We are the Berlin-based company Gardner & Kries GbR. We have since 2005 published the print magazine hidden europe. We are also the publishers of the guidebook Europe by Rail: The Definite Guide, the 17th edition of which came out in April 2022. As a publisher we also trade under the name hidden europe publications.

We are thoroughly committed to protecting your personal information and we undertake to keep the information you entrust to us safely and securely. We never sell or share your personal information with third parties. We would like to be very clear on this point. We do not sell our mailing list. We don't accept advertising, so there is simply no question of us ever sharing our customer data with potential advertisers.

We work to protect the security of your information during transmission by using SSL/TLS technology on our website, which encrypts the information you give to us. Our website security is verified by a Let’s Encrypt certificate. We protect the database that stores all customer information by physical, electronic and procedural safeguards. If you use a shared computer, be sure to sign off when finishing a session.

How we use the data we collect

We collect the personal data you voluntarily provide when you purchase hidden europe magazine (or any other product) from our website or through postal or telephone order. That information always includes the name and delivery address of the designated recipient of the order and usually the name, email address and postal address of the person placing the order. If you supply a telephone number (eg. when placing an order by phone), we may store that too, particularly where no e-mail address is available.

All this information is only used to fulfil your order and to provide you with a receipt. We do not automatically renew subscriptions to the magazine, but we do try to notify you about the upcoming end of your subscription (or retrospectively advise you that a sub has just ended). This is also true for a gift subscription you might have taken out for a friend.

We use Lyra to process our credit card payments (VISA, Mastercard). When you purchase hidden europe online in our webshop, you'll be taken to Lyra's own payment page to enter your credit card details. We cannot access those payment details ourselves.

If you give us your credit card details to fulfil an order - for example, in a letter, e-mail or by phone - we process those credit card details manually on Lyra's website and then immediately destroy the credit card information. Gardner & Kries GbR never stores credit card details.

Data retention

We may retain your personal data indefinitely unless you request its deletion (which you can do by simply contacting us). 'Personal data' means any information which, either in isolation or in combination with other information, identifies you as an individual. Examples of personal data include your name, address or email address.

For example, we do not automatically delete inactive user accounts if you have at least once placed an order. So unless you request the deletion of your account, we will retain your account information.

User accounts that have been created, but not used to purchase an order, will however be deleted from our database six weeks from the date the account was created.

If you have purchased hidden europe magazine (or another of our products) without creating an account, we retain any personal data you provided in that purchase unless you ask us to delete it.

You have the right to request the deletion of your personal information at any stage by contacting us. Upon requesting deletion of your personal data, that data will be deleted within 10 working days. However, we may retain some personal data after you have requested deletion of that data where such retention is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which we are subject, for example for financial reporting. For example, we like to pay taxes, and the German financial authorities do ask us to retain a list of all orders we receive for our annual accounts.

Where we store your personal data

Gardner & Kries GbR only stores your personal data at destinations within the European Union (EU).

Our website is hosted by the German company uberspace on servers in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany (this includes both our website and the databases). You can read more about uberspace’s own privacy policy online.

Financière Lyra SAS, the company that processes our credit card payments, has its headquarters in Labège, France. Read Lyra's GDPR regulations here.

Newsletter

The process of signing up for our e-newsletter, which is called Letter from Europe, is independent of any purchases made on our website. This means that you are never automatically signed up for our newsletter when you purchase the magazine. The personal data stored in our newsletter database is restricted to the email address you provide when signing up. Every newsletter contains a link that allows you to sign off that database. You can also request the deletion of your email address from our newsletter database by contacting us.

Use of cookies

Our website and our online shop use cookies. A cookie is a text file that contains a small amount of information. It is downloaded to your computer or mobile device when you first visit our website. Non of the cookies on our website are provided by third parties.

Some of the cookies hidden europe sets are essential in order for the website to function properly. They allow you to stay logged in and order the magazine through our online shop. These strictly necessary cookies are called 'phpsessid' (to distinguish between visitors), 'currency' and 'language'.

If you wish to delete individual cookies from your computer but are unsure how to do it, take a look here.

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Nicky Gardner and Susanne Kries
Gardner & Kries GbR
Geraer Str. 14-c
D-12209 Berlin
Germany

Our EU Tax Identification Number is DE237807620.

Please feel free to contact us about issues raised in this privacy policy. We are a small undertaking, and we believe in managing our relationships with our subscribers and others in an open, honest and friendly manner. If you have concerns, let us know and we shall most certainly do all we can to help.

Last updated: 30 May 2020