New Guide to Hostels Shows an Eastern Europe Ready for Prime-Time--at Half the Price

Feb. 19, 2013 - PRLog -- Los Angeles, CA, Jan. 7, 2013—“Backpackers and Flashpackers in Eastern Europe: 500 Hostels in 100 Cities in 25 Countries,” (ISBN 978-0988490529, Hypertravel Books) by Hardie Karges, is available now at www.amazon.com and elsewhere online.  The first book to document and catalog hostels in Eastern Europe, “Backpackers and Flashpackers” is more than just a guide to hostels for backpackers.   For one thing, it’s aimed at any and all independent travelers, not just backpackers, since many backpackers have now upgraded to “flashpackers,” a more modern and tech-savvy version of the original concept.  For another, it also combines the directory with “how-to” information and geographical/historical abstracts of all the places where hostels are found, which is a LOT… and this is just the beginning.  

Eastern Europe is the most exciting destination to open up for independent travel in years.  “The food is tasty, the people are friendly, and the variety is breathtaking, with exotic locales and services similar to the West, all at half the price,” Karges says.  “Poland and the Czech Republic may seem like extensions of their Western neighbors, but they are extensions that were frozen in time for fifty years before the Iron Curtain finally fell some twenty years ago.  Communism did nothing if not stop the clock; and what you find now are perfect specimens of old Europe, the one with the stunning architecture and the exotic city centers.”  Yes, now you can travel by bus, train and plane all over Eastern Europe with scarcely so much as an entry stamp to clutter up your passport, and with even fewer visas; there will be hostels to stay in once you get there.  The second book of the series is named and patterned after the first: “Backpackers and Flashpackers in Western Europe: 500 Hostels in 100 Cities in 25 Countries,” already available online and garnering good sales.

Author Karges has traveled to one hundred fifty countries over the course of forty years, much of it described in intimate detail and vivid prose in his narrative travel book, “Hypertravel: 100 Countries in 2 Years,” which was published in 2012 and got good reviews among the online travel community.  He knows his stuff, and he writes it up concisely.  “A happy accident of this book is that it suggests a new paradigm for travel guides, one that I would use—just the facts, and just the best places,” says Karges.  After all, these books are at their best when used in advance, to facilitate a hostel-based trip.  If there aren’t any hostels there, then a place just may not be worth visiting.  

Hypertravel Books is a newly formed imprint in Los Angeles, CA, with the mission to promote smart travel.  Advise if you would like to see a PDF copy of the book for review purposes.

Karges can be contacted at hyper.travel@aol.com and 1-323-366-2017 Pacific Time when he’s in the US, jack1free@gmail.com and +44-7937-638968 when not.