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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 ...
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 ...
Marking Time: New Train Services for 2020
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 ...
Crossing the Water
There are three places in Europe where passenger trains are still regularly conveyed on ferries. One of them is the Scandlines ferry that carries the regular daytime Eurocity trains from Hamburg to Copenhagen. But the days of that rail-ferry link ...
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 ...
When Empires Crumbled
The dignified commemorations marking one hundred years since the end of the First World War masked the details of what actually happened in November 1918. The aftermath of the Great War was a messy business, with conflict continuing in some areas ...
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 ...
Two Peas in a Pod: Denmark's Eastern Edges
The Ertholm Islands (literally 'Pea Islands') are the easternmost fragments of Danish territory, even further east than Bornholm. Just two islands in this small archipelago are populated: Christiansø and Frederiksø. In the 19th century, Frederiksø ...
Forbidden places
Next weekend, there's the chance to visit an extraordinary place in England - a village where the entire population was forcibly removed in 1943 in order to provide space on Salisbury Plain for American military manoeuvres. It's one of those places ...
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 ...
Follow the Red Brick Road: Baltic Gothic Architecture
From Lübeck and Stralsund to Malbork and Tartu, the distinctive decorative red-brick architecture is regarded as an iconic feature of the Baltic region. We take a look at the architectural tradition often known by its German name ...
The Shallow and the Deep: Exploring Maritime Geographies
So you think you know your way around Europe? Have you ever visited Adventure Bank or the Valencia Trough? Or taken a holiday on the Yermak Plateau? We take time out to explore maritime ...
Short hops by plane
Short hops by air over water are of course very common, generally relying on non-jet aircraft and providing lifeline air services to island communities around the coasts of Europe. A review of old airline timetables reveals that there used to be ...
The Aurora fades
A couple of years ago we commented on the departure boards at the main railway station at Basel that they are "no longer bubbling with as much character as once they did." But Basel's SBB station in 2012 still had its moments, the best of which was ...
Financial architecture
Well do we know that modern pieties demand that one speaks only ill of banks, but here at hidden europe we often say nice things about bankers - or, to be more precise, about the good judgement exercised from time to time by bankers as they ...
Ship Talk: From the Kattegat to the Crimea
Many travellers through Denmark this summer will be sorry to discover that the long-standing direct ferry from Kalundborg (on Sjælland) to Aarhus (on Jutland) has been axed. This is just one of many routes to disappear in the latest round of cuts ...
Double act: the Danish island of Ærø
The Danish island of Ærø is no more than a fleck in the Baltic. Yet this beautiful island is a good place to understand Danish history. If you are ever in any doubt as to how much the sea has inflected the Danish experience, make time for Marstal, ...
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 ...
Springtime on Ærø
Ærø in four words: hilly, hospitable, homely, hyggelig. The Danish island is the place to be at times like this. It is mellow and calm, a small island that wants spring to come sooner rather than later. The hilltops are scattered with ancient ...
The storm
It is one of those wild sulphurous days, and the bare heath beats to the roar of the winds. The storm sweeps in from the west. The drenched heath lies low. And it survives the fierce onslaught. The forest at Froeslev is less ...
Remembering Jacob Riis
The social reformer and documentary photography Jacob Riis, author of 'How the Other Half Lives' (1890), was born in the town of Ribe in Danish Jutland. Understanding Ribe is the key to understanding Jacob Riis. We take a look at how Riis described ...
Making waves from Ribe
Ribe no longer makes waves as once it did. The silting up of waterways has changed the local landscape. The bustle of port trade has long gone, but Ribe is still a watery place. Set in a wall on one Ribe street is an inscription that notes the ...
Of trains and tariffs: cross-border rail links in Europe
The European Union has programmes to encourage sustainable transport initiatives and to promote links between communities that are separated by frontiers. Yet every year more cross-border rail links close. We take a look at the issues preventing ...
Tussling with the elements: Jutland
Survival on Jutland's coast has always been a question of working with nature. Great storms have transformed the sandy coastline and entire communities have come and gone with the ebb and flow of history. We travel north along the Danish mainland's ...
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 ...
Frisian waves
We map our way around Europe using antique guidebooks, just as we map our way through the year using long-obsolete ecclesiastical calendars. So we are in a small minority of Europeans who happen to know that today, 16 January, was long observed as ...
Cast in stone: the island of Rømø
The Danish island of Rømø is full of reminders of its erstwhile connections with the whaling industry. There are fence posts made of whalebones, and the skull of a whale stands beside the main road across the ...
Crossing the Kiel Canal
If you like three dimensional landscapes, then Germany's most northerly state of Schleswig-Holstein is probably not for you. The hills are there, but you have to look hard to see them. We took a local train across Schleswig-Holstein last Sunday on ...
Smyril Line evaluates Risavika
Risavika on the coast of Norway has experienced mixed fortunes in recent years. The port serves nearby Stavanger, the city that is the service hub for the Norwegian offshore oil industry. It now looks as if Smyril Line is tempted to add Risavika as ...
Northern waters: Iceland by boat
It is surprising how quickly Denmark recedes into nothingness, and then the Norröna is alone among the waves. We travel on Smyril Line's flagship as she sails from Denmark via the Faroe Islands to the eastern fjords of ...
Airport links
Is not the journey to the airport often one of the great hassles of modern travel? Not all of us can enjoy the relaxed approach taken in the Isle of Man where narrow gauge steam trains pause on request at Ronaldsway Halt, just a short walk from the ...
Triglav (Slovenia) - the Danish Everest
It is that time of year when Slovenes take to the hills. It is perfectly possible to be Scottish and never climb Ben Nevis, just as it is easy to be German without ever having set foot on the Zugspitze - that is the mountain straddling the border ...
Privileged places: a small town eulogy
hidden europe alights upon a trinity of urban delights: Damme (Belgium), Ribe (Denmark) and Ystad ...
Crossing the North Sea
ferry operators Smyril Line and Fjord Line merge - and one of the most historic North Sea crossings ...
Grave encounters
The symbolism of a grave often eclipses the transient mortal whose remains are interred therein. We visit some of Europe's more interesting ...
Turbulent waters
Freight boats that take passengers, new routes and change aplenty as hidden europe reviews what's new in Europe's shipping schedules for ...
Coastal pedalling: around the North Sea
The North Sea cycleway demands more than 5000 kilometres of pedal power - and few ferry hops too. It is a route that takes in eight countries and encircles the North ...
Mapping the skies: the Swedish island of Ven
The astronomer Tycho Brahe arrived on the island of Ven with a stipend from the Danish king and an artificial nose. We report from the island where Tycho lived with his pet ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Swallowed by the sea: Jordsand
Jordsand is no more. The island in the Wadden Sea was once German then Danish and provided valued summer grazing for livestock from Jutland. Now it has been swallowed by the ...
Rock and rituals: Roskilde
Think of Roskilde, a smallish city on the Danish island of Sjælland. Yes, the annual rock festival. Yet there is much more to Roskilde than the rituals of one of Europe's premier open air music events. It is a place that captures the very essence ...
Sea fever
When one time English poet laureate John Masefield extolled the lure of the ocean ("I must down to the seas again..."), he clearly didn't have Cunard's luxury Queen Elizabeth II ship or the same company's new super liner Queen Mary in ...
Changing trains in Copenhagen
The building housing the Nimb Hotel in Copenhagen is deliciously exotic - a Taj Mahal style confection that incorporates Chinese and Moorish elements. It celebrates its centenary this year, having opened its doors in 1909 as Carstensen's Bazaar. In ...
Greenland referendum
There has been a revolution overnight in Nuuk. In the early hours of this morning, referendum results showed that Greenlanders have voted overwhelmingly for much greater autonomy from Denmark. This is not the first time that Greenland has rocked ...
South Jutland (Denmark)
Visit Jutland in Denmark and listen out for the local dialect, Sønderjysk or South Jutlandic, which some in the region feel should have the status of a minority language. In some schools in this part of Denmark, Sønderjysk is part of the regular ...
Across Iceland's interior
Iceland's central highlands are no cakewalk. At least that's the way Andrew Evans puts it in the Bradt Guide to the country. "Iceland's interior feels more a cross between the Gobi desert and Antarctica," writes Andrew. It is that time of year when ...
Traces of Europe in the Caribbean
On 31 March each year the most American of Caribbean islands recalls its Danish past. Until 1917, St Thomas was part of the Danish West Indies. There were three main islands in the Danish West Indies: St Thomas, St John and St Croix. The capital of ...
Saltholm, Denmark - Corsica - Moldova Wine Festival
The upcoming days see a couple of quirky festivals in Corsica, each marking the Catholic feast of the Nativity of Mary on 8 September. At Lavasina, in Corsica's northeast corner, locals gather on the beach for midnight Mass in honour of the gifted ...