It’s been a fine day, though our massive Ukrainian lunch was loaded with MSG, and we’ve spent the afternoon nursing headaches and queasiness with water, coffee, and aspirin.

We’re exhausted. Sue us.

We did just come across some exciting, if press release-driven information, though. Plucky UK low-cost carrier Jet2 celebrated their 10 millionth passenger today.

Good on you, Jet2.

1. The September Monocle has a bit of a state-within-a-state theme going on. The issue includes features on Finland’s autonomous Åland Islands, Bolzano, the capital of Italy’s Süd Tirol/Alto Adige region, and an especially fetching multipage feature on Georgia’s Russia-supported breakaway region of Abkhazia. A Monocle dossier on European microstates would be the perfect follow-up.

2. The Netherlands Tourist Board is the world’s first national tourist authority to launch a Second Life tourist board. May they be the last.

3. We recently discovered the Swiss Tourist Board’s rather more useful handy map guide to inexpensive hotels across Switzerland. The guide lists 154 hotels with rates at CHF160 (€97; $133) or under for a double en suite room, including breakfast.

4. We are in love with this brilliant song by Andy Hide. We’ll be petitioning ARIA to invent a new award category for musical adaptations of shocking moments in popular culture shortly.

Like a hard-bargaining player happy to have gotten his way and thus prepared to reward his subjects—yesterday, the airline came to an apparently mutually agreeable decision with the Brussels Charleroi airport administration—Ryanair today announced two new routes from Bremen. From late October onwards, Ryanair will kick off Bremen-Alicante and Bremen-Palma de Mallorca routes.

Of course, no Ryanair route expansion materializes without a route contraction these days. The airline will be withdrawing its Bremen-Murcia service in late October.

Our calculus: 2 - 1 = 1.

Ryanair announced today that the airline has reached an agreement with Brussels Charleroi airport. The Irish low-cost carrier had threatened to withdraw from the secondary Brussels airport from November 12 onwards.

All ticket sales for travel after November 12 have been released. A desire to avoid the future sudden strikes at Charleroi provided Ryanair’s purported rationale for freezing sales on flights in and out of the airport.

Since the airline operates 18 routes to and from Charleroi (compared to four operated by Wizz Air and one each by BlueAir, Jet4you, and OnAir) we’d guess that the airport’s administration was quite eager to hold onto the Ryanair routes.

In an attempt to capitalize on Ryanair’s threat to junk flights in and out of their Brussels Charleroi base from mid-November on, Brussels Airlines has announced a slate of inexpensive fares from Brussels. The airline is currently promoting €49.99 all-inclusive evening flights from Brussels to 13 destinations across Europe.

With b.places, the airline ensnares Second Life residents, in the name of customer outreach. Quirky!

What’s new this afternoon?

1. SkyEurope has gone and revamped their site. Very nice, especially the faint gray of the destination map. We just noticed for the first time that our favorite Central European LCC doesn’t fly to a single airport in Germany. Points to us for being observant.

2. Ryanair is in trouble with the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority for making sloppy claims regarding speed and price of their London-Brussels connection against Eurostar’s London-Brussels shuttle.

Tuesday. Rainy. Feels like fall. To brighten the mood:

1. EasyJet continues this season’s route expansion extravaganza with today’s announcement of two new routes. From November, the Orange and White will fly between London Luton and Hamburg; beginning in February, they’ll kick off an East Midlands-Palma route. Luton-Hamburg roundtrip fares will start at £33.98. The East Midlands-Palma route will begin at £35.98.

2. DK’s Where to Go When, out shortly, is a bulky tome stuffed with pretty pictures, useful itinerary suggestions, seasonal travel recommendations, and even pithy little destination-calibrated dos and don’ts. Much too big to take along on a trip, Where to Go When is nonetheless awfully useful for a book of the coffee table ilk.

D-Reizen, the Dutch holiday shop chain that regularly turns in some of the cheapest deals around, currently lists a seven-night house rental in Tuscany for €24 per person, based on double occupancy.

The rental, in Marina di Bibbona, actually costs €85.50 once reservations charge, booking fee, and insurance charge are taken into account. But considering the duration of the rental (we repeat: seven nights!) and location (we repeat: in Tuscany!) we think that under €90 is a pretty damn good deal.

This rate is good for the week beginning September 8.

We just discovered hidden europe, a treasure of a publication devoted to out-of-the-way corners of Europe, cultural (and geographical) enclaves, and thoughtful, leisurely examinations of destinations. Hidden europe commenced publication in early 2005 and comes out six times a year.

Quite frankly, we’re blown away. We love the publication’s very mission, its attention to detail, and its complete insouciance regarding trends and buzz. Take a look at these sample article subjects: Prague’s African community, the Georgian Military Highway, obscure airports, Vojvodina, Brussels’ les Marolles/De Marollen ‘hood, “people’s palaces” of socialist Europe, and Franz Josef Land.

Yowza, in other words.

What’s notable at midweek?

1. TUIfly may be in a financially shaky place, but they’re pulling out all the stops to get more people on board. They’ve just announced an “All you can fly” promotion, which runs €199. For your euros, you get unlimited travel between selected TUIfly destinations. These include 14 destinations in Germany, Paris, Valencia, Bilbao, Rome, Stockholm, Dubrovnik, and Basel—among 44 destinations in total.

The catch? You’ve got to be between 16 and 26 years of age—with valid student identification—to take advantage. We scoured the fine print for evidence that non-EU students might not be eligible and came up with nothing, though the deal is only promoted on the German-language version of the TUIfly site. The “All” ticket can be booked through August 31, and is good for flights through October 31.

2. Is Ryanair back in expansion mode? The Irish low-cost carrier announced six new routes from Dublin today. In October, Dublin-Basel, Dublin-Budapest, and Dublin-Szczecin routes will kick off; these will be followed in November by Dublin-Katowice, Dublin-Nice, and Dublin-Prague routes. Ryanair is also amping up flight frequency on 12 routes from Dublin. These include Dublin-Bratislava, Dublin-Manchester, Dublin-Riga, and Dublin-Tenerife.

3. Montenegro has announced tourist numbers for the first half of 2007. The newly-independent republic saw over 261,000 visitors during the first six months of the year, almost 210,000 of these visitors foreign.