Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet Europe on a Shoestring

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

With 17 countries on a 102-day itinerary and a careful eye on our budget, my son and I needed a book like this for our recently completed trip. Although we stuck with it until the end, I gotta say, Lonely Planet's "Europe on a Shoestring" has lots of flaws and you should think carefully before buying it.

THE GOOD NEWS: This is a great alternative to buying a dozen country-specific books. You'll save on pack weight and on dollars (or Euros). Furthermore, since its from Lonely Planet, this book does a lot better job than most of the "mainstream tourist" books of recognizing that a $300-a-night hotel room and a $50 meal are NOT in your plans.

THE BAD NEWS: (a) The prices and lots of info are out of date and getting more so. (b) The maps will taunt you with enough information to get you going but not enough to keep from getting lost, and (c) Overall the book offers a weird combination of too-much and too-little information.

You should consider this book only if you are planning to visit at least 10 different countries in Europe - otherwise you are better off buying individual country guides while in Europe (or sneaking a peek at the freebies stashed at many Hostel reception desks.)

My rating is three stars because you have to realize that there is probably no book out there that does an adequate job of `covering' all of Europe - but there are still lots of travelers, like us, who hope to do just that!

* * * details follow

(A) Check the COPYRIGHT date of the book very carefully before you buy! The one currently for sale is copyright early 2003. This sounded pretty current to us but it apparently means LP wrapped up whatever research they did into updating prices and other information sometime in 2001 or '02; for a trip in 2004 this was WAY OUT OF DATE. For one in 2005 it will be worse. It just gets to be a drag `translating' the prices: every 15 Euro Hostel is really going to be "18 to 20". Every 7 Euro admission fee: "9 or 10". Even expecting this problem, it leaves you feeling like your "shoestring" is getting shredded even more than it already is!

And, of course, prices aren't the only thing that can change in 2 or 3 years! We ran into museums and sights that had been closed for months and even the very strange situation of the LP book saying a museum was going to be closed "until 2004" and then not offering any info about it... as we walked by its open doors! We also bumped up against some hostels and places to stay that were either listed but long-gone or unlisted but two-years-"new."

Consider waiting for a new edition.

(B) The MAPS are a very strange problem. LP has made a clear effort to give you map info for the major cities in most countries and that shows that they realize you will probably be spending most of your time "pounding the pavement." But you won't really need their maps for getting around and touring a city - most major cities have much better maps available for free or cheap and you can usually rustle them up at the train station or hostel.

The REAL REASON you will need the sort of map this book provides is for the tricky first hour in a new city. You've just gotten off yet another train in yet another city and face another new language that's burbling all around you and your first goal is to get to your hostel or hotel and drop your pack.

But the LP city maps are the worst possible compromise of providing not enough info to serve as touring maps but also not enough to get you from that first important point-A to point-B! They trim back on space and printing by only naming SOME of the streets. You'd be surprised how many different ways there are to walk out of a typical European train station! We were unhappily surprised how many times we did that and found ourselves on a street whose name did not grace the LP map.

OF COURSE ASKING strangers is a great part of the travel experience and most of the time it was fun to figure out the best sequence of gestures and pidgin English and pseudo-Eurish to ask someone where the heck we were! But you'll do plenty of that anyways and besides, if, like Blanche DuBois, you've "always relied upon the kindness of strangers", why bring a guidebook at all?

(C) Its hard to whack LP for trying TOO hard; but when you are ending a 20 mile hike knowing that the 4-pound guidebook in your pack has at least 2-pounds of info about countries you aren't ever going to visit, it tends to ring in your mind with every step! This book was TOO extensive for us and I can't imagine anyone with an itinerary that would include even 75% of the countries listed. Do you want to lug around all that info on Lithuania and Latvia and Slovakia and Slovenia ? Our answer was to take a good sharp knife to the pages and hack out about 600 pages of excess. If you're a bibliophile and that prospect makes you shudder, at least think carefully about their "Western Europe" or "Eastern..." books instead.

At the same time, we often felt that the book offered too little information. For most of the larger countries, the book feels incomplete once you venture out of THE MAJOR CITY. I realize that this is the "we can't include everything" problem again, but its no help to understand their editorial challenges when you are lost in Lubeck or trying to find out about a place that's listed in your hostels book but not LP.

(D) Minor but annoying complaints include (1) less focus on hostels than I expected, (2) limited info on money-saving "self-catering" (e.g. where to buy food to COOK) and (3) too much silly self-promotion (it became a joke with us to read the section for each country where they `recommend' other books about the country and somehow only ever recommend other LP guides!

(E) Minor but gratifying kudos for their (1) thoughtful and informative country histories, (2) limited but necessary language guides (you can go far indeed if you just memorize the words for "thank you" in most places)

I guess the fact is that traveling as we did, lots of countries, lots of cities and lots of short stays, isn't a reasonable way to see Europe. OF COURSE its better to spend two weeks in Berlin - and get a "Berlin Book" - or a month zigzagging through France - and buy a "France book." But unless you've got unlimited time (and unlimited money) you'll probably face the same dilemma that drove us to our wacky itinerary and this ultimately unsatisfactory book: how can you sit there and plan to just "skip Italy" or "pass up Vienna"? Like us, like this book, you will probably end up trying too hard to do everything.

Enjoy your trip.

I used this book to get me through Europe as well as plan my backpacking adventure, and I thought it was great (especially for London). I barely had enough $ to afford the plane ticket to Europe, much less spend more on other things. The restaurant recommendations were especially useful in places like Athens. It was condensed enough (probably too condensed for some) so that I didn't have to waste time tracking things down. If you are short on time and money, this is the book for you. If you have money and more time, this book isn't for you then and you should upgrade to Frommer's and the like. I would echo what another reviewer said and make certain you have the most recent edition of this book because things can be out of date (especially prices) rather quickly.

I spent three months in Europe (England, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Belgium) last summer, and used this book as my primary guide.

It is good for finding the basics (hostels, train and bus stations, etc) but not much else, and with so much area to cover this should hardly be surprising.

As about 2/3 of my time was spent in Italy, I do wish I'd purchased an Italy specific guide... luckily I had access to various other books that were more in depth.

The maps and contact information were accurate. I don't think I ever used this guide for restaurant recommendations, though. It's much easier and more fun to go menu-shopping or ask locals. Hostel operators tend to know what's up too.

This book isnt as good as Lets Gos version as it is written more for an American audience. It doesnt include what it should and has been drastically thickened with a lot of [stuff] backpackers dont need to know and more importantly do not want to carry the weight of those pages around.

Who cares about restaurants, up market hotels and other places backpackers are unlikely to go. More supermarket listings would be more helpful and pointing out when what is listed is a 7 Eleven, Spar, Quix type place and not actually a supermarket would also be good as these places arent budget friendly.

The information on the actual towns, cities and national parks listed is ever increasing which is good, but the number of places is fast declining. This is because they want you to buy all their individual versions like Lonley Planet Germany, France, Eastern Europe etc. Like youre really going to carry around twenty books and spend more than you will for your trip on books. You will be better of buying an older version as more places are listed although hostel information wont be as up to date. Obviously Euro Dollar prices wont be used either but remember the price information is usually drastically wrong anyway. For an overview of the entire continent of Europe this should concentrate on having as many places as possible not just the main ones. The whole differentiation of backpackers from tourists is that we see places package tours dont go.

While this book is good to find the location of hostels thats about it. Prices of course go up the day after the book is published. Youre better off to go by word of mouth from other backpackers to find quality hostels. There arent as many hostels listed in this book as there are on web sites...Buy this book if you know nothing about where you are going and read it on the train/bus before getting there but dont have it out when you arrive or youll be hassled by homeless people and be a target for thieves. You should always look like you know exactly where you are going when you arrive somewhere, its way safer that way.

A bare bones, no nonsense approach to Europe. The book gives essential information for visiting all of Europe, and even beyond. There were times though that I would have preferred to have Lonely Planet's individual country guides. If you're planning on visiting a lot of countries on your trip, I'd say that this book will prove indispensable. But if you're visiting a few countries and would like to dig a little deeper into the culture of each place, I'd recommend that you compare this book against other options.

I just returned from a month long backpacking trip in Europe and this was the only guidebook that I needed. I had another with me, but never used it. Lonely Planet provided essential information from accurate maps to great restaurant recommendations from Italy to England and everywhere in between. The information is up to date and was a help in every city that we visited. This book is especially useful if you will be visiting several countries during your trip.