The Vegetarian Traveler: A Guide to Eating Green in Over 200 Countries

by Bryan Geon

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1894020855
• ISBN13: 9781894020855
• Release Date: September 2000
• Publisher: Warwick Publishing
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Very Good for General Background and Guidance

The ideal vegetarian travel book has yet to be written. Vegetarian travel books seem to fall into one of two camps: The destination-oriented guide (e.g., these are places you can eat, sleep, etc. if you are vegetarian or vegan), and the broad guidebook/phrasebook (e.g., a phrasebook giving veggie phrases in various languages a set of flashcards for vegetarians and vegans covering major languages; a Vegan phrasebook that may only be available in the UK; etc.). Each of these types has its limitations. This book is one of the latter.I actually found this book very useful and informative and(surprisingly) funny. The author purports to include virtually every country in the world, and while I can think of a few that aren't in there (e.g., the Falkland Islands--probably not very vegetarian-friendly in any case), he comes pretty close to that ideal. And he includes phrases in something over 100 languages. Some people might view this as overkill, but it is one of the strengths of the book.Basically, the author discusses the veggie situation in each country in a general way; there are NO extensive lists of common vegetarian dishes or of vegetarian-friendly restaurants/hotels (look to the destination-oriented-type guide for these), then gives a list of mix-'n'-match phrases in that country's language("I would like something without X, I eat Y," for example) with the pronunciation spelled out.This book may not be necessary for, say, Western Europe--although it couldn't hurt to take it along or rip out the relevant pages--because many new phrasebooks for European travel have at least one or two token vegetarian phrases (e.g., "I do not eat meat."). Some are better than others. But for other areas of the world, especially Africa and Asia, this would be really handy to have. He includes languages for which I've never seen phrasebooks--has anyone even heard of "Bambara-Dioula"?--and that is the really valuable thing about this book. I am not aware of any other vegetarian guide with this scope.And that is a weakness of the book, too: Because the author has included so many countries and languages, he doesn't devote huge amounts of coverage to any of them, although the descriptions can be fairly comprehensive. But it's hard to see how he could do otherwise without turning the book into a massive tome. Perhaps separate volumes for each continent? Other changes I'd like to see are the inclusion of other forms of writing for non-Roman script languages (so one could point and order rather than going through the phonentic pronunciation), and also the inclusion of more terms. (The book pretty consistently lists the words for meat, chicken, fish, eggs, and cheese, but not "meat stock," "dairy products," etc.) I'd also like to see this and other vegetarian/vegan phrasebooks list the phrase for "I am allergic to ____", which is a good way to get out of otherwise awkward social situations.I give this five stars not so much because it's perfect (it's not), but b