In Your Pocket 20

It was 20 years ago this week that the first In Your Pocket hit the streets of Vilnius, in Lithuania.

Issue N°1 of Vilnius In Your Pocket rolled off the presses at a time when the Soviet Union was considerably more than just a memory and the height of sophistication was owning anything that didn’t have Made in CCCP written on it. How times have changed. Despite the current economic gloom, the Lithuanian capital is unrecognisable from how it appeared two decades ago. There’s food in the shops, galleries are bursting with art that’s no longer required to conform to the strangulating requirements of Socialist Realism and you don’t have to hand over your coat to a geriatric every time you visit a restaurant.

The brainchild of German Matthias Lufkens and Belgian brothers George, Oliver and Nicolas Ortiz, In Your Pocket was conceived over several beers on a cold December evening in 1991 in the famous Stikliai beer hall. At the time, Vilnius was a town that did not even have a telephone directory. The four set out to conquer the world armed only with a dream and a laptop: they still have the dream, and they still have the laptop.

Over the past 20 years In Your Pocket has grown to become Europe’s leading provider of urban information, supplying locally produced, practical information for over 100 cities all over the region, available at the travel portal inyourpocket.com and in more than 70 publication guide books, published in 23 countries.

In Your Pocket’s lively, honest style has received consistent praise from, among others, Le Monde, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Guardian, the Sunday Times, the BBC, Rough Guides and Lonely Planet. We are, indeed, the best. Take a look at our press clippings here.

German theatre in English at the Schaubühne Berlin

Berlin has world-class theatre performances, but as most are in German these tend to go unnoticed by foreign visitors. Thankfully, the excellent Schaubühne Berlin on Kurfürstendamm in western Berlin regularly has English (and sometimes French) surtitles projected on a screen above the stage.

Especially the plays directed by Thomas Ostermeier are worth seeking out; his jaw-dropping version of Hamlet got excellent reviews (such as here and here in the Guardian), and when we saw it performed in January, the actors stunned a packed house, even humorously integrating the surtitle screen into the play at one point. Hamlet is next on stage several nights in late April.

Read our review and get the contact and ticketing details on our website. The theatre website lists which plays are surtitled.

On stage in Berlin

Most foreign visitors to Germany’s capital city limit their activities to sightseeing, eating, drinking and partying. Visiting theatre shows has always been difficult as German-language productions dominate. In recent years there has been something of a shift, and increasingly stage productions are suitable for casual visitors as well. In Berlin In Your Pocket we highlight the various mime and acrobatic dinner shows and the English Theatre, and we hope to review more performances here in future.

If you’re visiting Berlin this winter season, a great show to visit is Gayle Tufts’ Let it Show! at the Tipi dinner theatre in the central Tiergarten park. Gayle is an American Berliner, and an entertainer who presents a cockle-warming winter show with new versions of songs by artists like Madonna, Prince, Paul Simon, The Beatles, as well as her own work. The songs are interspersed by banter in her trademark ‘denglish’ language, which foreigners would have difficulty understanding, but the music makes up for that. This is no Christmas show although Wham does slip in at the end; Gayle uses her two hours on stage for a passionate plea to embrace the dark cold days of winter, and make the most of it. On our visit this week, the crowd loved the show and the artist, her backing vocalists and rocking band all visibly enjoyed performing.

Gayle Tufts performs Let it Show until 25 December, and from 2-15 January. For tickets and information see www.tipi-am-kanzleramt.de.

maps.inyourpocket.com

It’s been all go these past few months at In Your Pocket offices across Europe, as researchers and editors have been feverishly plotting GPS coordinates for the more than 50,000 hotels, restaurants, bars, clubs, cafes, embassies and such like that we have in our database.

The result was made available to the public at large today: maps.inyourpocket.com

Every city we cover (and the list is growing all the time) is now available as a map-led guide, with seamless links to our main website inyourpocket.com (which, recently named by the Guardian as one of the world’s best 50 travel websites, has been upgraded and given a bit of a facelift to incorporate the maps) and back again.

To all intents and purposes you can now choose how you want your In Your Pocket online city guide: text-led or map-led.

We hope you like it.

When villains get lost in layout

Any of our readers who happen to be in Poland this week and who have a habit of watching the evening news might have seen us hauled over the proverbial coals on Wednesday night, where you could have seen us all but accused of having Nazi sympathies.

The problem arose from this article published in the latest issue of Poznan In Your Pocket, which appeared under the headline Local Heroes instead of Local Heroes & Villains.

Here is the (offending) article:

Local Heroes & Villains

Now, call us biased, but we think that even if the headline was Local Heroes there is no suggestion of us liking Nazis.

No, what happened was a mistake. An error. When taking a title from one place and transferring it to another, part was lost. It happens. That really ought to be the end of it.

Besides, do we really need to point to the other features we have written about Poznan over the years?

For those who fell
The Great Escape
World War II Poznan

Or what about our extensive report on the role of Poles in cracking the Enigma code?

We leave readers to make up their own minds as to whether we have Nazi sympathies or not.

In Your Pocket in Finanz und Wirtschaft

The Editor-in-chief was in Switzerland’s top financial publication Finanz und Wirtschaft on Saturday, talking all things In Your Pocket.

Click on the image for the full page/article:

We’re hiring

In Your Pocket is looking for two writers to fill vacancies in Poland. The jobs are full-time, with one writer based in Warsaw, the other in Krakow.

You will be writing for a number of In Your Pocket guides in Poland, as well as the inyourpocket.com website and our new iPhone apps. A highly competitive local salary is offered in exchange.

Candidates must be native English speakers, and would ideally already be living in Poland, or at least be familiar with the country. Speaking Polish is a bonus but not obligatory; nor is it an advantage.

All that matters to us is how you write in English.

If you are interested and want to take our editorial assessment, please contact the Editor-in-chief, Craig Turp, at editor@inyourpocket.com.