Letter from Europe

Special subscription offer - an improbable Czech memorial

Issue no. 2005/9

Summary

Ústí nad Labem in the Czech Republic is certainly an unsung spot. hidden europe stopped off here in early April, revisiting a town that first caught our attention three years back when we found an intriguing few lines in The Rough Guide to The Czech & Slovak Republics.

Dear fellow travellers

hidden europe has a special subscription offer running from now until 30 June. If you take a new one year subscription, whether for yourself or as a gift for someone else, to commence with our July issue, we offer you the chance to purchase the two back issues for the price of one! Simply go to our online shop and follow the "special offer" link in the side bar. Of course you can also call us on 0049 30 755 16 128 and we'll gladly handle your order over the phone. This offer ends 30 June, and the two back issues will be mailed on 1 July 2005 with hidden europe 3. For gift subscriptions, use the 'comment' column in our online shop during check-out to give us a few details, and we''ll happily attach a card for the recipient, giving details of who made the purchase.

an improbable Czech memorial

Ústí nad Labem in the Czech Republic is certainly an unsung spot. hidden europe stopped off here in early April, revisiting a town that first caught our attention three years back when we found an intriguing few lines in The Rough Guide to The Czech & Slovak Republics. "Trains usually stop at Ústí for only four or five minutes, which is long enough for most people", said the guide. This seemed a tad harsh on the Bohemian town that nestles in the Labe valley about an hour north of Prague, and the Rough Guide's dismissal of Ústí prompted us to explore the place a little more.

Ústí, it has been to said, does not yield its charms easily, but it certainly has more of interest than our old Rough Guide implies. It has the remarkable new Mariánský suspension bridge, and the whole place oozes history. The town proclaims every august connection it can muster, from King Wenceslas to Napoleon and even a tenuous link with Marlene Dietrich. England's King Edward VII, it seems, was a fan of Ústí beer, and would have a few cases delivered each year for his regular summer sojourn in Marienbad. The town also asserts its cosmopolitan credentials through its road names: Parízská, Moskevská, Londýnská, and streets named after Roosevelt, Rembrandt, Churchill and Wagner. We walked them all, ending up on Bratislavská, which at its southern end has a quite remarkable memorial. There we found a huge photographic tribute to an alleged successful Albanian moon landing in July 1999. The red and black Albanian flag with its distinctive double headed eagle, and the images of helmeted Albanians treading the lunar surface showed that in Ústí, for all its drabness, there does at least remain a nice sense of civic humour.

More on Ústí in the July 2005 issue of hidden europe, when we visit Maticní Street, home to some of Ústí nad Labem's Roma minority.

Related articleFull text online

The Hills of Western Serbia

There are many visions of Yugoslavia's past. Laurence Mitchell visits the hills of western Serbia to learn how heritage and history fuel the imagination. It's a journey that starts and ends in Uzice and takes in the famous Sargan Eight narrow-gauge railway.

Related article

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?
Related article

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.