![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Swift and swifter
May. 28th, 2006 01:41 amJust finished reading a book that got me pretty me riled up, as I tend to get peeved when the facts are neglected, especially facts that I know from personal experience, such as the geography of places I have visited. The author would have us believe that one can drive from Vienna to the Romanian border in about 2 hours!
How fast are they going, exactly?!
Look, lady, Vienna to Budapest is 265 km, Budapest to Debrecen (where the characters spend a good deal of time) is another 226 km and the border is still a little ways on after that. By train, it took me over three hours from Budapest to the Romanian border*, followed by some time at the border itself, being stamped in and out. And that was in 2004. This book was published ten years before that, so I find it hard to believe these people (including Viennese police officers hot on the trail of a descendant of Elizabeth Bathory who has just killed a nun and bathed in her blood) crossing borders at the drop of a hat and driving around willy-nilly. Other nonsensical things of note include of a castle on the border between Transylvania and Wallachia (south-central-eastern part of the country, south of the Carpathians) that is mysteriously within reasonable driving distance of Debrecen and then a mention of something near Moldavia (regarding murky borders, can't remember if it was about the same castle). I mean, come on! Romania may not be the biggest country in Europe, but it's by no means small, and it's full of geographical features such as MOUNTAINS which make the going slower.
And if I'm not mistaken, the author also seems to think that Hungary is a seething mass of Carpathians. And while they do extend into the north part of that country, surely the quickest route from Vienna to Romania isn't that way. Unless you inexplicably detour through Slovakia. The only possible explanation I can find for this is that the author believes Hungary to be roughly a third of its actual size and was looking at a map of Romania backwards when she plotted out her novel. Either that, or she was speaking of a different Vienna in a different Austria, and also a completely different Debrecen and Wallachia.
That kind of stuff really bugs me, no matter how good or bad the writing is. If you want to write something, do the research! If you can't or don't want to go there yourself, look it up!
*My views may be skewed because I travelled solely by train, but I refuse to believe that it takes twice as long as driving and I like to think I'm pretty good at judging distances and at estimating the time it takes to cover them. Also, that's what maps are for, right?
How fast are they going, exactly?!
Look, lady, Vienna to Budapest is 265 km, Budapest to Debrecen (where the characters spend a good deal of time) is another 226 km and the border is still a little ways on after that. By train, it took me over three hours from Budapest to the Romanian border*, followed by some time at the border itself, being stamped in and out. And that was in 2004. This book was published ten years before that, so I find it hard to believe these people (including Viennese police officers hot on the trail of a descendant of Elizabeth Bathory who has just killed a nun and bathed in her blood) crossing borders at the drop of a hat and driving around willy-nilly. Other nonsensical things of note include of a castle on the border between Transylvania and Wallachia (south-central-eastern part of the country, south of the Carpathians) that is mysteriously within reasonable driving distance of Debrecen and then a mention of something near Moldavia (regarding murky borders, can't remember if it was about the same castle). I mean, come on! Romania may not be the biggest country in Europe, but it's by no means small, and it's full of geographical features such as MOUNTAINS which make the going slower.
And if I'm not mistaken, the author also seems to think that Hungary is a seething mass of Carpathians. And while they do extend into the north part of that country, surely the quickest route from Vienna to Romania isn't that way. Unless you inexplicably detour through Slovakia. The only possible explanation I can find for this is that the author believes Hungary to be roughly a third of its actual size and was looking at a map of Romania backwards when she plotted out her novel. Either that, or she was speaking of a different Vienna in a different Austria, and also a completely different Debrecen and Wallachia.
That kind of stuff really bugs me, no matter how good or bad the writing is. If you want to write something, do the research! If you can't or don't want to go there yourself, look it up!
*My views may be skewed because I travelled solely by train, but I refuse to believe that it takes twice as long as driving and I like to think I'm pretty good at judging distances and at estimating the time it takes to cover them. Also, that's what maps are for, right?
