We admit that we have a soft spot for Georgia, one of three ex-Soviet countries occupying Europe’s southeastern corner. We were thus quite happy to see the FT’s Special Report on Georgia in today’s paper, Quentin Peel’s article on tourism in Georgia in particular. Slowly, Georgia is readying itself to welcome greater tourist numbers, though, as Peel points out, hotel room availability in Tbilisi lags far behind airport and road infrastructure improvements.

Still on the Caucasian regional tip, we were downright chuffed to learn earlier this month that Azerbaijan will be participating in next year’s Eurovision Song Contest for the first time. Azerbaijan joins its fellow Caucasian nations Armenia (entry year: 2006) and Georgia (entry year: 2007) at the kitsch fest.

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Autumn is here!

1. EastJet announced yesterday that is has acquired GB Airlines. A giddy glance at the GB route map turns up several destinations not currently served by easyJet, including Tangier and Fez in Morocco, Malta, Hurghada and Sharm el Sheik in Egypt, Tunis, Paphos, and Ajaccio and Bastia in Corsica. We’re hoping that easyJet won’t abandon these routes.

2. Jaunted reminds us that Madrid’s Festival de Otoño is in hyperactive mode through the middle of November.

3. Ryanair announced a modest route expansion today, with a new Shannon-Alicante route as well as new routes between Dublin and Palma, Santander, and Zadar. All routes will be inaugurated in March.

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The last time we checked, Italian low-cost carrier Volareweb flew to seven destinations in Italy, plus Paris. So imagine our surprise when we took a glance at the Volareweb site the other day to discover the following new destinations: Alghero, Cagliari, Helsinki, Lodz, Maastricht Aachen, Manchester, Pescara, Porto, Rotterdam, and Wroclaw. Three new Italian destinations? Two in the Netherlands? Two in Poland? And, um, Helsinki? Very interesting.

All the airline’s new destinations are being served from Milan Malpensa. Volareweb is currently hawking €21.99 fares (including taxes and charges) on routes in and out of Milan. In the past, we’ve had a difficult time locating Volareweb’s lowest promotional fares, so imagine our pleasure when we found a €41.86 (yes, that’s under their listed lowest fare) for a Milan Malpensa-Maastricht Aachen roundtrip at the end of November.

Volareweb, we’re paying attention.

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Tuesday evening. The skies are gray. And we’re a million miles away, thinking about some of the following things…

1. Like another low-cost carrier sale. TUIfly is selling off winter one-way fares for €11 apiece, taxes and surcharges included. On sale through midnight on Sunday, October 28, these fares are good for travel from November through February.

2. Like Slovenia. Thanks to the Guardian’s Mat Smith, who teases us with tales of night tobogganing in Slovenia.

3. Like green lifestyles, courtesy of our friend Denise Young’s La Vie Verte blog, which appears to be churning out green posts by the truckload.

4. Like free museums. In January, the French government will offer free admission to 14 museums and monuments for a six-month trial period. The cultural sites with waived admission include the fab Cluny Museum in Paris.

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hidden europe has been on the road this past fortnight, meandering through Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is not a country that gets a lot of attention in the travel media. Sarajevo café life, the bridge at Mostar and the Roman Catholic shrine at Medugorje are the three Bosnian “sights” that travel writers love to cover. But what about the rest of the country?

It is of course a region that endured a terrible war in the 1990s. The Dayton Accord may have been a fine way of ending that war, but it wasn’t necessarily the best possible way of creating an enduring peace. But against the odds, Bosnia and Herzegovina is emerging as a credible multi-national state. Its two entities, the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Republika Srpska, have been cajoled into a precarious co-existence, while the town of Brcko (an enclave that is part of neither entity) is maturing from a wayward market town, where everything from guns to women were traded, into an entrepreneurial pocket of Bosnia where some effort is really made to promote the co-existence of Serbs, Muslims and Croats within a single town.

As with all areas where once there has been conflict, the question of rebuilding monuments, churches, mosques, and other emblematic buildings is a knotty one. Even in Dresden in Germany, the rebuilding of the city’s Frauenkirche (destroyed by American and British bombers in 1945) is laced with controversy. Quite whose memories are being embedded in the new stones?

Similar issues arise in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the world’s media rejoiced a year or two back at the reconstruction of the bridge over the Neretva gorge in Mostar. West European and North American audiences were clamouring for some good news from Bosnia (perhaps conscious that the imposition of a High Representative does not exactly provide a model of democracy.) High flown speeches highlighted how the bridge might stand as a cornerstone of reconciliation, and one dignitary even ventured to suggest that the Mostar bridge might link the worlds of Islam and Christendom. Quite a burden of responsibility for one small bridge to bear.

We may rejoice that the Mostar bridge is back in place, but in the back streets of the city a lot of ordinary mortals are still waiting for their homes and businesses to be rebuilt.

This is the fourth in a series of fortnightly blog posts by the editors of hidden europe.

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Who’s thinking about next summer? Not us. If anything, we’re hoping for cooler weather—and as quickly as possible. We want our autumn and we want it now.

That said, the impulse to plan is a wise one. Slovak budget airline SkyEurope released part of their summer 2008 timetable earlier today. Released routes include five in and out of Bratislava, nine in and out of Prague,13 in and out of Vienna, and a handful of routes to Slovakia’s hinterlands, Poprad/Tatry and Košice.

Advance planners, take note! Several low-cost carriers have released or will soon be releasing 2008 timetables. This is a great time to keep a look-out for route availability over the following seasons.

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We don’t know about that “stays mainly in the plains” bit, but we’ll say with certainty that when it rains (in Spain) it pours—at least when it comes to artistic ventures. As bullfighting season draws to a close, the art scene is just revving up. Here are three main events to watch:

1. Thinking takes to the streets: For the first time ever August Rodin’s “The Thinker” has left its home in the Rodin Museum in Paris for an exhibition in the streets. The streets of Málaga and Granada, that is. On October 17, “The Thinker,” along with the six sculptures of the “Burghers of Calais” were unveiled Málaga’s old town. They’ll visit (under the watchful eyes of a 24 hour guard) until December 19; following their tenure in Málaga, they’ll grace the streets of Granada through January 27.

2. Cinema Paradiso: Film critics, mark your calendars! The Seville Film Festival opens on November 2 with The Lark Farm, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani’s World War I drama. The festival, which runs from November 2 until November 13, features only European films in its program of 150 titles from 30 countries.

3. Prado, Prado, Prado: There is much to be excited about at Madrid’s Prado Museum this fall. On October 31, Madrid’s majestic museum will unveil its new extension, and an exhibition of the museums best 19th-century works which have been in hiding for decade. As if that weren’t enough, in honor of its exciting news, the museum will be offering free admission on select dates and at select times.

Ah Spain, how we love thee.

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When in Rome, do as the locals do and attend the city’s annual film festival, which kicks off this Thursday, October 18th, 2007. The opening night will be celebrated with a screening of Second Wind, a wild French film about bank robbers. We’re there.

You can snag screening passes for the 10-day event online or in person, with most tickets going for between €3 and €10. Dozens of screenings happen daily—with 11 premieres lined up—and are presented around town in fabulous venues. We took special note of both the temporary space erected by IKEA and the Byzantine-style Parco della Musica, which can seat one gazillion spectators.

This year’s film fest also celebrates Indian and German culture through series of special programs, screenings, and break-out discussions. Check out the festival’s official website for more information.

We always wanted to see Brad Pitt in lederhosen. We’d take him in a sari too.

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We were pleased to see that Eric Rayman at the New York Times recently arrived in Paris and immediately hopped on a Vélib’ bike rental. In yesterday’s travel section, Rayman describes the joys of pedaling down the Boulevard St-Germain (and the terrors of biking through Place de la Concorde).

We’ve been big Vélib’ fans since it was launched this spring by popular socialist mayor Bertrand Delanoë, and have even eyed it with envy (especially one Cheapo in this office, who bikes his way through lower Manhattan every morning, along streets that are decidedly unfriendly to cyclists). The program has put 15,000 bikes on the streets of Paris, available for short-term rental for almost nothing from more than 1,000 hop-on and drop-off stations.

BudgetTravel.com pointed out in a post this summer that many Americans were unable to rent bikes from the Vélib’ program, as the kiosks were only programmed to accept credit cards with “smart chips,” which are the norm in Europe. Rayman notes that the machines now accept American Express cards issued in the US, a sign, perhaps, of a “warming of Franco-American relations.”

Consider us warmed!

See also: Vélib official site.

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Ok, so a recent installation at the Tate Modern in London kinda cracked us up.

The exhibit, by Colombian artist Doris Salcedo, is called Shibboleth and is a 167-meter long crack in the floor. Museum goers are invited to interact with the exhibit. A story in the AFP says, “some visitors have been so distracted by the impressive surroundings that they have unwittingly fallen into the crack, around one foot (or 30 centimetres) wide in places.” The crack gets filled next April.

For more on the artist, check out the Tate’s site.

Across town at the National Portrait Gallery, a huge pop art exhibit opened today. The usual suspects—Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and David Hockney—are among the 52 artists represented. The exhibition runs through January 20th, 2008. More info at the Gallery’s Web site. Price: £10.

And, if you’re in London—whatever you do—please, for the love of art, go to the annual Frieze Art Fest. It’s on until October 14th and, though it will set you back £18.50, you’ll feast on the works of more than 1,000 artists the world ’round.

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