No Need to Rough It In Budapest (The Rough Guide to Budapest - Charles Hebbert)

Member Name: Essexgirl2006

Product:	The Rough Guide to Budapest - Charles Hebbert
Date:	07/08/07 (140 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lots of background info

Disadvantages: Listings section a bit confusing

For me, choosing a guide book for my trip is all part of the pre-holiday experience along with choosing which novel to take for the journey. I have been known to visit several bookshops comparing the different guide books for maps, information relevant to me and checking to see which one is the most up to date. For my recent trip to Budapest it was a close run thing with the Lonely Planet and the Rough Guide, as they were the most recently published. Ultimately I plumped for the Rough Guide as I preferred their maps. Their books tend to be text heavy, giving you a lot of background information as well as opening times/prices, but don't tend to have a great many photos.

The first Rough Guide (The Rough Guide to Greece) was published in 1982. Originally Rough Guides (so named as the information was rough rather than a guide for people roughing it) were aimed at the growing backpacking market and budget traveler but more recently have taken to including information for independent travelers of all budgets. Since the mid-nineties the company has also published non travel guides on topics such as world music (including CDs), climate change and the internet, as well as phrase books and maps.

This book was written and researched by Charles Hebbert and Dan Richardson. My copy is the third edition, published April 2006 and features bathers in one of Budapest's thermal steam baths on its front cover. The book is divided into sections and I shall discuss each section below with a brief outline of what each contains and how useful I felt it was.

The book starts with a small colour section giving a brief overview of the city and 25 must-see highlights. At this point I am starting to wonder if four days is enough.

BASICS
This covers how to get there (as I had already booked my flight, I had figured it out, but if you are coming overland then this would be more useful), visas, money, opening hours and other general information. Mainly I found this section interesting especially the suggestions of how to get to and from the airport as well as the information on the traditional place to go on New Years Eve (as this was the time we were visiting), although we did not take up their suggestion ultimately.

THE CITY
This is divided into eleven parts for nine different areas of the city, plus the outskirts and excursions. Initially I wanted to just dive in to the section where my hotel was to see what was in the immediate proximity but its exact location in terms of these sections wasn't known, as I only had a street name so I had to look at each section in more detail. I also struggled to relate the section maps to the bigger overall map at the back, but then spotted a tiny map inside the front cover that indicated where each section was in the city.

It lists the main attractions and points of interest for each part. The maps also showed accommodation and restaurants although they are detailed in another section. Generally they were very informative, although one attraction (The Hungarian House of Wine) was not listed in my guidebook, which I thought was a shame, I knew of it only through friends who had been previously. I realise they can't list everything, but this seemed quite a popular place, and think this is an oversight on RG's part. Places that were covered were covered in detail, with background information that included why each place was significant so you knew if and why you wanted to visit a certain museum or church etc. Prices were accurate to within about the equivalent of 30p (bearing in mind the book was eight months old).

LISTINGS
Again this is divided into sections so that you can skip parts you don't need. The first one is Accommodation and I have to say that since the advent of the internet I have not used a guide book for help in selecting a place to stay preferring the wider choice of information and consumer reviews available on the web. Accommodation covered in the book includes a range of hotels, with a separate section for hostels and a small part for private rooms/apartments and camping.

One problem I had with the Eating section (which also applies to the accommodation section if you used it) is the fact that the restaurants listed are then shown on a map a hundred pages back. It is helpful they are listed alphabetically to then find them on the grid by number. However, if you work the other way and are looking at the map, where restaurants and hotels are indicated by a number, you then have to scan an alphabetized list to see which one has the right number next to it to find the name and flick forward 100 pages or so to find the review. Also the map does not indicate if it is a restaurant or bar, you only find that out by flicking between the sections. Although the page number of the map is indicated in the listings section, the corresponding number would also help you locate it as opposed to running out of fingers trying to hold all the pages open (I'm not one of those people who can turn page corners down on books). We found plenty of restaurants on a street near our hotel, and had very little problem locating a place able to accommodate large parties, thus did not use any of the limited recommendations to eat or drink, but coincidentally used a coffee shop listed in it. The description was very brief but accurate. We occasionally passed restaurants featured in the book on our travels (usually after we had eaten elsewhere) and they did all seem nice places. Clubs, shopping, music venues and the gay scene are also covered in this section. We had no real problems finding what we wanted independently, or from friends who had been before. I was disappointed that a nearby street with lots of restaurants (Liszt Ferenc Ter) was barely referred to in the book (It was called 'posey' - we didn't find this at all, it was full of café-bar type restaurants with no attitude or dress code). There is also a small, informative colour section on Hungarian music. Generally I was disappointed with the choices and information included in this section, but the city is too diverse to include everything. Possibly this section and its format need a re-think in a city with such choice.

CONTEXTS
This is a smaller section covering the history of the city which is broken up into small chunks and thus easy to read. There are also some recommended reads for further information and a glossary of Hungarian terms. I found the more recent parts covering the Horthy years (Post World War I) and the Communist era the most interesting.

LANGUAGE
There is a section on grammar and pronouncing individual letters, as many of them have different accents on them and seem very complicated. There are also some useful phrases, days of the week, numbers etc and food and drink terms. However I would prefer it if they had the phonetic pronunciation listed rather than me having to refer back to the relevant section to check how to pronounce the o with the two backward apostrophes on top ('ur as in Fur, but longer'). Also with the Food & Drinks terms you need to know that certain foods are soups or cheeses, for example, to check in the relevant section for the translation, it is not alphabetised. However as most people spoke English (and most menus were in English) we had no real use for this section and most people cheerfully helped us with any attempts at Hungarian pronunciation, and were polite enough not to laugh.

TRAVEL STORE
Two to three pages containing a list of Rough Guide books available. Good if you are bored.

SMALL PRINT AND INDEX
As it says - credits and index. This is followed by a couple of maps covering the city and outskirts and public transport network. The city maps are too broad to be of much use if you are only there on an extended weekend break, as you are unlikely to explore that far a field.

Overall I think travel guides are for dipping in and out of, rather than reading from cover to cover. The information presented in this book is clear and easy to read, although sometimes I had difficulty finding the information I wanted, especially at the beginning. Once I got used to the book and the city's layout, it was much easier to use. The range of restaurants and bars is limited, I would have preferred information in street terms as we found several streets that had a variety of restaurants and bars on, and given a prompt in the right direction could then fend for ourselves from there. In terms of Budapest this section needs a slight re-think as there is so much choice available, in a place with less choice this would have been very useful I did like the information on places to visit, it was much more helpful in giving background info to places, and why they are significant and worth a visit than most other guidebooks that my friends had. It also explains what happens in the different steam baths (and which ones you may wish to avoid, depending on your persuasion).

The cover price is £9.99 although I purchased mine for £6.79 from Amazon.com.

Summary: An informative guide to Budapest for the independant traveller.