Yes, the book was later titled: Europe on $15-25 A Day and I am sure the title changed often.
I bought it for my first trip to Europe and had a love/hate relationship with the book. I liked that it gave you some good starting points in a strange city, and would give you some tips and suggestions and let you know the hours and prices of museums and stuff.
However, the hotels/pensions were always more expensive (thanks to the popularity caused by the books) and often the book lead you on a wild goose chase. I remember going to “the in spot in Vienna” and as I stood there with my book staring at a vacant lot (the building had been torn down) I saw another guy at the other side of the vacant lot holding his copy of the book.
So did anyone else use this book on their first trip through Europe, and what were your experiences with it?
I’ve found that the advantage to various “budget” travel guides is they can tell you what part of town tends to have the less expensive hotels. They may suggest Hotel XYZ, but Hotel ABC next door tends to be similarily priced.
I used one of them when I was in college on my spring break. Didn’t really have a lot of problems, although the restaurants can be of varying quality. In Venice the retaurants English menu had a note saying “some of our meals are of frozen origin.” They tasted like it.
I can’t say that they ever really steered me wrong. I have to admit that other guests in the hostels may have been unhappy that I used the book since my snoring is still legendary when I get together with my old traveling companions.
Now that I am gainfully employed I have tossed those books. I think I get better deals online. And paying in advance in dollars eliminates the currency hassle.
All guide books go out of date fast. I’ve just found many problems with a 1995 one, and I long ago learnt to never use a guide book to advise on a night out.
Any book focussing on a niche market will be doubly problematic - as soon as a hotel or hostel knows they’re in the book, they can start raising their prices.
The single most useful source for travel information, bar none (IMHO obviously) is the Lonely Planet forums.
My wife and I used * Europe on Five Dollars* when we were young and childless and stationed in Germany in the late 1960s. It was a good guide to most of Western Europe and to the big cities. I was a real boon for people working on a minimal budget but who wanted to travel in some comfort. Of course back then the DM was $.25 and the French Franc was five to the dollar. You could get yourself into some strange places, like a very good alcohol free restaurant in Zurich or a cheap clean walk-up hotel in Paris not two blocks from the Arch of Triumph. The book never put us in a place we could not tolerate – except for one restaurant in Normandy that served us pork tripe. That wasn’t the book’s fault. It was just the cheapest thing on the fixed price menu and few college language classes deal with subtleties like the local word for boiled hog intestines stuffed with chopped snouts, ears and rectums.
Now that we are old and prosperous we haven’t used the updated and inflation adjusted edition. The old book was very helpful and accurate.