Kolmanskop, reviews and a re-re-naming

Hello subscribers!

Yesterday I finally uploaded the next Namibia-themed post on to the DT Blog. It’s about the fabled ghost town of Kolmanskop, the best-known and most photographed of Namibia’s various ghost towns. And it is indeed extremely photogenic. For the day I was there I had purchased a special ‘photographer’s permit’ that allowed me access before the regular opening times, so I got up really early and made it there well before sunrise. So some photos are in moonlight, and then the first rays of sunlight appear. It was magical. I took about 200 photos and making a selection of just a few for the Blog post was a difficult task. I ended up with 27 – more than usual in my Blog posts, but the photo gallery for the Kolmanskop chapter on my main website has already been a given a far more substantial number of photos. For the Blog I had to be more restrictive. But do take a look. If you like abandoned places you will love those photos. The taster photo above was taken inside the former school of Kolmanskop.
  

Before that I was also busy writing another response to a maliciously negative pseudo-review of my book Atlas of Dark Destinations, by the same person who a few months ago had also left the only one-star review of the book on Amazon. This guy really seems to have it in for me … and I had thought we were on the same page with regard to dark tourism. Clearly not, instead it seems he decided to become my arch-enemy. Quite sad really. One ulterior motive that I presume is behind this negative campaign against me and my book could be that author’s own little guidebook to “111 Dark Places in England That You Shouldn’t Miss” (my review of that is here). I guess he sees my book as competition and therefore rubbishes it as much as he can and at the same time promotes his own book. Or maybe he’s just jealous. His book has attracted far fewer ratings and only two reviews on Amazon. And if you search ‘dark tourism’ on Amazon, my book usually comes up first or amongst the top three (varies by which country’s Amazon page you use), while the “111 Dark Places” book does not feature at all. This new “review” is also in a very odd outlet (some pseudoscientific online journal that otherwise features things like alien abductions and psychokinesis!).
  

Finally, something on a lighter note. Kazakhstan is apparently re-re-naming its capital city Astana (which means ‘capital’ in Kazakh). After Nursultan Nazabayev, the first president of post-Soviet independent Kazakhstan, finally stepped down in March 2019, his successor Tokayev renamed Astana “Nur-Sultan”, after his predecessor’s first name, but with the addition of a hyphen (no idea why the hyphen). Meanwhile, however, Nazabayev has been stripped of many of the old privileges and posts he had still kept, and the new president seems keen to shake off Nazabayev’s legacy. The re-re-naming of the capital is just one indication of that. For me it meant I had to do more updates on my Kazakhstan chapters, especially Astana’s of course, in response to this development. In fact, strictly speaking, the re-re-naming was actually a re-re-re-re-re-naming, because Astana was previously called Akmolinsk, then Tselinograd, then Akmola, and then Astana in 1997/98, when the capital city status was moved from the former capital Almaty (which itself was previously known as Alma-Ata).

But enough of confusing names.
  

Have a good week!

Best wishes,

Peter