Customer Reviews

Rick Steves' Germany, Austria, and Switzerland 2003

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I'm both attracted and annoyed by Rick Steves' travel guides. I'm giving this book a 3, not because it's generally okay, but because it's an average of 1 and 5.

Steves does some things really well. His maps are really good, for instance. Rather than try to show every street (you'll have an ordinary map for that), he makes it easy to find the places you probably care about (or the ones he thinks you should care about); the museums, train station, etc. are easy to find -- like the map you'd scribble on a cocktail napkin for a friend. Plus, he's reassuring about distances from one place to another (a ten-minute walk to the museum from the train station, etc.).

He also does a good-to-excellent job at, hmm, how shall I put this -- describing the experience of a place. I haven't been to Munich, yet, and his is the only guide that tells me that the biergarten tables with no tablecloths are reserved for customers who are drinking only (no food, in other words). And to look for a vomitorium in the bathrooms (!). When I'm traveling, I'm tripped up by the "ordinary" things I didn't know -- so this sort of information is reassuring. (Why do none of the guide books tell you that "Ausfart" is the word for "car exit" on the autobahn? As a friend of ours said, "The first time I saw all those Ausfart signs, I thought, 'Wow, this is a really big city!'" Ausgang, by the way, is the word for *people*-exit, a helpful item to know when you're in an underground parking garage, looking for the way out.)

Also, Steves is better at orientation than most. I think his is the only book that says you can get tickets ahead of time for the big Bavarian castles, so you don't spend time waiting in line. That sort of stuff is incredibly useful.

On the other hand... his priorities and taste do not coincide with mine. As another reviewer pointed out, Steves gives you the itinerary *he* thinks you should follow, and ignores or disparages other destinations. Maybe he thinks that Triberg is a tourist trap, but I spent 3 days in the area (in Hornberg, a few miles north) and I thought it was both a lovely town and a great base of operations for Black Forest exploration.

What finally turned me off was realizing how differently he travels than we do. (There. That doesn't seem so negative.) Steves gives a one-day itinerary through the Black Forest, starting in Frieburg and ending in Baden-Baden. To accomplish that, he has you zoom through the Clock Musuem in an hour (we spent two, though maybe it could have been less), and 1.5 hours at the Volksbaurnhof in Gutach. That's way too little time; we spent 3 or 4 hours there on two trips (obviously, we liked the place). Yes, in an hour and a half you can walk around this open-air museum, but you won't have time to watch one of the demonstrations, or read more than a few expanatory signs. If I followed his itinerary, I'd be skimming the surface of every destination rather than experiencing the place.

I own several guidebooks to Germany. It's probably worth looking through this one, especially if you happen to be planning to visit the sights he says are worthwhile. But it's far from a complete guide to the country, and you're stuck relying on HIS opinions -- which may or may not agree with yours. I'm glad I read through this book, but it's sure not being stuffed into my backpack.

I've been to Germany several times.....Frankfurt, Koln, the Mosel and Rhine wine tours, etc. Here are my reviews of the best guides to meet your exact needs.....I hope these are helpful and that you have a great visit! I always gauge the quality of my visit by how much I remember a year later......this review is designed to help you get the guide that will be sure YOU remember your trip many years into the future. Travel Safe and enjoy yourself to the max!

Rick Steves' books are not recommended. They may be an interesting read but their helpfulness is very poor. They don't do well on updates, transportation details, or anything but the first-time-tourist routine and even that is somewhat superficial on anything but the mega-major sites.

Frommer's

These are time tested guides that pride themselves on being updated annually. Although I think the guides below provide information that is in more depth or more concise (depending on what the guide is known for), if your main concern is that the guide has very little old or outdated information, then this would be a good guide for you.

Lonely Planet

Lonely Planet has City and Out To Eat Guides. They are all about the experience so they focus on doing, being, getting there, and this means they have the best detailed information, including both inexpensive and really spectacular restaurants and hotels, out-of-the-way places, weird things to see and do, the list is endless.

Blue Guides

Without doubt, the best of the walks guides.... the Blue Guide has been around since 1918 and has extremely well designed walks with lots of unique little side stops to hit on just about any interest you have. If you want to pick up the feel of the city, this is the best book to do that for you. This is one that you end up packing on your 10th trip, by which time it is well worn.

MapGuide

MapGuide is very easy to use and has the best location information for hotels, tourist attractions, museums, churches etc. that they manage to keep fairly up to date. It's great for teaching you how to use the public transportation system. The text sections are quick overviews, not reviews, but the strong suite here is brevity, not depth. I strongly recommend this for your first few times learning your way around the classic tourist sites and experiences. MapGuide is excellent as long as you are staying pretty much in the center of the city.

Time Out

The Time Out guides are very good. Easy reading, short reviews of restaurants, hotels, and other sites, with good public transport maps that go beyond the city centre. Many people who buy more than one guidebook end up liking this one best!

Let's Go

Let's Go is a great guide series that specializes in the niche interest details that turn a trip into a great and memorable experience. Started by and for college students, these guides are famous for the details provided by people who used the book the previous year. They continue to focus on providing a great experience inexpensively. If you want to know about the top restaurants, this is not for you (use Fodor's or Michelin). Let's Go does have a bewildering array of different guides though. Here's which is what:

Budget Guide is the main guide with incredibly detailed information and reviews on everything you can think of.

City Guide is just as intense but restricted to the single city.

PocketGuide is even smaller and features condensed information

MapGuide's are very good maps with public transportation and some other information (like museum hours, etc.)

Michelin

Famous for their quality reviews, the Red Michelin Guides are for hotels & Restaurants, the Green Michelin Guides are for main tourist destinations. However, the English language Green guide is the one most people use and it has now been supplemented with hotel and restaurant information. These are the serious review guides as the famous Michelin ratings are issued via these books.

Fodor's

Fodor's is the best selling guide among Americans. They have a bewildering array of different guides. Here's which is what:

The Gold Guide is the main book with good reviews of everything and lots of tours, walks, and just about everything else you could think of. It's not called the Gold guide for nothing though....it assumes you have money and are willing to spend it.

SeeIt! is a concise guide that extracts the most popular items from the Gold Guide

PocketGuide is designed for a quick first visit

UpCLOSE for independent travel that is cheap and well thought out

CityPack is a plastic pocket map with some guide information

Exploring is for cultural interests, lots of photos and designed to supplement the Gold guide

My husband and I used this book to plan our honeymoon and found it to be phenomenal. Steves does a great job of rating what you should see with the time you have. So it was great for planning our scant two weeks. He very candidly describes different places and explains what he likes about them or why he rates them low. This is helpful in deciding what you absolutly have to do since time is limited. Steves also has wonderful tips for drivers, where parking is located for example, and for accomodations. We loved all of our hotels and they were all well located and reasonably priced.

This tour guide has two drawbacks. One are the crude maps. They are fine for getting a general lay out, but buying detailed maps is a must, especially for drivers. It also has no pictures. Since I'm a visual person I also bought the DK Guide to Germany. It lists EVERYTHING and has a picture of EVERYTHING. So, once I used Steves to decide what to do and where to stay I would find out what it looked like elswhere.

We are planning a trip to England for next year, I'm certainly not going without his guide.

You can really tell that Steves loves Germany and Austria because this is one of the best guidebooks in his series. First things first--this is not a regular guidebook in that it doesn't show an endless list of cities that you will probably never visit. Instead, he figures that you'll have less than two weeks for your vacation, so he picks out the places that he thinks you will enjoy the most. If you are looking for a more complete listing, then another guidebook would be better. Getting back to the guide, he has a particular flair for finding the scenic beauty of this region of Europe, and he gives lots of advice for finding those picture perfect spots that you're looking for. Also, Steves is good at tapping into the beer hall scene, so if you're thinking of checking out Bavaria, you'll be able to get some good tips. Of course, you can get better recommendations from a local though. Just think of this as a starter kit, and once you make a few contacts and start talking to the locals, you'll be able to find the places that aren't list in any guidebook.

Another good thing about this guidebook is that the maps are fairly easy to follow. The downtown maps for cities are especially good. However, this book is for train travelers. If you are going to be driving, you'll need to pick up a seperate road map because there aren't any good road maps in this guidebook.

First and foremost, to clarify, this product that you are supposedly reading reviews for is Rick Steves' MAP of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It appears that the other reviews are of Rick Steves' guidebooks! Again, this product is NOT one of Rick Steves' famous guidebooks (which I would always rate as 5 stars, incidentally!). This map is very basic; don't count on using it to find your way around a country or city. Only the major cities and towns are marked. Likewise, in the city maps of Berlin, Munich, Salzburg and Vienna, only the major thoroughfares are mapped. You should use this map only as a reference to his guidebook of the region to plan your trip. You will want to get a 'real' map that's much more detailed, e.g. Michelin, when you arrive. Best part of this map? The cool water resistant paper on which it is printed. Especially if you have small children who are apt to spill liquid, as mine did on Day One upon receiving it from Amazon!

I am generally a fan of the Rick Steves series and just wrote a glowing review of the Paris 2004 guidebook. But this particular entry is simply too much crammed into too small of a space. Germany deserves its own guidebook, and in fact, there are cities in Germany that probably deserve their own guidebook. By lumping all of Germany, Austria and Switzerland together, Steves fails to go into the kind of great detail about any one destination that makes the Paris 2004 book such a winner.

In usual Rick Steves form, this book attempts to answer the questions that you probably wouldn't think to ask before being on the ground in an unfamiliar land, e.g. how to buy train tickets, what the street signs mean, wie sagt man "ATM Machine" auf Deutsch, etc. And it is for this reason that I recommend these books, especially to first-time travellers who are going without a seasoned veteran to guide them.

I ended up travelling around Germany and Austria without using this book much. I bought an ADAC map of the Autobahn and drove around, taking in the various little Alpen towns and having a great time. But when I made it to Salzburg at the end of my trip, Rick Steves once again proved to be a helpful guide and I used his walking tours to navigate the city, and although I ignored his advice about the quality of different sights, I had a blast and I think the helpful tips and navigation aids in this book can get most of the credit for that.

My teen-aged daughter and I used this book extensively on our recent trip to Germany and Austria. (My sixth visit to Germany.) No one has the time to poke around in every corner of a country during a vacation and Rick helps minimize wasted days by offering great tips and suggestions. His sightseeing recommendations all proved to be 'right-on', and we never regretted staying in one of his recommended lodgings, or following his suggestions for meals. We appreciated Rick's recommendations for rooms in Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, Salzburg and Hallstatt. The hotels were centrally located, clean, quiet, offered great breakfasts, and were staffed by friendly and helpful personnel. All at attractive prices. I have five guidebooks for each country that I used during planning, took my favorite two about each country to Europe with us, but it was Rick's book that we carried as we left the hotel each morning.

This map has very little information and is printed on poor quality paper that wouldn't hold up long on a trip. It doesn't meet expectations for people who value Rick Steves books and videos.

I just received this map from Amazon today and I can't believe I just paid $7 for a thin paper map that I could have easily gotten at any tourist information center in Europe for free and with more information!

Please be aware that some of the reviews for this might have been written for a different product. This is an one-page (double sided) thin paper map. Not a book.

I knew this was only a map when I ordered but I didn't realize just how poor the paper quality is! I was hoping for a good quality laminate map. This thing looks as if it's going to fall apart before I even get on the road! I've always been a big Rick Steve fan but this time I'm extremely disappointed.

In short, save your $$$ and go get free maps from a AAA office or tourist information center around where you are going!

This is a great high-level roadmap of Germany, but it lacks the detail needed to really explore the countryside. If you are driving through Germany like we did, buy an atlas that provides more route detail. There are so many country lanes in Germany that even a detail book sometimes misses the many villages you'll encounter along the way. If you're taking the train, this map works fine. If you're driving, look at something else.