Brand power

Summary

The number of Russians making cross-border journeys into northern Scandinavia to go shopping leapt by over a third last year. They head for small towns in northern Finland and some even continue into Sweden to visit the world's northernmost branch of IKEA.

hidden europe 39 / Snippet / By hidden europe

We have over the years used the pages of hidden europe to report on the world’s most northerly stray cat and all manner of other notable extremes. But we have somehow neglected to mention the planet’s most northerly IKEA. Welcome to Haparanda, population less than five thousand souls, a town in northern Sweden just on the border with Finland. Lenin came through Haparanda, twice, but never stopped to go shopping. Lenin was never big on shopping, though he did once famously go shopping during a nine-hour stopover in Stockholm.

The arrival of IKEA in Haparanda has boosted the local economy. Russians come to Haparanda for bookshelves and köttbullar.

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Editorial hidden europe 39
Editorial

By hidden europe

Welcome to hidden europe 39, in which we sweep from the Pyrenees to the Tatra Mountains, from Rannoch Moor in Scotland to Russia's Arctic outpost of Franz Josef Land. Ghosts of Habsburg days haunt the pages of hidden europe 39. [full text available online]

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The route to Zakopane: a journey of the spirit
Feature

By Nicky Gardner

The slow train journey from Kraków to Zakopane seems to last an eternity. The names of the forty-one stations along the way – and our train pauses at every one of them – make a wonderful litany of Polish toponyms. The route takes in a remarkable religious landscape (one that is inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List) and the valley where Lenin and other early Bolsheviks helped shape their revolutionary code. It concludes at Poland's premier mountain resort.

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Into the Great Unknown: Rannoch Moor
Feature

By Philip Dunshea

The Moor drags itself out to the distant horizon, a great brown smudge studded with little black lochans. Guest contributor Philip Dunshea, writing for hidden europe for the first time, invites us to brave the weather on Rannoch Moor. Maps of the Scottish Highlands can only hint of at the barren reality of this solemn wilderness.

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Beauty and the Beast
Feature

By Diego Vivanco

Just prior to the start of Lent each year, the village of Bielsa on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees welcomes a flood of visitors to its annual carnival. For a couple of days of transgression, the frenetic energy of the carnival contrasts with the normally slow pace of mountain life. Diego Vivanco escorts us through the crowded streets of Bielsa at a time when caution is thrown to the wind. Anything can happen at carnival time.

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Parisian prayers: a litany of liturgies
Feature

By Duncan JD Smith

Paris is a city that has always embraced migrants, with each new wave of arrivals bringing their own faith. Walk the streets of the French capital and you'll find faith comes in many flavours, from varying shades of Orthodox Christianity to Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. Duncan JD Smith, author of the guide Only in Paris (published March 2013), takes us on a pilgrimage through Parisian prayer traditions.

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The ghost of Beeching
Perspective

By Nicky Gardner

Is cutting public transport links in rural areas and across its borders really the right way for Croatia to gear up to join the European Union this summer? We look at how the pieties of the market are playing havoc with rail services in the north Balkan region.

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Retrospect 1873: Salzburg to Vienna
Routes

By Nicky Gardner

There is a prevailing view in Salzburg that Vienna is halfway to Asia. And that is certainly the perspective with which 19th-century travellers from western Europe approached Vienna. We retrace the itinerary followed by Thomas Cook's clients in 1873 as they headed east to Vienna to attend the World Fair hosted that year in the Austrian capital.

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The Book of Hours
Railscan

By Nicky Gardner

Some argue that printed timetables are obsolete in an Internet Age. But no online database has ever managed to capture the overall pattern of a train service with the fluency of the tabular format used in printed timetables. We probe the magic appeal of Bradshaw's guides and Thomas Cook's timetables and reflect on which of the two might claim the upper hand.

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Tartan tactics: creating a national brand
Performing Europe

By Nicky Gardner

An image is worth a thousand words. France is represented as a land of soft-focus vineyards while Norway is captured in a fjord. Slovenia is distilled in one island in the middle of a lake, while Scotland is evidently populated by men wearing kilts. We look at how national brands have evolved over two hundred years.

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Life on a mound: visiting Hallig Hooge
Message in a bottle

By Nicky Gardner

At the eastern margins of the North Sea, in the shallow waters hard by the German coast, are a series of islands that are seasonally flooded. Human settlement on these islands is a fragile thing. These special islands (called Halligen in German) have their own distinctive cultural landscape. Join us on a day trip in deep mid-winter to Hallig Hooge – where it happens to be dustbin day.

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The Great and the Good: history distilled in Franz Josef Land
Maps

By Nicky Gardner

The maps of Franz Josef Land are a cartographic journey through the royal salons of a lost era. Here is territory where the relatives of explorers are locked in cartographic alliance with a Russian princess and the Viceroy of India. We look at the cartographic legacy of early travels to Russia's largest Arctic archipelago.

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Papal exits
Borderpost

By Nicky Gardner

The Holy See and the Italian Republic tussled for years over which country owned one contested section of the Passetto di Borgo. That's the name given to the elevated footpath that links the papal apartments in the Vatican with the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome. That path has been for centuries the exit of last resort for popes in trouble. Now the passetto is to be opened to the public.

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History for sale
Snippet

By hidden europe

Many abandoned station buildings in rural Poland are finding new life as private entrepreneurs restore them to their former glory. This spring the Polish authorities are selling off a further tranche of buildings, most of them remarkable pieces of architecture.

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Asia in the mind
Snippet

By hidden europe

We start with a dubious attribution, a few words allegedly uttered by the Austrian diplomat and politician Count Metternich. And we end with the Ukrainian poet and dramatist Lesya Ukrainka in Georgia. In between, we discover that Asia is a state of mind – a place of the imagination that always lies away to the east.

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Brand power
Snippet

By hidden europe

The number of Russians making cross-border journeys into northern Scandinavia to go shopping leapt by over a third last year. They head for small towns in northern Finland and some even continue into Sweden to visit the world's northernmost branch of IKEA.

Read on
Preview hidden europe 40
Preview

By hidden europe

A look ahead at hidden europe 40 which will be published on 15 July 2013.

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hidden europe 39

Brand power

Summary

Editorial

Feature

Feature

Feature

Feature

Perspective

Routes

Railscan

Performing Europe

Message in a bottle

Maps

Borderpost

Snippet

Snippet

Snippet

Preview

Focus on fish

Eastwards by car

In search of the arc