Welcome to hidden europe 16, which explores the Polish city of Bydgoszcz, windmills in Andalucia, MS Lofoten boat in northern Norway, the Sorbs of Lusatia and the Narva river region.
hidden europe 16
hidden europe travel magazine explores the Polish city of Bydgoszcz, windmills in Andalucia, MS Lofoten boat in northern Norway, the Sorbs of Lusatia and the Narva river region.
Picture above:
The fortress at Vyborg, Russia (photo © Nikolay Sereda / dreamstime.com)
Summary
hidden europe travel magazine explores the Polish city of Bydgoszcz, windmills in Andalucia, MS Lofoten boat in northern Norway, the Sorbs of Lusatia and the Narva river region.
God never intended travellers to reach the land of tapas, sherry, flamenco and Carmen without a struggle. Join us as we head south through Spain for Andalucía, first crossing Don Quixote country (La Mancha) and then taking Despenaperros Pass through the Sierra Morena.
Bydgoszcz is a gritty sort of place. You'll still scuff your shoes on the dust as you walk through town on the footpath that hugs the bank of the Brda river. But Bydgoszcz is all the better for having never quite been tamed.
Vardø is a Norwegian town where they used to burn witches. It's further east than Cairo! Join us on a remarkable ship, the MS Lofoten, as we explore the parts of Norway that most travellers never reach.
If you venture out to where the Sorbs live, around the River Spree upstream from Berlin, watch out for the Water Man. He is small, grey and hideous, and may even try to lure you to a horrid death by drowing. We explore the Sorb communities of Lusatia.
Hungary's byways and lanes are suddenly getting brighter, as new laws encourage booming sales in fluorescent safety jackets.
Rivers are often the great links between nations. Not so the Narva River which divides Russia from Estonia. We review life in this border region and look at how the Saimaa Canal, on the frontier between Finland and Russia, might offer a good model for the Narva river area.
Finland's Ox Road is one of northern Europe's ancient highways. It skirts lakeshores, crosses gravelly eskers, weaves round moraines and links some of Finland's oldest settlements.
Few towns and villages in Europe will mark the fortieth anniversary of the death of Che Guevara in October. But they surely will in Marinaleda, a small town in southern Spain where the cult of Che is alive and well.
Travel around Europe and you will come across runic texts in Scandinavia and Scotland's Orkney islands, Glagolitic inscriptions in Croatia and Hebrew texts on synagogues across the continent. We explore how alphabets often become an emblem of identity.
Living on the old military frontier at the edge of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Uskoks made a decent living. They are still there. Nowadays their homeland is where Croatia abuts onto Slovenia. Join us as we visit a few Uskok villages.
Film directors often morph real world geographies to suit their own purposes. Docks on the River Thames stand in for Venice, and Granada in southern Spain suddenly is given new life as a Turkish port. We look at a few examples of transposed geography.
'We do not come here to look at the mountains', said the Carthusian monk with a curl of his lip. Yet still the monks of La Grande Chartreuse listen for the cry of the eagle as it soars over Europe's most extraordinary monastic outpost.
It was traumatic to find, some years back, that our favourite Italian restaurant - a neat little place in San Remo - had been turned into a garage. Things change. Let's take a moment to pick up threads of some articles published by hidden europe over the last year or two and see what has changed.
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.
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.
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!
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.
a look ahead at issue no. 17.