The Rough Guide to Europe 2000, 6th Edition (Europe (Rough Guides), 6th Edition)

Introduction

The collapse of the division between eastern and western Europe at the end of the 1980s, and the ever closer ties among the fifteen countries of the European Union - increasingly a political and cultural as well as economic union - made Europe a buzzword of the early Nineties, implying shared values and, despite all the wrangling, a broad consensus of political beliefs. Some of this is inevitably a superficial analysis, but although true European unity still remains a distant dream, recent developments such as the single European currency and the opening of the Channel Tunnel have done much to bring it closer.

Conventionally, the geographical boundaries of Europe are the Ural Mountains in the east, the Atlantic Coast in the north and west, and the Mediterranean in the south. However, within these rough parameters Europe is massively diverse. The environment changes radically within very short distances, with bleak mountain ranges never far from broad, fertile plains, and deep, ancient forests close to scattered lake systems or river gorges. Politically and ethnically, too, it is an extraordinary patchwork: Slavic peoples are scattered through central Europe from Poland in the north to Serbia and Bulgaria in the south; the Finnish and Estonian languages bear no resemblance to the tongues of their Baltic and Scandinavian neighbours, but more to that of Hungary, over 1000km south; meanwhile Romansch, akin to ancient Latin, is spoken in the valleys of south- eastern Switzerland, while the Basques of the Western Pyrenees have a language, and even some blood groups, unrelated to any others known. These differences have become more political of late with the rise of nationalism that coincided with the fall of Communism, and borders are even now being redrawn, not always peacefully, and usually along ethnic lines defined by language, race or religion.

Where you head for obviously depends on your tastes and the kind of vacation you want: you can sample mountain air and winter sports in the Alps of France, Austria or Switzerland, lie on a beach in the swanky resorts of the south of France or Italy, or view architecture and works of art in the great cities of London, Paris, Florence or Amsterdam. Suffice to say, the lifting of restrictions on travel in eastern Europe, with only a handful of countries still requiring visas and nothing like the bureaucratic regulations there were before, means that the Continent really is there for the travelling - something manifest in the increasingly good-value rail passes (see pp.000-000 & 000-000) which cover most of the countries in this book. Although you may want to make a long hop or two by air, rail is indeed the way to see the Continent, highlighting the diversity of the place when you travel in a few hours from the cool temperatures of northern Europe to the rich and sultry climes of the Mediterranean. In fact, with the richness and diversity of its culture, climate, landscapes and peoples, there is no more exciting place to travel.

This book is a little eccentric in its definition of Europe. We have excluded countries such as Albania, Belarus, Moldova and the Ukraine, which are too far off the beaten track to be on most people's European "grand tour", while of the war-torn and strife-riven republics that have been carved out of the former Yugoslavia, only Slovenia and Croatia have been included as easily accessible and currently safe to visit.

On the other hand, we cover the British Isles and countries like Morocco and Turkey that are not strictly part of Europe, in the main because they are easy to reach on a European tour and are included by the InterRail pass. We also have chapters on Russia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, though these countries are not covered by the InterRail pass.  more