Europe For All
This week saw the passing of Arthur Frommer, whose books changed my life. When I traveled to Europe as a student, it was with a wave of other budget-minded travelers whose bibles (and mine) were Frommer’s famous series that began as Europe on $5 a Day. Although that became Europe on $10 (and on up to $95) as the years passed, the philosophy remained the same.
You don’t have to stay in fancy hotels to see the Continent, Frommer told Americans. Stay in guesthouses. Grab a baguette for lunch. Forget about the private bathroom. Live like the locals, in other words. “I wanted to scream at people to tell them they could afford to see the world,” Frommer told the Houston Chronicle, as quoted in his Washington Post obituary.
Frommer was a U.S. Army lawyer stationed in Berlin when he wrote and self published The G.I.’s Guide to Traveling in Europe, which was the genesis of Europe on $5 a Day. By the mid ’60s he quit his successful law practice to concentrate on his guidebook empire.
Frommer, along with low-cost carriers like Icelandic and Laker Airways, made it possible for people like me to wander around Europe soaking up art, music and history. He democratized the “Grand Tour.” He convinced the American public that travel wasn’t just for the well-heeled. It was for all of us. You may want to curse him the next time you’re crammed into the middle seat of a fully booked 737. But as I read about his life this week, all I wanted to say was “thank you.”
One thought on “Europe For All”
So glad you discovered his guides!
‘“I wanted to scream at people to tell them they could afford to see the world”…’
This quote made me think on whether the urge to scream these words was prompted by specific comments of the “I’d dearly like to travel, but…” kind.
If so, and even if/when Frommer went on in the conversation to give concrete examples of affordability, I imagine that in some cases he quite soon surmised that the person in question either grabbed his words like a lifeline… or just used ‘regrettable unaffordability’ as code for “I *should* want to travel, but I’m not actually very interested in going to other places.”
I do tend, while mindful of the real possibility that the circumstances of some folks might be decisively restrictive, generally to be of the school that believes that if somebody wants something enough, they will find a way to achieve (or at least approach) it. Although many such individuals do indeed tend to forge their own hallmarked path, for others their generic interest has to be kindled to a useful intensity. Perhaps it’s for them — as well as for, e.g., those who need explicitly to be shown the opportunities and the arithmetic — that communicators such as Frommer have great value.
On your post from yesterday: I am very sorry about Toby. Thoughts and hugs,