Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe | Bill Bryson | Great Book for those who have traveled...

Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe | Bill Bryson | Laugh-out-loud funny

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Neither Here nor T...

	Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe Bill Bryson Harper Perennial, 1999 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 156 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Like many of his generation, Bill Bryson backpacked across Europe in the early seventies -- in search of enlightenment, beer, and women. Twenty years later he decided to retrace the journey he undertook in the halcyon days of his youth. The result is Neither Here Nor There, an affectionate and riotously funny pilgrimage from the frozen wastes of Scandinavia to the chaotic tumult of Istanbul, with stops along the way in Europe's most diverting and historic locales. Like many of his generation, Bill Bryson backpacked across Europe in the early seventies--in search of enlightenment, beer, and women. Twenty years later he decided to retrace the journey he undertook in the halcyon days of his youth. The result is Neither Here Nor There, an affectionate and riotously funny pilgrimage from the frozen wastes of Scandinavia to the chaotic tumult of Istanbul, with stops along the way in Europe's most diverting and historic locales.

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Great Book for those who have traveled to Europe

Bill Bryson is so right on with the quirks of Europe. It's a great read for those who've traveled there, because he can take you back to those moments and make you laugh. I recommend to my friends who haven't been there to let them know how Europe really is. Even after being to Europe and reading his book, I'm still going back there on Vacation !!!

Laugh-out-loud funny

A hilarious madcap ride through Europe. Bill Bryson always makes me laugh out loud. Don't miss the chapters on France and Belgium; they are priceless, especially if you have ever spent any time in those countries. This book is a must-read for all those with wanderlust and a sense of humor.

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Funny, with its best observations coming from out-of-the-way places

In this book, Bill Bryson embarks on the grown-up version of backpacking across Europe. Having wandered Europe twenty years previously with a friend named Katz, he revisited some places and observes how they have changed.

Bryson has the idea of starting at Hammerfest, in far northern Norway, and then working his way south to Rome. Because he wants to see the northern lights, his journeys begin in winter, when the Arctic is still dark and, of course, cold. The northern lights don't appear to him for a couple of weeks, so the book begins at a leisurely pace, with Bryson hanging out in a dark, cold city where there really isn't much for a tourist to do.

Moving south from Hammerfest gives Bryson many cold, rainy days in Copenhagen and Stockholm before he can't take it any more and goes to Italy. From there he hops from one city to another, ending in Sofia, Bulgaria. His slower pace in the first part of the book gave him many opportunities to talk about the people in each place; in Italy, his observations tend to focus on the physical plant instead. When he gets to Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, however, his observations tun personal again.

Oddly enough, Bryson's most pithy observations are about the people but he doesn't spend much time meeting them. He comes across as a loner who is happiest wandering the streets of an unfamiliar city, visiting the museums, and then having a large number of beers at the end of the day. That strategy means that he risks making unfamiliar generalizations about the people around him, so it's remarkable that his observations don't necessarily jibe with the stereotypes. However, he doesn't pass up a stereotype if he can make a good joke.

Bryson is at his best when on the road less-traveled, from Hammerfest to Sofia, and he doesn't have much to say about the Romes of the world. He's a gifted writer, and it's a pleasure to accompany him.

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<< Walk in the Woods

I really did laugh out loud at times. Bryson tells of travels in Europe both of recent times and flashbacks to a trip through Europe when he was younger. I especially enjoyed the parts on places of Europe that I have visited myself. I was a little disappointed there wasn't much time spent in Germany. In this book, Bryson seems to try and get laughs at the expense of people. I had to knock off a star for that.

Full of clichés but entertaining

Neither Here Nor There is probably more for the novice than the experienced traveller, but it is entertaining and has a usefully broad scope. Bill Bryson, an American resident in London, takes his readers from the Arctic Circle to Istanbul in something like a couple of months, mixing in parts of Scandinavia, the Benelux, France, Germany and Italy among others before passing through the Balkans.

Inevitably a lot is about finding hotels and places to eat, misplaced reservations and the pitfalls of communicating with strangers. This is travel writing, after all. And inevitably there tends to be quite a few clichés and national stereotyping. The commentary ranges from insightful (e.g. different perceptions of Amsterdam) to expected but fun (the police episode in Florence), to downright vulgar ("Quick restaurants - as in quick, pass the bucket!"). I found the first and last chapters, set in northern Norway, then Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, the most interesting. Bryson has more to say in out-of-the-way settings. And having travelled to the latter two at about the same time, I thought his observations both original and to the point. Nor does the book, written in the early 1990s, generally feel out-of-date.

Bryson's style combines a wide descriptive vocabulary with a matter-of-fact, colloquial tone. It drips with irony and evinces plenty of sniggers. The same note is held too long, though, which may explain why one doesn't laugh as much as one would expect: the jokes and witticisms eventually lose an essential element of surprise.

Perhaps not unusually for the genre, the book ends up saying as much about the observer as the observed. It provides a snapshot of how an educated and informed American views the European continent.

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