- Michael M.: Too much going on. Life in flux, etc..
- Sunshine: Wow, I was soooo happy to see a new post in my rss reader. I was hopping this is already the comeback! :(...
- gandalf: Did you only get caffeine through Dr.p or did you drink coffee as well? I’m interested, since...
- neeka: nine kilos… wow… :) happy holidays to you, michael, and to all your loved ones! veronica
- m: It was a bargain. No strings attached.
Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Maribor, Slovenia.
Portoroz, Slovenia.
• AlienMelon
• Burger.si
• Heck
• Izklop
• si.blogs
• Sloblogi
• Blogorola
• Natalija Verboten
Lonely Planet shows images of Slovenia under "Slovakia."
When I first toured Slovenia in 1999, I took the Lonely Planet guide with me. It was pretty much the only big-name guide at the time (and probably still is) but it served its purpose well. It’s pretty decent, I have to say. Which is why it pains me to see that they’ve joined the Slovenia/Slovakia Hall of Shame.
This page is supposed to contain images of Slovakia. And yet the first two are from you-know-where. This one is from Slovenia’s Triglav national park; this one is from a fruit stand in Slovenia’s capital, Ljubljana. I wanted to sue them for a billion dollars for the mistake, but they’ve cleverly indemnified themselves at the bottom of each page with a warning about accepting "no responsibility for any loss, injury
or inconvenience sustained by anyone resulting from this information."
Damn.
(Thanks Rok!)
Comments
Comments for this post are closed.
Another good one!"It was pretty much the only big-name guide at the time (and probably still is)"Actually, Lonely Planet has since been joined by the Rough Guide (a division of Penguin) and Bradt, both of which have published English-language guides to Slovenia recently, although I’m not sure if the latter really fits the definition of a "big-name guide." I can’t compare the two guides on Slovenia, but generally speaking, Rough Guides tend to be very good — sometimes better than Lonely Planet. Fodor’s is also about to release a guide to Slovenia, but they are combining it with Croatia, so I guess that doesn’t really count.German-speaking visitors to Slovenia have a much wider choice of guidebooks in their language to pick from. Nevertheless, when I visited Britain this past summer, I was delighted to discover five different guides to Slovenia being sold in a general-interest bookstore (including a guide to Ljubljana and a specialized hiking guide), more than what some bigger countries got. In the US, however, even Lonely Planet’s Slovenia guide is rarely on bookshelves.
I should add that Lonely Planet’s guide to Slovenia was, ironically, easier to find in US bookstores several years ago, when far fewer Americans visted Slovenia than they do now. I guess the trend now is for people to buy more specialized books online.
That’s good to know. What I’d really love to see is an Eyewitness Travel Guide for Slovenia. I’m a sucker for those things and their 3-D maps. They’ve managed to cover a lot of this part of Europe so far, including Croatia, so I’m hoping Slovenia is in the works.Also: Some people have asked me about the owl -> Here’s the lowdown.
There, I had it. We should get a hint and reunite our two glorious
countries so that IT REALLY WON’T MATTER if anyone confuses one with
another.
Michael: I’m kind of ambivalent when it comes to the DK’s Eyewitness Travel Guide series. I love their diagrams and overall design, but the visual luxury does seem to come at the expense of text. That’s not a huge problem as far as their city guides are concerned, but when entire countries are covered, important things and places invariably get left out. I looked through their guide to Croatia, which happens to be one of the smaller countries they cover, and was surprised to see that some of the country’s most beautiful islands were either left out entirely or covered superficially, with most of the space devoted to a few bigger towns and cities. I also miss the type of historic, social, and cultural background that Lonely Planet and Rough Guide are usually good at. Having said that, I think the DK guides make a great second guidebook, and I would love to see one on Slovenia.Speaking of DK, I’ve seen quite a few copy-cat guides out there recently. By looking at the cover, it’s pretty hard to tell that this guide to the Croatian islands has nothing to do with DK, but is published by a Croatian company. I own it, BTW, and it’s otherwise pretty good, with really interesting text, even though it is not as visually attractive as the DK series. But the best of the lookalikes is this Italian guide to Istria (covering both the Slovenian and the Croatian parts of the penninsula), also available in Slovene. Its quality is as good as DK’s (you can see some sample pages on the page I linked to above), and because it covers a small area, it contains plenty of detail.
1 look at the picture of the market and Michael knew right away that it was Ljubljana. Impressive.
I think what tipped me off was the fact that they listed it as Ljubljana.
Regardind the mistake…what can you expect from americans?
I was really surprised thought when I’ve seen The best of eastern europe by Rick Steve.
It is a really good book and incredibly all the local names and all the
rest are spelled probelly, even with š?ž! He is also making fune of
Bush and the forementioned mistakes caused by negligence!
I would like to add that in the paper version of the guide, I think
that picture from the market is properly labled (well, in Lonely Planet
Eastern Europe. Its true, Lonely Planet Slovenia is hard to find
in the States, even in Cleveland). So, to me, it does look like
a Slovenia Slovakia mix up. However, I do not know if they
spelled everything probelly!
I see that the two offending photos are also in Slovenia’s photo
section… So I guess nature struck twice and both sights can be seen
in both countries! Thanks Lonely Planet.
Furthering AZ2SI’s comment, the Bradt guide series,
www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1841621196/ref=pd_bxgy_text_2_cp/203-1586112-9155117
, are quite good. I haven’t perused the Slovenia guide but if
it’s anywhere close to their guide to Croatia, it’d be worth a
look. Bradt tends to use a bit more humour than Lonely Planet or
Rough Guide. I’ve used all three recently for a trip to Croatia
and found Bradt’s more accurate and more useful as far as
recommendations and commentary.
mAT: "Regardind the mistake…what can you expect from americans?"Um, Lonely Planet is an Australian company.
"O RLY?" LOL =D
Oooopsss!
I emailed them anyway, protesting.
Cadogan guides unfortunately lump "Central and Eastern Europe" into a
single book, but the one I bought a few years ago on Madeira was very
good: like the Bradft guides, they seem to have quite a laissez-faire
editorial policy which means you really get the feeling of an
individual’s voice. For example, the book about Madeira contained
a reference to a restaurant which went something like
"Unfortunately, Sr. Teixeira fancies himself as something of a painter,
and you will have to eat surrounded by his hideous Pop Art creations
with which he has covered every inch of wall space."
Um, Lonely Planet is an Australian company.Though they’re now owned by Americans I think.
The pictures are definitely not from Ljubljana or Slovenia. Martina-the slovenian girl ;-))))
hello!
Don’t know if it was already mentioned (i think it wasn’t).
below SLOVAKIA it’s written “a little taste of Prague without…”
Prague in Slovakia?