Dear fellow travellers
The anticipation of Christmas, hastened by an all-too-short Advent this year, means that many of the calendrical highlights of December are easily missed. In many of the Orthodox Churches, today is the Feast of the Holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called (which ranks in the premier league of saintly titles). St Andrew is of course the patron saint of both Russia and Scotland.
Today is also the Feast of Santa Lucia, giving a cue for various festivals of light across Europe this evening. We are moving into the midnight of the year, and your lives are probably just as busy as ours on these pre-Christmas days.
So, in a rare commercial plug for our products, we have some handsome Christmas gift ideas. For just 48 hours from the time stamp of this newsletter, we are selling signed copies of our Europe by Rail book, the fifteenth edition of which was published late last month. This 512-page book is a fine celebration of journeys around Europe, and is the perfect guide for readers planning European rail trips in 2018.
But act quickly, as this signed copy opportunity ends in the evening of Friday 15 December. The book costs €20, which includes worldwide delivery by priority airmail. We cannot absolutely guarantee pre-Christmas delivery, but we’ll do our level best to get books shipped quickly. Our final pre-Christmas mailings are on Friday and Saturday.
We also have gift sets of back issues of hidden europe magazine and gift subscriptions too. Again, this pre-Christmas sale runs only until this Friday evening.
As a small publisher, we rely greatly on the goodwill and enthusiasm of our readers — all the more so as hidden europe accepts no advertising. To all those who have supported us in 2017, we offer our sincere thanks. And to all our readers, warm best wishes for peaceful and happy holidays.
We shall be back after Christmas with many resolutions for the New Year. One of them is to ensure that our Letter from Europe appears with unfailing regularity in 2018. We have not been so good of late in that respect. Our principal excuse is that the publishing of the new edition of Europe by Rail has been an enormous amount of work. You can read more about the new book at www.europebyrail.eu. Even if you miss the chance of buying a signed copy in the next 48 hours, the book is easy to obtain through the regular book trade. You’ll also find a list of online retailers on the book’s website.
Nicky Gardner and Susanne Kries
(editors, hidden europe magazine)
