In Your Pocket Mums....

Read about the adventures of In Your Pocket's mumtrepreneurs, as reported in the Belfast Telegraph, right here.

Romania Goes Green

In order to conform with EU norms, Romania's parliament this week rushed-through legislation that will require, from April 1, all old electronic hardware and appliances to be disposed of at special collection centres. Here they will be recycled or destroyed under environmentally friendly conditions.

There's just one problem.

Romania does not have any electronic hardware disposal centres operational yet.

Poles plan to ban men in skirts

Polish authorities are keen to ban men in skirts, reports The Scotsman. It seems some Scots, possibly after raising their glasses a few too many times, have been raising their kilts and exposing their bums and wedding apparatus to astonished locals.

Of course, we're all familair with complaints and concerns about drunken British yobbos and beer monsters descending on Eastern Europe and wreaking all manner of disrespectful havoc, but now the men in skirts have come under specific criticism in Poland for their garment lifting tomfoolery.

Wroclaw wants to ban kilts alltogether, after local police have admitted that they just can't control "groups of maurauding Scots". The police, however, are unsure that thay can enforce a kilt ban.

The article in The Scotsman goes on to quote a young local from Krakow who said that: "You can't go round the corner without seeing a Scot showing off what he has under his kilt while one of his mates photographs him."

Photo from Looking Glass (clearly a classy individual) on Flickr.

Bucharest Baneasa Airport to Close

Europe's worst airport, Bucharest Baneasa, is finally going to get a face lift. Planes due to take off from and land at Baneasa (mainly those of budget airlines) will be using Bucharest Otopeni during the closure.

It is rumoured in travel industry circles that improvements to Baneasa have come at the request of easyJet, who want to begin services there but have refused to do so with the airport currently creaking under the strain of handling oh, at least 12 flights a day.

Beach swallows Prime Minister

We like taking a peek at the Jaunted travel blog from time to time, and noticed that they have listed Lambert Beach on the British Virgin Islands as a KILLER BEACH!!!

Pfh... that's nothing. We'd just like to remind you that Cheviot Beach on the Mornington Peninsula, south of Melbourne, swallowed a whole Australian Prime Minister once. That was 40 years ago, so it's kind of old news, but still quite remarkable, don't you think? I mean, Australian Prime Ministers, with the obvious exception of the current one, are tough, hardy, burly blokes who don't get eaten by beaches easily.

Oh - and while we're on the subject of Australian Prime Ministers, we can't resist suggeting that you take a look at some of the classic insults hurled across parliament by former Prime Minister, Paul Keating. Follow this link and click on the 'scumbag archive'.

You live in what?, where?

"There was an old woman, who lived in a shoe."

That's nothing. What about the folks that live in this big pink serpent-throttled dildo? Or the person who lives in a fish?

The to-much-free-time-to-spare website (2spare.com) have a domestic diversion in the form of a list of wacky houses. The real fun here, especially for travel-addicted folks who don't mind a bit of a brag, is seeing how many of the strange structures you have seen or at least can identify.

After that has kept you amused for eleventeen seconds or so (which is actually a very long time for someone like me who has the attention span of ... erm, what was I saying?) you might like to further explore the self-declared waste of time website, discover that Brad Pitt used to move white goods and see a picture of a python eating a pregnant sheep.

Oh, and for the sake of nostalgia, here's the full ditty about the old woman who lives in a shoe:

There was an old woman,
Who lived in a shoe;
She had so many children,
She didn't know what to do.
She gave them some broth,
Without any bread;
She whipped them all soundly,
And sent them to bed.

Via Gadling and EnhancedLearning.com.

How to loose friends and infuriate people

Just ask Amir Vehabovic. The 45-year-old Bosnian faked his own death to see who would turn up at the funeral. He watched from bushes while the undertakers (whom he had bribed) lowered an empty coffin into the ground, watched only by his mum.

He then sent an angry letter to his s0-called friends reprimanding them for not showing up at his funeral. The letter, according to Ananova, reads in part:

"I paid a lot of money to get a fake death certificate and bribe
undertakers to deliver an empty coffin.

"I really thought a lot more of you, my so-called friends, would turn
up to pay their last respects. It just goes to show who you can really count
on."

BA: First class for corpse

BA's decision to upgrade a corpse to a first class seat has attracted just a little media attention. So we thought we'd jump on the bandwagon.

When a cattle-class passenger died shortly after take-off, BA cabin crew decided to upgrade the
septuagenarian stiff to first class, much to the chagrin of fellow first class passenger Paul Trinder. Wailing relatives were then invited to follow, further exacerbating the discomfort of the full-fare paying first class passenger. The dead body had to be propped up with pillows to prevent it sliding out of its seat.

We don't want to get into the debate about the rights of passengers versus the rights of dead bodies or grieving relatives, but it is interesting to note that the Times (London) article about the incident has become one of the most read and most commented on their website. It taps into themes of 'We hate BA' (quite popular) as well as 'aren't first class passengers selfish bastards'. One contributor even warned of the dangers of the body becoming 'undead'.

The story was also covered in the Daily Mail, The Mirror, and (one of our favourites, although admittedly a bit geeky,) The Register.

Interesting reading, if you've got time to kill.

In a related story, an American man called Mr Whipple has been rewarded for peeing in a sick bag.

15 years of In Your Pocket

In May, In Your Pocket will be 15 years old. The first Vilnius In Your Pocket was launched in May, 1992.

The next Vilnius In Your Pocket, due to be released in early April and covering both April and May, will carry a feature looking back at the 15 years. As a part of that, we'll re-print some of the classic reviews and letters that we've received from our readers. (Like the reviews, not all the letters are positive - but we print them anyway.) There will also be covers from some of the old In Your Pocket guides so you can see how things have changed over the years.

You can also get involved - add your comments and quips to this post and we may run them as a part of the 15th Anniversary feature. What was your favourite review? Can you remember the fist time you found In Your Pocket? What would you like to see in future In Your Pockets? We welcome all comments, congratulations, complaints and interesting In Your Pocket anecdotes.

We'll send a copy of the next Vilnius In Your Pocket to anyone whose contributions are printed. (If you don't want to add a comment to the blog with your email address, send it to vilnius@inyourpocket.com.)

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Ding! Ding!

I came across this video via the excellent Gadling blog. It's worth a look for a bit of a chuckle. It reminded me of the fun/frustration (choose one depending on mood) of navigating through slow moving human traffic in London. Now I live in a city with far fewer people, although even they do have a habbit of dawdling along right in front of you. So I still have to deal with human traffic. Anyway - this video is worth a look. Keep with it... it's amusing at the end.

Visit PMR

I have a list of dream destinations for which In Your Pocket will one day publish guides. While Pyongyang tops the list, not too far down is Tiraspol, capital of Moldova's breakaway republic of Transnistria (sorry, Pridnestrovie, as it likes to be called. Names mean a lot in these parts.)

Until we do however, those of you planning on taking a holiday in this would-be country yet to be recognised by the international community will have to make do with the PMR's own travel site, Visit PMR. It isn't all that bad.

For a laugh, you can also try the propaganda-fest that is the breakaway republic's mouthpiece, the Tiraspol Times.

Flying fat

I've just read an interesting article from the LA Times on the design of airline seats. While the whole article is worthwhile (have a read yourself), the bit that caught my eye was this:

"Since the 1960s — the dawn of the jet age — the average American has become an inch taller and 25 pounds heavier ..."

Twenty-five pounds, by the way is something like 11kg. That's a lot of extra baggage. They really are larding-up over there, the fatties. The article also says that ...

Boeing guidelines, which comply with those of the Federal Aviation Administration, allow for 185 pounds [84kg] per passenger, 20 [9kg] of that for carry-on baggage.

And then there's the fact that fatties are pushing up fuel costs:

... in 2000 alone those added pounds that passengers had packed on since the '60s cost airlines US$275 million for 350 million more gallons of fuel.

Now, what gets me a bit riled by all this is all those fatties (regardless of nationality) who come waddling onto planes with way too much carry-on baggage and, probably, mountains of luggage in the hold. Those of us who are light, and travel light, are not only making sacrifices for but also paying for these flying walrusses.

But, when I check-in, can I take a few extra kilos in my luggage because I am skinny? No way. Do I get a discount because I will incurr lower fuel costs? Erm... nope.

I know it's a difficult issue, and there really is no solution because you can't discriminate against fat people (and besides, muscle weighs more than fat, and I don't want to discriminate against big muscly people either) but it is just very annoying for normal (non-fat) people.

It's just very annoying that if I want to take a little extra weight onto a plane, in my luggage, I have to pay extra. And yet, I know, there will be some fat, waddling, jelly-tubby blob who won't be charged an extra cent for his or her extra weight. It's simply not fair. What do you think?

BTW - If any fat people are reading this and would like to loose weight, I've invented a new diet that could help. It follows this simple principle: eat less, do more. Simple, huh? You see, it's all about calories and... erm... oh, forget it, you're probably not listening anyway. Have another 'donut'.

Throw away your swimsuit

Ever been on a trip to some place where you thought you wouldn't be able to swim--Uluru or Minsk, for example--and then discovered that the hotel has a spiffing swimming pool, a sauna full of very hot bodies, or a gorgeous nearby lake?

No - that hasn't happened to us, either. But, just in case it does, someone has gone and invented disposable swimwear. The idea is that if you have a sudden and unexpected requirement for swimming garments, or you just forgot to pack them because you're stupid, you could buy these temporary togs from your hotel (or somewhere), wear them a few times, and then chuck them away when you go home.

SwimEeze disposable swimsuits are quite daggy, as you can see, but they're also cheap and chuckable. So you don't have to waste your holiday cash buying a whole new pair of fancy pants swimmers just because you want to take a quick splash.

The only problem is: where to stick your copy of In Your Pocket?

Metal thieves nick slides and peals

I just saw a story about how thieves in Japan, prompted by rising metal prices, have been nicking children's slides, the roofs off public toilets and those little thingies that hold incense on graves. Yes, those Japanese certainly are resourceful. But Lithuanians got up to such pranks first.

Last year, the clock tower that stands near Vilnius Cathedral was renovated, and light-fingered scallywags took the opportunity to nick the copper cables that made the bell actually operate.

I'm not sure if the bells are ringing again yet. I don't hang around listening for it, to be honest. Nor do I hang around the kiddy slides, obviously, so I can't report on their status either. But it looks like anything made of metal is in danger. Fortunately, the statue of the Iron Wolf is made of stone, so that should be safe.

• Let The Bells Ring photo from Flickr by rcubed.


• Metal thieves steal kids' slides, toilet roof [Reuters].

Northern Ireland may be voting...

...in (another) historic election right now, but this is the real story in Belfast this week...

Knicker thief pleads elf defence

International women's day

Inner-beauty
Originally uploaded by janinehealy.

I'm not going to bang on about romantic clap-trap or rampant consumerism, communism or feminism, but I found this article to quite interesting. A good read for anyone floating around any former Soviet cities at the moment.

Aussie dunny database and hair thief

When we first heard that the Australian government had set up an online database of dunnies, we thought someone was taking the piss. But no. There really is a dunny database.

Visitors to the land down under can now log on to the dunny database to find the nearest place to, as Aussies might say, splash their boots. (Or take a dump, or launch a steamer, or drop a log, or grow a tail, or write their name on the wall, or ... they don't mind the odd euphemism or two down there, you know.)

Anyway, good to see the taxpayers money at work, aye mate?

In other Aussie news, a Qantas baggage mishandler has been nicked for nicking hair. Apparently the man in question had a bit of a thing for hair and would rummage through the lost or delayed baggage of unfortunate sheilas and swipe their hair. He took strands from brushes and clothing. (Here's a tip, girls: when you've finished brushing your hair, take the hair off the bloody brush and put it in the bin.) He then stored the hair in plastic baggies, CSI-style, and recorded the personal details of the hair's rightful owner. We're not sure what he did with the hair after that.

He has been arrested and jailed for ... can you guess? ... theft. He'll be out of your hair for at least two years, girls.

Photo: Morning Glory Originally uploaded to Flickr by beeater.

The new-look inyourpocket.com

So, after months of intensive labour and nights so late and long that our children must have almost forgotten who we are, on Monday this week we launched our new-look website. Comments on it are welcome.

Designed to offer the web user a better navigation experience, and the advertiser a higher impact product, the new look is just the first of many innovations inyourpocket.com will be carrying out this year.

For the first time, and uniquely in travel publishing, we are offering free, PDF versions of our full city guides. They can be downloaded here, alongside our existing range of mini- Instant Guides, of which more than two million have been downloaded since we began publishing them in 2000. Look out soon for videos and podcasts.

Our next project is the revolutionary In My Pocket, which will allow users to create and publish their own content. Sign up here to be one of the first to beta test the project.

E-stonia e-lections

(Pic from jannelass on Flickr.)

Estonia has become the first country in the world to count internet voting in parlaimentry elections, reports the BBC and just about every other news site that subscribes to Reuters. This will not only ensure that someone who is technically advanced and looks good on Youtube will get to run the country, but will further bolster Estonia's reputation for being all digitally wonderful and e-everything.

Romanian Logic

No sooner has Bucharest put itself on the budget-airline map than it begins talking about taking itself off. Reports this week that the Transport Ministry wants to move all budget flights from Baneasa Airport (minutes from the city centre) to a new airport in the middle of nowhere half-way to Constanta confirm our belief that this nation can truly call itself a world leader in shooting itself in the foot.

Indeed, given the Romanian propensity for getting things arse over tit, what are the odds on a shiny, new, state of the art airport opening on schedule only for some bright spark to realize that newly arrived passengers have absolutely no way of getting into the city centre?

Stag weekend in Urziceni anyone?