Guidebooks

As on trips past, I went with two series of guidebooks on this trip. This isn't a minor issue, as guidebooks are the single greatest weight in the backpack. But after going through each extensively prior to leaving, I wasn't quite comfortable taking just one for each destination.

The two series I use are:

Lonely Planet: This used to be my sole guidebook. Their format was aimed squarely at the budget traveler and had pretty comprehensive coverage of each destination (unless it was an enormous "Europe" guidebook which can't possibly be of much use).

Over the last five years or so, I feel that Lonely Planet no longer serves my needs. Primarily, the information is often way out-of-date. Even taking into consideration that they are updated maybe every other year, I can't fathom how prices are often near double what the guidebook says for such things as food, museums, and even lodging on occasion. Although I understand businesses come and go, the number of businesses in Lonely Planet which no longer exist is quite suspect.

The foreign phrase sections are a bit ridiculous. They include very odd situations such as asking where to get a tooth filled, but not everyday things such as numbers and polite phrases. Worst of all, there's no pronunciation guide -- not all pronunciation can be gleaned from the language intro.

I do think they provide decent maps, historical information, and (although less and less nowadays) transit options to each listing.

The three books I used on this trip were:

Vienna City Guide - not bad, but not particularly comprehensive either. It is the "new" LP format, which is aimed at a little bit more popular (non low-budget) traveler. Prices were outdated a bit.

Best of Prague - utterly worthless. The only thing good I can say about it was that it was small and so its uselessness didn't cost much weight. It is mostly a bunch of lists without much historical, geographic, or cultural context, and therefore not in the traditional LP format. I will also say that I used the fold-out maps on the front and back covers (including the subway system) extensively. If I had to do it again, I'd tear these off and ditch the rest of the book.

Poland - This was the best of the LP bunch. It was fairly comprehensive and seemed to follow the original LP format which I liked much better. Though some things were slightly outdated, it did a better job than I expected. Much of its historical information overlapped with my Rick Steves book (below) but its maps and additional listings made it useful to have. Venturing outside of Krakow and Warsaw would have made it a necessity as well.

Rick Steves

Using the "Best of Eastern Europe 2006" guide (2007 was published just before I left), I made this series my primary book through the trip.

These books are good for the lengths of trips I usually take; while not in-depth months-long travel, I do like to get to know and observe the local culture and experience things off the tourist circuit. For this type of travel, the Rick Steves books are perfect.

One thing I personally don't like about the RS books is the fairly high focus on art. Of course, this works for many people (and likely Rick) but for me personally, the art -- especially art museum walking tours and palaces-- are concentrated on a bit heavily. That said, they are aimed at the average traveler, just one who is more interested in examining art museums than I am. He rates sights as 1, 2, and 3 triangles (or 0 triangles, as a sort of 'honorable mention'). I take them with a grain of salt as I generally can't stand to visit more than one or two museums in a city, even though the book might give multiple museums three triangles.

His maps are of the "hand-drawn" variety and are very good at showing landmarks. I don't usually get lost going from major sight to major sight using Rick's maps. It especially shows things such as "the big purple house" which might be an obvious landmark but wouldn't make a typical map. But a real street map (of the type in Lonely Planet) might be useful in addition. Many time's I've been at an intersection without obvious landmarks and need the level of detail a real map provides to get me somewhere.

A compromise is the style: the books are a bit linear for each city. That is, if I find myself in a particular location within a city, it's not exactly easy to go to that location in the book and see a list of sights there. But the trade off is that you can follow his path without needless worry that you're going to miss something or get lost, because each step is described in detail. I wouldn't change this, but it is a trade-off.

The best part, and they are well aware of this, is that they are updated annually. I did find a number of errors this time but the website is fairly robust as a last minute guide to updates.

The pronunciation guides are a bit limited but they really do help. He includes numbers, all the niceties, and some basic other phrases. Let's face it, if I'm going to ask "Which platform does the train to [city] leave from?" in the local language, I better be prepared to understand the response, which is rare. So there aren't any relatively complex phrases in here. A few more would be nice, but I've gotten along quite well with what's in here.

The walking tours really are good and give a good orientation to the cities, as are the tram tours and historical footnotes. While any of his "back doors" are bound to be less so after he mentions them, he has good ideas on how to experience local culture that is not ready-made for tourists.

If I had to ditch guidebooks, I'd ditch the Prague, then Vienna, then Poland guidebooks from Lonely Planet, and get a few good fold-out maps in their place, and use them in conjunction with local information and the Rick Steves guidebook.

That said, I do like having a whole bookshelf of Lonely Planet Guides. They look nice all lined up.