Falklands, Gdańsk, poll result

Hello subscribers – and welcome new ones!

Thanks to all who commented on the image of the cover for my forthcoming book featured in last week’s newsletter. The feedback was largely very positive, though there may still be scope for improvement with the typeface, as was pointed out to me. I have to point out, though, because that may not have been clear enough in the newsletter, that I cannot take credit for the design! It was delivered by the professional book designer who my publishing house specifically hired for this book project. I contributed a hundred of the ca. 300–400 photos in the book, but otherwise my job was just the words. I might give you a few more tasters of the main content of the book in the coming weeks.

On the DT Blog I added one new post, namely on Friday, which was the anniversary of the start of the 1982 Falklands War. I travelled to this faraway archipelago in 2013/14 and went on a number of battlefield tours. The most impressive was the one in the environs of the islands’ capital (and only town) Stanley, esp. on Mt Longdon. That was with a veteran of such tour offers, and somebody who was resident in Stanley during the war and had held an important position at that time, namely running the local radio station. For the post I took ten photos from my archive to illustrate the battlefield tour experience. One of them is featured above. As you can see, it’s a barren land, but I quite like that, and it was for sure immensely interesting and very memorable.

On my main website I’ve meanwhile finished all the new chapters and updates for Gdańsk, where I had been in the summer of 2019, but only now found the time to write all that up (I was too busy with the book, hence the delay). The most significant new addition is the comprehensive chapter about the impressive European Solidarity Centre in the old shipyards. I’m now working on additions to and updates of the Warsaw chapters.

But now to the result of last week’s theme poll. There was a very clear winner this time around, namely “Dark Tourism & toys”. So that will be the topic of a new post that I hope to be able to upload in the course of the coming week. “DT & flames” came last this time, so will be out of the competition for a while, and second place was shared by “DT & bullet holes” and “DT & mining”, so those might be fielded again sooner, esp. “mining” as that was a new theme.

To be honest I wasn’t surprised that “DT & toys” won, as that must be the most contrasting juxtaposition. Toys are normally associated with joy and children’s innocence. But you just wait and see …

So much for DT this week – in which we just went into yet another full lockdown here in Vienna. I should have been in Taiwan now, had it not been for this endless pandemic. Btw. the recent train disaster there made us think “could have hit us”, since we would have circumnavigated the whole island by train, so would at some point have passed through the very spot where it happened.

The ongoing restrictions because of the pandemic are very frustrating, but at least my wife and I have managed to avoid contracting the virus, so we can’t complain so much, really. I just watched the video about “long Covid” that comes with this article. You really do not want to be affected by that. It can be pretty horrific and debilitating.

So do stay safe and healthy!

Goodbye for this week,

best

Peter