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Amy Eckert’s love affair with travel began on a train in Europe and it hasn’t stopped yet. As a college student Amy lived and worked in Southern Germany; as a travel writer she has returned many times since, traveling by train through a dozen countries including Germany, France, the Benelux nations, Italy, and Scandinavia.

After living several years in Germany as a freelance travel writer and in Tokyo as editor of Far East Traveler, Beth Reiber has written several Frommer’s guides, including Frommer’s Japan, Frommer’s Tokyo, and Frommer’s Hong Kong. She also contributes to Frommer’s USA and is a blogger for japantravelinfo.com. She resides in Kansas with her two sons, a dog, and a cat.

George McDonald has lived and worked in both Amsterdam and Brussels as deputy editor of the KLM in-flight magazine and as editor-in-chief of the Sabena in-flight magazine. Now a freelance journalist and travel writer based in Germany, he is the author of Frommer’s Amsterdam and Frommer’s Belgium, Holland & Luxembourg.

Hana Mastrini is a native of the western Czech spa town of Karlovy Vary who became a veteran of the “Velvet Revolution” as a student in Prague in 1989. She began contributing to Frommer’s guides while helping her husband, John, better understand his new home in the Czech Republic.

Olivia Edward is a British writer and photographer who specializes in travel and culture, and has contributed to guidebooks for MTV, Time Out, and DK. She loves sea air and raw fish, and was particularly happy researching the Scandinavian chapters for this guide. You can see more of her work at www.oliviaedward.com.

A freelance writer and editor, Jocelyn Auerbach grew up in both the U.S. and the U.K., and currently resides in France. Her childhood travels have created a strong desire to explore the world’s vast number of cultures—and to capture them all in the written word. So far, she’s managed to get to four continents . . . and counting.

Tania Kollias Eurailed her way through a gap-semester “On $10 a Day,” which sparked a few more years of travel across four continents. Based in Athens, Greece, she is an accredited journalist and has worked as a copy editor, writer/reporter and editor for more than a decade.

Ryan James earned a doctorate in International and Multicultural Education from the University of San Francisco. He has been living in Budapest, Hungary since 2001, and has been a full time instructor in the American Studies Department at Eötvös Loránd University since 2002. He has traveled to forty-five countries, so far.

Darwin Porter, a native of North Carolina, was assigned to write the very first edition of a Frommer’s guide devoted solely to one European country. Since then, he has written many bestselling Frommer’s guides to all the major European destinations. In 1982, he was joined in his research efforts by Danforth Prince, formerly of the Paris bureau of the New York Times, who has traveled and written extensively about Europe.

Native New Yorker Naomi Kraus is a senior editor at Frommer’s, a former travel agent, and a graduate of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. She’s logged lots of miles on European trains over the years and rides the rails whenever she can.