The Vegetarian Traveler [Paperback]

Bryan Geon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2000

(Warwick Publishing) A phrasebook providing food related phrases in over 125 languages and dialects, for the vegetarian traveler who would like to travel with social grace and cultural sensitivity. Softcover.

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

"The Vegetarian Traveler: A Guide To Eating Green in Over 200 Countries" enables traveling vegetarians to make their dietary desires known in virtually any country on the planet. I began researching and writing this book because of my desire to communicate my eating preferences while traveling and my frustration with the limitations of standard phrasebooks. Each country listing in the book features a general description of the types of food a visiting vegetarian might expect to find in that country as a whole and, where relevant, in particular regions. It then provides a list of words and fill-in-the-blank phrases, together with phonetic pronunciations, in the main language or languages of the country. I have included phrases in over 110 languages. The list is broad enough to allow vegans or strict vegetarians, ovo-lacto vegetarians, pesco-vegetarians, and even "vegetarians" who avoid only red meat to order their preferred food. My goal is not to make the us! er sound like a native speaker, or to replace standard phrasebooks entirely, but simply to allow a vegetarian to get the point across. It is my hope that "Speaking Vegetarian" will allow vegetarians to travel more easily, more comfortably, and without offending their well-meaning hosts. Happy travels. Please note that the "The Vegetarian Traveler" is a revised and expanded version of the book originally published by a different publisher under the name "Speaking Vegetarian."

About the Author

Longtime vegetarian (ovo-lacto) author Bryan Geon has lived in or visited more than 55 countries on every continent except Antarctica. A graduate of Harvard University and the University of Michigan Law School, he lives in Portland, Oregon.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Warwick Publishing (September 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1894020855
• ISBN-13: 978-1894020855
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,975,095 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Good for General Background and Guidance, March 21, 2001

By 

David Light (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Vegetarian Traveler (Paperback)

The ideal vegetarian travel book has yet to be written. Vegetarian travel books seem to fall into one of two camps: The destination-oriented guide (e.g., these are places you can eat, sleep, etc. if you are vegetarian or vegan), and the broad guidebook/phrasebook (e.g., a phrasebook giving veggie phrases in various languages a set of flashcards for vegetarians and vegans covering major languages; a Vegan phrasebook that may only be available in the UK; etc.). Each of these types has its limitations. This book is one of the latter.

I actually found this book very useful and informative and(surprisingly) funny. The author purports to include virtually every country in the world, and while I can think of a few that aren't in there (e.g., the Falkland Islands--probably not very vegetarian-friendly in any case), he comes pretty close to that ideal. And he includes phrases in something over 100 languages. Some people might view this as overkill, but it is one of the strengths of the book.

Basically, the author discusses the veggie situation in each country in a general way; there are NO extensive lists of common vegetarian dishes or of vegetarian-friendly restaurants/hotels (look to the destination-oriented-type guide for these), then gives a list of mix-'n'-match phrases in that country's language("I would like something without X, I eat Y," for example) with the pronunciation spelled out.

This book may not be necessary for, say, Western Europe--although it couldn't hurt to take it along or rip out the relevant pages--because many new phrasebooks for European travel have at least one or two token vegetarian phrases (e.g., "I do not eat meat."). Some are better than others. But for other areas of the world, especially Africa and Asia, this would be really handy to have. He includes languages for which I've never seen phrasebooks--has anyone even heard of "Bambara-Dioula"?--and that is the really valuable thing about this book. I am not aware of any other vegetarian guide with this scope.

And that is a weakness of the book, too: Because the author has included so many countries and languages, he doesn't devote huge amounts of coverage to any of them, although the descriptions can be fairly comprehensive. But it's hard to see how he could do otherwise without turning the book into a massive tome. Perhaps separate volumes for each continent? Other changes I'd like to see are the inclusion of other forms of writing for non-Roman script languages (so one could point and order rather than going through the phonentic pronunciation), and also the inclusion of more terms. (The book pretty consistently lists the words for meat, chicken, fish, eggs, and cheese, but not "meat stock," "dairy products," etc.) I'd also like to see this and other vegetarian/vegan phrasebooks list the phrase for "I am allergic to ____", which is a good way to get out of otherwise awkward social situations.

I give this five stars not so much because it's perfect (it's not), but because there aren't really any other books like this out there and a lot of this stuff is not available on the Web.

5 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Too scattered to be helpful., March 5, 2001

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Vegetarian Traveler (Paperback)

This book is fairly worthless. It describes how to order vegetarian food in about 30 or 40 languages. Never gets in-depth with any.

It really doesn't tell you much about any particular region. I can't believe it doesn't have the same title as his other book. I was really disappointed in this book. Pass.

2 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Do more research before you write a book, Bryan Geon., September 24, 2002

By 

"littlelentil" (Amherst, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Vegetarian Traveler (Paperback)

It seems as if the author did not always have good first-hand source to write this book and wrote this guide from generalizations about other countries. For example, a supermarket in Japan carries almost anything you would find in a supermarket here. Convenience stores like Seven-Eleven are even more convenient than you think for the variety of prepared food available. Oh, there are a lot of decent bakeries too, which Mr. Geon fails to mention.
Even though I can't really tell how useful this book is because I have never been to many foreign countries, I can tell you at least some of the information in this book is misleading.