Into 2022

Hello subscribers – and Happy New Year!

A year ago I gave you a themed post “DT & New Year’s Eves”, that followed on from the themed post “Dark Tourism & Christmas”, both of which more or less exhausted their topics … there are only so many places that I’d been to on New Year’s Eve or over Christmas. But I’m reusing one of the New Year’s Eve photos from that post in this Newsletter (above); it was taken in 2013 here in Vienna (the famous Prater Ferris Wheel, which also featured in the dark movie classic The Third Man, is in the frame on the bottom right).

And instead of repeating those themes on the Blog, I uploaded an all-new post on Boxing Day (26 December), namely on the theme “Dark Tourism and Boxes”! It features boxes of several kinds, from the “wooden boxes” that are coffins to ammunition and medical kit boxes on display in various war museums, a code box from a Titan II ICBM Launch Control Center, matchboxes, and also a so-called “black box”, i.e. a flight recorder. These are in actual fact neither black (but orange) nor necessarily box-shaped.

I haven’t yet decided what the first blog post for 2022 will be about … but I have a couple of ideas.
  

My book will have made an appearance under several people’s Christmas trees, as I knew from various friends and family members that they had bought copies of the book to give away as Xmas presents. If you’re among the recipients: I hope you’ll like it!

The book also got a small feature with a reproduction of its chapter about St Helena (by permission of the publishers) namely on the principal website about this island, that remote and utterly charming volcanic rock in the South Atlantic, whose most (in)famous resident (albeit involuntarily) was Napoleon Bonaparte, who lived out his final years in enforced exile there.

And then a friend of mine sent me a screenshot from a post on a public group on Facebook, namely on Dark Tourism Photography, that features a photo of my book, which the poster (somebody I do not know) referred to as “This is now my travel bible”. That was of course very nice to see. And also very nice to be sent a screenshot of it, given that I couldn’t have seen it on Facebook myself due to my total ban from that platform, but I’ve meanwhile had a look at it via my wife’s Facebook account. If you are on that platform you can find the post in question here.
  

But so much for this first Newsletter of 2022.

I hope it will be a good year for all of you!

Stay safe,

best

Peter