Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet Munich, Bavaria & the Black Forest (Regional Travel Guide)

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

 

 

If you're only bringing one book for your trip, this is definitely the book to get! Although I do wish there was a book just for Munich, this one has excellent information. I would recommend pairing it with the Borsch map, which is truly fantastic. If you're traveling around the region, this book will be perfect as well. Great solid info!

I've visited 44 countries, mostly on a budget, and Lonely Planet is THE only book I would consider using. It's throrough, comprehensive and concise. It's especially geared for the budget/adventure traveler, though it would also prove useful to anyone on a tour or cruise. Lonely Planet is packed with maps, useful phrases, history lessons, tips on culture & conduct, addresses and descriptions of museums, hotels, restaurants - everything you need. Though Lonely Planet leans towards those of us who travel in hostels and budget hotels, it also gives a good description of hotels and restaurants for those who wish to travel in a more luxurious manner. There are other good travel books out there - Eyewitness Guides, etc - that have a lot of beautiful photos - but unless you're traveling with a steamer trunk, these are of little use because they lack the information you'll need while on the road. Look at the others for inspiration before you go, if you'd like, but pack your Lonely Planet. I'd never travel without it.

The book you need if you are going to Munich. Very detailed. I wish that there was a simple list of the top 10 things to do in each location as opposed to reading through each section. But that is a small issue. Compared to other guides, it is the best.

This travel guide was great help for us when we visited Bavaria. I also very much like it that Lonely Planet books provide just the right amount of historical insight and are written with a wonderfully subtle sense of humor.

I wish I had been warned about the slant of this regional guide before I bought it. I would have saved myself the money. If you want to go through Europe like the stereotypical "ugly American" tourist, sampling the architecture quickly and moving on to the nearest biergarten for the afternoon, or if you go through life with the values of, say, Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan, then by all means buy this guide. This is the one for you. But if you want to settle in for a week or so and breath German air, if you want to meditate quietly in a medieval church or cathedral for an hour, then buy a different guide. Or just google "Rough Guide" and "The Alps and Eastern Bavaria", and print whatever information you want on your home computer. It is a better guide than this, more detailed and more accurate, and it is free.

While the Lonely Planet seems to offer more information about night life locations and that sort of thing than other guides, the entire book seems to be slanted with the perspective of a traveler wanting to breeze past the historic places, take a few snapshots, and then go to a bar. There are limited descriptions of historic churches with a focus on the architecture and little or nothing else about the history or present day significance of the locations.

The guide mentions the surrounding areas, but with less information about them than can be easily found online for free, and some of the language is insulting to travelers with religious faith. Freising's Domberg (cathedral hill), for example, is a historic ecclesiastical town whose museum holds one of the world's greatest collection of Catholic art. There are organized tours of the cathedral and cathedral hill. But this tour guide mentions little of that. Instead, it calls the Domberg "a hub of religious power" and calls the cathedral "a head turning masterpiece". Of course, to an atheist, that's all it is. To anyone with a spiritual life, it is much more. The guide says, "Don't miss the crypt, not so much to view [the guide omits "St."] Korbinian's mortal remains as to admire the forest of pillars . . . ." (thus assuming that the reader, like the author, has less interest in the saint than in the architecture).

In its description of the pilgrimage city Regensburg, this guide starts out with comments on the beer garden, the pasta at a former Gothic chapel, and the nightlife. After a page or so, the guide describes the cathedral, saying that its construction began in the 13th century "mostly to flaunt the city's prosperity", and describing its stained glass windows as one of its "prized possessions". Little or nothing is offered about the city's other historic buildings of religious significance. Nothing is said about the cathedral's famous choir. In fact, a church has stood on that cathedral site since around 700, and the Gothic cathedral was built over several centuries, a testimony to the importance of religious faith to medieval worshipers. By comparison, try the Rough Guide's free online description of the cathedral, which is more accurate, more detailed, and not at all insulting to the reader.

Amazon.com has a lot of books available that could be recommended to travelers planning a trip to Bavaria. Spend your money on a book about German culture or a German phrase guide and not on this one.