For sale: KGB Maps

The KGB knew where you live. And whether a tank would fit up your front path. And how much they would have to roll-up their trousers in order to come running through your local river. It turns out the commie cartographers were not just very skilled, but very well informed.

Using satellite imagery combined with observations from the lady who worked in the chippy (but was actually a secret agent), KGB map makers charted many cities around the world with extraordinary detail. River depths, bridge clearances, antenna heights and locations of important services like telephone exchanges were all carefully mapped.

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, many of these maps were discovered lying around in Eastern Europe. (The above photo, which may or may not be one of the maps in question, was taken at a trash-n-treasure style market in Vilnius, Lithuania.) Now, to cut a long story short, you can buy them online. A company called Envirocheck in the UK is flogging the maps on their website, as well as providing free samples and a bit of an interesting story about how the maps were created and how they got them. Interesting, even if you don’t wear spectacles and think dusty old maps are cool.

Aussies swap toads for beer

Aussies can now pay for their beer using cane toads.

Cane toads--ugly, slimy buggers that range from 10-15cm in length--were introduced to Australia in 1935 as a means of controlling cane beetles, who were scoffing Queenslanders' sugar cane. The plan went horribly wrong, and now the randy and prolifically breeding toads have taken over the country. (One of them is the Prime Minister, judging by appearances.)

Estimates have the cane toad populatioin at between 100 and 200 million. There are nearly ten toads for every person. And lots more toads than kangaroos.

To help eliminate the pests, Tom Hedley, Australia's biggest publican (no, he's not fat, he just owns loads of pubs), is offering to trade a bag of toads for a 'pot' (285ml) beer. A 'bag' must contain at least two toads.

So, now when you visit Australia you'll be able to spend the day hunting cane toads, and celebrating at the pub. Two cultural experiences for the price of none!

Sidenote: Cane toads are toxic. Licking them has psychotropic effects, and dogs have been known to become addicted to toad-licking.

Picture: cane toad from Michael Henderson.

Cats that look like Hitler

My cup of tea this morning was accompanied by the amusing fiasco of a flaming office chair, and some cats that look like Hitler. Just thought you'd like to know.

Serbia: Mad midfielder ploughs pitch

ploughing season
Originally uploaded by small fry.

A Serbian midfielder, miffed after being dropped from his local amateur football team, has ploughed the pitch so no one else can play. ("I'm not playing any more... and nor is anyone else!")

Upon hearing that he had no place in the team, Slavomir Milnovic, 25, hopped in the family tractor and proceeded to turn the football field upside down. Locals heard the agricultural anomaly and called the ... erm... pigs, who then arrested the former footballer for willful damage to private property.

Source : Ananova

We're updating Minsk In Your Pocket

Minsk Library
Originally uploaded by Kritta.

I've just returned from the capital of the... a-herm... 'Republic' ... of Belarus. Yes, we're updating Minsk In Your Pocket, and it seems there's plenty of change over there on the other side of the linen curtain. The building you see here, for example, was only recently completed - it's the new National Library. It was paid for by various contributors including schoolchildren and Saddam Hussein. Other new bits include an Irish Pub where they serve Australian beer, and a new yet-to-be-opened hotel that seems to have been decorated by someone who used to work on 1960s James Bond films. There's also a railway system operated by and for children. Yep, it's a wacky kind of place, and we look forward to sharing its many interesting facets with you in the next Minsk In Your Pocket.

Coincidences

It is said that imitation is a form of flattery, so we at In Your Pocket have become somewhat philosophical about the ever-increasing number of lesser companies who blatantly steal and re-use our content. The internet - as wonderful as it is - has made it so easy for people to copy and paste our reviews, features and even contact details (complete with mistakes, usually) that is difficult to keep track of them all.

Fortunately there are now tools available to publishers that make finding the culprits just as easy, and with a good legal team behind us we can in most cases nip any copyright theft in the bud before it becomes a serious problem.

In the past we have successfully taken action against a number of publishers, from Mickey Mouse outfits such as Bucharest Cream of the Crop (a guide to the Romanian capital whose very name was stolen from our guides!) to major international publishers such as Le Petit Fute (one of whose writers back in 1999 stole vast swathes of text from one of our guides).

Less easy are dealing with the 'moral thieves,' who are clever enough to rewrite the content they steal in order to prevent legal action. Such moral theft is common in the travel publishing industry, where armchair travel writers abound. Many of us old timers long for the pre-internet days, when being a travel writer meant actually having to do some traveling.

Now, putting to one side all talk of plagiarism and moral theft, I would like to bring to your attention some coincidences.

A travel-publishing start-up, Fastcheck Arrival Guides, recently began offering PDF guides for download on the internet. We were flattered, having been the first company to offer such guides, back in 2000.

Browsing a couple of the Arrival Guides, and being familiar with our own content, I was amazed by the coincidences that occur. For example, the Arrival Guide review of Deja-vu, a popular cocktail bar in Bucharest, reads:

"Order Deja-vu's most exotic cocktail to make the most of the extensive drinks menu. If you're feeling risque a Russian barmaid will obligingly squeeze lemon into your mouth with her teeth, to accompany whichever concoction you choose."

The Bucharest In Your Pocket review of Deja-vu reads:

"Not a place for a quiet night out. This is the best cocktail bar in Bucharest, with the best bar staff this side of the River Prut. They serve a few cocktails here involving fire, as well as a few which involve wearing a World War II Russian army helmet. They also serve at least one which involves a young Russian girl squeezing lemon into your mouth with her teeth. At weekends it is packed and the small dancefloor is the sweatiest place in Bucharest. The music is as bizarre but enjoyable as the drinks."

What makes this such a coincidence is that the 'Russian' girl in question is not actually Russian - the reviewer from Bucharest In Your Pocket made a mistake. It really is incredible that the Arrival Guides reviewer made the same mistake! Still, innocent coincidences do happen...

Take a look at the Arrival Guides write-up for the Bucharest metro:

"Bucharest's metro has four lines and 45 stations..."

A previous (now corrected) entry for the Bucharest metro in Bucharest In Your Pocket also claimed that:

"The metro now has four lines and 45 stations..."

What is incredible here is that the Bucharest metro has 39 stations... What a coincidence! Both the Bucharest In Your Pocket writer and the Arrival Guides writer have similar arithmetic issues, miscounting 39 as 45. Really quite spooky.

Oh, here's another one.

Arrival Guides:

"Bucharest's Triumphal Arch remembers Romania's Great War and its reunification in 1918."

Bucharest In Your Pocket:

"Raised in 1922 to commemorate Romania's Great War dead..."

What's strange about this is that only Britons use the phrase Great War, and on the evidence of the rest of the guide, the Arrival Guide to Bucharest was not written by a Briton.

I could go on. Arrival Guides are full of such crazy little coincidences.

Coincidences. Nothing more, nothing less, and I would never suggest otherwise.

Keep checking back for more.

New Zealand: 100% Puerile

Tourism New Zealand has admitted that it has used digitally altered photos to promote tourism to the country. An image of kayakers accompanied by a pod of dolphins is actually two images bunged together - one of kayakers and one of dolphins. It is, quite simply, lying. What is most startling about this, however, is the defence that Tourism New Zealand has spouted:

In an article on the One News website, Tourism New Zealand spokesmuppet, George Hickton, is quoted as saying "This is something that happens every day in our country, and therefore it's a 100% pure New Zealand experience."

So, lying and cheating and deceiving visitors is something that happens every day in your country, huh? It's a part of the New Zealand experience? Wow! Let's go!

Idiots.

Vilnius: Hannibal tours

Young Hannibal
Originally uploaded to Flickr by Cinencuentro.

A travel agency in Vilnius, Lithuania, is offering 'Hannibal The Cannibal' tours, which include a bit of a jaunt around town followed by a 'Hannibal feast' (no mention of what's on the menu) and a meeting with Hannibal.

The Saules Kelias travel agency (the name translates to something like 'the road of the sun'), who don't have a website and we'd never heard of before, spewed out a press release offering the tour recently, and have since found themselves mentioned in pithy newspaper articles and blog entries around the world.

Of course, they're trying to cash-in on the Hannibal Rising film which, incidently, was mostly filmed in Prague. (See here for a brief account of the Lithuanian film production industry, which is having difficulty competing because it gets sod all support from a government that is too busy being corrupt and scandalous.)

So - Hannibal tours? Hmmm... they could make a killing.

Useful...

Want to check that global warming hasn't melted all the snow at Romania's ski resorts, the mobile phone people Zapp have this neat site where you can see live webcams from all of Romania's resorts.

Acrobatic vegetarian dog pees up trees

Okay, so it's nothing to do with travel, but I couldn't resist mentioning the Chinese acrobatic vegetarian dog who has taken to doing hand-stands (or front-paw-stands) and peeing upside down. Presumably this is a ploy to get his pee as far up a tree as possible, thereby making him appear taller than he really is to would-be sniffers. And trees.

IYP Writer Jeroen van Marle in The Guardian

Paris-Stuttgart - now 6hrs; from June 3hrs 50.

It hits you as soon as you emerge from the cavernous Hauptbahnhof. There on the roof, a massive three-pointed Mercedes badge revolves against the skyline: welcome to Germany's Motor City, birthplace of the car industry, home of Daimler, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche. The next thing you'll notice, however, is not blocks of brutalist factories, but a city defined by its museums (admittedly, two are for Porsche and Mercedes), pristine parklands, leafy hillsides and neighbouring vineyards. And also the rewards for all this industry: smart shops, weinstubes and restaurants.

Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg (think Black Forest, wooded hills) and is Germany's third largest metropolitan area, but feels more village-like than Berlin and Munich, with districts spread over several cosy valleys.

The historical centre, partly reconstructed after the war, is a few hundred metres south of the station along Königstrasse, the pedestrianised main shopping street. The tangle of streets and squares around here are nice enough to wander through, but just across busy Holzstrasse lies the Bohnenviertel (Bean Quarter), which is Stuttgart's prettiest and oldest surviving district, built outside the city walls in the 14th century for the town's craftsmen, wine growers and Jewish community and named after the staple food grown in the gardens at the time.

Stuttgart is at the centre of a wine region and it's possible to do vineyard walks in the hills immediately around the city centre. If you're feeling lazy, though, sample some of the local rieslings in the Ratskeller, below the city hall at Marktplatz 1, where you can also try authentic regional Schwabian food including the ravioli-like maultaschen. The Alte Kanzlei at Schillerplatz 5a serves everything from late breakfasts to salads and steaks.

Once you've refuelled, hit the bars on Theodor-Heuss-Strasse and the surrounding streets such as Mezzanin (Bolzstrasse 8b) and Scholz (Marktplatz 12). The younger, wilder crowd is to be found in Bar Waranga (Kleiner Schlossplatz) with its fantastic interior design. Even hipper is the hotel Der Zauberlehrling (Rosenstrasse 38, zauberlehrling.de, from €145), which translates as The Magician's Apprentice. Whatever gets your motor running.

Jeroen van Marle
Editor of Stuttgart In Your Pocket

Ukrainian humour: tasty

Ukrainian's have interesting tastes when it comes to practical jokes. Check this out.

Russki? Nyet!

From The Guardian Wrap:

An influx of brash Russian tourists is creating a stir at one of Austria's poshest ski resorts, according to the Telegraph. Their vulgar behaviour is such a problem that the Austrian resort of Kitzbuehel is to cap the number of Russians to 10 per cent, in its hotels, the paper reports.

"They are too noisy and they drink too much," one resident tells the paper. The Guardian itself says that the presence of "big spending" Russian is fuelled by a property boom in Russia. "Russians are increasingly buying ski chalets and hotels for GBP15m or more, driving prices up and pushing locals out, despite the fact that only EU citizens have the right to buy property in Kitzbuehel," it says.

Nuclear weapons of mass distraction

After our recent post on Miss Atom 2007 (which we incorrectly referred to as 'Miss Nuclear 2007' ... oops!), we note that the number and, erm... quality of contestants has been rapidly increasing*. No wonder those Russians and former-Soviets can't keep their nuclear reactions under control.

Shown here is Olesia Valeriavna Kirianenko (green eyes, blonde hair, problematic swimming costume), who works at the Zaporoshskaja nuclear power-station in the Ukraine. She likes 'everything about dogs' and spends her free time working-out. She is married, and is most happy when her family and friends are happy. Isn't that nice?

To vote for her, or any of the growing number of nuclear bombshells, head over to the Miss Atom 2007 site and do some browsing. Then wait till February 20, when voting will commence. The winner will be the contestant with the most number of votes as at 6pm (Moscow time) on March 6.

* The number of painful puns has also been increasing, but we can't say the same for their quality.

Black ceramics: smashing

Last night I went to the opening of a new (or, more precisely, relocated) black ceramics workshop. The event took place in a smallish room with shelves on the walls displaying a fascinating range of creations that appear to be made out of iron, but are actually earthenware. There was also a few too many people, some children, and lots of alcohol. Can you guess what happened?

Black ceramics are quite lovely. A gunmetal metalic sheen gives them quite an allure. They'd be quite at home on the mantelpiece next to your gauntlet, mace and mysterious old rusty farm impliment. The technique of creating black ceramics has been around since about 6000BC, and has a long history in Lithuania. Vilnius itself was home to black ceramics artists in the 14th century. Bits of their pots keep turning up whenever anyone renovates anything in the Old Town.

The ceramics are baked in dug-out kilns, and the blackness comes from a combination of pine smoke and iron particles within the clay that are melted in the firing process.

Black ceramic items look solid and heavy. They appear to be made from melted train tracks, but actually they are just sooty pots. I know, because one smashed about my feet. I don't know whether I bumped the shelf, or whether it was the snotty little brat on the other side who magically vanished when there was the unmistakable sound of something expensive breaking, but somehow a little pot, or an angel, or something was lying about my feet in many pieces.

Fortunately the owners of the galler were good humoured about this, but I left anyway before I could break anything else. I might go back one day when there will be less alcohol and people--especially small people--to have another look.

Expat sex

Here's an interesting read: Knife Tricks: Expat Life Is A Sexual Feast For Men And Famine For Women.

Basically it's a blog entry about the sexual life of expats. There's one bit that suggests that expat life is good for guys because ...

Now I’m living in East Asia [or Brazil or the former Soviet Union], and young local women who are so sexy they could walk unquestioned into the most exclusive clubs back home will sleep with me on the first date.

Well, that's one point of view. But not the only one. It certainly underestimates the standards of local women around here (in Vilnius, Lithuania), and demonstrates a lack of interest in long-term meaningful relationships that is not characteristic of every expat.

Anyway, it's fun to talk about sex... so, what do you reckon?

Sofia: Bus station soft porn

Waiting for a night bus at Sofia's bus station just got a whole lot more interesting. The screens that during the daytime are packed with titillating bus schedules flick to soft-porn mode at night. Don't worry - you'll still be informed about when the next bus is coming, but as there are so few arrivals and departures at night, the unused screen real-estate can be used to amuse and entertain passengers with scenes of frolicking flesh.

Of course, old ladies and the sorts of people who think the bus station in the middle of the night is the ideal venue for small children are not amused. There are also concerns that randy security guards are shirking-off and standing around watching porn instead of wandering around looking for trouble.

Sources : Ananova, Jaunted

Druskininkai Aqua Park

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the new Druskininkai Aqua Park (Pocket Blog: Waterslide opens, causes injury, closes). Well, I actually went there on the weekend and didn't have to come home in an ambulance or a bin liner, so it seems they must have sorted the problems out.

Apart from a few niggles with changing facilities (there are no mirrors in the changing cubicles, much to the annoyance of ladies and homosexuals, and there's nothing to stop men walking among the ladies' showers and vice-versa, which seems to happen approximately always) and the lack of somewhere to swim lengths, the place is outstanding. I'm not normally one to go in for such razzmataz and family fun, but I enjoyed a good couple of hours of splashing about, basking in warm bubbles, undetected farting, frolicking under waterfalls and, of course, the now infamous water slides.

Of course I went straight for the 'exteme' water slide first and found it to be appropriately named. It ends with everything going black and a nuts-in-your-guts plunge into a landing pool before you surface with a where-am-I? feeling and a wedgie that can only be removed with an audible 'twang!'. Brilliant.

The less extreme waterslides looked enjoyable but come with the drawback of lengthy queues, probably because they don't have a reputation of injuring people.

Overall, I reckon the Druskininkai Aqua Park is pretty good. My recommendation, in case you want to go along, would be to buy a three-hour ticket for both the pools and the saunas. It's also worth going in winter so you can enjoy the simple pleasure of sitting in a warm fizzing bath while gazing over the pretty snow-sprinkled landscape outside.

I also highly recommend not staying in this hotel.

New In Your Pocket guides available

The latest issues of In Your Pocket are hitting the streets as I hit the keys to type this sentence. (Or at least they should be.) If you're living or travelling in any of the cities covered by our bi-monthly guides you'll be able to nip out and grab a copy to ensure you're up to date with the latest list of cultural and seasonal events, as well as new cafes, bars, restaurants, pubs, clubs, tourist attractions, and so on.

No matter where you are, you can get the latest copies with the Click And Buy feature on our website, otherwise known as an online store.

How not to fill up your car

This photo - of a man filling up his car with petrol in Bucharest, Romania - arrived in my inbox this morning, sent by a friend. Believe me: it is not an atypical scene. It does rather some up the Romanian attitude not just to driving, but to life.

Miss Nuclear 2007

Could this be Miss Nuclear 2007? (Or, as one other In Your Pocket writer has suggested, Miss Nuclear Waist?) Natalia Borisovna Savastianova, 34, works in the Atoms Resources Company, one of Russia's many nuclear operations.

She is just one of the contenders to become Miss Nuclear 2007. All female employees of Russia's nuclear power plants are eligible to enter, but only if they're between 18 and 35 years of age. (So, that rules out all the old babushkas pushing mops about and the 12-year-old who is in charge of the big red button.)

Other interesting beauty pageants from this part of the world include Miss Captivity, in which 'Samanta' was elected Lithuania's most captivating female prison inmate in 2002; Miss Longest Locks, in which Emilija Lepeskaite was deemed to have the most beautiful 132cm-long hair (especially when it was sculpted into elephant ears) in 2006, and the annual election of the Queen of the Cucumbers in the Lithuanian town of Kėdainiai.

Oh - and for those of you whose interest in Natalia is greater than their ability to read Russian, she is interested in music, theatre, fine art and collecting decorative pigs. She likes skiing, tennis and non-extreme tourism. She dreams of bitter chocolate, having a second child and world peace. And she's only slightly radioactive. Probably.

What's Yiddish for ...

The BBC reports that there are efforts in Vilnius to revive Yiddish. While there is a gently thriving Jewish community in Vilnius, it's a mere fraction of what it once was. Vilnius was once the 'Jerusalem of Lithuania', with nearly half of the population being Jewish. The city was a cultural centre for Jews, and Yiddish was widely spoken.

The Jewish population was almost completely annihilated by the Nazis, and now there are just 5,000 Jews in Vilnius, not many of whom speak Yiddish at all. As the BBC article shows, efforts are being made to teach the language to a new generation. One hopes that Vilnius may once again be seen by Jews around the world as a strong and vibrant cultural centre.

For more, check our listings on Jewish Vilnius.