Broken Glass, book review and website updates

Hello subscribers!

As was decided in our latest theme poll, the winner, “Dark Tourism & Broken Glass” got its post on the DT Blog on Tuesday. It’s a very visual post, with some intriguingly aesthetic images involving broken glass, but also with some pretty dark links to history.

In the previous Newsletter I announced a book review, and meanwhile I’ve finished it and put on my main website the in-depth review. It’s a very positive review, and not just because I know the author, Darmon Richter, and have long valued his writing on his blog (now called Ex-Utopia – external link). It really is a very cool book, namely about Chernobyl, looking not only at the 1986 accident but at every conceivable angle – history, mythology, culture, tourism, etc. Despite the title “Chernobyl: A Stalkers’ Guide” (external link to some teaser photos) it is not just about stalking (i.e. visiting the Exclusion Zone independently and without a permit, i.e. illegally) but it’s much much more than just that. It’s possibly the most comprehensive account of Chernobyl there is (of the place itself, not just the nuclear disaster). So if you have more than just a passing interest in Chernobyl, and especially if you are interested in all those angles other than the 1986 accident, then this is a must-read! Please also spread the word!

I also resumed writing proper travel chapters for my main website dark-tourism.com, or rather: rewriting and updating older and seriously outdated ones, namely in Belgium, a country that deserves much more credit as a travel destination than it usually gets. So I finally got round to writing about my visits in August 2016 to two places: Kazerne Dossin in Mechelen, and Fort Breendonk. The former was a military barracks appropriated by the Nazis during the German occupation of Belgium in WWII and from 1942 to 1944 it was used as a transit camp in the Holocaust. It was from here that some 26,000 victims, mostly Belgian Jews, were deported to Auschwitz. The latter, Fort Breendonk, a pre-WW1 fortress, was also appropriated by the Nazis during the occupation and served mainly as a dungeon for political prisoners, but also as a smaller transit camps for Jews. While the fort exudes great place authenticity, but is a bit weaker on the exhibition side; the state-of-the-art new museum at Kazerne Dossin is excellent on the content front but lacks place authenticity (it’s housed in a completely new purpose-built structure opposite the original barracks that were used as a transit camp, which has now been largely converted into housing).

Since my book is now off my desk, I intend to do more writing for the website in the hope of bringing everything up to date and complete by the time the book comes out in October. But it’s a tall order, something like 50 all-new full-length chapters, plus some updates and a dozen or so stub-length entries. The latter are for Taiwan and Namibia – the two countries I had planned to travel to but couldn’t because of the pandemic; but since I had done the research on both countries that informed my planned itineraries, I included both Taiwan and Namibia in my book, so they should also be covered on my website by the time the book is released.

I’ve asked my publishers, by the way, if I’d be allowed to post some teasers here and they said yes. They’ll let me know what the finalized title design will be and once I have that that’ll be my first preview for you of my forthcoming book.

So much for this time.

All the best – and stay safe (while most of us have to wait for the vaccinations to reach us)!

Peter