The cult of Che Guevara gets a boost this week as special events across Europe commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the revolutionary’s untimely death in Bolivia on October 9, 1967. In Derry in Ireland, a week of celebrations will include the unveiling on Saturday of a new mural of Che – complementing the long standing Che Guevara mural a little further up the Foyle valley in Strabane.

Che Guevara stock remains as high as ever among European socialists, not least in Andalucía (southern Spain) where knotty issues surrounding land tenure are still a popular grievance in some agricultural communities. Stop off in Marinaleda, just forty miles southwest of Córdoba, to catch the feel of a small town that has a passion for combative action against absentee landlords. A spark of revolutionary zeal permeates the town and is reflected in graffiti, street names and murals.

Other European socialist thinkers and politicians still mould the travel plans of more politically engaged travellers. There are larger than life figures of Lenin all across Europe (from Spitsbergen to St Petersburg) and even Stalin is eulogised in a new museum in Volgograd – and of course, in his home town of Gori in Georgia where a huge statue of Uncle Jo stands in the town’s main square.

Predictably Ulyanovsk, where Lenin lived as a kid, plays the Lenin card very strongly, but affection for Lenin is not just confined to Russia. There are good Lenin museums at Ulyanovsk, at Shushenskoye (where Lenin lived in exile and was married) and at Tampere in Finland.

The socialist flame has not been totally extinguished. Hasta la victoria siempre!

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

We do love the annual “Europe travel” edition of the New York Times’ travel section, which appeared in yesterday’s paper. Here are a few highlights:

Fall Travel: Cheap? No. Cheaper? Yes.
Natch, we were into this article in the Practical Traveler series. It’s chock full of helpful budget travel tips (think south, flight strategies, consider packages, etc.). But it also makes it clear that traveling to Europe is still possible for Americans, even during a period of dismal exchange rates. (And yes, we also loved it because it gave us a very nice shout-out!)

Season to Savor: As Weather Cools, Europe Heats Up
Articles on cities like Rome, Berlin and Prague showcase how, as temps go down, Europe’s cultural scene stays on the up-and-up.

Worshiping Paris
As if we needed another reason to genuflect before Paris, this beautiful recap of one journalist’s spiritual journey, through Parisian churches and the like, has us packing.

Ryanair again offers what appears, at first blush, to be impossible: one million completely free fares. Good for travel between November 5 and January 31, they can be purchased through Monday, October 8.

While strictly speaking not too good to be true, this promotion comes with more exceptions that most. To wit: the free fares only extend to flights on Monday afternoon, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday before noon, and Saturday afternoon. In addition, the entire period from December 18 through January 8 is blacked out.

We’re also having a hell of a time finding these free fares on the Ryanair site, though it’s easy to find €.01 and £.01 fares with nothing but taxes to pay. Say what you will about Ryanair’s no-frills cattle-call experience and advertising bluster. If you’ve got the time to find the right fare, Ryanair’s an incredibly cheap way to fly.

European charter airlines and low-cost carriers are slowly but steadily adding destinations in countries just outside of Europe. While Ryanair and most charter airlines—the latter feeding into holiday packages—fly to a range of destinations in Morocco, these are but one demonstration of the latest frontier. Among other routes of note, the Russian low-cost carrier SkyExpress flies east of the Urals to Tyumen, several charter airline fly to destinations in Tunisia, Transavia among other airlines flies to Egypt, and tuifly and Thomsonfly jet to Tel Aviv.

As of November, Aqaba (on Jordan’s Red Sea coast) will be added to the slate of midhaul Europe-adjacent destinations reachable by a low-cost carrier. JetairFly, the Belgian wing of TUI, will be flying to Aqaba from November.

The Red Sea resort town draws divers and sunlovers and is a stone’s throw from Eilat, Israel. It’s also got a popular Turkish bath on hand, and is about two hours south of Petra by car.

We found a January roundtrip from Brussels to Aqaba for €360. Not impossible, but we’ll be watching to see if these fares go down a bit.

Today SkyEurope announced the release of 99,000 promotional all-inclusive €29 fares. “All-inclusive” here means that taxes and fees won’t pounce out at the final step of your online transaction. This promotion is good for travel between November 1 and December 15. Tickets can be purchased through October 7. In the past, we’ve struggled to find very many good fares during these SkyEurope promotional sales; nonetheless, this one is certainly worth a look.

Isle of Man Travel Services is trying to drum up off-season interest in the Irish Sea island with some holiday packages. Noteworthy: a £135 per person package for two nights at the Sefton Hotel, including sea transportation from either Heysham or Liverpool and all additional taxes, or £170 for an identical package but with an extra night thrown in. Ultracheap? No, but not bad for a longish weekend in the pricey British Isles.

Meanwhile, Spanish low-cost carrier Vueling is having some serious troubles. Last week, Air Scoop alerted us to the possibility that Vueling might soon change its pricing model. Subsequently, trading on Vueling shares has been halted. Things are looking wobbly.