Stockholm  - Up close, a Boeing 747-200 is an impressive sight.

Visitors to Stockholm's Arlanda airport can now get a real, close-up view of a mighty bird - in the form of a decommissioned jumbo jet which has been converted into a hostel.

General Manager Oscar Dios hopes that aviation enthusiasts, budget travellers, charter tourists and day visitors will book a stay at the Jumbo Hostel that opened in mid-January.

Tamworth, Australia  - It's late January and the Australia Day long weekend is coming up.

Some seek relief from the dog days of the southern hemisphere summer at the beach. Others head to Tamworth, a five-hour drive north of Sydney and to its annual country music festival.

Now in its 37th year, Tamworth is the world's biggest country music bash. The 11-day shindig rates eighth in Forbes magazine's list of the world's 10 best festivals.

Queensland couple Del Connolly and John Hastie are in town after a two-day drive, making the scene in Peel Street.

Port of Spain  - It is hot and loud. It is carnival in the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago where the pre-Lenten festivities, dubbed "the greatest show on Earth," last about five weeks.

Until Ash Wednesday, which falls on February 25 this year, the islands' inhabitants will be busy sewing costumes, tuning steel pans, percussion instruments made from oil drums, practicing with their bands and party-hopping. The people on Tobago, the smaller island, take carnival less seriously, but Trinidadians pull out all the stops.

Hamburg  - The idea is as simple as it is ingenious - people from all over the world come together in an online network to offer accommodation on their sofas to others. In return, they can spend time abroad on a couch anywhere around the globe.

Online communities that bring so-called couch surfers together such as hospitalityclub. org, bewelcome. org and couchsurfing. com are booming.

Couchsurfing. com alone has about 600,000 members according to the website's operators. But in order for you to enjoy a good night's sleep on a foreign couch, there are a few things to take into consideration.

Berlin  - Colourful posters, brochures and travel books, some dating back to the 17th century, line the shelves of Germany's biggest tourism archive.

Germans have long been prolific travellers, and it's easy to see why when you comb through the literature at the Free University's Willy-Scharnow Institute for Tourism in south-west Berlin.

It contains a trove of travel literature, much of it related to 19th and 20th century travel, and to the phenomenal growth of the German tourism industry in the past 80 years.

Munich/Berlin  - Travellers to the United States have been advised to check the new regulations about online registration as early as possible.

Since January 12, travellers to the US from countries that are part of the Visa Waiver Program must go to https://esta. cbp. dhs. gov and obtain pre-authorisation by filling out an online form.