Twenty four essays invite readers to depart from the well-trodden tourist trail and take an excursion into St. Petersburg's historical past: visit the scenes of former German and Jewish life; the Moskovsky Prospekt, a magnificent boulevard built under Stalin; Lake Ladoga, which froze over in 1942 thereby providing the only link to the besieged city; the locations of Bolshevist mass rallies; the infamous police department, but also the gardens, cinemas and apartments. The result is a lively mosaic of locations that reveals the history of the city and its citizens.

This anthology deals with vocational teacher education in Ukraine, which is a country facing many social and economic challenges. It is a result of the Erasmus+ project “Improving teacher education for applied learning in the field of VET (ITE-VET)”, a capacity building project focussing on Ukraine (2016–2018). The project came up with the following issues which were defined as “working packages” in the context of the EU project guidelines. These issues also represent the major contents and arguments in the chapters of this book: • Ukrainian VET teacher education and VET system and analysis of their needs • Didactical input from EU countries on modern teaching • Revision of course programmes and curricula • Implementation of new forms of practice-orientation.