Europe Beyond Your Means

Bookshelves today are crowded with titles that give the same advice, recommend the same places to visit, and ultimately convey the philosophy that travel should be brief, cursory, and cheap. Europe Beyond Your Means is the work of two writers hoping to exploit what they see as a dearth in the tourist reading market. Consider this the introduction of a totally new genre that exists as a supplement for the discerning traveler who isn’t looking for prepackaged travel tips but instead craves social commentary and permission to break from the norm and discard the fanny pack. While invoking our particular brand of social justice, we have produced a book filled with political satire, short stories, humorous observations, bar crawls, and offhand but fairly obvious travel and appearance tips. The overall goal of this publication is to act as a guide for those lost souls who feel unaccounted for by the typical travel literature on the market today, while debunking certain engrained stereotypes. This book exists because we feel there need to be statutes for Beyond Your Means Travelers to follow and cite when others are spotted violating what should undoubtedly be a solid body of established international law. This is, in short, a reaction to other travel books—a “tra-vella,” if you will. The question looms: Who exactly was this book prepared for and who are Beyond Your Means travelers? In short, these are the pseudo-intellectual spendthrifts that regular tourists often see but rarely engage when wandering with tour groups, for fear of dishonoring the “buddy system.” Essentially, if you can identify with the following scenario, you, too, may be a Beyond Your Means traveler: It’s the beginning of a particularly trying time at work or school, and many important deadlines are approaching. Conventional wisdom holds that if energy is directed toward the tasks at hand, the rewards themselves will be so immense as to make the exertion seem minuscule. Instead of staying up all hours slaving away on work-related projects, you pass the time by checking international news sources on the Web, worrying if your dry cleaning will be done by the weekend, and investing energy in planning an exotic trip with money you don’t have. By championing this unique ideology, you have moved in the direction of becoming a true Beyond Your Means traveler. These travelers have a strong distaste for the contents of most travel guides and are disenfranchised by the many ill-suited suggestions aimed at the mainstream. For some reason unbeknownst to your authors, the world just doesn’t quite embrace the Beyond Your Means lifestyle. The typical travel guide will steer readers away from enticement and toward the direction of the bland, while lulling them to sleep with boring facts rather than highlighting the rich, idiosyncratic history of a place and its people. This may very well be the credo for the masses—but not for a Beyond Your Means philosopher. A myriad of travel information currently focuses on how to plan an economically conscious trip to an interesting locale and how to fit as many highlights into as few days as possible. But we don’t believe that meaningful travel experiences can—or should—always be bought at deep discounts while lodging in hostile environments. Another disappointing theme recurring in standard travel guide parlance is the emphasis on Disneyland-style casual dress. The prevailing paradigm of the modern era is that travel is best accomplished in a pair of Nikes and white athletic socks, in hopes of saving a trip to the podiatrist some day. All of this well-heeled advice is bought and sold at the price of looking derelict in some of Europe’s most public and celebrated places. One might have won the war for comfort but sacrificed a great deal of class in doing it. This is nothing but the most Pyrrhic of victories under false accords. After all, Wal-Mart is a lovely idea for toilet paper and household cleaning supplies, but it’s not the philosophy to employ when your quest is sipping Chablis on the Champs-Élysées. If you’re constantly worried about paying for tomorrow, you’ll forget what you can later regret spending today. Contained herewith is not a step-by-step guide to your next escape to Europe; this isn’t that kind of publication. Our aim isn’t to be your number one resource for vacation tips but instead to create the antithesis to the “common” travel guide. We keep the “in-the-knows” entertained and the poseurs des normes obvious. We’re not writing a nauseating Rick Steves hand-holding manifesto, telling you all the details of budget travel. If you stick with us, you won’t be spotted walking through a train station, wearing a backpack on the front of your chest laden with locks, like the Ghost of Christmas Past. Efforts like those make you nothing but a rank-and-file member of the “Ricknick” army. We, on the other hand, tell you the stuff Rick didn’t think about or warned you against because of the “frivolous” cost. The bottom line of the Beyond Your Means philosophy is simple: life is lived and best enjoyed when experiencing and striving for what you don’t yet have but think you already should.