Which Route? Which Guidebook? And Rick Steves Defends Weed

Relatively cheap flights are available from Minneapolis-St. Paul Int'l to Roissy (Charles de Gaulle) in Paris. My plan as of today is to begin in the City of Light, then Eurail my way to Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Venice, Rome, Florence, Interlaken in Switzerland, then back to Paris. That’s a lot for a 15- to 16-day trip, so some cities may not survive to the final itinerary. Bottom line, the trip will focus on Western and Central Europe.

Every competent traveler needs a guidebook, right? A Lonely Planet tome, or maybe that Let's Go from those rich brats at Harvard. A quick search at Barnes and Noble deteriorated into a 40-minute grind when I realized the volume of guidebooks available today. There were at least a dozen for most individual cities, and hundreds covering all aspects and corners of Europe.

For starters, I immediately decided to skip the 1,500-page general EUROPE guidebooks from Frommers and other established publishers. I won’t be visiting the UK or Ireland (did that for 16 days in 1996) or Eastern Europe, so why purchase all that extra paper?

Rick Steve’s Europe Through the Backdoor struck me as a good general guide to traveling Europe with some destination highpoints. Yeah, I know he's that sensitive guy that aging boomers crush on. He’s frighteningly inoffensive, but I can’t dislike the man. His guidebooks are practical, even going so far to recommend other books for certain situations, and he talks practical sense.

Off the subject: Steves and Weed

You know what convinced me to spend money with Steves? He strikes me as another non-user of marijuana who thinks the war on this drugs is ridiculous. (For the record, this geek hasn’t even smelled marijuana in decades.) Our economy is in the tank yet our jail cells are full of users and sellers while formerly productive cities like Juarez, Mexico have become war zones over pot smuggling turf. Insane. Check out Steves' statement, which I stumbled into on his website, on the matter. Makes sense to me. (He really has spoken at NORML rallies. I haven’t watched any video snippets but you easily can find interviews with him on the weed topic on the web)

By the way, just because I believe marijuana should be decriminalized doesn’t mean I condone the illegal use of any drug, including dope, or for health issues, booze or cigarettes for that matter. When you blaze up, you’re providing financial incentives for marijuana smuggling and the violence it breeds. All you pot users: Think about this American child before blazing up next time.

Wow, where’d that soapbox moment come from?

Back to trip planning

Anyway, I like Steve’s guide and bought it for $24 minus 25 percent off at B&N thanks to a coupon my mom printed for me. Heads up: Some of the content in Steve’s guide also exists, for free, on his website.

I’m supplementing this general guide with books and information on specific destinations as well as a rail guide. Reading up on Steve’s website, he suggests buying the Thomas Cook European Rail Timetable, which I’ll purchase when the Winter 2010 schedule becomes available. The first specific destination guide I purchased, along with the Backdoor book, focuses on Prague. If I visit no other city during this walkabout, I will spend time in Prague. During the early to mid-1990s, Gen-Xers from around the world descended on the Bohemian Capitol, but I was not among them. Czechs initially embraced the ex-pats era, then tired of it, but nonetheless, Xers left their mark there – sort of like Hemingway’s lost generation in Paris in the early 20th Century – and I intend to absorb the city’s vibe as much as possible.

The DK Eyewitness guide has loads of color shots, fits in a back pocket, and features top 10 destinations. I’m reading a little bit of both before bed every night.

Instead of buying piles of guidebooks, I’m looking forward to reading literature and history about my destinations during the next six months.