16 ms·

I get the complaint, but some of those cliched "In the footsteps of..." books are actually pretty good. I recently read Douglas Mack's "Europe on Five Wrong Tur

I get the complaint, but some of those cliched "In the footsteps of..." books are actually pretty good. I recently read Douglas Mack's "Europe on Five Wrong Turns A Day", in which the author tries to visit Europe in the modern day using a 1963 copy of Arthur Frommer's classic "Europe on Five Dollars a Day". It wasn't just the obvious "things are more expensive now", but really about how the whole idea of travel is so different from in the 1960s.

ryanlol 10y ago
>It wasn't just the obvious "things are more expensive now" Doesn't seem obvious at all, five 1960 dollars is around 40 2017 dollars. 40 dollars per day can be a plenty.
- icebraining 10y ago
  Sure, but the author was eating three course dinners in Paris and staying in sunny hotels in Florence with those $5 a day. Try doing that with $40 nowadays. The difference is, of course, mostly in the rates between the dollar and the European currencies, rather than simply an increase in costs locally.
  - trendia 10y ago
    > mostly in the rates between the dollar and European currencies I think this might be true in some countries -- it used to be way cheaper to go to countries in Eastern Europe before they joined the Euro. But I believe that Germany and France would have always been rather expensive since they had rather strong currencies. As far as the Euro is concerned, USD / Eur is the highest it's been in 10 years [0]. [0] http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=EUR&view=10Y http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=EUR&view=10Y
    - icebraining 10y ago
      The book was written in the mid-50s, back in the days of the Bretton Woods system, and barely a decade after WW2.
- VLM 10y ago
  The problem with touring Europe on $40/day is a fairly typical contract software developer might pay $1800/month or $60/day for family health insurance. The point being that if you're wealthy enough to have a roof over your head and food and medical care, which a significant fraction of the American population doesn't have, then trying to nickel and dime it when traveling doesn't make any sense as an over-hyper-optimization. I'm in good financial shape so most Americans can't replicate this but I went to Ireland a couple years ago for a week, it was all the time I could get off work, I dropped oh at least a couple grand. From memory the plane tickets were like $700, so that's a hundred bucks a day even if all we did was panhandle at $0 per day. If I have to work 51 weeks a year, when am I going to spend the money on that prevents me from dropping $500/day instead having to spend $5?
  - notahacker 10y ago
    Sure, but the whole point of "Europe on Five Dollars a Day" and "Southeast Asia on a Shoestring" and their ilk was opening up the idea of leisure travel to people who aren't working 51 weeks a year on contract programmers' salaries and feeding their families, and might instead have a few months off after their studies or in between low paid jobs.

ryanlol 10y ago

>It wasn't just the obvious "things are more expensive now" Doesn't seem obvious at all, five 1960 dollars is around 40 2017 dollars. 40 dollars per day can be a plenty.

icebraining 10y ago
Sure, but the author was eating three course dinners in Paris and staying in sunny hotels in Florence with those $5 a day. Try doing that with $40 nowadays. The difference is, of course, mostly in the rates between the dollar and the European currencies, rather than simply an increase in costs locally.
- trendia 10y ago
  > mostly in the rates between the dollar and European currencies I think this might be true in some countries -- it used to be way cheaper to go to countries in Eastern Europe before they joined the Euro. But I believe that Germany and France would have always been rather expensive since they had rather strong currencies. As far as the Euro is concerned, USD / Eur is the highest it's been in 10 years [0]. [0] http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=EUR&view=10Y http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=EUR&view=10Y
  - icebraining 10y ago
    The book was written in the mid-50s, back in the days of the Bretton Woods system, and barely a decade after WW2.
VLM 10y ago
The problem with touring Europe on $40/day is a fairly typical contract software developer might pay $1800/month or $60/day for family health insurance. The point being that if you're wealthy enough to have a roof over your head and food and medical care, which a significant fraction of the American population doesn't have, then trying to nickel and dime it when traveling doesn't make any sense as an over-hyper-optimization. I'm in good financial shape so most Americans can't replicate this but I went to Ireland a couple years ago for a week, it was all the time I could get off work, I dropped oh at least a couple grand. From memory the plane tickets were like $700, so that's a hundred bucks a day even if all we did was panhandle at $0 per day. If I have to work 51 weeks a year, when am I going to spend the money on that prevents me from dropping $500/day instead having to spend $5?
- notahacker 10y ago
  Sure, but the whole point of "Europe on Five Dollars a Day" and "Southeast Asia on a Shoestring" and their ilk was opening up the idea of leisure travel to people who aren't working 51 weeks a year on contract programmers' salaries and feeding their families, and might instead have a few months off after their studies or in between low paid jobs.