shelved at: 92 ROM : Architecture - Romania / price : £4.99

shelved at: 92 ROM : Architecture - Romania

"Used - almost as new": were I to sell my Lonely Planet guide after my visit to Romania and Moldova, this would be my likely description. It stems partly from the increasing obsolescence of sections of LP guides (and others of their ilk). Especially with countries like these, such guides tend to be out of date as soon as they are published and cannot compete with the speed of new information provided by the Internet.
The tendency for certain guides to move from a measured and balanced opinion towards opinionation has always been dubious. As an example, this guide begins its description of one hotel - quite a popular one, as I understand it - with the words "The welcome is curt....", thus crossing the boundary between opinion and silliness. The use of the present tense implies that this is the norm, although presumably based on a single visit. I chose to stay there in full knowledge of this comment and, unsurprisingly, my experience (and well as that of other Internet users) was quite different. In fact, my staying in any accommodation in this guide was more due to coincidence than recommendation. Even in Moldova, not noted for its cutting-edge Internet sites, it's easy to find somewhere to stay without using the guide.
As regards places to eat, changes here will be even more rapid. But even in the middle of winter in 1993, at a time when Romania had barely emerged from the CeauÅŸescu era, it was possible to find places to eat food of surprisingly good quality. Indeed, this should be easy enough in any moderate sized European town now so how much reliance need one place upon LP recommendations anyway?
So why did I buy this guide at all? The main answer would be because it is one of the few which covers Moldova, albeit in insufficient detail. The other reason is for what it tells me about places I was likely to visit and it covers Romania's sights perfectly adequately.
In short, this guide is helpful in terms of what there is to see and do. As regards the basics, you are better off using the Internet and following your nose. ( )

It didn't tell us Sibiu is the nearest thing to Vienna east of, well, Vienna. And it didn't tell us how to get to the airport from the bus station. And the directions it gave for Constanta led to a lot of us taking four buses all around and seeing only ugly Communist apartment blocks and not the mosque or anything (although to be fair, so did the directions we got from Constanta people). And the food vocab in the front was frustratingly useless. Other than all that, this book was pretty good - certainly better than LP's Greece and Turkey - and told us what places were like, how to get to them and what to watch out for with a minimum of nattering posing as flavour text. Often reliable! ( )

Not quite up to the usual LP thoroughness. Listings for accomodation are not extensive at all, and information on transport isn't always helpful. Slim pickings for restaurants as well, and a lot of smaller places are presented without maps. Prices for Romania are given in Euros, which is distracing when things are predominantly quoted in Lei.

Useful, but not up to standard. ( )