Vlora Prefecture at 1:150, 000 in a series of handy size, waterproof & tear-resistant, contoured & GPS compatible road maps from the Tirana-based publishers Vektor. Landscape is presented by altitude colouring & contours lines at 100m intervals, with spot heights & a few more names of topographic features than found on Vektor’s 200K road maps of the country. National parks & nature reserves are prominently highlighted. The prefecture maps appear to show the same small local dirt roads as in the 200K series, but given the increase in scale do so with greater clarity & also provide more detailed GPS coordinates (latitude & longitude lines are drawn at 5’ intervals), useful when travelling across the more remote parts of the country. Railway lines are included & local airports are marked. Symbols highlight campsites, beaches, archaeological & historical sites, caves, etc. The maps also show subdivisions of prefectures & names of the communes, & indicate administrative status of towns. Map legend

Includes:: English. Please note: border crossings are prominently marked but beyond topographic colouring no road or other information is provided outside the country’s borders.

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A5 size, 72-page guide-booklet for use in navigating the Vltava river between Borova Lada & Hluboka. The route is covered by 13 1:50, 000 scale maps. All text is in Czech only, but the map legend

Includes:: English translation. Detail

Includes:: locks, bridges, distance indicators, water guages, marinas, rapids, danger points, facilities eg. hostels, grocers & campsites, as well as roads, landmarks & attractions. Lock & weir diagrams are also included.



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Vtava (Moldau) Cycle Route, a 480-km long trail from Želazná Ruda in the Šumava National Park along the Cech border with Germany & Austria to the Lipno Reservoir & then along the Vltava across the beautiful historic town of Ceský Krumlov & Ceské Budejovice to Prague, & beyond it to Melník to join the cycle route along the Elbe. The Vltava route is presented by the Verlag Esterbauer in guide with maps at 1:50, 000 showing the route & its variants. Extensive information is conveyed by symbols, indicating road surface, campsites & other accommodation, repair workshops, recreational facilities, places of interest, etc. A list of various types of accommodation facilities is included.IMPORTANT
- PLEASE NOTE BEFORE ORDERING
- ALL THE TEXT IN THIS TITLE IS GERMAN ONLY. MAP LEGEND

Includes:: ENGLISH (please see our sample image) & the information provided on the maps is sufficient to use this title without any knowledge of German.ABOUT THE BIKELINE SERIES: all the titles have been meticulously researched & are highly regarded in their native Germany. Most titles, as indicated in their individual descriptions, also include a separate section listing selected accommodation, from hotels to campsites, youth hostels & rooms in private houses, all with addresses, telephone numbers & price range. Information on towns along each route

Includes:: a list of places of interest, with opening hours, etc. Several of the guides also have street plans. To see the list of other titles in the Bikeline series please click on the series link.





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A taut & shocking story of vengeance, bloodshed & love, set over 100 days of bitter Russian winter! from the bestselling author of Messiah. Moscow, December 1991. Chaos reigns after the fall of communism. Muscovites are used to queues & empty shelves, but now they have to cope with a dangerous power vacuum -- & a war between brutal mafiya gangs for control of the city. So when a child`s body is found beneath the ice of the Moscow river it attracts little attention to begin with. Then a second body is found. & a third. At the heart of the gathering storm is Red October, Russia`s most famous vodka distillery. Alice Liddell, an American banker, has come to Moscow to oversee its privatization
- an unpopular move. Alice wants to get going, but faced with the charismatic, ruthless Lev
- distiller director & head of one of the warring mafia gangs
- a very difficult job is starting to look impossible. Lev`s arch-enemy has vowed revenge on him & it seems that the bizarre child killings might be part of this. The last thing he needs is a determined young woman in the heart of his criminal empire. But will Lev & Alice be enemies or allies? & when the storm has passed, who will be left standing?


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Russia is famous for its vodka, & its culture of extreme intoxication. But just as vodka is central to the lives of many Russians, it is also central to understanding Russian history & politics. In Vodka Politics, Mark Lawrence Schrad argues that debilitating societal alcoholism is not hard-wired into Russians` genetic code, but rather their autocratic political system, which has long wielded vodka as a tool of statecraft. Through a series of historical investigations stretching from Ivan the Terrible through Vladimir Putin, Vodka Politics presents the secret history of the Russian state itself-a history that is drenched in liquor. Scrutinizing (rather than dismissing) the role of alcohol in Russian politics yields a more nuanced understanding of Russian history itself: from palace intrigues under the tsars to the drunken antics of Soviet & post-Soviet leadership, vodka is there in abundance. Beyond vivid anecdotes, Schrad scours original documents & archival evidence to answer provocative historical questions. How have Russia`s rulers used alcohol to solidify their autocratic rule? What role did alcohol play in tsarist coups? Was Nicholas II`s ill-fated prohibition a catalyst for the Bolshevik Revolution? Could the Soviet Union have become a world power without liquor? How did vodka politics contribute to the collapse of both communism & public health in the 1990s? How can the Kremlin overcome vodka`s hurdles to produce greater social well-being, prosperity, & democracy into the future? Viewing Russian history through the bottom of the vodka bottle helps us to understand why the ”liquor question” remains important to Russian high politics even today-almost a century after the issue had been put to bed in most every other modern state. Indeed, recognizing & confronting vodka`s devastating political legacies may be the greatest political challenge for this generation of Russia`s leadership, as well as the next. ...

Vogelsberg
- Nördliche Wetterau (No. 846), a detailed, GPS compatible map at 1:50, 000 from Kompass with local & long-distance
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Vogelsberg – Wetterau on a waterproof, tear-resistant, GPS compatible cycling map at 1:75, 000 from the ADFC (Allgemeiner Deutscher Fahrrad-Club
- the official German cycling federation), in a series of maps with extensive overprint for long-distance & local cycling routes. GPS waypoints, route profiles, details of online links for information about accommodation etc. are also provided. Maps included in this series are contoured & the interval varies according to the type of the terrain. Steep sections are annotated with gradient markings. Colouring and/or graphics show various types of landscape: woods, vineyards, etc. An overprint highlights both the national long-distance cycling routes & the shorter local cycling trails, each clearly identified by a symbol and/or an abbreviation of its name. Sections with heavy traffic and/or poor road surface are clearly marked. Symbols indicate various facilities, such as railway stations with cycle hire, cycle repair shops, campsites, youth hostels, shelters, country restaurants/bars, sport & leisure facilities. Maps have a UTM grid for measuring distances & for determining location using GPS device & they are printed on weather resistant & tear-resistant paper. Each map covers an area of Approx. 130 x 87 km & the map legend is in German only. To see all the titles in this series please click on the series link.
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One of the titles in a series of topographic hiking maps covering the whole of the state of Hesse. All the maps have cartography identical to the standard topographic survey of Germany, with extensive overprint highlighting local footpaths, long-distance paths & cycling routes, indicating their waymarking. A wide range of symbols show various types of accommodation (campsites, youth hostels, etc), sport & recreational facilities, & places of interest. Most titles have a UTM grid. Map legend

Includes:: English. All of the titles either come with an accompanying brochure or have on the reverse illustrated descriptions, in German only, of various places of interest & contact details.

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Rother’s Walking Guide to the Côte d` Azur covers 44 day & multiple-day excursions between Meton & Marseille. The guide



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These are stories of Nigeria & of America, & of the frayed bonds that connect the two. Hostages are taken from an American expat bar. Attempts are made to get visas, & those who have succeeded return covered in wealth or in ignominy. Children are told tales of spirits who ride on horses & take bad little girls as their wives, but when hooves & flames do come to their house they are real enough. A man arrested at a brothel is posed as an armed robber by a corrupt police force. The radio station Voice of America brings a new pen pal, & some very high hopes, to a group of young men. This is a Nigeria of gossip & spells, of families & refugee camps, & Osondu makes it his own. Voice of America is a brilliantly original, deft & darkly funny book. ...