Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Black Swan (1998), Edition: Worn Condition, 320 pages
Description
In the early seventies, Bill Bryson backpacked across Europe-in search of enlightenment, beer, and women. He was accompanied by an unforgettable sidekick named Stephen Katz (who will be gloriously familiar to readers of Bryson's A Walk in the Woods). Twenty years later, he decided to retrace his journey. The result is the affectionate and riotously funny Neither Here Nor There.
User reviews
LibraryThing member rommy
I had high expectations of Bill Bryson. I was expecting a witty and intelligent commentary loaded with depth, philosophy, and style. I was disappointed.
Although brief moments stood out in this book, I don't find him to be an intriguing person. He's a homebody from Iowa that seems to only enjoy
Most frustratingly, his broad generalizations of places and people in Europe based on a couple bad experiences lack any objectivity that an otherwise intelligent person might have. Everything sucked or everything was awesome.
His flashbacks to his time traveling with Katz were the fun parts, because they seemed the most real to me. But his traveling as a mature adult seemed to cater to a lowest common denominator of broad pop culture intelligence, reinforcing xenophobic stereotypes that the average American has of Europeans, most of which were dead wrong, but probably sell a lot of books.
Although brief moments stood out in this book, I don't find him to be an intriguing person. He's a homebody from Iowa that seems to only enjoy
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himself when he is comfortable, when things are simple, and when there's CNN in every hotel room he goes to. Most frustratingly, his broad generalizations of places and people in Europe based on a couple bad experiences lack any objectivity that an otherwise intelligent person might have. Everything sucked or everything was awesome.
His flashbacks to his time traveling with Katz were the fun parts, because they seemed the most real to me. But his traveling as a mature adult seemed to cater to a lowest common denominator of broad pop culture intelligence, reinforcing xenophobic stereotypes that the average American has of Europeans, most of which were dead wrong, but probably sell a lot of books.
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LibraryThing member JBD1
I think I'm about done with Bryson's travel books. Every time I get the urge to try one, I end up feeling the same way about it: there are a few funny moments, but they're so well hidden amongst the constant complaining as to make them hardly worth seeking out. You've got the time, resources, &c.
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to travel all around Europe and yet you spend far more time kvetching about the food, the hotels, the lines, the minor travel kerfuffles than on anything else? C'mon. Enough's enough - no more of these for me. Show Less
LibraryThing member fyrefly98
Summary: Bill Bryson travelled around Europe as a young man. In the early 1990s, he decided to retrace his steps. He starts out in Norway, hoping to see the Northern Lights. He then makes his way through the rest of Scandinavia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland,
Review: Not his best. From reading his other travel writing (Notes from a Small Island and In a Sunburned Country, and to some extent A Walk in the Woods), it's pretty clear that Bryson is, at best, a grumpy traveler. I've occasionally wondered why, if seemingly everything about travel irks him so badly, he continues to do it. I suspect that he's not really as grumpy as he puts on, but instead is dealing with the same minor inconveniences as any traveller, just amping up the curmudgeonliness for comic effect.
But the thing was, in this case, the grumpiness outweighed the humor, although there were some parts that were relatively amusing. But Bryson didn't seem to enjoy much of anything about Europe except Italy, and also ogling the asses of every young European woman he saw. (Seriously, he comments on women's bodies a lot, enough that I not only noticed but was also grossed out by it.) The biggest problem was that not only did Bryson not make me want to visit these places, it's that he didn't give me a particularly good feel for most of them, either. He doesn't really talk to the locals (other than station agents and hotel clerks and the like), and he doesn't include much of the type of history or tangents that mark some of his other travel books. So for all that he tries to point out how much cultural diversity Europe contains, all of his destinations tended to blur together, and it makes it hard to remember if this rude waiter or that crowded museum or the really terrible traffic was in Copenhagen or Vienna or where. And given how dated this book is at this point, it's hard to say how much of the impression that he does give is still accurate at this point. (So maybe this book did make me want to go to Europe after all, if for nothing else but to compare!) 3 out of 5 stars.
Recommendation: It's not terrible, but it's out of date, and it's not Bryson at his best at any rate. I think it might actually be better for those with some experience traveling in Europe already, who can impose their own experiences over Bryson's grumbling.
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Liechtenstein, Austria, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Turkey, reminiscing about his previous trip, and reporting along the way about the hassles of transportation, the odd accommodations, the highlights and lowlights of the various cultural attractions, and the attitudes of the locals he encounters.Review: Not his best. From reading his other travel writing (Notes from a Small Island and In a Sunburned Country, and to some extent A Walk in the Woods), it's pretty clear that Bryson is, at best, a grumpy traveler. I've occasionally wondered why, if seemingly everything about travel irks him so badly, he continues to do it. I suspect that he's not really as grumpy as he puts on, but instead is dealing with the same minor inconveniences as any traveller, just amping up the curmudgeonliness for comic effect.
But the thing was, in this case, the grumpiness outweighed the humor, although there were some parts that were relatively amusing. But Bryson didn't seem to enjoy much of anything about Europe except Italy, and also ogling the asses of every young European woman he saw. (Seriously, he comments on women's bodies a lot, enough that I not only noticed but was also grossed out by it.) The biggest problem was that not only did Bryson not make me want to visit these places, it's that he didn't give me a particularly good feel for most of them, either. He doesn't really talk to the locals (other than station agents and hotel clerks and the like), and he doesn't include much of the type of history or tangents that mark some of his other travel books. So for all that he tries to point out how much cultural diversity Europe contains, all of his destinations tended to blur together, and it makes it hard to remember if this rude waiter or that crowded museum or the really terrible traffic was in Copenhagen or Vienna or where. And given how dated this book is at this point, it's hard to say how much of the impression that he does give is still accurate at this point. (So maybe this book did make me want to go to Europe after all, if for nothing else but to compare!) 3 out of 5 stars.
Recommendation: It's not terrible, but it's out of date, and it's not Bryson at his best at any rate. I think it might actually be better for those with some experience traveling in Europe already, who can impose their own experiences over Bryson's grumbling.
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LibraryThing member ecw0647
Bryson writes hysterical travel books. In this one he sets out to re-create a backpacking trip of Europe he made during the seventies when he was twenty. His descriptions of people and places will have you falling out of your chair. The beer he is offered in Belgium, for example, defies his palate.
Bryson has truly captured some of the giddy enjoyment that I experience when traveling in a foreign country where one does not speak the language. “I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can’t read anything. You have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work. . . . Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting
guesses.”
At the Arc de Triomphe, some thirteen streets come together. “Can you imagine? I mean to say, here you have a city with the world’s most pathologically aggressive drivers -- who in other circumstances would be given injections of valium from syringes the size of basketball jumps and confined to their beds with leather straps -- and you give them an open space where they can all go in any of thirteen directions at once. Is that asking for trouble or what?”
Interspersed are salient comments about traveling on European trains. “There is no scope for privacy and of course there is nothing like being trapped in a train compartment on a long journey to bring all those unassuageable little frailties of the human body crowding to the front of your mind – the withheld fart, the three and a half square yards of boxer shorts that have somehow become concertinaed between your buttocks, the Kellogg’s corn flake that is unaccountably lodged deep in your left nostril,”. . .and rude comments about the Swiss: “What do you call a gathering of boring people in Switzerland? Zurich.”
He reveals some funny stories about himself. “I had no gift for woodworking. Everyone else in the class was building things like cedar chests and oceangoing boats and getting to play with dangerous and noisy power tools, but I had to sit at the Basics Table with Tubby Tucker and a kid who was so stupid that I don't think we ever learned his name. We just called him 'Drooler.' The three of us weren't allowed anything more dangerous than sandpaper and Elmer's Glue, so we would sit week after week making little nothings out of offcuts, except for Drooler, who would just eat the glue. Mr. Dreck never missed a chance to humiliate me. 'And what is this?' he would say, seizing some mangled block of wood on which I had been laboring for the last twenty-seven weeks and holding it aloft for the class to titter at. 'I've been
teaching shop for sixteen years, Mr. Bryson, and I have to say this is the worst beveled edge I've ever seen.' He held up a birdhouse of mine once and it just collapsed in his hands. The class roared. Tubby Tucker laughed so hard that he almost choked. He laughed for twenty minutes, even when I whispered to him across the table that if he didn't stop it I would bevel his testicles."
It used to be -- not as common now as formerly -- that each public washroom had an attendant whose job it was to keep everything clean, and you were expected to drop in some change for his or her income. The sex of the attendant was irrelevant to the sex of the washroom and Bryson had difficulty getting used to the idea of some cleaning lady watching him urinate to make sure he didn't "dribble on the tiles or pocket any of the urinal cakes. It is hard enough to pee when you are aware that someone's eyes are on you, but when you fear that at any moment you will be felled by a rabbit chop to the kidneys for taking too much time, you seize up altogether. You couldn't have cleared my system with Drano. So eventually I would zip up and return unrelieved to the table [in the restaurant:], and spend the night back at the hotel doing a series of Niagara Falls impressions."
Bryson does not mince words, and his perspective on former Austrian president Waldheim echoes mine but is perhaps more trenchant. “I fully accept Dr. Waldheim’s explanation that when he saw forty thousand Jews being loaded onto cattle trucks at Salonika, he genuinely believed they were being sent to the seaside for a holiday. For the sake of fairness, I should point out that Waldheim insists he never even knew that the Jews of Salonika were being shipped off to Auschwitz. And let’s be fair again – they accounted for no more than one third of the city’s entire population (italics theirs), and it is of course entirely plausible that a high-ranking Nazi officer in the district could have been unaware of what was happening within his area of command. Let’s give the man a break. I mean to say, when the Sturmabteilung, or stormtroopers, burned down forty-two of Vienna’s forty three synagogues during Kristallnacht, Waldheim did wait a whole week before joining the
unit. . . . Christ, the man was practically a resistance hero. . . .Austrians should be proud of him and proud of themselves for having the courage to stand up to world opinion and elect a man of his caliber, overlooking the fact that he is a pathological liar. . .that he has a past so mired in mis-truths that no one but he knows what he has done. It takes a special kind of people to stand behind a man like that.”
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He just can’t associate the taste with any previous experience, but finally decides it puts him in mind of a very large urine sample, possibly from a circus animal. (He should have stuck with Coca-Cola, nicht wahr, Wendell?) Bryson has truly captured some of the giddy enjoyment that I experience when traveling in a foreign country where one does not speak the language. “I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can’t read anything. You have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work. . . . Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting
guesses.”
At the Arc de Triomphe, some thirteen streets come together. “Can you imagine? I mean to say, here you have a city with the world’s most pathologically aggressive drivers -- who in other circumstances would be given injections of valium from syringes the size of basketball jumps and confined to their beds with leather straps -- and you give them an open space where they can all go in any of thirteen directions at once. Is that asking for trouble or what?”
Interspersed are salient comments about traveling on European trains. “There is no scope for privacy and of course there is nothing like being trapped in a train compartment on a long journey to bring all those unassuageable little frailties of the human body crowding to the front of your mind – the withheld fart, the three and a half square yards of boxer shorts that have somehow become concertinaed between your buttocks, the Kellogg’s corn flake that is unaccountably lodged deep in your left nostril,”. . .and rude comments about the Swiss: “What do you call a gathering of boring people in Switzerland? Zurich.”
He reveals some funny stories about himself. “I had no gift for woodworking. Everyone else in the class was building things like cedar chests and oceangoing boats and getting to play with dangerous and noisy power tools, but I had to sit at the Basics Table with Tubby Tucker and a kid who was so stupid that I don't think we ever learned his name. We just called him 'Drooler.' The three of us weren't allowed anything more dangerous than sandpaper and Elmer's Glue, so we would sit week after week making little nothings out of offcuts, except for Drooler, who would just eat the glue. Mr. Dreck never missed a chance to humiliate me. 'And what is this?' he would say, seizing some mangled block of wood on which I had been laboring for the last twenty-seven weeks and holding it aloft for the class to titter at. 'I've been
teaching shop for sixteen years, Mr. Bryson, and I have to say this is the worst beveled edge I've ever seen.' He held up a birdhouse of mine once and it just collapsed in his hands. The class roared. Tubby Tucker laughed so hard that he almost choked. He laughed for twenty minutes, even when I whispered to him across the table that if he didn't stop it I would bevel his testicles."
It used to be -- not as common now as formerly -- that each public washroom had an attendant whose job it was to keep everything clean, and you were expected to drop in some change for his or her income. The sex of the attendant was irrelevant to the sex of the washroom and Bryson had difficulty getting used to the idea of some cleaning lady watching him urinate to make sure he didn't "dribble on the tiles or pocket any of the urinal cakes. It is hard enough to pee when you are aware that someone's eyes are on you, but when you fear that at any moment you will be felled by a rabbit chop to the kidneys for taking too much time, you seize up altogether. You couldn't have cleared my system with Drano. So eventually I would zip up and return unrelieved to the table [in the restaurant:], and spend the night back at the hotel doing a series of Niagara Falls impressions."
Bryson does not mince words, and his perspective on former Austrian president Waldheim echoes mine but is perhaps more trenchant. “I fully accept Dr. Waldheim’s explanation that when he saw forty thousand Jews being loaded onto cattle trucks at Salonika, he genuinely believed they were being sent to the seaside for a holiday. For the sake of fairness, I should point out that Waldheim insists he never even knew that the Jews of Salonika were being shipped off to Auschwitz. And let’s be fair again – they accounted for no more than one third of the city’s entire population (italics theirs), and it is of course entirely plausible that a high-ranking Nazi officer in the district could have been unaware of what was happening within his area of command. Let’s give the man a break. I mean to say, when the Sturmabteilung, or stormtroopers, burned down forty-two of Vienna’s forty three synagogues during Kristallnacht, Waldheim did wait a whole week before joining the
unit. . . . Christ, the man was practically a resistance hero. . . .Austrians should be proud of him and proud of themselves for having the courage to stand up to world opinion and elect a man of his caliber, overlooking the fact that he is a pathological liar. . .that he has a past so mired in mis-truths that no one but he knows what he has done. It takes a special kind of people to stand behind a man like that.”
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LibraryThing member nemoman
As a collector of travel literature, I have been aware of Bryson for years. I have avoided buying his books, however, based on a presumption that they were rather shallow, albeit humorous. I broke down and finally bought this as my first. My presumptions wee correct.
Bryson had toured Europe as a
As a traveler, Bryson is basically a curmudgeon. In this respect he is like Paul Theroux. Theroux, however, writes with intelligence and insight. Bryson reaches for the obvious joke. Bryson writes well and is entertaining; however, reading him is like eating fast food.
Bryson had toured Europe as a
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young man in the early 70s with a friend. Years later he attempts to reprise that trip by himself. The book alternates in time between the two journeys. Bryson is funny, almost relentlessly so. He does manage some true wit, but you have to suffer a lot of potty humor in the meantime. He does not dwell much on the history, culture or cuisine of the places he visits. He revels in his linguistic ignorance. Much of the book is spent on humorous encounters with locals and observations based on obvious cultural stereotypes.As a traveler, Bryson is basically a curmudgeon. In this respect he is like Paul Theroux. Theroux, however, writes with intelligence and insight. Bryson reaches for the obvious joke. Bryson writes well and is entertaining; however, reading him is like eating fast food.
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LibraryThing member BeeQuiet
Another lovely, and hilarious book by Bill Bryson. I read this whilst travelling, which is what I would suggest for anyone. You can share the frustrations, the joys, and even find yourself writing your own travel blog in an increasingly Brysonesque voice.
LibraryThing member kittyjay
Bryson's Neither Here nor There takes you on an adventure from the coldly beautiful Hammerfest, Norway to the cafes of Paris, onward to Belgium and Germany, meanders through the crowded, chaotic streets of Italy, the stern cities of Switzerland, and even into the exotic markets of Istanbul.
With his
There is a line that struck me as especially poignant, not least because it is a recurring lament in Bryson's works: "We used to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls" (105). His vitriol against city planners who spend pittance on great works of art that cannot be replaced but bestow lavish amounts of money on commercial districts usually inclines me to sympathy, though I have to admit some discomfort when he did the same to the poverty-stricken area of Sofia. Though he makes a few perfunctory motions to the people who live there and who benefit from such capitalism, he openly bemoans that the beautiful city he once visited has disappeared. Well, yes, I'm sure it has, but that is a small price to pay for people being able to eat things not bought out of unmarked tin cans.
It is pleasing, however, to note where our perceptions are right - and wrong. Let's be honest: we have stereotypes of each country, to some extent, built from scraps of news, film, and stories. France, for instance, is filled with people who are unconscionably rude (Bryson does not deny this, and, indeed, even finds it charming in its own way). Switzerland is peaceful, clean, and scarily efficient in a way that befits a country known - to be frank - for its watches and tiny knives. Even Italy, with its dreamers and romantics live up to the ideal.
Happily, our perceptions may be accurate to some extent, but can never encompass the full spectrum of people - just as not every American chows down on hamburgers while watching reality tv shows, there is a wealth of diversity to be found in abundance throughout the world, and Bryson offers a small glimpse at this happy truth.
There is nothing better than personal experience, but in the meantime, the second best is to read Bryson's adventures.
With his
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usual dry wit and personal anecdotes regarding the locals, the local food, and the local highway robbery of hotel rates, Bryson spends his time regarding the landscape with either pleasure (Italy, one finds, is impossible to love) or mild disdain (in Austria's case, the mild is removed). There is a line that struck me as especially poignant, not least because it is a recurring lament in Bryson's works: "We used to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls" (105). His vitriol against city planners who spend pittance on great works of art that cannot be replaced but bestow lavish amounts of money on commercial districts usually inclines me to sympathy, though I have to admit some discomfort when he did the same to the poverty-stricken area of Sofia. Though he makes a few perfunctory motions to the people who live there and who benefit from such capitalism, he openly bemoans that the beautiful city he once visited has disappeared. Well, yes, I'm sure it has, but that is a small price to pay for people being able to eat things not bought out of unmarked tin cans.
It is pleasing, however, to note where our perceptions are right - and wrong. Let's be honest: we have stereotypes of each country, to some extent, built from scraps of news, film, and stories. France, for instance, is filled with people who are unconscionably rude (Bryson does not deny this, and, indeed, even finds it charming in its own way). Switzerland is peaceful, clean, and scarily efficient in a way that befits a country known - to be frank - for its watches and tiny knives. Even Italy, with its dreamers and romantics live up to the ideal.
Happily, our perceptions may be accurate to some extent, but can never encompass the full spectrum of people - just as not every American chows down on hamburgers while watching reality tv shows, there is a wealth of diversity to be found in abundance throughout the world, and Bryson offers a small glimpse at this happy truth.
There is nothing better than personal experience, but in the meantime, the second best is to read Bryson's adventures.
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LibraryThing member etxgardener
Bill Bryson is a funny guy and this book about his re-treacing of his first trip to Europe made me laugh out loud more than once. He shows his various stops on the continent warts and all - even poking fun at himself. This book is a joy for an arm-chair traveler.
LibraryThing member RussellBittner
Whether you’re thinking of traveling to Europe on $5 or $5,000 a day, this is the book you first have to read to prepare for your trip – and possibly re-think it. Whether you’re a casual tourist or – as I once was – a SERIOUS student, this is the book you first have to read. I wish I’d
This is the third work of Bill Bryson’s I’ve read (the other two being the monumental A Short History of Nearly Everything and the quite amusing A Walk in the Woods), and I suspect that Bryson is going to turn out to be my favorite (English-language) non-fiction writer. Yes, he’s that good. Why more textbooks for American high schoolers aren’t written by folks like Bill Bryson is a mystery to me, although I suspect that public school boards wouldn’t know what to do with the certain revolution in learning that might result – namely, that most kids would look at most parents and teachers and think Why can’t you think, talk and write a little more like Bill Bryson and little less like yourselves?
As if to underscore my point, Bryson has this to say on p. 64 about why he learned (or at least retained) virtually nothing from his junior high school French courses: “How often on a visit to France do you need to tell someone you want to clean a blackboard? How frequently do you wish to say: ‘It is winter. Soon it will be spring.’ In my experience, people know this already.”
Litotes – or understatement – is a literary device Bryson excels at, quite possibly thanks to his nearly two decades in the U. K. And although this book is primarily about traveling in Europe and rendering observations of – and judgments on – things Continental, Bryson is not too bewildered or bewitched by the mystique of the Olde World to deprive us of some of his more New Worldly nuggets, almost all of which are couched in what I’ll call, respectfully and affectionately, “Bryson-speak.”
As an example, we find on p. 66: “(t)o my mind, the only possible pet is a cow. Cows love you. They are harmless, they look nice, they don’t need a box to crap in, they keep the grass down, and they are so trusting and stupid that you can’t help but lose your heart to them. Where I live in Yorkshire, there’s a herd of cows down the lane. You can stand by the wall at any hour of the day or night, and after a minute the cows will all waddle over and stand with you, much too stupid to know what to do next, but happy just to be with you. They will stand there all day, as far as I can tell, possibly till the end of time. They will listen to your problems and never ask a thing in return. They will be your friends forever. And when you get tired of them, you can kill them and eat them. Perfect.”
‘Sounds a bit like my idea of an ideal girlfriend – except, perhaps, for that last bit.
But back to Europe and things quaintly European, Bryson observes on p. 68 that “I have been told more than once that one of the more trying things about learning to live with the Germans after the war was having to watch them return with their wives and girlfriends to show off the places they had helped to ruin.”
Ah, yes. The Olde World. Makes one downright grateful to have been born in the New – unless, of course, one was summarily called to task in Vietnam.
And I suppose Bryson’s two-decade residency in the U. K. also permits him to make this rather bold (not to say impertinent) observation on p. 145: “(t)he town [Sorrento, Italy] was full of middle-aged English tourists having an off-season holiday (i.e., one they could afford). Wisps of conversation floated to me across the tables and from couples passing on the sidewalk. It was always the same. The wife would be in noisemaking mode, that incessant, pointless, mildly fretful chatter that overtakes Englishwomen in midlife. ‘I was going to get tights today and I forgot. I asked you to remind me, Gerald. These ones have a ladder in them from here to Amalfi. I suppose I can get tights here. I haven’t a clue what size to ask for. I knew I should have packed an extra pair….’ Gerald was never listening to any of this, of course, because he was secretly ogling a braless beauty leaning languorously on a lamppost and trading quips with some hoods on Vespas, and appeared to be aware of his wife only as a mild, chronic irritant on the fringe of his existence. Everywhere I went in Sorrento I kept seeing these English couples, the wife looking critically at everything, as if she were working undercover for the Ministry of Sanitation, the husband dragging along behind her, worn and defeated.”
Bryson has no particular bone to pick with Brits, however, as we see from an equally trenchant observation about some of our own, delivered with equal parts pith and punch, just a few pages earlier. While touring (solo) the Vatican City in Rome, he spotted and hitched up with an American tour group, but was quickly spotted and discarded “because I wasn’t wearing a baseball cap and warm-up jacket and trousers in one of the livelier primary colors.”
The French have a lively (and accurate) little aphorism: “personne n’est prophète chez soi.” Perhaps it’s time someone in some language came up with a suitable way to describe your run-of-the-mill mass tourist – as in, “a tourist is never more lame and out of step than when he or she is on tour.” If this sounds both vaguely tautological and roundly condemnatory of the species ex situ, it’s meant to.
But before we leave Sorrento for parts unknown, Bryson treats us to a smidgen of what much of his Short History is all about – in short: here today, gone tomorrow. Some part of Calabria could blow (once again) at any time. And when it does, it’s hasta la vista, baby.
Let it never be said, by the way, that Bryson is above a product placement. On p. 185, after an exasperating experience inside a Union Bank of Switzerland office in Geneva to get some replacement travelers’ checks (for those that had been stolen by a gypsy posing as a child posing as a gypsy in Florence), we find: “(b)ut from now on it’s American Express travelers’ checks for me, boy, and if the company wishes to acknowledge this unsolicited endorsement with a set of luggage or a skiing holiday in the Rockies, then let the record show that I am ready to take it.”
Of course, Bill Bryson is a writer of unimpeachable ethics. And so, on p. 196, we have the following: “Perhaps the people at the hotel just didn’t like the look of me, or maybe they correctly suspected that I was a travel writer and would reveal to the world the secret that the food at the Vaduzerhof Hotel at number 3 Stadtlestrasse in Vaduz is Not Very Good. Who can say?”
The potential reader of Neither Here Nor There will, I trust, allow me the inclusion of a lengthy paragraph from p. 201 to this already lengthy review, but only because I find it so compelling. “One of my first vivid impressions of Europe was a Walt Disney movie I saw as a boy. I believe it was called The Trouble with Angels. It was a hopelessly sentimental fictionalized account of how a group of cherry-cheeked boys with impish instincts and voices like angels made their way into the Vienna Boys’ Choir. I enjoyed the film hugely, being hopelessly sentimental myself, but what made a lasting indent on me was the European-ness of the movie background – the cobbled streets, the toytown cars, the corner shops with a tinkling bell above the door, the modest, lived-in homeyness of each boy’s familial flat. It all seemed so engaging and agreeably old-fashioned compared with the sleek and modern world I knew, and it left me with the unshakable impression that Austria was somehow more European than the rest of Europe. And so it seemed here in Innsbruck. For the fist time in a long while, certainly for the first time on this trip, I felt a palpable sense of wonder to find myself here, on these streets, in this body, at this time. I was in Europe now. It was an oddly profound notion.”
“Austria was somehow more European than the rest of Europe” indeed! – as we discover on just the next page when Bryson and Katz (his erstwhile traveling companion here, but also in A Walk in the Woods), discover what’s being said about them by a couple of local yokels. In fact, it’s not until the squalor of Sophia (on p. 238) that Bryson “…realized with a sense of profound unease the Europe I had dreamed of as a child.”
One parting note by way of exit from this review… If Bill Bryson’s no-longer-so-youthful traveling experience is any reliable indicator, you now have a better idea of how the Western world was won, lost, and won again on the strength of many dreams, fantasies, erections, demolitions – and three essential lubricants: beer, wine and coffee. While the first two might well have given, uh, rise to the dreams, fantasies & Co., it’s clearly the last of these that keeps us in Wheaties. Lord help us if the bean farmers and pickers of the developing world ever decide to cut off our supply!
RRB
11/12/14
Brooklyn, NY
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possessed Bill Bryson’s sense of humor during the decade I spent in pre-post-graduate studies at several universities and language institutes in Western Europe and the (then-) Soviet Union, but I didn’t. Instead, I had to wait almost 30 years to learn what I obviously never missed by not going to Lichtenstein – and I can honestly say that I’ve never had a more enjoyably vicarious non-experience or un-urge to take (in) a Valduz.This is the third work of Bill Bryson’s I’ve read (the other two being the monumental A Short History of Nearly Everything and the quite amusing A Walk in the Woods), and I suspect that Bryson is going to turn out to be my favorite (English-language) non-fiction writer. Yes, he’s that good. Why more textbooks for American high schoolers aren’t written by folks like Bill Bryson is a mystery to me, although I suspect that public school boards wouldn’t know what to do with the certain revolution in learning that might result – namely, that most kids would look at most parents and teachers and think Why can’t you think, talk and write a little more like Bill Bryson and little less like yourselves?
As if to underscore my point, Bryson has this to say on p. 64 about why he learned (or at least retained) virtually nothing from his junior high school French courses: “How often on a visit to France do you need to tell someone you want to clean a blackboard? How frequently do you wish to say: ‘It is winter. Soon it will be spring.’ In my experience, people know this already.”
Litotes – or understatement – is a literary device Bryson excels at, quite possibly thanks to his nearly two decades in the U. K. And although this book is primarily about traveling in Europe and rendering observations of – and judgments on – things Continental, Bryson is not too bewildered or bewitched by the mystique of the Olde World to deprive us of some of his more New Worldly nuggets, almost all of which are couched in what I’ll call, respectfully and affectionately, “Bryson-speak.”
As an example, we find on p. 66: “(t)o my mind, the only possible pet is a cow. Cows love you. They are harmless, they look nice, they don’t need a box to crap in, they keep the grass down, and they are so trusting and stupid that you can’t help but lose your heart to them. Where I live in Yorkshire, there’s a herd of cows down the lane. You can stand by the wall at any hour of the day or night, and after a minute the cows will all waddle over and stand with you, much too stupid to know what to do next, but happy just to be with you. They will stand there all day, as far as I can tell, possibly till the end of time. They will listen to your problems and never ask a thing in return. They will be your friends forever. And when you get tired of them, you can kill them and eat them. Perfect.”
‘Sounds a bit like my idea of an ideal girlfriend – except, perhaps, for that last bit.
But back to Europe and things quaintly European, Bryson observes on p. 68 that “I have been told more than once that one of the more trying things about learning to live with the Germans after the war was having to watch them return with their wives and girlfriends to show off the places they had helped to ruin.”
Ah, yes. The Olde World. Makes one downright grateful to have been born in the New – unless, of course, one was summarily called to task in Vietnam.
And I suppose Bryson’s two-decade residency in the U. K. also permits him to make this rather bold (not to say impertinent) observation on p. 145: “(t)he town [Sorrento, Italy] was full of middle-aged English tourists having an off-season holiday (i.e., one they could afford). Wisps of conversation floated to me across the tables and from couples passing on the sidewalk. It was always the same. The wife would be in noisemaking mode, that incessant, pointless, mildly fretful chatter that overtakes Englishwomen in midlife. ‘I was going to get tights today and I forgot. I asked you to remind me, Gerald. These ones have a ladder in them from here to Amalfi. I suppose I can get tights here. I haven’t a clue what size to ask for. I knew I should have packed an extra pair….’ Gerald was never listening to any of this, of course, because he was secretly ogling a braless beauty leaning languorously on a lamppost and trading quips with some hoods on Vespas, and appeared to be aware of his wife only as a mild, chronic irritant on the fringe of his existence. Everywhere I went in Sorrento I kept seeing these English couples, the wife looking critically at everything, as if she were working undercover for the Ministry of Sanitation, the husband dragging along behind her, worn and defeated.”
Bryson has no particular bone to pick with Brits, however, as we see from an equally trenchant observation about some of our own, delivered with equal parts pith and punch, just a few pages earlier. While touring (solo) the Vatican City in Rome, he spotted and hitched up with an American tour group, but was quickly spotted and discarded “because I wasn’t wearing a baseball cap and warm-up jacket and trousers in one of the livelier primary colors.”
The French have a lively (and accurate) little aphorism: “personne n’est prophète chez soi.” Perhaps it’s time someone in some language came up with a suitable way to describe your run-of-the-mill mass tourist – as in, “a tourist is never more lame and out of step than when he or she is on tour.” If this sounds both vaguely tautological and roundly condemnatory of the species ex situ, it’s meant to.
But before we leave Sorrento for parts unknown, Bryson treats us to a smidgen of what much of his Short History is all about – in short: here today, gone tomorrow. Some part of Calabria could blow (once again) at any time. And when it does, it’s hasta la vista, baby.
Let it never be said, by the way, that Bryson is above a product placement. On p. 185, after an exasperating experience inside a Union Bank of Switzerland office in Geneva to get some replacement travelers’ checks (for those that had been stolen by a gypsy posing as a child posing as a gypsy in Florence), we find: “(b)ut from now on it’s American Express travelers’ checks for me, boy, and if the company wishes to acknowledge this unsolicited endorsement with a set of luggage or a skiing holiday in the Rockies, then let the record show that I am ready to take it.”
Of course, Bill Bryson is a writer of unimpeachable ethics. And so, on p. 196, we have the following: “Perhaps the people at the hotel just didn’t like the look of me, or maybe they correctly suspected that I was a travel writer and would reveal to the world the secret that the food at the Vaduzerhof Hotel at number 3 Stadtlestrasse in Vaduz is Not Very Good. Who can say?”
The potential reader of Neither Here Nor There will, I trust, allow me the inclusion of a lengthy paragraph from p. 201 to this already lengthy review, but only because I find it so compelling. “One of my first vivid impressions of Europe was a Walt Disney movie I saw as a boy. I believe it was called The Trouble with Angels. It was a hopelessly sentimental fictionalized account of how a group of cherry-cheeked boys with impish instincts and voices like angels made their way into the Vienna Boys’ Choir. I enjoyed the film hugely, being hopelessly sentimental myself, but what made a lasting indent on me was the European-ness of the movie background – the cobbled streets, the toytown cars, the corner shops with a tinkling bell above the door, the modest, lived-in homeyness of each boy’s familial flat. It all seemed so engaging and agreeably old-fashioned compared with the sleek and modern world I knew, and it left me with the unshakable impression that Austria was somehow more European than the rest of Europe. And so it seemed here in Innsbruck. For the fist time in a long while, certainly for the first time on this trip, I felt a palpable sense of wonder to find myself here, on these streets, in this body, at this time. I was in Europe now. It was an oddly profound notion.”
“Austria was somehow more European than the rest of Europe” indeed! – as we discover on just the next page when Bryson and Katz (his erstwhile traveling companion here, but also in A Walk in the Woods), discover what’s being said about them by a couple of local yokels. In fact, it’s not until the squalor of Sophia (on p. 238) that Bryson “…realized with a sense of profound unease the Europe I had dreamed of as a child.”
One parting note by way of exit from this review… If Bill Bryson’s no-longer-so-youthful traveling experience is any reliable indicator, you now have a better idea of how the Western world was won, lost, and won again on the strength of many dreams, fantasies, erections, demolitions – and three essential lubricants: beer, wine and coffee. While the first two might well have given, uh, rise to the dreams, fantasies & Co., it’s clearly the last of these that keeps us in Wheaties. Lord help us if the bean farmers and pickers of the developing world ever decide to cut off our supply!
RRB
11/12/14
Brooklyn, NY
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LibraryThing member Cheryl_in_CC_NV
I generally don't rate books unless I finish them, but after reading other reviews I do believe I got far enough in to be able to judge this. Here's Bryson wittily whining again - sharing little bits of interesting insights into bits of Europe amongst lots of boring stuff about him and his
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inability to admit he'd have a lot less to whine about if he planned ahead just a little bit. A line of Americans for the Louvre!? Really?! Who'd've thunk!! Show Less
LibraryThing member buffalogirl
Entertaining, quick read. Nor Bryson's best, but funny.
LibraryThing member Oreillynsf
While not Bryson's strongest book, NHNT is a fun chronicle of his travels in Europe, from Norway to Italy. His recount of a visit to a dirty book store in Hamburg is funny enough to warrent the price of a book. This book is less about people and more about the places, which I think is why it falls
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a little short of the others. More like Notes from a Big Country than Notes from a Small Island. But there's one unique benefit -- we meet Katz, the guy who accompanies him on the Appalachian Trail some 25 or so years later. Read mroe about Katz in A Walk in the Woods. Show Less
LibraryThing member Edith1
Travelogue of Europe. At times funny, at times a bit uneventful, but it was an easy read and not boring. And Bill and I seem to be in agreement on those countries that we both visited.
LibraryThing member iayork
genius? let's not go that far: Bill is a good writer, but genius should be reserved for writers like Thomas Sowell, Marc Steyn, Shelby Steele, Dan Pipes, Victor Davis Hanson, etc. No, I don't expect everyone, sadly, to have read works by these brilliant men, of course.
But anyway, a guy like
Off tangent? Nope. Poking fun at Eurabia is different than being brutally honest. Travel books about this barbaric country where six million Jews were exterminated in unappealing.
But yeah, while he's not a genius, you can call him acerbic, or, like the "great" John Stewart," "witty."
But anyway, a guy like
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Bryson, being paid to travel around Eurabia and mock people, offering his insight, should be able to produce good copy. I'd like to see more people write about the decadence, hedonism and secularism that is fueling Eurabia's rapid demise though. I know it won't be any Euros, as they cater to Islam, ignore evil, and spew hatred at the Jews just like in 1939, so hopefully more Americans will. Off tangent? Nope. Poking fun at Eurabia is different than being brutally honest. Travel books about this barbaric country where six million Jews were exterminated in unappealing.
But yeah, while he's not a genius, you can call him acerbic, or, like the "great" John Stewart," "witty."
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LibraryThing member skinglist
One of my first Bryson's -- love his comparison of the world pre and post the fall of Communism
LibraryThing member ptpdx
I believe this was the first book of Bryson that I've read. And, I have to say that his writing is very witty and fun to read. I bought this to read on my first trip to Eastern Europe. Having read this one, I would like to read more of his stuff.
LibraryThing member cinesnail88
I like travel essays a lot, and have read a good few. I've read three of Bryson's other books, and I had a rollicking good time with each of them. This book was a bit different. Yes, I had fun, and Bryson's sense of humor was ever present, but this book almost seemed like a step by step of his
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journey across Europe, which I suppose it was. At times it seemed repetitive, but overall it was enjoyable enough, and somewhat enlightening at points. Show Less
LibraryThing member HedgePig
Not the best Bill Bryson. It is a mildly amusing light read, ideal for an aeroplane trip.
LibraryThing member FrogPrincessuk
Certainly not as laugh-out-loud funny as some of his other books, but an entertaining read for anyone who has an interest in travel.
LibraryThing member rakerman
Preliminary review:
Fairly amusing in parts (and I am hard to amuse).
So far I have mostly agreed with his assessments of cities that I have also visited.
Fairly amusing in parts (and I am hard to amuse).
So far I have mostly agreed with his assessments of cities that I have also visited.
LibraryThing member Elainedav
I love travel books and I can't believe it has taken me so many years to get around to reading this one! What a great trip, the odd flight here and there, but mainly place to place by train all over Europe. Bill Bryson was recreating a trip in this book that he had first experienced as a student,
It would be fascinating, I think, if Bill Bryson were to recreate this trip for a third time and republish this book with an update. The sections on Yugoslavia and Sofia would be very obviously different but I wonder what else would change - the ease of ticket bookings given the availability of mobile access/wifi would undoubtedly be something that would have to be significant.
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with his friend Katz. His observations include the hotels he stays in, what to see in different towns and cities as you wander around and what the restaurants and museums are like. It was a four star read, not five star for me purely because it was dated. This is no fault of the author - the book was first published twenty three years ago! But I did wonder whether some of the observations are still accurate - there were two oppostite views which stood out for me. One was the description of Rome - 'the Romans will decorate it with litter - an empty cigatette packet, a wedge of half eaten pizza, twenty-seven cigarette butts, half an ice-cream cone with an ooze of ice-cream emerging from the bottom, danced on by a delirium of flies, an oily tin of sardines, a tattered newspaper and something truly unexpected, like a tailor's dummy or a dead goat'. I was in Rome a couple of years ago and cannot relate to this image of rubbish in the streets - hopefully this means the city is a cleaner, tidier place now! However, the observation I agreed with wholeheartedly was this one about Liechtenstein - 'restaurants were thin on the ground and either very expensive or discouragingly empty. Vaduz is so small that if you walk for fifteen minutes in any direction, you are deep in the country. It occurred to me that there is no reason to go to Liechtenstein except to say you have been there'. Spot on! We went last year and came to exactly the same conclusion.It would be fascinating, I think, if Bill Bryson were to recreate this trip for a third time and republish this book with an update. The sections on Yugoslavia and Sofia would be very obviously different but I wonder what else would change - the ease of ticket bookings given the availability of mobile access/wifi would undoubtedly be something that would have to be significant.
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LibraryThing member miketroll
Effervescent whistle stop tour through Europe. Bryson is always fun.
LibraryThing member Diccon.Bewes
Not quitehis best, but still much more amusing and interesting than most other writers.
LibraryThing member TianaWarner
Possibly the best travel book I've read.
LibraryThing member Harrod
Bryson, as always, makes me laugh.
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1991
Physical description
320 p.; 5.08 inches
ISBN
0552998060 / 9780552998062