Thursday List: Monocle, NL, CH, Andy Hide

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.