained wetlands and coastal meadows across the continent from Bordeaux to the Baltic. We look at some of the continent's Hollandries.
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The Best of Both Worlds
On a lake to the east of Berlin is Europe's sole surviving example of a ferry which relies on an overhead cable to pick up electricity. The Straussee ferry is an unusual transport oddity.
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Recalling Tito
From Skopje to Moscow, from Sarajevo to New Delhi, the names of roads and squares recall Josep Broz Tito, who was President of Yugoslavia from 1953 until his death in 1980. But what happened to all the Tito towns in former Yugoslavia? Titograd became Podgorica. And the others?
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Bosna-gauge Railways
Had the Balkan region narrow-gauge rail network survived, it would surely today be a cherished asset in promoting tourism over a wide region - in much the same way as the narrow-gauge Rhaetian Railway network has been important in attracting visitors to the Graubünden region of eastern Switzerland.
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Bouvet Island
Bouvet Island, at the southern end of the mid-Atlantic ridge, is 1,800 kilometres away from the nearest landmass (Antarctica) and is thus one of the remotest places on earth. The normal jumping off point for expeditions to this fragment of Norwegian territory is Cape Town.
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From Austerlitz to Waterloo
So where is the Trafalgar which gave its name to the Battle of Trafalgar? And where is the Blenheim after which Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire is supposedly named? We look at a few European place names which feature larger-than-life in the historical record.
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Mystical France
Scottish publisher Findhorn has always had an eye on the offbeat and alternative. Many travellers place great stock on their Camino pilgrimage guides. Now Findhorn has launched a new guide to France. We dip into the pages of Mystical France.
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Scottish ferries
The ferry operator Caledonian MacBrayne has always had a dash of Scottish spirit. But this spring CalMac is facing a challenge with a rival company bidding to take control of the lifeline ferry routes in the Hebrides and Clyde regions.
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Hay fever: the story of European book towns
What do Wünsdorf-Waldstadt in eastern Germany, Bellprat in Catalonia and Hay-on-Wye in Wales all have in common? They all style themselves as 'book towns'. Across Europe and beyond, small towns are discovering the appeal of 'the Hay model' as they jump on the bandwagon set rolling by Richard Booth in Hay-on-Wye.
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Kosovo travel notes
It's perfectly sensible to travel from Budapest to Thessaloniki through Kosovo. But it's unwise to attempt the journey in the reverse direction. Find out why in our notes on travelling through Kosovo.
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Pleasure or pain
The notion of privation as conductive to more virtuous travel seems alien to the modern mind. Today's travellers search for five-star luxury and often look for a higher level of food, lodging and service that they experience at home. Travel has become a way of exerting economic power and negotiating privilege. But it was not always thus.
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Mennonite migrants
Over 100,000 migrants left Kyrgyzstan in the 1990s, a good number moving to Germany. Many of them were descended from Mennonites who over a century earlier had walked from the steppes of southern Russia to Kyrgyzstan.
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Keeping track
It is that time of year when Europe prepares to introduce new train timetables. The 2016 schedules come into effect on Sunday 13 December 2015. As usual, there are winners and losers. We look at some new services.
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Ukrainian-Russian links
The tit-for-tat posturing between Ukraine and Russia benefits no-one trying to travel to and from Crimea - or for that matter anywhere in the border regions between the two countries. In late October 2015, air links between Russia and Ukraine were severed.
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Est: writing about East Anglia
There is a certain tyranny of the horizon in the flatlands of East Anglia. The spirit of those landscapes is captured in the debut volume from Dunlin Press which is titled 'Est: Collected Reports from East Anglia'.
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A station in the shadows
The Gare Saint-Lazare attracted the artists. Yet Paris Gare du Nord has a grittier atmosphere. This busiest of Paris' railway termini is ultimately a station in the shadows. And therein lies its enduring appeal.
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Railway ghosts
Literary ghosts haunt the pages of mid and late 19th-century fiction - from Henry James The Turn of the Screw to Charles Dickens' The Haunted House. One of the spookiest tales of all is Dickens' The Signalman, a fine short story which may have been influenced by the train crash in which Dickens was involved in summer 1865.
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Elbe excursions
A new ferry powered by liquefied natural gas will make its first journey from the island of Helgoland to the port of Hamburg this month. It'll be a rare chance to cruise in comfort up the River Elbe to the German port city.
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Tall statements
Faith has evidently replaced politics as the motivation for some of the world's tallest sculptures. In Europe, the largest such structure is the massive statue of Jesus Christ at Swiebodzin in western Poland.
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Free rail travel
Slovakia follows Hungary's example in offering free travel on many rail services for senior citizens.
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Through the back of the wardrobe
Nigel Roberts, author of the Bradt Guide to Belarus, gives us a preview of the upcoming new edition of his guidebook with his account of crossing into Belarus on foot.
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Remembering Anna
Anna Walentynowicz died five years ago this spring in the plane crash that also claimed the lives of many in the Polish leadership. We recall the woman who was a welder, crane driver and political activist - a woman who quietly helped shape modern Poland.
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The witches of Varanger
The 17th-century witchcraft trials in Finnmark are recalled in a striking new memorial on the shores of the Barents Sea. hidden europe visited the memorial which is pictured on the front cover of this issue of hidden europe.
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Russia’s eternal winter
They have fiddled with the clocks in Moscow. Not just in Moscow, but right across the Russian Federation. Russia has decided to move to perpetual winter – at least when it comes to time. For the clocks shall stay henceforth on winter time.
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The Talgo tale
The story of the Talgo trains of Bosnia reveals a quite stunning waste of money. This is a country which invested in a new fleet of trains which are simply incompatible with its antiquated rail infrastructure.
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Martinmas
Martinmas is a day for a fresh start, a chance to turn over a new leaf. A good day for an armistice. And a good day to kick off the Carnival season.
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One country, two entities
Several European countries are split on ethnic lines. We see the dramas being out in Ukraine just now. Belgium is even more decisively split, but happily the results are not as fractious. Shift to Bosnia and Herzegovina and we see the great game of nationhood played out in a peculiarly schizophrenic way. We unpick the puzzle behind a country that has two "entities".
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Crimea notes
The Ukrainian railway administration may still be advertising trains to Crimea, but not a lot of Ukrainians will be heading to the region for their summer holidays. Hoteliers in Crimea are having a lean season, but Moscow has plans to ensure that Crimean resorts are not completely empty in 2014.
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Escape from Carlsbad
The funicular railway to the Café Diana on the hills above the spa town of Karlovy Vary marks a birthday this summer: it was opened to the public in 1914. It remains the easy way to get a bird's-eye view of Karlovy Vary (the town often referred in older travel literature as Carlsbad). The doctors treating spa clients would naturally prefer that their patients walk rather than ride up the hillside.
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Russian Orthodox churches on the Riviera
Visitors to the Riviera are often surprised to find the striking Orthodox churches along the coast. From the red headlands of the Esterel Massif to Sanremo in Liguria, there is a hint of the east in the ecclesiastical landscape - a legacy of the history of Russian visitors to the region.
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A question of numbers
'Grey gold' is the term used by Ærø councillor Carl Heide to describe the talented and still-very-active migrants whom he feels can help sustain community life on the Danish island of Ærø. For an island where deaths greatly outnumber births, and where young adults often move away, the challenge of maintaining a viable community is uppermost on the local agenda.
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Dollars and cents
Three of the 406 municipalities that comprise the Netherlands use a currency other than the euro. Yes, there really are three municipalities where you buy Dutch pancakes with US dollars.
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Rail timetable reborn
The renaissance of the European Rail Timetable (ERT) is good news for rail travellers across the continent. The decision last year by Thomas Cook to scrap the title was a bitter blow. But, thanks to a new company set up by the team that compiled the timetable in Thomas Cook days, the ERT is back.
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The idea of ‘good’ borders
The Curzon Line, which for so long marked the approximate western border of the Soviet Union is named after Lord Curzon. His Lordship has strong ideas on borders, seeing them very much as zones of demarcation. But ideas have changed since Curzon's day. Across much of Europe, they have become invitations for communities on either side to collaborate.
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By train to Sóller
The jewel in the crown of Mallorca's railways is the delightfully antiquated Ferrocarril de Sóller. Last year, it celebrated 100 years of service. It is just one of three separate railways to serve the Mediterranean island.
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Fictional twins
Do they have meerkats in Russia? Or in Market Harborough? And where exactly is Meerkovo? We go in search of Russia's most famous non-existent village.
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The airport question
What new European airport welcomed its inaugural flight in April this year and has since closed its doors for a long winter break? The answer is Kassel in Germany, which gets the hidden europe wooden spoon for the biggest transport flop of the year.
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Maltese connections
Virtu Ferries have until recently enjoyed a monopoly in the market from Malta to Italy, but a new ferry route launched this summer brings some competition.
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The Caucasus dimension
Georgians have high hopes for the Lithuanian Presidency of the European Union - a six-month term that started this month. Georgia, like Lithuania, slipped out of the Soviet Union in 1991. The hopes in Tbilisi are that Lithania will open European doors for other ex-Soviet states.
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Hitting the buffers
Does the European Rail Timetable, published by Thomas Cook since 1873, have a future with a new publisher? Plans are afoot for the relaunch of a book that has defined horizons for generations of travellers.
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History for sale
Many abandoned station buildings in rural Poland are finding new life as private entrepreneurs restore them to their former glory. This spring the Polish authorities are selling off a further tranche of buildings, most of them remarkable pieces of architecture.
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Asia in the mind
We start with a dubious attribution, a few words allegedly uttered by the Austrian diplomat and politician Count Metternich. And we end with the Ukrainian poet and dramatist Lesya Ukrainka in Georgia. In between, we discover that Asia is a state of mind – a place of the imagination that always lies away to the east.
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Brand power
The number of Russians making cross-border journeys into northern Scandinavia to go shopping leapt by over a third last year. They head for small towns in northern Finland and some even continue into Sweden to visit the world's northernmost branch of IKEA.
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Hartland connections
The parish of Hartland in the north-west corner of Devon is served by no railway lines, and the endless onslaught of winds and waves have destroyed its port. Only the name, Hartland Quay, survives on maps as a reminder of the commerce and trade once handled here.
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England and Europe
Given our interests, you might have thought that we'd have pounced on The Smell of the Continent the moment it was published in 2009. The book is a witty and well-researched account of how the English discovered continental Europe in a decades following the Napoleonic Wars.
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Time check
The second weekend in December sees new rail timetables introduced across Europe. The new schedules see a significant recasting on long distance services in the northern Balkans. Two new international night trains will link Italy with France and Germany respectively.
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The art of marketing
We fear that the slow travel tag has been appropriated by writers and publishers who see slow travel as the latest marketing opportunity. Seven years after the launch of hidden europe and three years after the publication of our Manifesto for Slow Travel, we take a look at how slow travel is evolving.
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Mirogoj Cemetery in Zagreb
Nicely multi-ethnic, assertively multi-confessional, the cemetery at Maragoj is a fine spot to fire the imagination of the living. The cemetery in Zagreb's northern suburbs is one of Europe's most evocative burial grounds.
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Mining heritage
A new crop of European heritage has just been added to UNESCO's celebrated list of notable heritage. The newcomers to the World Heritage List include remarkable industrial villages in Flanders and Wallonie, a German opera house and a clutch of colourful Swedish farmhouses.
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Stranded in San Marino
San Marino may no longer have a passenger railway. It does however still have a train, thus marking out San Marino as one of two countries in Europe that have a train but no railway. The surviving train in San Marino is a graceful addition to the landscape of the mountainous republic in the Apennines. It is perched on an old railway bridge.
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Agar Town
We remember Agar Town, an area of London that simply disappeared from the maps when in 1866 the Midland Railway edged south towards St Pancras.
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Rites of penance
Prompted by Diego Vivanco's report from San Vicente de la Sonsierra, hidden europe sets out to detect the origins of the religious practice of self-flagellation in Europe.
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La Maison de la Beurière
Today, the steeply sloping streets behind Boulogne's Quai Gambetta no longer have the character of a closely-knit fishing community. hidden europe visits a little museum that recalls the former life of this distinctive part of the French port city.
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Ephemeral art
There is a remarkable vividness about pieces of art whose days are numbered. Artists like Richard Shilling and Andy Goldsworthy have been keen advocats of what is sometimes called land art. We search for the remnants of last year's sand sculpture festival in the coastal community of Søndervig.
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Red Star Sofia
Whatever happened to the massive five-pointed red star that for many years topped the communist party headquarters in Sofia? For years, it was hidden away in a cellar, but now it greets visitors to a new museum of socialist art in the Bulgarian capital.
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Libyan links
We explore the prospects for new ferry services in the Mediterranean linking Europe with Libya.
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Better prospects
During the 1960s and 70s, trains full of guest workers (or Gastarbeiter as the migrant workers were called in Germany) were a common site arriving in German cities. This autumn marks the fiftieth anniversary of the accord between Turkey and Germany that prompted on of the largest migrations of workers in recent European history.
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The lunch that never was
We revisit a surreal moment at a tiny café tucked away in the forests of eastern Estonia.
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Temple of All Religions
Ildar Khanov lives in a temple of his own creation. It boasts a splendid array of minarets and domes that recall many of the world’s principal religions. Not quite what you might expect to find in the suburb of a city in the Russian Federation. But this is Russia with a twist, for Ildar Khanov lives in Tatarstan.
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The Russian Federation
Kalmykia is the only political unit in Europe where Buddhism is the dominant religion. You think we jest! But it is true. We take a look at some of the lesser known republics within the European part of the Russian Federation.
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Sharing sacred space
The clean lines that we think divide religions often become very blurred in the Balkan region. Thus shrines may be claimed as sacred by adherents of more than one religion. We look at the phenomenon of syncretic shrines.
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Malta: end of the road
They call it progress. In early July, Malta’s splendid fleet of heritage yellow buses was replaced by modern vehicles run by transport conglomerate Arriva.
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From Waterlitz to Austerloo
Did you know you can take the train to Brathlavstan or fly to MaastrAachen? The portmanteau title of Daniela-Carmen Crasnaru’s 1998 poetry anthology Austerloo prompts us to reflect on portmanteau terms in European geography.
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Crossing the lagoon
The Stettiner Haff or Szczecin Lagoon is one of Europe's unsung water bodies, a vast area of shallow saline water that is home to many birds. Seasonal ferry services cross the lagoon in the summer months, allowing travellers to explore this remote area on the German-Polish border.
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Girls on the bridge
A line of red and green Russian border-posts skirt the Norwegian Parliament building in Oslo. Politicians turn and look, as do casual passers-by. It is a quiet reminder that Norway really does share a common land border with Russia.
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By ferry to Russia
There is one very good reason for travelling by ferry to the Russian city of St Petersburg. For a short stay, ferry travellers are generally exempt from Russia's otherwise strict visa rules. So no surprise perhaps that St Peter Line, which already operates ferries from Helsinki to St Petersburg, is now adding new routes from Stockholm and Tallinn.
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Superstitious minds
If you happen to know a good source of peewit's hearts, please let us know. We explore some of the zanier superstitions that we have run across on our travels across Europe.
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Sea and Sardinia
'There's nothing to see in Nuoro,' wrote DH Lawrence when he and his wife Frieda visited Sardinia in January 1921. 'Happy is the town that has nothing to show,' opined the English writer. We follow the Lawrences on their winter journey by sea to Sardinia.
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Polish connections
A quick review of recent and upcoming changes to Polish train services, as a new rural rail route linking Poland with the Czech Republic opens for business.
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Cruise ferry update
Catamarans compete for space with whales and dolphins in the crowded sea lanes off the south coast of Spain. Space is tight in some European waters as more travellers embrace ferry travel and an efficient and relaxing way of getting around.
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Sillitoe in Menton
Alan Sillitoe's first publications, written during the brief spell that he lived in Menton in France, were travel essays. Sillitoe died in April, having achieved a formidable reputation as a novelist. We take a look at the lesser known side of Sillitoe's writing, namely his travel prose.
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The Mixdorf maze
Full marks to the Ragower Mühle, a mill in the beautiful Schlaube valley near Berlin, for having created what we think is the first maze in Europe explicitly designed with wheelchair users in mind. Would only that the access route through the Brandenburg forests to reach the maze near Mixdorf were not so formidably rutted and bumpy.
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Top brass
The brass band is alive and well in the Faroe Islands and is just one aspect of the varied musical life of the remote North Atlantic archipelago. hidden europe presents a pot pourri of musical notes from the Faroes.
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Urban matchmaking
Two towns, neither of them well known beyond their local regions. Herten in Germany and Dudley in England. Both are so very similar, that they seem to be places made for each other. Indulge us, while we engage in a little matchmaking.
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An immortal mortar
It is a little known fact that the entire course of European history has been shaped by mortars and pestles. We unravel a little tale from Venice that highlights why the mortar deserves pride of place in any good culinary armamentarium.
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Painted churches
The UNESCO World Heritage List features many ornately decorated churches across Europe. The List includes the painted monasteries of southern Bukovina (described elsewhere in this issue), as well as murals on churches in Switzerland, Bulgaria and Germany - not to mention the fabulous painted churches of the Troodos Mountains in Cyprus.
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A Russian diversion
The Imperial Russian Standard, with the double-headed eagle so intimately associated with the Romanovs, still hangs in the living room of a wooden lodge on the bank of a river in southern Finland. We visit the former holiday home of the Russian tsars.
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Viva football
World Cup year! Again! We shall be eagerly following the 2010 Viva World Cup as teams from Padania, Gozo, Lapland, Monaco and other small territories compete for football supremacy.
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Cyprus links
A range of new shipping links now gives Cyprus new status as a stepping stone to ports in the eastern Mediterranean. We report on new services from Cyprus to Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Israel.
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All a matter of time
How many time zones in mainland Europe? The answer is six. All a matter of astronomy, you might think. And to some extent that is true. But the way we set our clocks is often as much a matter of politics as a respect for astronomy.
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Arctic concord
Cross-border confidence is the Barents Sea region has this year prompted a raft of new initiatives fascillitating contact between Norway and Russia. hidden europe reports from the town of Kirkenes in northeast Norway.
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Orient Express: end of the line
The news that the Orient Express will be withdrawn from mid-December 2009 brings to an end the 126 year history of Europe's most celebrated scheduled train service.
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Cross-border traffic: missing links
Investments in cross-border roads in remote and rural areas of the European Union are much to be welcomed. But where are the bus services that should be plying those routes to connect communities across borders?
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A matter of letters: Belarusian
The complex story of the Belarusian language and its flexible deployment of three different alphabets deserves to the better known. Early Belarusian texts in the Arabic script (called kitabs) are a remarkable part of Europe's cultural heritage.
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Orbiting Zagreb
Pluto must be very small and very far away. And so it is in Davor Preis' ingenious model of the solar system that invisibly orbits Zagreb and its suburbs.
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Ukraine: Askania-Nova
A nineteenth-century nature reserve on the dry steppes of southern Ukraine was a pioneering example of early nature conservation in Europe. The feathery grasses still dance to the local winds at Askania-Nova.
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Norway by plane
A small Norwegian airline called Widerøe operates flights into some of Europe's remotest communities. The company's Explore Norway Ticket allows travellers to hop from one small airport to another.
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The island of Gavdos
We take a look at one of Europe's remotest outposts. The island of Gavdos is south of Crete in the Libyan Sea. The fact that George Bush and Colin Powell have both visited is a measure of the strategic importance of Gavdos.
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A submarine secret
The Norwegian Depression is not a state of mind. It is actually a submarine valley off the coast of Norway. We explain more in this short note.
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Landfall in Iceland
It is difficult to go to ReykjavÃk without getting a big dose of Icelandic history. Icelanders will proudly tell you the tale of Ingólfur Arnarson who gets a lot of credit all over Iceland for putting the country on the map in the late ninth century.
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Salt splashes
tidal crossings in England from the Scilly Isles to Holy Island
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Decoding the suburbs
beyond the boulevard périphérique: the language of Parisian suburbs
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Clothes make the man
Street iconography that is more than commercial branding.
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Preserving Arctic wilds
a new Russian national park
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Crossing the North Sea
Ferry operators Smyril Line and Fjord Line merge - and one of the most historic North Sea crossings disappears.
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Raindrops keep falling
is London really wetter than Nice or Rome - an interesting cognitive illusion
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Under the wires
Arriving at Lviv airport recently, the hidden europe team was pleasantly surprised to find that trolleybuses are still a regular sight on the streets of the Ukrainian city. This prompted us to track down Europe's longest trolleybus route.
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Overnight luxury
As we report in railscan, many overnight trains have been axed, but, especially within the CIS countries, there remain a few hidden gems. Ukraine is a good place to start.
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Slovak diversions
The towns of the so-called Spis confederation in Slovakia - a vivid reminder of a Saxon past.
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Eastwards by car
hidden europe suggests you can never have too many pieces of official looking paper
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The Wilde card
A monument that commemorates a meeting that never took place.
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Jewish legacies
Jewish sites in western Ukraine and southeast Poland: Hasidic connections
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Islands for sale
A while back we were contacted by one of those property companies that trade on the internet. Most unusually, it had Slovenian islands for sale.
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Riga is silent
hidden europe remembers Latvian poet Vizma Belsevica
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Nuntii latini: news in Latin
Latin is dead? By no means! News in Latin are still broadcast in Europe on a regular basis
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A place apart
Bratislava's suburbs - with Austria and Hungary both just a stone's throw away
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The European flag
one flag: blue background with twelve stars. It flutters above buildings in over forty European capitals. hidden europe looks at the Council of Europe flag.
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Hidden charges
"taxes, fees and charges extra" say the airline advertisements in tiny print, as they hawk low price flights across Europe. But what is included in taxes, fees and charges? And who levies these extras?
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Europe's steepest road
the road signs warn of a gradient of forty per cent. We track down an improbably steep hill on the Welsh coast
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Island spirit
a wee dram worth waiting for, from the island of Islay in the Scottish Hebrides
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Reserved for ladies
a special glance at gendered space - places where males and females dare not mix
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A road that disappeared
in search of the road over Cakor Pass that leaves Montenegro's Lim valley and heads east to Péc in Kosovo
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Barszcz and bigos
The Bailiwick of Jersey, in the Channel Islands, has long played host to many migrant communities. hidden europe explores the growing Polish influences in the island.
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The way to Philadelphia
Philadelphia is decidedly un-American! Because this Philadelphia is not the great city on the Delaware river; instead, it lies in a very rural part of eastern Germany, close by the Turkish Mountains and just a stone's throw from New Boston.
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Endgame
It is World Cup year. Football is everywhere. Even at the very end of Europe, in Azerbaijan, where we run across the tale of a great Azeri football hero.
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Cutting edge
A fine collection of lawnmowers attests to the collective obsession of the English to secure the perfect lawn.
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What's in a number?
An essay inspired by the Pope's telephone number! The politics of dialling codes that somehow contrive to associate Greenland with Africa.
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Banking on poets
Nineteenth century poets often nurtured the flower of national consciousness; today they are rewarded with pride of place on many European banknotes.
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Exhaustion in Ulcinj
Karlos Zurutuza reports on a summer day in Ulcinj, a coastal town in southern Montenegro.
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Ethnic enclaves
Migrant communities are often some of the most intriguing in Europe. We look at Senegalese settlers in Lombardy and Vietnamese entrepreneurs in Berlin.
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Harvest festivals
We sample a few of Europe's late summer harvest festivals.
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Crossing the Danube
Until now there has been just a single bridge crossing the Danube to link Romania with Bulgaria. That now looks set to change.
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Nicely nautical!
regular hidden europe correspondent Karlos Zurutuza files a report from Nagorno Karabagh.
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The last picture show
hidden europe celebrates the life and work of a pioneering Russian photographer.
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Bizarre nights
Quirky overnight stays - from tree houses to caves and igloos.
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Venice at rest
Venice's most populous corner turns out to be an unlikely haven of solitude.
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Essays in glass
Never heard of a fosterito? Then you have probably never been to Bilbao! hidden europe explores some unusual street architecture.
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Calculating train fares
For those who tire of trying to get staff at their local station to reveal the train fare to Istanbul, hidden europe has the perfect solution: a website with a reliable railway fare calculator.
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Georgian hospitality
A onetime showpiece hotel of the Soviet era, the Iveria in Tbilisi, was transformed into a vertical refugee camp. We find out why.
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Dice to Europanto?
Do you speak Europanto? It's not so hard to learn. To speakare Europanto, tu basta mixare alles wat tu know in extranges linguas. We take a look at one of Europe's lesser known languages.
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Latvian border links
Latvia's eastern borders mark the outer edge of the European Union. We look at a couple of frontier oddities in the areas where Latvia borders on to Belarus and Russia.
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Forbidden zones
A note on the territories where foreigners may not tread: the closed cities and proscribed zones of the Russian Federation.
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Turtle notes
More on turtles! We like turtles. This time, we report from the Karpas peninsula of northern Cyprus. The waters around the peninsula are home to both green turtles and loggerhead turtles.
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Unsung Brussels
Les Marolles is a place of smoky bars, tiny shops and rich dialects. hidden europe alights from the train at Brussels' Gare La Chapelle to explore the city's most intriguing district.
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An Azeri national symbol
The Maiden Tower in Baku is a powerful national symbol for all Azeris. But remarkably little is known about this enigmatic structure.
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The Kaliningrad puzzle
There is a part of Russia that finds itself curiously isolated from the Motherland. hidden europe reflects on the Kaliningrad puzzle.
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Autobahn affairs
Motorways come and motorways go! Yes, some routes really do disappear - like the A862 in Germany. And there are rumours that the days of the M10 in southern England are numbered.
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Trans-Caucasus rail link
Plans for a new rail link between Turkey and Georgia offer the prospect of some tantalising new journeys by train into the Caucasus region.
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Peace parks
International peace parks that seek to promote conservation across national boundaries while also encouraging cooperation across borders, are becoming increasingly common. Bringing projects like the current plan for a Balkans Peace Park to fruition demands not just environmental understanding but also a hefty dose of political acumen.
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Estonian links
A round-up of Estonian connections: planes, boats, trains and buses. We focus on what's new for the current spring season.
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A European map
A new edition of a map published by the European Union prompts us to reflect on what might make a good map of Europe.
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Summer feasts
Pilgrimages to national shrines often catch the pulse of a nation. hidden europe highlights a few summer feasts.
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Seaplanes and helicopters
Yes, flying between major airports may have become boring, but there are still interesting ways to fly in some parts of Europe. We check out a few scheduled flights by helicopter and seaplane.
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Squirrel shades
Most of Europe has red squirrels. But there are exceptions. In England, squirrels are generally grey - and just occasionally black. We report on the black squirrels of Letchworth.
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Icons or eyesores
Most visitors look to Prague for a feast of Gothic and baroque. But what of the city's modern architecture? Prague boasts what is probably the finest cubist interior anywhere in the world. We visit the Grand Café Orient.
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Devoutly Bosnian
Supernatural revelation or mere stunt? The small town of Medugorje in western Herzegovina is the focus for some extraordinary devotional antics, as Catholics flock to the mountain valley where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared.
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Hidden Yerevan
Karlos Zurutuza, a regular contributor to hidden europe, tracks down an intriguing church in the heart of Yerevan, capital of Armenia.
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Crossing the Urals
What about the most northerly railway route across the Ural Mountains? Way up north in the Nenets regions, the train to Labytnangi makes the Trans-Siberian route over the Urals seem rather tame.
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Alchemy in Brussels
The Grand Place in Brussels seem the epitome of peace. But does it house some hidden messages? Some say that a great cosmic tussle finds expression in the architecture. A Masonic tale from the Belgian capital.
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Palindromic puzzles
Surely the most bizarrely eccentric article we have ever published. We take a look at European communities with palindromic place names. From Eye to Eze and Sarras to Serres!
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Iskenderun
We stop off at an unusual Turkish port, a place where Melkites and Maronites once lived alongside Jews, Chaldeans and Anglicans. It is as cosmopolitan as ever today.
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International rail tickets
Until May this year, it was perfectly possible to buy a through ticket from continental train stations to London using cross-channel ferries. No more, but a new initative from Railteam offers the prospect of a new generation of through tickets.
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Robocop R BOT 101
R BOT 101 is a robot. He never loses his cool, nor can he be bribed. But otherwise he is much the same as the human police officers who pound the beat in the Russian city of Perm. Meet a Russian electronic cop!
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Svalbard links
For travellers with their ice axes and crampons at the ready, Svalbard (Spitsbergen) is about to come a whole lot closer, with a Norwegian budget airlines offering flights in 2008 to the Arctic archipelago.
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Norway transposed
There are about two dozen remaining fine examples of Norwegian stave churches. Most are in Norway. But one of the best is, somewhat improbably, in the mountains on the Polish-Czech border.
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A Belorussian border town
hidden europe casts an eye on Hrodna in northwest Belarus
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Untouched by modern dentistry
Molvania, Slaka and more! We recall a tradition of writing guidebooks to non existant places
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Tangier for the day
by catamaran across the Straits of Gibraltar to North Africa
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Pilgrim paths to Santiago
some lesser known pilgrim routes to Santiago de Compostella - and the path to Finisterre
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Border rites
Okay, there is the Latin or Roman Church in western Europe and the Orthodox Church in eastern Europe. Easy to remember! But what happens at the boundaries?
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The streets with no names
a navigational dilemma in the Albanian capital Tirana
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Publishers look east
Lonely Planet and Rough Guides may be mainstays in the guidebook market, but for more offbeat destinations in Europe, look to Bradt Guides for coverage of places that other publishers just do not reach.
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Russian outposts 1
rail links to Kaliningrad
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Russian connections
Malta may boast a fabulously complicated history, but the island's rich range of links with Russia is often overlooked.
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Russian outposts 2
a travelling Orthodox church in Russia: religion on rails
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North Sea ferry links
We take a moment to map out what must surely be the two most obscure international ferry links in the North Sea region.
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Revival of the Huns
Hun nostalgia makes its mark in modern Hungary
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Russian outposts 3
cruising on an icebreaker to Franz Josef Land and the North Pole
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Eggs galore
Regular hidden europe contributor Laurence Mitchell introduces us to the museum of Easter eggs at Kolomiya in eastern Ukraine.
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Ukraine opens its doors
Ukraine relaxes its visa requirements
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Islanders on celluloid
mapping the special appeal that remote island communities have held for filmmakers: Whisky Galore!, Stromboli and more
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A London palindrome
Yet more on palindromes! Yes, we really like palindromes. This time one from London.
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Cardinal points
One travel guide claims that Finisterre is the most westerly point on the European mainland. This is in fact wrong, just as other points that lay claim to special status as geographical extremities are often spurious. We map Europe's extremities.
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Unfair fares
great rail rip-off: how US travel agents make a tidy profit in selling European rail tickets
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Train times
A good train timetable is a book to cherish. So when the British authorities decided that printing a national train timetable was a waste of time and money, we were distraught. Fortunately, a latter-day Bradshaw has stepped in to fill the gap.
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Island flights
links to North Cyprus, the Faroe islands, the Azores and Svalbard
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When a border is not a border
hidden europe tracks down some curious cases of European border crossings which are not open to all
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The heart of nations
"We may no longer be officially the centre of England" says a lady in Meriden in the English Midlands. "But we are undoubtedly at the heart of the country." Join us as we ponder on the heart of nations.
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Snickelways
What were once back streets of iniquity in the English city of York are now important elements in the cityscape - little lanes and alleys that, for those in the know, provide valuable short cuts.
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Worth a detour
Many classic guide book publishers, going back to nineteenth century, have used star ratings to grade sights. But is Antibes really only "interesting" and not "worth a detour"?
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A dog's life
Chtenia: Readings from Russia is a new themed literary journal that features good Russian writing, old and new, in translation. If it lives up to the promise of its first issue, which focuses on canine tales from Russia, it will be a huge success.
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Border traffic
A note from the remote border region on the Barents Sea coast where Russia and Norway share a common frontier.
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Restaurante Los Pueblos
We look inside one of the traditional Andalucian restaurants that does a roaring lunchtime trade in Málaga.
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Innovation vs. imitation
We are great fans of quirky museums. The Museum of Plagiarism in the German town of Solingen is definitely worth a visit.
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Harefares or hare-brained
Route indexing services seem to be all the rage with many new websites offering advice on who flies where, and each claiming to be better than its rivals. Harefares invited us to cast an eye over their website, which they claim is the most complete for the continent. It turned out to be sorely wanting.
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The exotic Baltic
The best chicken soup this side of the Volga? Look to a Kazakh restaurant in Vilnius! The Baltic States are not just meat and potato country. You'll find exotic restaurants aplenty from Uzbek to Armenian, Georgian to Azeri.
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Alpiniøya (Spitsbergen)
The name of a tiny island off the coast of Nordaustlandet in Spitzbergen is a tribute to an extraordinary series of expeditions conducted in 1928 by members of the Alpini, the elite mountain brigade of the Italian army. A report from Alpiniøya.
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Flying to Fair Isle
To fly to the Scottish island of Fair Isle (midway between the Shetlands and the Orkney Islands) is to have one of the most extraordinary flying experiences on offer in Europe.
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A noble commune
If the demeanour and bearing of folk waiting at the bus stop in Velika Gorica looks that little bit more distinguished than in other towns in Croatia, it is merely that there is more blue blood in Velika Gorica than anywhere else in the region. Welcome to the Noble Commune of Turopolje.
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Greenland banknotes
This autumn the population of Greenland has a referendum that could usher in full self-government for the island nation. Greenland is confidently asserting its very distinctive identity - and a new set of banknotes are just part of the story.
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Blessed bread
The rituals of religion take a strange turn in the Savoie village of Bramans in the French Alps. We report on the significance of the pain bénit (blessed bread) festival that is held in Bramans on 15 August each year.
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In praise of birches
Pause and listen, in the rustles of a late summer breeze stirring the majestic birch, for an echo of the Russian soul. Russians have a very special relationship with the birch tree. Find out more!
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Hugo connections
Victor Hugo was an acclaimed writer, to be sure, but he was also a European visionary. We look at Hugo's connections with Luxembourg.
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Simenon in Liège
Fact and fiction blur in modern Liège. One city square has been renamed after Georges Simenon's fictional detective Inspector Maigret.
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Autumn in Trieste
The best cafés have the knack of allowing you simultaneously to feel alone and yet in company. The Caffè San Marco in Trieste is one of the best.
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Filfla (Malta)
Filfla is Malta's forgotten island. It is a place reserved for lizards and storm petrels.
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A Baha'i pioneer
A short tribute to Brigitte Hasselblatt, the spiritual mother of both the Shetland and the Estonian Baha'i communities.
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A Polish curiosity
To walk through the door of the church is to leave modern Poland and enter a space suffused with exotic incense and the rich iconography of European Orthodoxy. A note on the Polish Orthodox church in Jelenia Góra.
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Sicilian New Year
Snow gathered on Etna on the first of January makes wonderful granita - the perfect antidote to any New Year Day's hangover.
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Slovakia's new currency
Slovakia adopts the euro and along the way reshapes its identity. Icons of western and secular modernity replace a more eastern demeanour.
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Latin lover
Do you think Latin is a dead language? We present the case to the contrary.
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Radishes in Hesselø
As long as the radishes grown on Hesselø remain red and white, so shall the island be forever Danish. At least that is the perspective of one of the island's last remaining residents. Hesselø is a little remnant of Denmark that is coveted by Sweden - a rare instance of strife disturbing a Nordic harmony of nations.
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More than a streetcar
Inter-municipal tram routes still survives here and there in Europe. We survey examples from the Ruhr region of Germany, Bohemia, the Isle of Man and England.
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Northern palms
Scourie Lodge in northwest Scotland may claim to have the most northerly palm trees in the world, but we think they are wrong. We travel north up the Norwegian coast in search of palm trees that seemingly defy geography.
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Pomor visa fiasco
Way up north near the Barents Sea, Norway borders onto Russia. The Norwegian port of Kirkenes depends heavily on good links with its Russian hinterland. But all is not well in this Arctic wilderness.
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Latvia's Liv minority
A remote coastal area of northern Latvia is at the heart of a modest revival of Liv culture. The Liv community of Latvia have their own language and way of life and are one the Baltic region's most distinctive cultural minorities.
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Tatra politics
A forgotten incident in the history of the Polish Tatra Mountains invites us to consider whether public access really can be reconciled with conservation objectives in European wilderness areas.
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Muddy waters
Nicolai Gogol's Ukrainian connections come under the spotlight as we stop off at the spa town of Saky in the Crimea region.
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Shipping news
There are new shipping routes aplenty for the 2009 summer season. We take a look at what's new in the world of European ferries, with many developments in the North Sea, Baltic and Mediterranean markets.