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The Hitch-hiker's Guide to Europe (ISBN 0-8128-1446-0) was a guide book, copyright 1971 by Ken Welsh and first published that year in the UK by Pan Books. A first American edition was published in 1972 by Stein and Day, New York, NY, USA.
Contents
Countries/regions
Factual information on specific countries/regions was broken down into (using the book's original chapter headings):
- England
- Wales
- Scotland
- Northern Ireland
- Ireland
- France
- Belgium
- the Netherlands
- West Germany
- Luxembourg and the Small Countries
- Switzerland
- Austria
- Italy
- Spain
- Portugal
- Greece
- Denmark
- Sweden
- Norway
- Finland
- The Communist Countries
- In the 1972 edition, the entire contents of the subsection on Albania were the words "Forget it."
- Morocco and Northern Africa
- Turkey and the Middle East
Further sections
Further information was broken down into sections on:
- How to hitch
- When not to hitch
- How to make money go further
- How to get in and out of a strange town and what to do when you're there
- Photography hints
- International Student Identity Cards
- Embassy and Student Association addresses
- Youth Hostels
- Black markets
- Selling and pawning items
Editions
The book is long out of print, though it may be found in used-book shops. Updated editions were printed in 1974, 1975, 1986 (with the full title Hitchhiker's Guide to Europe: The 1986 Guidebook for People on a Hitchhiking Budget), and an edition in 1988 had the subtitle "How to See Europe by the Skin of Your Teeth." The book was co-edited by Katie Wood from 1993 and the final edition appeared in 1996.
The book promised that any other ways of saving money would be accepted as a submission by the publishers and printed with a credit in subsequent editions.
U.S. edition
In the US edition's introduction it states that it is possible to survive a trip in Europe on less than twenty-five US dollars per week. The US edition also included such information as US dollar to other currency exchange rates (current as of January 1972), weight and measurement conversion charts, and brief lists of phrases and numbers for French, German, Spanish and Italian.
Legacy
The title of the book inspired the title of Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.