Customer Reviews

Michelin the Green Guide Austria (Michelin Green Guides)

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We have been fans of Michelin's Green Guide series for thirty years, but have become increasingly disappointed with the sloppy proof reading in the last four revised guides we have purchased. I had high hopes for this 2007 revision of the Austria guide, because our 2001 edition still had prices listed in schillings. Austria adopted the Euro in 1999, and so I assumed that this version would be fully updated. But NO! The lodging and eating out sections for Vienna still list all the prices in shillings! Who even knows what "Single room from 1 300S.", means!?! And note the lack of a comma in "1 300S", so you're not entirely sure whether the 1 is their shorthand for "single", or whether it is 1,300 shillings -- whatever THAT equals.

Then there are the places that appear to have been cut and pasted from another source. For example, there is an almost full-page text box of the Hapsburg family tree. The editors have forgotten that people buy this edition for its text in English, because the box is entitled, "Stammbaum des Herrscherhauses Hapsburg". Maybe a family tree is self explanatory, and maybe readers can figure out that the "Ludwig XVI" who is married to Marie Antoinette is known to English speakers as Louis XVI. But it is just sloppy editing.

I won't dwell on the many sentences that have missing words because I want to get to one of the most vexing features, and that is the insufficient indexing. Many readers are familiar with Michelin's 3-, 2- and 1-star system of rating principal sights. Three star sites are highly recommended, two star are recommended and one star sites are interesting. But many of the two-star sites -- and even a three-star site (Wilhering) -- do not even appear in the index or in the alphabetically-arranged main text!! How is one to decide whether to visit sites that this guide ostensibly recommends by awarding them two stars if neither the index nor the alphabetically-arranged main text can get you to a description of these places!?! Examples are Staatz, Stams, Hohe Mut, Jochdohle, Hafelekar, and Grosser Ahornboden. When the answer is to look in another guide it is time to toss this one.

As Americans living in Vienna we use a lot of travel guides. Of the nine we have for Vienna and Austria, I like "Best Drives Austria - ISBN 0749539240" for its clearly-depicted circuit drives; a book published here in Vienna and not available on Amazon - "Only in Vienna - by Duncan J.D. Smith" for its descriptions of unique sights in Vienna -- like the Turkish cannonballs embedded in Stephansdom; and the Eyewitness Travel Guides for Vienna and for Austria, for their maps, indexing (15-18 pages, 3-columns across and small font, as opposed to this Michelin guide's 7 pages, 2 columns, regular font) and recommended places to stay and eat.

This book has been helpful in planning our trip and will be a good resource to take along.