Ash, Riga, Book

Hello Subscribers!

This week the DT Blog has seen one new post, which I uploaded on Tuesday. It’s a themed post, decided on not by a poll but just by myself: Dark Tourism & Ash (a theme that featured in previous polls twice, but failed to win). I was inspired to post this by the latest volcanic news from Indonesia, namely the eruption of Mt Semeru. So I selected photos of various ash-spewing volcanoes that I’ve visited on my travels over the years, and that included Mt Semeru. But the most spectacular volcano I ever had the privilege to visit when it was in action was Soufrière Hills on the Caribbean island of Montserrat. I was lucky enough to even witness one of its dramatic pyroclastic flows/surges (seen in the featured photo above).

I find volcanos absolutely fascinating in general, and others featured in this post were Bromo, Merapi, Ijen, Krakatoa, Sakurajima, Mt Putana and Mount St Helens.
  

On my main website I mostly worked on updating/expanding existing chapters for Riga, Latvia, in particular the Riga Ghetto Museum entry, as I found major upgrades there when I revisited the place in August. It’s certainly much improved since my first visit in 2014. Another discovery was that the largest exhibit and pride of the collection at the Riga Aviation Museum, a Soviet-era Tu-22M supersonic strategic bomber, had moved from the museum to the side of the adjacent Riga Airport runway. I’ve now learned that the rest of the aviation museum is forced to move out of its current premises right next to the airport and relocate to somewhere else. I hope it can at least do that. Given that it is mainly run by an ageing single enthusiast, I fear this enforced move might mean the end of the museum altogether. I’ll have to monitor further developments.
  

The PR for my recently released book Atlas of Dark Destinations continued too and I’ve been able to pitch it for another review and a feature. Both are on a smaller scale, though. I’m still hoping for a bigger platform to feature it. Apparently the publishers are in continuing negotiations. On Amazon there’s still only a small handful of reviews, all very positive, but not numerous enough. I keep checking every other day or so, and this "activity" seems to have misled Amazon’s algorithms. I had to laugh out loud when a few days ago I received this email (screenshot):

If further proof was needed that relying on algorithms is not a good idea, here we have it. At least you can laugh about this and it's done no harm (unlike my algorithm-induced total purge from Facebook).
  

Further outlook: I still have to write a new chapter for the Riga KGB building (but I’ve already uploaded a new substantial photo gallery as a kind of preview), and that will be the Baltics done. I also hope to finish the remaining updates for Hamburg in order to be caught up with all of this year’s DT travel. I’ll also try to slot in another blog post or two over the coming week and a half.

And speaking of travel: we’re still holding out the hope that it will be possible for us to travel to Britain as planned over Christmas despite the new virus variant and additional restrictions. We’ve now booked our mandatory PCR tests on Day 2 after arrival (and they cost a fortune! We are really lucky here in Vienna that tests are still for free!) as well as a hotel for the required quarantine until we get the result. Fingers crossed it all goes to plan.
  

But so much for this time.

Have a good week – and stay safe.

Best,

Peter