Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet Eastern Europe

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The guide is up to LP's usual standard, which is good, with good information regarding the backgrounds of countries, cities and regions. Also, almost every town mentioned has maps and plenty of accomodation and restaurant suggestions.

However, it is incomplete or simply incorrect in some areas:
- the costs of accomodations and places to eat are noted in euro's, and, as the exchange rates have changed since the time of writing, there are quite significant increases in costs (in euro's). This can be a setback when counting on this financially
- some maps are somewhat incorrect; I came across this twice when walking from a train station to the centre of town (real distance was much greater than the distance mentioned on the map)
- when buying train tickets in Eastern Europe, the procedure for seat reservations differs from country to country. This wasn't mentioned for instance in the case of Bulgaria: there you have to buy a train ticket AND pay for a supplement for a seat reservation (regular tickets only buy transport, no seating)
- train connections were displayed differently when comparing one country to another; in some information would be in the city chapters, in others it would be in the country directory. Also, the amount of information displayed varies greatly.
- Often people will travel to Istanbul as well as lots of countries mentioned in this guide, or maybe Greece as well (I went from Istanbul through Northern Greece to Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Hungary, Austria and Slovakia), and nothing in those countries is covered. Perhaps omitting Greece is logical, but at least a couple of pages on Istanbul (geographically in Europe) would benifit the traveller.

And, my big disagreement with practically any LP guide is that makes judgments about destinations, instead of merely describing what is there. These judgments may fall into the liking of the mainstream traveller, but are not a success for everyone.

To wrap it up: this guide is great value if you're travelling to or through Eastern Europe, but especially in the transport area: ask around and don't rely solely on this guide.