Exploring cultures and communities – the slow way

hidden europe 59

Here is an extended table of contents for hidden europe 59 with brief summaries and excerpts of every article published in this issue of the magazine. Read the full version of all articles in the print edition of hidden europe 59, published in November 2019.

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The shaping of history and the stories which are told about a region’s past are endlessly fascinating and that’s a running theme in this issue of hidden europe. We look at examples from Alsace and Spain and also look at how guidebooks helped, in ...
The town hall and church in the Vosges town of Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines. The town was once home to many Amish who in time emigrated to America (photo © hidden europe).

Join us as we discover the Vosges hills in the Alsace and Lorraine regions of eastern France. It's a region which has always been a wellspring of fine ideas, cutting a dash in the world of culture and industry. We visit a valley once settled by the ...
The Meninpoort (Menin Gate) in Ypres was unveiled in 1927 as a memorial to those who fell in the Great War (photo © Sergey Dzyuba / dreamstime.com).

It's hard to imagine these days that any guidebook might ever sell 100,000 copies each month. But 100 years ago, in the second half of 1919, Michelin was managing just that. We explore how guidebooks fared in the years after the end of the First ...
A rare departure from Berlin Hauptbahnhof — a direct train to Stockholm (photo © hidden europe).

As winter slipped slowly into spring in 1917, Lenin passed through Berlin on his journey back to Russia from Switzerland. His onward route from Berlin took him by train to Sassnitz, then on by ferry to Trelleborg in Sweden. These days it's still ...
Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria is of course a complete fake. There is nothing mediaeval about it at all (photo © minnystock / dreamstime.com).

Germany has themed tourist routes aplenty, but one of the earliest was the so-called Romantic Road, which leads from Würzburg in northern Bavaria south towards the Alps. It was hugely popular with American visitors, becoming a sort of showcase for ...
Vienna is the best connected European capital when it comes to train travel (photo © SlavkoSereda / dreamstime.com).

The hidden europe award for ingenuity in creating new European rail travel opportunities is awarded to Austria's state rail operator, Österreichische Bundesbahnen (ÖBB). We look at what ÖBB will offer anew for 2020, and examine too what's new on ...
The Uffizi Gallery in Florence (photo © Gordon Bell).

Take care how many art galleries of great Baroque churches you visit in a day. Overdoing it can have dire consequences. Too many cherubs or crucifixions might induce transient paranoid psychosis or even irrevocable breakdown. Or so they say. We ...
Image © Ievgenii Tryfonov / dreamstime.com

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 ...
The train to nowhere: a fragment of a railway through the Vosges, built in the 1930s but never completed (photo © hidden europe).

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 ...

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 ...
Image © Shaiith / dreamstime.com

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 ...

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 ...