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The 50th Anniversary Arthur Frommer Interview

In celebration of Frommer's guidebooks first 50 years, the legendary travel guide writer talks about how it all began and the special moments along the way.

In 1957, Arthur Frommer published a slim travel guide that showed Americans how to travel to Europe without breaking the bank. Europe on 5 Dollars a Day revolutionized the way Americans traveled -- no longer did they have to be rich to eat a croissant from a Parisian bakery or take in the masterpieces at the Uffizi Galleries.

In celebration of Frommer's guidebooks first 50 years, the legendary travel guide writer talks about how it all began and the special moments along the way.

Q: Why did you focus on budget travel?

AF: As a soldier traveling in Europe on a Pfc's pay, , I discovered that not only was budget travel possible but that it was preferable; that it was a better form of travel. It enabled you to enjoy the authentic aspects of the cities you were visiting and to remove yourself from the artificial world of tourism.

There was a day in Paris when I was traveling on my own, before I did the GI's Guide, and I was sitting in a sidewalk café writing letters home, nursing a little glass of wine for several hours -- to enable me to keep sitting at that café. I looked up and saw a motor coach of forty or so American tourists passing by with everyone's noses pressed to the glass looking out at the life of Paris from the inside of the bus. At that moment, I realized that the difference between them and me was that they had money and I had no money -- and because I had no money, I was having the time of my life. That if I'd had any money, I would not be sitting at an exotic cafe, meeting Parisians and involving myself in the life of Paris ... I would be in that bus, having a second-rate experience.

I suddenly realized that when you travel, the less you spend, the more you enjoy. The experience is better. And I held onto that lesson and will go to my grave still advocating it. That's the love for budget travel which underlies Europe on 5 Dollars a Day.

Q: What was the biggest challenge travelers faced around the time that Europe on 5 Dollars a Day was published?

AF: It was overcoming the advice given to the American traveler, that Europe was a "once in a lifetime" visit that had to be accomplished in the grand manner. The idea that you took several suitcases, you went there for a lengthy trip, you lived only in first class hotels, that you could not possibly hazard staying in a hotel of second-class quality. The idea that you would be eaten up alive by bedbugs in war-torn Europe. People were being told at that time by the entire American travel industry that there was only one way to travel in Europe and that was first-class.

Q: What do you feel is the biggest challenge facing travelers today?

AF: The biggest challenge is keeping travel authentic. Getting away from the tourist mill. Returning to the basic elements of travel and tourism. Going like a traveler, not like a tourist. Not bringing the United States with you, but remaining open to new ideas, new surroundings, new lifestyles, and new approaches to life. Listening instead of talking.

The biggest problem today is that whole vast areas of travel have been taken over by people who have commercialized the activity and made it more and more difficult to experience the authentic aspects of the travel experience.

Q: In the fifty years you've been involved in travel publishing, what has been your biggest surprise?

AF: It has been the invasion of an intellectual activity by people who regard travel as a trivial recreation and not as a learning experience. The great majority of the professional travel industry -- the tour operators, the hotels, the cruises -- treat travel as simply a form of entertainment. I have always believed that travel is the best form of learning and that it affects the mind in a way that no other activity -- even that of widespread reading -- can possibly do, and that, therefore, it has become an essential part of a civilized life. I've lost that battle because the commercial interests have taken over so much, not in travel publishing necessarily, but in other aspects of travel.

Q: What is your favorite special travel moment?

AF: It was emerging from the jungles of northeastern Thailand and walking to the top of a mountain to spend two nights with the hill tribes of the Golden Triangle, actually living among a community that lives as people lived during the Stone Age. With no electricity, no tools, as nomads moving from place to place. It was a fascinating travel experience and one that's still available today.

I've heard recently from people who've done it -- you go to Thailand, you go to http://frommers.com/destinations/chiangmai/ Chiang Mai, then you take a bus to a little town called Chiang Rai, and you go to any travel agency up and down the street. You hire a guide who will accompany you into the Golden Triangle, all the way up the mountain to visit with the so-called hill tribes. It's really a unique opportunity that won't last for much longer because these hill tribes are being exposed to 21st century people.

Q: What is the best travel advice you've ever received?

AF: That was from the first person who ever criticized me for taking too many items of clothing on a trip. We all take far too much; we burden ourselves with dozens of items, 90% of which are never used. We damage the trip by doing so, in addition to increasing its cost. People can travel with a fraction of the items they normally take with them, and it's a bit of advice I've repeated over and over again.

Q: What's been the biggest change for travelers since the original guide was published?

AF: It's the increasing difficulty of finding authentic experiences, all resulting from the sheer numbers of people who are today visiting the traditional destinations. Not only should one seek out the new and undiscovered, but it's increasing important to travel during off-season periods, when the Florences and the Venices of the world aren't inundated with visitors. There are just so many more people traveling now -- there were fewer than a million Americans going to Europe when the original guide was published, now there are twelve million Americans going to Europe -- so it gets more difficult to experience Europe as one used to. That, I think, is the biggest change since the original guidebook was published. Travel has simply skyrocketed and it continues to increase.

Q: What destination has changed the most over the last fifty years?

AF: The islands of the Caribbean have, in many cases, been destroyed by the cruise ship industry. You arrive on almost any day of the week in Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands and find that this quaint little port city is now overwhelmed by as many as 12,000 cruise passengers per day when four of the mega ships all land at the same time. It's made the Caribbean an increasingly difficult area to enjoy. It's more and more important to select the cruises that head for the less visited islands, the stranger islands, the ones that are not nearly as well-trafficked -- the Grenadas, the Dominicas -- rather than the standard islands.

Q: What destination has changed the least?

AF: The country towns of Europe. The small cities outside the major capitals have, in many cases, retained the way of life they enjoyed 200 years ago, especially in the Alpine areas, the mountain villages of Bavaria, Switzerland, Austria and even Northern Italy. There's very little change there in the way of life from what it was in the 1800s. There has been no building, no high-rises, and the roads are the same as before. The community life is intensely personal and familiar and people know one another. They make a point of going to shop every day at stores where they are well-known to the proprietor and vice versa, and where every day involves a little bit of a visit and an encounter.

It makes it all the more fascinating to rent an apartment in some of these smaller towns and to live as a resident for a month or so. My wife Roberta and I did that a few years ago when we spent the month of September in the little town of Impruneta in Tuscany, where every morning I wandered into town for my morning coffee and to get the newspaper and it really was like going back into the 1800s. It was a lovely respite from the life that we normally know.

Q: Do you have any thoughts on the future of Frommer's?

AF: I find it gratifying that the books still carry on the tradition in which they were founded. I was reading one of my daughter Pauline's guides the other day and I burst out laughing when she described one hotel in Manhattan. She said it was done by a designer who must have been blind-folded when he chose the decor. I started laughing because that's the sort of open, impudent way in which the very first books were written.

It's an example of the fact that the books, from the very beginning, have and should regard the reader as their only client and I hope this is always the case -- and it's certainly the case with Pauline's guidebooks. Her guide to New York City reveals and reflects a love of New York City, and yet a brutal honesty about the establishments she's writing up, and I find it just delightful. I'm just so proud of her.




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