The Rough Guide to Sweden

Easy to use, practical, detailed, extremely helpful, with an eye toward saving money while you travel. This guide is organized by different regions of the country in case you don't have time to see the entire country while there. Has all the things you'll need to do and know before you go.

I lived in Sweden for a year, and this book was hands-down the best guide to the place I found. In fact, when I traveled around the country I left the other guides behind and took this one with me. Not only is the Rough Guide small enough to cart around conveniently, it has consistently accurate information. I also admire the attention the guide gives to areas outside of the big cities. Sweden is a country of small towns, really, and the guide pays a lot of attention to their attractions. Rough guides have never been afraid to be candid, either. I walked into a coffeehouse in Lund one day, took a look around, and felt instantly at home. I looked in the Rough Guide, and read that this was the place to be if you were a pretentious intellectual and wanted to be among similar effette poseurs. Yep, that was me, and that was the place. I had a great time. Tak sa miket, Rough Guide.

I have always wanted to go to Sweden. I started learning Swedish when I was 14, and I started a pen-pal friendship with a Sweden at the same time. When I was 21 I finally made a trip to Sweden (March 2002) for 2 weeks and I used the May 2002 edition of this book.I spent my time in three cities: Stockholm, Umeå, and Skellefteå. Most guidebooks that I looked at covered the south of Sweden quite well at the expense of the North. This guidebook used 25% of its space to write about the two largest cities and 60% to write about the rest of Sweden. (The remaining 15% of the book deals with formalities of getting to/into Sweden, language, food, etc.)The section on Stockholm was fantastic, and since the chapter was organized based on each island or section of the city, it was very easy to read. You could plot out which part of the city you wanted to visit each day with ease. The book specifies open/close times very well (although you always double check). As someone traveling in the winter, I appreciated that fact! Some guidebooks don't list the months that something is open!Whereas some guidebooks have 2 paragraphs on Umeå and Skellefteå, this one had 6 and 3, respectively. The cities are described well and the information is as much as you'll probably need.Another nice feature is that the guide features fairly detailed information about getting to/from each city, even the small ones.The third section of the book, about history, food, money, language, etc was well laid out, and the history section was as complete as most general tourists would want it.The book caters to a variety of tourists as it lists a wide (very wide) variety of accomodations, restaurants, activities, and methods of travel. Other guidebooks aimed at "poor college students" seem to cover mostly pubs and nightclubs at the expense of museums. Guidebooks aimed at the "one trip to Europe in a lifetime let's use all of our stock earnings" books seem to cover hotels at the expense of hostels. This book covers both. Overall, a very good buy.

Sweden is a wonderful travel destination. It is beautiful country that manages to be both very tranquil and very dynamic. However, like most Americans, I was totally ignorant about Sweden. In fact, I don't think I would ever have gone there if I hadn't found this book in the public library. It got me interested enough to spend a few weeks in Sweden, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I will definitely go back! The book was very detailed and accurate, and went well beyond the average travel guide in the level of interesting detail about almost everything you could possibly encounter in Sweden. Although the book was published in 1997 and I went in 1999, most of the hotel and restaurant information was still accurate. The book also provides a good introduction to the history and culture of Sweden.

I throughly enjoyed reading this book, about a country which so little is understood, I baffled as to why nobody has discovered this fancisating guide to a wonderfully exciting, beautiful country. It's a must that you visit the beautiful,wonderous, exciting, young and vibrant and little known cities in northern europe Stockholm. Stockholm has been described as the "The Venice of the North". But Stockholm is far more beautiful, spacious, less crowded but best of all it has 24,000 islands in it's archipalego to discover. Don,t take my word for it GO!