Happy New Pockets

The year 2008 will be a big one at In Your Pocket.

Besides our brand new Dublin guide, you can also expect new Pockets to appear in Athens, Mostar, Belgrade and Ljubljana throughout the year. Expect to see more of our Mini-Guides in smaller towns and resorts too.

Website users can also look forward to an improved inyourpocket.com experience, as we add a new generation of content functionality. You can also expect to see In Your Pocket on more mobile devices too.

For all that's Pocket, the best place for a heads up on what's happening is here at the blog. Make sure you check back regularly.

I bid everyone Happy New Year, whatever your plans for tonight. Us? At home in front of the television with a tumbler of Campari.

From the Baltic to the Atlantic... With no passport

Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Malta and Cyprus all become members of the Schengen Protocol at mignight tonight. Border controls will disappear, meaning that a traveller could make his or her way (by land - airport controls remain in place until March 31, 2008) from Estonia to Portugal without showing a passport.

Merry Christmas in 21 Languages

But can anyone identify them all?

The duty-free free airport

Travellers fleeing Lithuania are advised to stock-up on cheap alcohol, cigarettes, chocolates and amber bling before going to the airport. Vilnius airport recently openeed a new terminal, and passengers are being exported through it... but there are no air-side shops. Yet. This means you can't get cheap smokes or carry-on alcohol. It's important to some.

Emma Mahony is Boycotting Bulgaria

So Bulgaria is guilty of state-sponsored child abuse. Therefore we must not go on holiday there.

The mistake here is not to condemn the Bulgarian state's treatment of children. It is clearly rotten and we should be offended to the point of ensuring some kind of action is taken: protests to MPs, letters to ambassadors. There are a number of ways.

But to state that "I will not holiday in Bulgaria because of its treatment of these children" is to at once suggest a link between the two things: that Brits holidaying in Bulgaria are in some, however indirect, way responsible for these awful things. And to do that is wrong, for there is no connection. It also removes attention form the real reasons for the treatment of these children: grinding poverty, under development and - most of all - under trained, underpaid and and uncaring staff.

I also wonder if Emma Mahony is boycotting Burma, or Cuba, or Russia or...

Dublin? Done.

It's all done. It's at the printer. The first issue of Dublin In Your Pocket.

What's that? Can't wait until the ink's dry?

Go on then, get it here.

The Winners Are...

Best Review - Martins Zaprauskis
(Alpenrose, Riga In Your Pocket):

"It’s like having dinner in the von Trapp’s summer cottage. Black and white photos of the Alps line the walls of this charming restaurant whose rustic interior is the perfect backdrop for a meal of fondue, raclette or delicious Bavarian sausages. Unfortunately the wait staff dressed in Heidi outfits meet queries about the cuisine the way Swiss bankers talk to the homeless. In case you’re not sure, Alpenrose is the medieval building with cows painted on the façade."

Best Cover - Poznan In Your Pocket

Pocket Person 2007 - Tomáš Haman

There's a short video of the Champagne being handed out on the In Your Pocket Staff Facebook Group.

Berlin In Your Pocket Video

In Your Pocket founder Matthias Lufkens and I had a day to spare after the IYP get together in Berlin, so we zipped around the city with a toy-like video camera and no preparation and came up with this:

Berlin

Le Tout In Your Pocket assembles in Berlin today for the annual jamboree that is our AGM. After a full day spent around the conference table tomorrow, all will head off to a restaurant for a good supper and the announcement of the winners of this year's Pocket competitions:

In Your Pocket Cover of the Year
In Your Pocket Review of the Year
In Your Pocket Person of the Year

There is no cash reward for the winners, just the recognition of his or her colleagues and a good bottle of champers.

I will let you know who wins next Monday. Now I have a plane to catch.

Crap Travel Pieces About Eastern Europe #76

This is beyond satire. We reproduce in full the Galveston Daily's (Texas) account of life in Romania...

Human spirit lives on in Romania

By Janice Law
Contributor

Published December 2, 2007
CONSTANTA, Romania — Villagers whispered rumors that the secret police were on their way to arrest their priest.

He had, after all, preached against the Communist dictator Nicolai Ceausescu, who did not tolerate dissent in the 1967-89 years he held this impoverished country in his iron control.

Villageers ran; gathering one by one, holding hands in a circle around their beloved priest’s home — defiantly remaining as the secret police arrived and began firing on them.

Some villagers ran to the factories where they toiled, grabbing guns kept there, and firing back at the police, who soon retreated without the outspoken cleric.

In the next days, that small 1989 uprising encouraged the downtrodden population to overthrow Ceausescu.

After a two-hour trial on Christmas day, 1989, the oafish peasant who turned on his own people was executed by firing squad, as was his wife, Elena.

Our charming 25- year old guide, Christian, saved that electrifying history for our two-hour bus ride back from Bucharest, the capital, where we spent the day before returning to the coastal city of Constanta.

We are touring Balkan countries with ports on the Black Sea. Our ship, the Nautica, is part of Oceania Cruises.

The quality of a guide is everything. A competent guide makes any trip — and Christian was the best.

A crime punishable by death was the mere act of listening to the Voice of America on the radio.

“We listened anyway. That is the only way we knew what was going on in the rest of the world,” Christian said.

“VOA gave us hope.” When he said that, I felt even more proud of America.

A network of informers working for the secret police, turning countryman against countryman, chipped away the societal structure, because no one knew who, if anyone, to trust.

“I never really, really understood what it was like to live under Communism, until I heard Christian,” one of our shipmates said, shaking his head in disbelief.

Christian told us of sporadic electricity only two to three hours a day, near-starvation subsistence with less than a kilo of meat allotted per person per month, no heat in winter — while watching a lavish parliament building constructed for, some say, $1 billion as Ceausescu’s showpiece.

The ultimate irony, since Ceausescu was not any parliament, ran Romania.

Bucharest, once called the “Paris of the East” is a shadow of its former self, because everything is very run down.

But real class never fades, and despite everything, the Communists couldn’t entirely obliterate the elegance and charm that once was.

For me, the highlight was the Patriarchal Church, with arches of darkly painted murals.

“In the end, our clergy were the only ones we trusted,” Christian said.

We were treated to folk dancing while lunching in a local restaurant. Musicians play an instrument much like a bagpipe.

We also toured the Village Museum in Herastrau Park, a collection of 300 buildings moved from regions throughout Romania to exemplify rural architecture.

Rolling past acres of yellow sunflowers, amid tiny well-kept homes, I thought how Romania, like many countries that survived dictatorships, is a testament to the indestructability of the human spirit.

That truth, crushed to earth, will rise again.