In Your Pocket at Euro 2012

We have been very busy these past few months putting together a whole load of brand new content specially for the European football championships, which begin this Friday in Poland and Ukraine.

With over 20 years of experience in writing guides to the rapidly changing central European region we have all the most important information you might need to plan your trip.

More importantly, we have all the information you need as to what to do when you get here. We have produced special guides – designed with football fans in mind – to Warsaw, Gdansk, Poznan and Wroclaw.

What’s more, we have also produced content to all of these cities in the languages of the competing countries.

Warsaw In Your Pocket Euro 2012 is available in Russian and Greek, Wroclaw In Your Pocket Euro 2012 is available in Russian, Greek and Czech, Gdansk In Your Pocket Euro 2012 is in Croatian, Italian, German and Spanish, Poznan In Your Pocket Euro 2012 is available in Croatian and Italian.

Although no games will be played in Krakow, we have even put together a special guide to the city for fottball fans, as the England team – and many supporters – are likely to be based there.

For all cities, in all languages, there is a PDF to download, for free!

We even put together a video for fans in Warsaw

Over in Ukraine, we have unrivalled guides to both Kiev and Lviv. Both are available as PDFs, which you can download for free.

Our iPhone app, which includes six of the host cities (and Krakow) can be downloaded for free here. They all have special Euro 2012 content.

You should also make sure you follow us on Twitter. Each day throughout the tournament we will be available to answer all sorts of questions, as well as sharing news and information from our people on the ground.

The In Your Pocket Twitter accounts to follow are:

@PoznanIYP

@GdanskIYP

@WroclawIYP

@WarsawIYP

@KrakowIYP

@UkraineIYP

The tournament promises to be a landmark event in the history of both nations while the visiting fan is promised a fascinating experience quite different from those you may have had at previous tournaments. In Your Pocket knows these countries like no other travel guide publisher. We really hope that our guides will make your visit as simple to organise and as enjoyable as possible.

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.

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.

In Your Pocket Goes Dutch

With all of the many interesting cities that the Netherlands has to offer, you might be puzzled why we chose ’s-Hertogenbosch (the city also known as Den Bosch) as the first Dutch city to add to the growing In Your Pocket European publishing empire.

We’re certain that once you see ’s-Hertogenbosch you’ll understand why we selected this little jewel, that the Dutch visit in droves and that foreigners are only now discovering.

We have our usual full guide to the city – updated every three months – which you can pick up locally in Den Bosch, or download for free here.

We have video over at our You Tube channel, including a tour of the city’s canals: the canal tour Dutch people (who would not be seen dead on Amsterdam’s canals) take.

We have a chapter devoted to Coffeeshops, as well as a rundown of the dos and don’ts when it comes to high times in Den Bosch.

There is a word form the mayor, a bit about the city’s most famous son, and everything else you have come to expect from Europe’s leading publisher of locally produced city guides.

No wonder they call us essential.

In Your Pocket Readership Survey: Preliminary Results

We recently carried out a pretty major survey of our readership here at In Your Pocket. We thank those people who took part, and we will be announcing the winner of the draw (23 great prizes will be heading somebody’s way) right here, very soon.

A team of well-trained monkeys is currently hunkered down scanning, analyzing and deciphering all your answers, but in anticipation of the full findings, we thought we would share a few nuggets we have mined from the result so far…

- More than 52 per cent of our readers chose In Your Pocket because it is more up to date than the competition

- 95 per cent of our readers would recommend In Your Pocket guides to friends

- The restaurant chapter is the most popular; sightseeing is a close second

- An incredible 98 per cent of readers said that In Your Pocket guides had helped them make a decision about spending money in a city

We also note with glee that a large number of readers find the adverts in In Your Pocket guides to be ‘a useful addition to the editorial content.’

Stand by for more details. In the spirit of transparency we intend making the full results open to our readership.

Eastern Europeans should strive to present a more modern face to visitors

There is an excellent Europe.view column by Edward Lucas on The Economist’s website this week, imploring the countries of Eastern Europe to present a more modern face to visitors:

‘Visitors to eastern Europe expect beautiful old buildings (Hanseatic, Art Nouveau, Baroque, Ottoman or Levantine) and miserable history, plus fiery drinks, unhealthy food, peasant handicrafts and folk-dancing. All the more reason, therefore, to offer them something that shakes their stereotypes, emphasising modernity, innovation, creativity, optimism and other notions not normally associated with the ex-communist world.’

You can read the full article here.

It’s all thought provoking stuff. In Your Pocket likes to think that ever since we began publishing our city guides, back in Vilnius in 1992, we have always striven to do just that, to present a more modern face to visitors. The current cover of our Vilnius guide features a Lithuanian ski resort: who even knew you could ski in Lithuania?

Or the Forest Opera near Sopot in Poland? Currently being turned into one of Europe’s most modern outdoor opera venues.

And we would add that the need to look forward and not back is not limited to eastern Europe. What about Belfast, Northern Ireland? Take a look at the political murals left over from the Troubles by all means, but enjoy the other contemporary public art too.

Lithuanian ski resorts, modern Polish opera houses and Belfast’s contemporary public art are not in your average guide book that dwells on the historical and little else.

But they are In Your Pocket.

Venues on inyourpocket.com: now with added Facebook

A large number of In Your Pocket offices have been reporting an internet phenomenon back to HQ these past few months, one that has led us to take a small step we nevertheless think makes us unique in travel publishing.

Basically, as offices have been doing their research for our bi-monthly guides (remember, only In Your Pocket researches every piece of information in every guide every two months: it is what makes us different, and the most reliable source of information in every market in which we publish guides) they noticed that an increasing number of venues (especially clubs and live music venues) were eschewing websites in favour of simply creating Facebook Fan Pages.

A good example of this is Mojo, a live music club in Bucharest.

Though they have a website, it doesn’t say very much. Yet their Facebook Fan Page says plenty. Besides a rundown of the bands playing each night, news of special events, photos and a direct line to the hands-on manager, a quick look at the place’s fans also gives you an idea of the kind of crowd you can expect to find there.

There is also instant feedback, with people posting in about what they have or haven’t gotten up to said club.

And Mojo is not alone: for many clubs a website is now a needless worry. They do it all on Facebook.

With that in mind, the minor little step we have taken is to include a venue’s Facebook page (and its Twitter feed – if applicable) in our listings. As far as we know, no other travel publisher is yet doing this (for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that fact that they do not update their information as often as we do).

Expect to see Facebook links popping up in our listings over the next few weeks as we input all the Facebook pages we come across while doing our research.

If you want your club or venue to get a head start, then become a fan of In Your Pocket and send us a link to your venue’s Facebook page.

Romania’s Revolution

For most foreigners over the age of 30, the bloody revolution of December 1989 remains the first thing about Romania that foreigners think of; in Romania’s case, the revolution was televised, and, somehow, it was all done without the help of Facebook and Twitter. Few however remember the equally bloody Mineriada of June 1990: a brutal, three-day long, government-approved riot. The revolution and Mineriada are linked: the latter had its roots in the former; in the downfall of Romania’s communist regime. Yet to this day, 20 years on, the real stories behind both events remain well guarded secrets, and all we have to go on are best guesses.

Here, In Your Pocket Editor-in-chief Craig Turp visits the scene of the revolution: Bucharest’s Piata Revolutiei.

Read more on the Romanian Revolution here.

More Bucharest In Your Pocket videos

Bucharest In Your Pocket editor, Craig Turp embarks on a video tour of Bucharest ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Romanian revolution of 1989. In these videos, he visits the Old Town (Lipscani), the Russian Church and the National Bank.

Read more about the Lipscani area, including the Russian Church and the National Bank in Bucharest In Your Pocket.