Illustrations by Jamie Toon

Most European kids believe in Santa Claus, too, whether they call him Father Christmas, Pere Noël, or St. Nick. But they also await the arrival of their own traditional gift-bringers. Meet some of the more colorful visitors calling at European homes this winter...

Our premiere edition, Eucopia #1: Sweet, is making its way to our subscribers right now. And you can still buy it on its own, without subscribing - the perfect way to sample Eucopia for the commitment-shy.

The mini-magazine inside each box explores the products and the theme, including this candy-coated infographic illustrating the ten European countries who can't get enough of the sweet, sweet stuff. Not even Germany's sweet tooth rages like the USA's, though: Americans are the undisputed world "champs" at a whopping 126.9 grams per person per day.

The theme of the Milan World's Fair, running through October 31, is food. But the real action is in the temporary buildings. While each nation's pavilion pays varying degrees of lip service to the local agricultural and culinary traditions, for most, the effort clearly went into creating photo-ready architectural ambassadors, to infiltrate a little soft-power propaganda into the Facebook pages and Instagram feeds of tourists around the world.

A walk down the Expo 2015 midway is a parade of the striking, the surreal, and the downright tacky, each pavilion twisting and vaulting in an effort to out-impress the others. As the world's temporary Main Street, the Expo midway vividly illustrates that the world is a weird town. Here are just a few examples that caught my eye:

 by Jason Toon

Fondazione Prada had to know what they were getting when they asked Wes Anderson to design the cafe at their new museum and exhibition space in southeastern Milan. Every detail of Bar Luce is planned to evoke the midcentury mood and aesthetic of Italian Neorealist cinema. Anderson specifically cites Vittorio De Sica's Miracolo a Milano (1951) and Luchino Visconti's Rocco e i suoi fratelli (1960) as inspirations for a bar that "would make a pretty good movie set, [but] an even better place to write a movie." I was eager to see how well he succeeded...

by Jason Toon

San Siro cuts a suitably distinctive figure for this most style-conscious of cities, Milan. The original 1920s stadium (officially named Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, which nobody calls it in practice) sits inside a shell built around it, to add a third tier of seats and a partial roof for the World Cup in 1990. The visual drama comes from this addition, with the massive red girders jutting out at each corner and the towering spiral walkways. It glows in the murk of a cloudy September evening like a monument built by a dead alien civilization.

I'm in the crowd of pilgrims for tonight's episode of the twice-yearly Derby della Madonnina, the clash between the two teams that share San Siro: Internazionale Milan, who wear black and blue, and who everyone calls Inter; and AC Milan, who wear black and red, and who are confusingly called simply Milan except by Inter fans, who opt for the equally simple "merda" (shit).

If you listen to the pessimists, that dead civilization might be Milanese soccer itself. It's true that Inter and AC Milan are both going through rebuilding periods. After dominating the Serie A league for decades, they spent last season mired in the middle of the pack. For the second straight season, the Champions League of the top European clubs has no Milanese entry, a streak that had gone back to 2001.

It's a long, long way to Polynesia. The dusty hills of the province of Toledo, Spain are almost as far from the South Pacific, both geographically and culturally, as you can get. No frothy surf, thatched huts, or gently swaying coconut palms here. The town of Borox, high on the Castilian plain, runs more to tall thin evergreens and low, severe, sun-baked buildings with red tile roofs.

But one of those squat buildings on the outskirts of town might just be the center of the tiki universe. 

We launched our pre-order Indiegogo campaign this week, and we're already closing in on $2,000! There are plenty more beautiful, useful, interesting subscriptions available, starting at just $12 a month - so get yours and tell all your coolest friends!

Our first Beta Box has shipped! We offered this prototype box to ten of our friends with good taste. They seemed to like it. Even with all of the compromises we had to make - from sourcing online in small quantities, to printing all of the labels and inserts on a desktop printer - we're pretty proud to take Eucopia's first step.

In keeping with the box's theme of Morning, it included a porcelain latte mug made in Italy by d'Ancap:

The cuckoo crows early. A survey of sleepers in seven European countries reveals that the clockwork Swiss are the continent's earliest birds.