Travel guide takes brave new angle: Partying

Do you ever find yourself in old Paris, loaded up on coke, dangling a half-empty bottle of scotch out of your left hand while scantily dressed French women lick the salty sweat off of your brow? If so, you don’t need Party Europe to create memorable evenings.

If you’re like most of the human race, however, the latest college-student aimed travel guide is going to be a highly useful companion to any time you spend in Europe. The book, researched by two Duke graduates, Jesse Jachman and Michael Korvach, is full of information about fun and social places to go in 14 of Europe’s most populous and touristy destinations.

Party Europe is a book about exactly what it seems to be about: partying in Europe. Korvach calls it a “niche travel guide, meant to supplement Let’s Go or another big guide.” Party Europe isn’t going to please older travelers—it’s directed toward the college crowd.

Written in a different style than most travel books, each review of a bar or club includes comments from one of four fictional characters: Tucker, frat-boy extraordinaire; Adam, drug-addled hippie; Brittney, sorority girl and shopping aficionado or Emma, serious yet social fun-lover. The personas reflect the most bland and stereotypical of students, but Korvach claims that readers can associate with each the characters on different days.

Korvach and Jachman, who both graduated in 2004, spent 14 weeks traveling through Europe last year, taking notes on various locations. They had a list of clubs and bars to visit, but Jachman notes, “the best research we did came from [the locals] that we talked to in cities we visited.”

Both former students were quick to point out how lucky they were to have the opportunity to travel Europe on someone else’s dime—and both have fond memories of the trip. Now on opposite coasts, Korvach and Jachman harbor wishes of continuing their travels: “I would love to break off and see some other parts of the world, not Europe, but South America, Australia, eventually the Far East,” says Jachman.

The book is focused mainly on clubs and bars, places small to large, from pubs to large raves, and each review goes into pretty significant detail on what to expect in terms of atmosphere, prices and type of crowd.

Unfortunately, it’s pretty difficult to take the book with you out for a night on the town—it weighs a hefty two pounds and doesn’t fit in your shirt pocket very easily. It’s a far better idea to just write down a couple of clubs and their locations, then see which one you end up stumbling closest to.