Out in the Mountains

Are You Two ...Together?

A Gay And Lesbian Travel Guide to Europe

by Lindsay Van Gelder and Robin Brandt

Terje Anderson

Information for gay and lesbian inter-
national travelers has always been hard
to come by. The existing gay guide-
books (Spartacus, Gais’s Guide, etc)
tend to offer little more than an out of
date list of names and addresses of bars
and cruising areas, accompanied by in-
decipherable codes and symbols as clues
to the nature of the place. (Using these
codes, I once ended up in an elegant and
pricey restaurant in Amsterdam clad in
bareriented tattered denim - oops, so
much for the guidebook). And to most
straight guidebooks, we’re invisible, or
worse, gay places are an annoyance to
be avoided by the respectable traveler.

Into this vacuum enters Are You
Two...Together?, a comprehensive, read-
able and altogether enjoyable guide for
lesbian and gay visitors to fourteen Eu-
ropean destinations.

Far more than just a guide to gay night-
life, this is travel writing at its very best.
For each city, Van Gelder and Brandt in-
clude a section of general information;
highlights of the area’s gay and lesbian
history, culture and politics; notes on lo-
cal language and customs; sites of par-
ticular queer interest; and, the most fun,
lots of anecdotal accounts of their trav-
els, meetings with other gay men and les-
bians, and encounters with the local
straight population.

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20

They write with a real queer sensibility;
brutally honest and at times ironic and
uproariously funny (their section on vis-
iting Berlin before The Wall came down
left me laughing out loud every par-
agraph.) After reading their book, I don’t
just want to go back to Europe, I want to
travel with these women - they simply
must be loads of fun. Their sense of cu-
riosity, excitement, and very un-
American openness to the ways of other
cultures would undoubtedly make them
the perfect travelling companions.

The descriptive sections are augmented
by thorough listings for each city — gay
nightlife, gay—oriented or gay—friendly
restaurants and hotels, and local lesbian
and gay community resources. The list-
ings are annotated, with full descriptions
of everything (including delicious ac-
counts of the food which could make you
gain weight just from reading them).
And, at least for the cities I’ve visited in
the last few years, I can attest to the ab-
solute accuracy of their listings.

While much of the book is geared to les-
bian and gay couples (the ins and outs of
getting a double bed for a same sex
couple are described in detail), the book
is just as valuable for the single queer
traveling alone. In fact, their descriptions
of gay men’s bars are undoubtedly the
most insightful and useful (as well as the
funniest) I’ve ever read.

If you’re planning a trip to Europe, don’t
even think of going without this book
(although if you’re going on a tight bud-
get, you'll want to augment it with some-
thing else geared to the hostel—style trav-
eler, like the very gay-friendly Let's Go
guidebooks.

And even if you’re not going anywhere
in the near future, this book is perfect for
curling up next to the fire on a cold Ver-
mont winter evening and dreaming of be-
ing somewhere else. It’s not quite as
good as being there, but it’s close.

My only complaint with this book is a
simple one: why wasn’t it published
years ago, before my last trip? Oh well,
at least the next time I won’t blunder into
a candlelight romantic gay restaurant
wearing torn blue jeans more suited to a
backroom.

Are You Two... Together? is available in
paperback from Random House. V