14
Ampersand
MayJune, 1980
Europe? Cheap? Are
bu Kidding?
To many travelers, the idea of seeing
Europe on a budget must sound too good
to be true. It is; rising prices and an end
lessly falling dollar have made Europe on a
Budget a myth, a relic from a bygone era,
but people who spend a fortune on movies
about spacemen will certainly find a few
dollars to invest in guides to "budget
travel."
The two most popular and successful
budget guides are probably Europe on $15
(formerly $10, and, before that $5) a Day
(Frommer Travel Guides, $3.95) and Let's
Go: Europe (Harvard Student Agencies,
$5.95). Both are widely respected and
each is full of travel information and
suggestions, but anyone seriously in
terested in seeing Northern. Europe com
fortably and cheaply would do" about as
well consulting UFO magazine.
Arthur Frommer probably invented the
budget travel guide when he developed
Europe on. $5 a Day during the 1940s as a
way to share his travel secrets with the
public. Today, the format has become so
successful that he shares those "secrets" in
a whole series of guidebooks and heads a
travel bureau with the modest name of
Arthur Frommer International. Asa
mini-conglomerate, Frommer may no
longer be the best source for tips on
budget travel. More to the point, any time
$15 a Day or any other guidebook
recommends a place, it becomes the "dis
covery" of thousands of readers. The arri
val of hordes of budget-happy tourists is
almost certain to overwhelm local flavor,
increase demand for rooms or tables, drive
prices up, and generally change the things
that made the place worth recommending
in the first place.
Frommer's taste in restaurants is nause
ous; he consistently praises the budget
meals to be found in cafeterias, youth
hostel dining rooms, and other places that
serve dull, institutional food. In a recent
edition he gushed: "... a pleasant little
room of eight tables covered with pink
checked oilcloths. . . Is it a stage setting? A
Russian plot? The work of a saint returned
to earth?" Let's Go: Europe described the
same place in less romantic terms: "Don't
expect too much. It's dirty and the most
you can say for the food is that it's food, but
where else can you eat a full meal for $1?"
Let's Go: Europe, revised annually by
Harvard students who have spent the pre
vious summer touring Europe, discusses
cheaper places and generally seems to be
written for younger travelers. At its best, it
provides well-written, thoughtful, and
realistic descriptions of hotels and res
taurants, along with knowledgeable sight
seeing suggestions and practical informa
tion about everything from exchanging
currency to buying drugs or selling blood.
(Occasionally, the information gets a little
too practical for comfort "If you're really
down and out, a good place to scrounge
for discarded food is...") In general,
though, the realistic descriptions in Let's Go
are a refreshing contrast to the gushy,
Chamber of Commerce enthusiasm ol $15
a Day. Let's Go identifies places that are
dirty, noisy, poorly managed, or overrated,
and even suggests a few places to avoid al
together. "Unfortunately, Let's Go's non
professional researchers are not always ac
curate, sometimes leaving out important
details like street addresses.
Let's Go readers may dis-
- i
o
o
0
(3
cover that a recommended place has
raised its prices, changed its policies, or
simply disappeared without a trace. To
make up for its own unreliability, Let's Go is
careful to identify tourist information
centers and to offersuggestions for read
ers who find themselves looking for their
own accommodations.
A good deal of time, effort, and experi
ence (both books are in their third decades
of publication) have obviously been de
voted to Europe on $15 a Day and Let's Go:
Europe; if popularity means anything, they
are the best of their kind. The disap
pointing, uneven results suggest how dif
ficult it is to compile a useful, reliable travel
guide, particularly one devoted to a sub
ject as elusive as Europe on a Budget.
David Coursen
Collegiate How To
There is something curiously similar about
the vast majority of books which are de
voted, in one way or another, to aiding the
college student scramble through the
academic experience. Perhaps it's a func
tion of the genre that all those study aids
and guidebooks possess a usually subtle,
ocassionally abrasive element of what Mr.
Rogers embodies so pedantically on TV:
talking down to the pupils.
Take, for example, Michael Edelhart's
College Knowledge (Anchor Press
Doubleday, $7.95), an imprudently indis
criminate guidebook resting on the notion
that college is a four-year experiment in
growing up. Edfehart's assertion that one's
education in college is only partially re
lated to the classroom is a verifiable one
indeed. His conclusion, however, seems to
be that the average college student is an
inept, apathetic youngster for whom inex
pensively decorating a room or filling
spare time is a difficult achievement. Col
lege Knowledge is plagued with a lot of what
should be considered superfluous mate
rial: consumer sections on buying autos
and sound equipment, psychological
guidance for cohabiting couples, where to
buy art reproductions.
There is some nifty advice under the
litter: reference sections on summer
employment, internships, financing and
careers (especially the Dept. of Labor's
OIS program of career information) indi
cate some hefty research and an eye for the
offbeat.
Edelhart's worst mistake is his shallow
advice on academic ingenuity; the 25-year-old
graduate should have left how-to-study
remarks to those who take the
matter seriously, such as James and Ellin
Deese, whose third edition of How to Study
(McGraw-Hill, $4.95) reaps the benefits
and shortcomings of the professorial ap
proach. Here, too, one finds excessive
explanation and a tinge of the humiliative,
but the handbook, written in the dry, au
thoritative tone seemingly earmarked for
such concerns, offers helpful sections on
note taking (organize!), reading textbooks
(highlight!) and studying foreign lan
guages (recite!). Revisions are most appar
ent in the paragraphs on calculators, in
which the authors advocate that every stu
dent should own one (a dubious prescrip
tion), plus adding emphasis on reading
and writing, no doubt sparked by good ole'
Johnnie, who can't write or read.
In Playing the College Admissions Game
(Times Books, $12.95), Richard Moll at
tempts an entertaining, readable ap
proach to what is the prelude to the college
experience, actually getting into an in
stitution, which has always been a truly
acute event. Playing relays tips from the
Director of Admission at Vassar College,
whose overriding advice, and it's excellent,
is for the applicant to take real initiative to
insure that hisher high school is properly
"defining classroom accomplishments" and
that hisher personality is evident in the
application.
In an intriguing dialogue between
members of a fictitious Admissions Com
mittee, presumably based on Vassar, Moll
shows us how and why selections are made
in the private, relatively posh segment of
American education. In a discussion
which ironically assumes an intelligence
and worth in its high school readership, a
refreshing exception to the rule, Moll
verifies the ineffectiveness of many high
school guidance counselors and insists that
one must fight to retain the services of
those hired to serve.
Moll seeks to help us get into college,
Edelhart strives to cushion life at the col
lege level, and the Deeses demand wizar
dry in the college classroom. Enter Cliff
MacGillivray with his manual for the
college-bound gourmand, The Simple Poors
'".'"ftfajitf " .....
Handbook to Cooking (Far West Publications,
$4.95). Those who have been accepted
into college and are adjusting beautifully
both in and beyond the classroom need not
worry about another essential concern,
eating. There is a college handbook, it
seems, for everything.
MacGillivray, a 23-year-old graduate
who apparently conceived of the manual
in between phone calls to mom for tips on
escaping dormitory food, lists over 150 re
cipes which he terms "tasty, economy
minded, quick'n easy." Virtually half of the
meat dishes call for ground beef, the
sauces are based on canned soups, frozen
vegetables are preferred, and casserole
dishes, in which one flips on the oven and
bakes, run rampant. Fool's Handbook is
written with crisp humor and gleeful
anecdotal illustrations (by John Ibrmcy)
and there are some wild ideas, such as
making a grilled cheese sandwich with an
iron and formulating soup in a coffee pot.
The hints on cooking in a dorm room bear
the book's greatest fruits.
Having tried a few dishes myself, I can
say that (hard to believe) this author relies
excessively on the intelligence of his stu
dent audience. (Amateur gourmands re
quire explicit guidelines.) Of course the
Fool's Handbook, in the final reckoning,
charms as much as whets the appetite. The
food it recommends isn't all that tasteful,
but The Joy'of Cooking never looked so
stuffy. MacGillivray, by the way, is dis
tributing his own book; if it can't lc found
in local bookstores, write to him at Far West
Publications, Box 953, South Pasadena,
CA 91030.
William W. Bloomstein
Science Fiction
Science fiction writer Roger 7elazny's new
novel is the latest installment in his con
tinuing mythology of the motor vehicle, a
mythology begun early with short stories
such as "Devil Car and "Auto-Da-Fc" and
previously brought to fruition in the novel
(and later the movie) Damnation Alley
(1909). His latest motor myth hlloadmirks
(Ballantme Books, $8.95), in which a
superhighway through time is the scene of
the action.
7clazny wastes little effort justifying the
time-road's existence or explaining how it
works. Instead he concentrates on Red
Dorakeen, a tough time traveler who
spends his days driving up and down the
centuries in a blue pickup, searching for a
way back home again. Red is accompanied
or accosted by a variety of weird ro!ott,
mutants, throwback and hitchhikers, and
though there's lots of talk about what's
happening out in the "real" world of the
off ramps. Red and his friends rarely go
there.
Roadmarks has little in the way of a plot,
but much of the action is generated by a