Audiobook read by William Roberts


Subtitle: Travels in Europe

First published in 1991, this is not aged well. Bryson had fond memories of his youthful adventures when he backpacked around Europe, one summer solo and the next with his friend, Katz. He attempted to re-create those magical summers, though this time having traveler’s checques, a travel agent, and full-service (mostly) hotels.

I’ve read several of Bryson’s books and found some of them hugely entertaining. But not this one. He seems far too snide and complaining, the “Ugly American” come to life.

Now, there are a few interesting and engaging scenarios when he’s not being a pain-in-the-a** complainer, and for that I give him two stars.

The audiobook is read by William Roberts, who, if possible, makes Bryson sound like even more of whiner than he is in print. There is also an Abridge audiobook, read by Bryson himself. I wonder if I would have enjoyed that more …. I guess that would depend on whether he cut the complaining part in favor of the nicer interludes, or vice versa. But I’m not going to bother to find out myself.

I was thinking about Rick Steves’s canon compared to Bryson’s. Both fairly privileged white men writing about travel for a living, but the difference between their work is huge and especially evident in this book. Bryson books a European tour alone, then complains about being alone, complains about the food, the length of his trip, and the customs & attitudes of the Europeans around him. I read this during the recession as a travel hungry millennial who would’ve given her eye teeth for such a trip (still would). So at first I thought, oh it’s just Bryson being of his boomer demographic. But then I read “Travel as a Political Act” and became more familiar with Rick Steves’s programs. I spent enough time in Rick’s content to know that Bryson’s attitude is not something that should be excused based on demographic. Steves frames every travel experience as a gift and comes with a sense of openness and respect for the hospitality offered to him in each country. He doesn’t get trapped in the “Europe was better when I was younger” model that Bryson can’t seem to escape. Bryson can be very funny in his other works, but this book is just an extended bad Yelp review that Europe didn’t ask for and doesn’t deserve.

One of Bryson's first works, before he got all "hoity-toity" with his more intellectual books like At Home and A Short History of Everything (both of which are also really good). As such, he's a little sillier and cruder here - more sex and f-bombs - which is actually kind of cute, coming from ol' Bill. The book starts off very funny, so that just 2-3 pages in I grabbed a pen and started marking the really memorable bits. But by about page 70 I realized I was marking less and less, and once he got to Italy it was really just a lot of "then I walked here and went to this museum and ate that." Even then, the writing was great - Bryson is always smart, usually clever and often laugh-out-loud funny - but from here on out it was at best occasionally amusing, and certainly not "hilarious" as the back-cover blurbs said. Dave Barry Does Japan was hilarious; this was an informative travel book that was sometimes very humorous.

Not bad Bryson - no Bryson is ever bad - but there is certainly better Bryson out there. However, if you've traveled to the places he's been to, it's fun to read his thoughts, if only to ask yourself "now why didn't I think of that?"

In this book travel writer Bill Bryson wrote about a whirlwind trip through Europe that seemed designed solely to give him something to write about rather than a journey he actually wanted to take. I didn't take notes so Bryson's stops in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Lichtenstein, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Austria, Italy, etc. blended together into a continuous blur of traveling, finding hotels, walking around, looking at things, eating, drinking, and so on. I could hardly distinguish one city from another.


Leichtenstein


Bulgaria

Bryson's observations are meant to be humorous (and sometimes are) but they're almost always snide and critical. Again and again Bryson complains that the cities he visited were dirty and filled with litter; had menus he couldn't read; served bad food that cost too much; harbored surly, unhelpful or purposely obstructive service workers (clerks, waiters, hotel staff); sported poor transportation with inconvenient schedules; wouldn't accept whatever kind of money he happened to have; allowed panhandlers in the streets; sold useless merchandise; and on and on and on.


Käsknöpfle from Leichtenstein


Kachamak from Bulgaria

Bryson has a (probably well-deserved) animus toward Germany for the Holocaust and Austria for electing a former Nazi to be president - but his extreme hostility is a jarring note in what's supposed to be an entertaining romp. The book is also heavy with sexual innuendos, has numerous comments about prostitutes, describes lots of excessive drinking, and contains 'dirty' language that's off-putting in the context of a light-hearted travel story (and I'm no prude).

On the positive side Bryson's descriptions of some of the sights he sees are interesting: the northern lights, museums, parks, historic sites, artworks, and so on. Still, I had to force myself to finish and was glad when he finally went home. Not one of Bryson's best efforts.


Northern Lights

You can follow my reviews at http://reviewsbybarbsaffer.blogspot.com/

Bill Bryson is 1 part comedian, 1 part explorer and 1 part grumpy-old-bastard, when you put those three things together you get a very funny travelogue by a reluctant traveller who dislikes most humans.

Neither Here nor There covers two journeys, one when Bill was young and touring Europe with his "mate" Katz and today where Bill is retracing that first journey. He visits France (full of psychopaths), Belgium (sooooooo dull), Scandinavia (too wet), Italy (untidy), Switzerland (grumpy people), Germany (obvious), Liechtenstein (not very big), Austria (full of tat), Bulgaria (Makes you feel guilty) and Turkey (woohoo made it to the end). Bill's sense of humour is not for everybody, he is full of opinions of England's neighbours (see comments above in brackets) and that can come across as a tad racist at times, I know it was him trying to be funny but I did struggle for a while when he got to Switzerland.

One of my favourite lines in the book is when he is describing the Pompidou centre and says of it's architect, Richard Rogers; "Look, I put all the pipes on the outside, am I cute enough to kiss?"

He is not the ideal person for this type of journey, he only speaks English, he never plans ahead, he will argue over everything and refuses to try local cuisine as it is probably sheep's eyes or something similar. This does add to his charm and regardless of all his faults you do cheer him on when he gets a win.

My second book by Bill Bryson and I'm sold, he is a very entertaining travel writer.

Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2019...

I have generally enjoyed Bill Bryson's books prior to reading this one, but "Neither here nor there" was a huge disappointment. Where in e.g. "Notes from a small island" he comes across as witty, good natured, and open-minded, this book seems to be one long (and not particularly funny) whinge about continental Europe. What annoyed me the most was that Mr. Bryson considers himself qualified to make unreserved public judgements about an entire country's culture after a two-day stay and personal encounters with a handful of people - which to me reeks of arrogance and disappointing narrow-mindedness given his reputation. If you want to keep enjoying Bill Bryson's books then approach this work with caution, as it has shown me a side of his personality that up to now has discouraged me from reading any further travel books by this author.

This book hits the sweet spot: Bill Bryson travels around Europe, entertaining us with his humor and thoughtful observations, and also sharing memories of a similar trip he took in the 1970s with his bumbling friend, Stephen Katz.

Ah, poor Stephen. If you have read Bryson's book A Walk in the Woods, which is about hiking the Appalachian Trail, you will remember Mr. Katz as the comic foil, the ridiculously overweight guy who complained a lot and who threw away critical supplies because they were too heavy in his pack. Here is how Bryson introduces Stephen in Neither Here nor There:

"Katz was the sort of person who would lie in a darkened hotel room while you were trying to sleep and talk for hours in graphic, sometimes luridly perverted, detail about what he would like to do to various high school nymphets, given his druthers and some of theirs, or announce his farts by saying, 'Here comes a good one. You ready?' and then grade them for volume, duration, and odorosity, as he called it. The best thing that could be said about traveling abroad with Katz was that it spared the rest of America from having to spend the summer with him."

Hahaha! This book frequently made me laugh out loud and want to read passages to friends, but of course I had trouble getting the words out because I couldn't stop laughing.

It wasn't just stories about Katz that I enjoyed. Bryson toured all over Europe -- he started in Hammerfest, Norway, to see the Northern Lights, then jetted over to Paris, then Brussels, Cologne, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Rome, Naples, Florence, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Yugoslavia and Istanbul. (That isn't even a complete list, but you get the idea -- he literally traveled from one end of Europe to the other.)

While in Istanbul, Bryson decides he is finally ready to return to England:

"I had come to the end of my own road. That was Asia over there; this was as far as I could go in Europe. It was time to end this long indulgence and go home ... And I was, I admit, ready to go. I missed my family and the comfortable familiarities of life. I was tired of the daily drudgery of keeping myself fed and bedded, tired of trains and buses, tired of existing in a world of strangers, tired of being forever perplexed and lost, tired above all of my own dull company. How many times in recent days had I sat trapped on buses or trains listening to my idly prattling mind and wished that I could just get up and walk out on myself? At the same time, I had a quite irrational urge to keep going. There is something about the momentum of travel that makes you want to just keep moving, to never stop."

This book was first published in 1992, but Bryson's comments and anecdotes were so thoughtful and entertaining that it still felt relevant. I listened to this on audio, read by the author, and as I have said many times before, Bryson is a delightful narrator. The next time you get the blues, get yourself a Bill Bryson book and it will cheer you right up.

Bryson's signature droll sense of humor is apparent throughout and is a fun read. Did someone say dry sense of humor . . . ?

‘Notes from a Small Island’ and ‘Neither Here nor There’ are Bill Bryson’s early travelogues concerning his journeys through Britain and other European countries respectively.

Both of these books are the strongest and the funniest of Bryson’s earliest work and undoubtedly established his reputation (at that time) as a travel writer and commentator of repute, producing engaging and very entertaining travelogues.

Now very much the Anglo-American (having lived at times in the UK and now holding dual UK/US nationality) Bryson writes here very much as ‘a young American abroad’ – with all the cultural and language based misunderstandings that predictably ensue. Whilst all this could certainly have been trite, pedestrian and clichéd as well as probably unfunny and verging on the xenophobic, what Bryson does here though is very much far from that – the joke more often than not is on him and just as importantly, the jokes are more often than not very funny.

What also comes across in addition to the humour, is the open mind and love (although admittedly occasionally hate) that Bryson has for travel and exploring other countries and cultures.

Bryson’s more recent books are now no longer limited to the ‘travel’ genre and have been of varying quality; he still however produces some great reads every now and then (most recently see: ‘One Summer: America, 1927’) – but this was where it all started.

Oh, how I miss Bill Bryson's travel writing. I have been deliberately saving some of his older works for a rainy day (or a sweltering 106 degree day, as it were).

And this was mostly fun! Each chapter is a meandering, facetious account of his visit to a different European city. He is very critical and grumpy about each country, as is his style. But as always, his general crabbiness make the moments of sincerity all the more poignant. His chapters about Italy were my favorite: he clearly wants to find something to complain about but struggles.

Notably, this was published in 1991, and the travels of course took place before that. It feels very dated, which is perfectly fine for me in a travel memoir as the goal is to capture the place in that time (i.e. he makes many interesting observations about Eastern Europe immediately post-Iron Curtain.)

Less fine for me though was some barbed comments he makes to stereotype several different nationalities. It was jarring and occasionally downright nasty.

Just as enjoyable as Notes From a Small Island, this is Bryson's memoirs of bopping around random places in Europe while contemplating everything from the Bulgarian economy to blow-up sex dolls. If I have one complaint, it is that some travels were back in the day with the lamentable Katz, and some were more modern, and the going back and forth in time is sometimes confusing, as things change quickly in European countries. Still, his powers of observation are as astoundingly good as his ability to function while drunk.

4 Stars for Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe (audiobook) by Bill Bryson read by the author.

I enjoyed hearing the author’s stories of his earlier travels across Europe. He really makes me feel like I’m along for the journey. I’d love to go back to Europe someday.