Safe Travels, Arthur Frommer
I am very thankful for those Frommer’s recommendations during what proved to be a formative period of my own life.
Arthur Frommer, the founder of the Frommer’s travel guides, website, and other media that highlighted affordable travel long before it became IG trendy, has died.
In the long, long before time prior to smart phones keeping the entire length and breadth of human knowledge in the palm of travelers’ hands, information on faraway lands was harder and slower to come by.
Right before the invention of the iPhone and the revolution of social media changed travel planning forever, I was trying to find my way around Europe in the early years of the 00s. Stationed in Frankfurt, Germany meant not only being overseas but being homebased at one of the great transportation hubs in all of Europe, putting most of the Old World within a day’s travel. What was hard to know was where to go, how to get there, and then — usually on a tight budget — what to do, eat, and where to sleep once you got there.
Fortunately, half a century before, another serviceman had a plan to address those issues. By the time I got to Europe, Frommer’s was a pioneering website, but while serving in the US Army Arthur Frommer started writing guides for GIs who wanted to see…
