Four years ago, a motley bunch of U.C. Berkeley students launched a new series of guidebooks-The Berkeley Guides. Since then, we've been busy writing and editing 13 books to destinations across the globe, from California, Mexico, and Central America to Europe and Eastern Europe. Along the way our writers have weathered bus plunges, rabies, and guerrilla attacks, landed bush planes above the Arctic Circle, gotten lost in the woods (proverbially and literally), and broken bread with all sorts of peculiar characters-from Mafia dons and Hell's Angel bikers to matronly B&B; proprietors who insist you eat your stewed tomatoes. And don't forget about the train station sleep-ins, voodoo bus schedules, and gut-wrenching ferry trips across the Adriatic.

Coordinating the efforts of 65 U.C. Berkeley writers back at the office is an equally daunting task (have you ever tried to make a phone call to Romania?). But that's the whole point of The Berkeley Guides: to bring you the most up-to-date info on prices, the latest budget-travel trends, the newest restaurants and hostels, where to catch your next train--all written and edited by people who know what cheap travel is all about.

You see, it's one of life's weird truisms that the more cheaply you travel, the more you inevitably experience. If you're looking for five-star meals, air-conditioned tour buses, and reviews of the same old tourist traps, you're holding the wrong guidebook. Instead, The Berkeley Guides give you an in-depth look at local culture, detailed coverage of small towns and off-beat sights, bars and caf�s where tourists rarely tread, plus no-nonsense practical info that deals with the real problems of real people (where to get aspirin at 3 am, where to launder those dirty socks).

Coming from a community as diverse as Berkeley, we also wanted our guides to be useful to everyone, so we tell you if a place is wheelchair accessible, if it provides resources for gay and lesbian travelers, and if it's safe for women traveling solo. Many of us are Californians, which means most of us like trees and mountain trails. It also means we emphasize the outdoors in every Berkeley Guide and include lots of info about hiking and tips on protecting the environment. To minimize our impact on the environment, we print our books on recycled paper using soy-based inks.

Most important, these guides are for travelers who want to see more than just the main sights. We find out what local people do for fun, where they go to eat, drink, or just hang out. Most guidebooks lead you down the tourist trail, ignoring important local issues, events, and culture. In The Berkeley Guides we give you the information you need to understand what's going on around you, whether it's the latest on the European Union or minke whaling in Norway.

We've done our best to make sure the information in The Berkeley Guides is accurate, but time doesn't stand still: prices change, places go out of business, currencies get devalued. Call ahead when it's really important, and try not to get too stressed out.

THANKS TO YOU

Putting together a guidebook that covers more than 25 countries is no easy task. From figuring out how to mail manuscript from Morocco to getting the lowdown on the bar scene in Barcelona, our writers and editors relied on helpful souls along the way. We'd like to thank the following people-as well as the hundreds of others whom our writers met briefly on the road-for their advice and encouragement. We're always on the lookout for the newest information, so we'd love it if you gave us feedback from the road. Drop us a line-a postcard, a scrawled note on some toilet paper, whatever. Our address is 515 Eshleman Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720.

Berkeley Bios

Behind every restaurant review, train schedule, and cheap thrill in this book lurks a student writer. Eleven writers sold their souls to The Berkeley Guides for the summer, fanning out all over Europe, Turkey, and Morocco. Every two weeks, they sent back their tattered and torn, wept-on, slept-on, sun-beaten, and beer-stained manuscript for the travel-deprived editors in Berkeley to decipher.

The Writers

After editing The Berkeley Guide to Mexico, Jessica Blatt came down with a severe case of travel-withdrawal, whose symptoms she promptly alleviated by returning to write for The Berkeley Guide to Europe. Jessica recently moved to New York City to pursue graduate studies in translation, but after a summer of wandering through the cities, beaches, mountains, and bars of Portugal and western Spain, she's no longer certain why.

Armed with a degree from Berkeley in social science, with a concentration in public health and medical anthropology in underserved communities, Lillian Boctor was well prepared for her summer spent scrambling onto ferry boats as the ramp was being pulled up, being stranded for hours on deserted island roads, and cultivating intimate relationships with bus drivers. Fortunately, her countless mishaps did not detract much from her trip-strains of haunting bouzouki, the smell of retsina, luscious Greek salads, and swaying vines now creep into her dreams. As the mystical, serene waters of Greece caress her memory, Lillian wonders whether she can make a career out of being a dolphin.

A senior at U.C. Berkeley, shooting for a degree in chemistry (despite those all-too-frequent ether spills in the lab), Pete Craig mostly enjoyed his high-mileage jaunt through Finland and northern Norway, from thumbing a ride with the Norwegian Army to sorting spuds on a Finnish farm. But eventually the 24-hour sunlight, $7 beers, and candies filled with ammonium chloride (no joke) took their toll, leaving Pete twitchy and longing for civilization (or at least a thorazine drip). All we know is that Pete's back in Berkeley inhaling fumes in a campus lab, still mumbling something about German tour buses and siilijaatelo (herring ice cream).

During her first Berkeley Guides assignment in 1993, Jamie Davidson found herself stranded on a Caribbean isle, but encountered a friendly Viking who helped her pass the time. After completing two more Berkeley Guides itineraries in Mexico and Spain, she crossed his path again this summer in Denmark; lucky for her, he let her crash on his couch and empty her backpack into his washing machine. With a degree in philosophy from U.C. Berkeley under her belt, Jamie is now working toward a masters degree in humanities.

Amy Gosling was welcomed to Switzerland by a USA Today article listing Zurich and Geneva among the world's top-five most expensive cities. This depressing information was immediately driven home when she thought she'd save some money by eating at McDonald's, only to flee in horror when she could barely afford a Big Mac. After adjusting to the shock, Amy took comfort in the breathtaking scenery of the Alps and the warm hospitality of its residents. She returned to the States with a new respect for the rejuvenating power of clean alpine air and a healthy tolerance for the Bay Area's (relatively) high cost of living.

Northern Sweden's 24 hours of daylight so mesmerized Aran Johnson that he nearly traded in his U.S. passport for a Swedish one. Then he heard about the country's frozen, dark winters, packed his bag, and hightailed it back to balmy California. Aran is now accepting donations of warm clothing before returning to brave Sweden's brutal winters head-on.

Michael Levine emerged fairly unscathed from his experience writing for the Berkeley Guides in Turkey. This was no small feat, considering that he barely escaped bodily harm at the hands of an irate Turkish tour-company owner after he staged an impromptu boycott to protest the owner's unethical business practices. He chalked the incident up to bad luck and enjoyed the remainder of his trip, particularly his extended stay in the surreal, otherworldly Cappadocia. After completing his itinerary, he went on to explore parts of Israel, Jordan, and Syria. Prepared for pretty much anything following his stint with the Berkeley Guides, Michael is currently pursuing a career in journalism.

Corey Nettles fell in love with Spain while writing for The Berkeley Guide to Europe 1995, and was shocked when she had an even better time doing it the second time around. Aside from her first night in Sevilla in a room that featured fleas, a used condom in the corner, and family proprietors who liked to air their issues loudly in the dead of night, and her last night in Bilbao when a well-meaning but clueless ferry staff lost her bag (and half her manuscript with it), her experiences in the south and east of Spain were infinitely gratifying. Corey has fond memories of listening to flamenco in the streets, wandering the stunning Alhambra, hanging out with a Galician folk music troupe, and downing vast quantities of Ribeira wine while watching the rain.

Matthew Reid enjoyed drinking his way through Madrid but warns against merciless backpack thieves in the Parque del Retiro. He also highly recommends a strong dose of opium tea to counter nasty bouts with the runs in Morocco-in fact, he found that opium tea is good for just about anything. An anthropology undergrad at Berkeley hailing from the East Coast, Matt plans to shirk future responsibility through travel and small-time scams.

After discovering that one of the hotels in Rotterdam had burned down, Stephanie Schuck scoured the streets for a substitute. She asked about the rates at the inviting Hotel California, but when they informed her that they charged by the half hour, she quickly redirected her search. A little wiser and less easily mortified, Steph had no problems covering the rest of the ultra-efficient, user-friendly Netherlands-tripping over every other cobblestone on its streets doesn't count. Her highlights included biking over a polder (reclaimed land), meeting the Cannabis King and High Times cover boy Arjan, and spotting soccer stud Frank Rijkaard in Amsterdam. Steph is currently earning a master's degree in journalism at the University of Minnesota; she hopes to integrate an international angle into her program so that she can continue her travels.

Since he still looks too young to be a professor, Joshua Skov took a break from his doctoral work in economics and spent the summer practicing his French, German, and traveling skills in Belgium, Luxembourg, and northern Greece. Although occasionally disabled by lower-back muscle spasms and an intermittent but acute inability to read simple city maps, he was once given a much-needed reprieve from his only chronic ailment: separation from the piano. Suffering from drug-like withdrawal, Josh stumbled into a Brussels piano store, where the compassionate proprietor, a sixth-generation piano builder, quickly recognized and treated the condition with access to several uprights, a few harpsichords, and a grand once used by Brahms himself. In general, his travel woes were palliated by Belgian beer, plates of tsatsiki, and a beautiful tulip that he discovered in Gent.

Finally, we'd like to put in a word for the writers who worked on the Berkeley Guides to France, Germany, Great Britain and Ireland, Italy, and Eastern Europe, whose work made this massive tome possible: Laura Altieri, Jennifer Berktold, Jennifer Dawson, Mylah de la Rosa, Kathleen Dodge, Sara Fisher, Deborah Giattina, Laura Helmuth, Lauren Herz, Jennifer Hosek, Julie Jares, Jeff Johnson, Jonathan Kazmar, Jonathan Kier, Alice Kim, Paul Kottman, Jonathan Leff, Denise Leto, Kenneth Logan, Quin Marshall, Janet Morris, Irene Nexica, Mielikki Org, Meir Rinde, Oliver Schwaner-Albright, Cale Siler, Matthew Waxman, Pamela Whitney, Erin Williams, Kristin Wojtkowski, Padma Yanamandra, and Matt Young.

The Editors

Sora Song came to Berkeley an uprooted, homesick New Yorker, but quickly learned to appreciate the Bay Area's negative humidity levels, 10-lane freeways, and overabundance of cheap Thai food-even from the confines of a congested Berkeley Guides office. After spending a joyfully frenetic summer agonizing over her fledgling writers, tracking down lost manuscript in the Sinai Desert, and staving off an intense desire to escape to Tashkent tomorrow, she's finally laid to rest The Berkeley Guide to Europe and now feels defenseless in the face of a stress-free future. Before joining the ranks of U.C. Berkeley's pre-PhDs, Sora spent four years as a diehard Hoya, and she'll eventually hit I-80 back east to throw herself at the mercy of the New York publishing scene (though not before learning to prepare sushi, and pitching her tent once in every national park in California). Please contact her if you're planning to give up an Upper West Side apartment any time soon.

We'd also like to thank the editors of the France, Germany, Great Britain and Ireland, Italy, and Eastern Europe books, who handed us edited manuscript at a moment's notice: Chris Baty, Peter DeDomenico, Sunny Delaney, Tara Duggan, Jewlia Eisenberg, Maureen Klier, Karen Radziner, Elisabeth Schriber, Maggie Trapp, and Stephan von Pohl.