Five stars because it made me burst out laughing! I'd call it the wacky adventures of Mark Twain and his long suffering guide Harris, who set out to walk around Europe but find excuses not to. Of course there have to be descriptions of scenery in a travelogue, but they were all so long! The hilarious French duel and the over-the-top expedition in the Swiss mountains gave me some serious giggles, oh my!

I am listening to the unabridged version read by Grover Gardner. It's all I can do to finish it. This is the same voice that read the "Atlas Shrugged" version on CD that I checked out earlier and just couldn't finish because this man's voice grates on my nerves. I'm trying desperately to finish this book.

eta: can't finish this. There are some good stories but most of it is just boring and the voice makes it that much more painful. I rarely don't finish a book, but this one I just can't get into and it felt too much like a chore.

I like anything by Mark Twain, and this book, A Tramp Abroad is no exception, however this is not one I would recommend to someone who has not already developed a taste for him. This is his second book about his European Travels, the first one, Innocents Abroad, was about a trip he took about 12 years prior to the trip that A Tramp Abroad is about. This book was written in 1880, so you have to read it with a perspective of someone living over 135 years ago. European Travel, for average Americans, was a very new experience, and although by this time Mark Twain, was not really an average American, he still wrote like one, and thought like one. So his perspective on Europe is very interesting. The majority of the narrative is about his time in Germany and Switzerland, but he does skip around a bit, which is one of the idiocracies, of his writing that you need to get used to. In a way, reading Mark Twain is a little like sitting in a parlor with an old grandfather reminiscing about his life experiences. He jumps around, and tells stories within stories, and get off track, at times. He also exaggerates, and tells what could be considered tall tales, and it's sometimes hard to tell where the truth ends, and the tale begins. In this particular book he does all those things a little more than with other books of his that I have read, so that is why I caution that this may not be the first Mark Twain non fiction book that you want to read. I think "Roughing It" might be a better one to start with, however If you have experience with Mark Twain, and you want more then, this is probably one you will like. You will learn about duelling in Heidelberg, and mountaineering in Switzerland during the late part of the 19th century among many other things, and you will get a large dose of Twain's tongue in cheek perspective on just about everything.

I love Twain’s travel books. They are a perfect outlet for me. Reading about exotic and interesting places is much cheaper and easier than actually going there. Unfortunately people do not also write about uninteresting places, so I am compelled to actually visit only citadels of boredom. My tour of the lower Midwest springboarding from Kankakee IL begins August 30th – formal dress or toothbrush not required.

A Tramp Abroad (no not that type of tramp) has Mr. Clemens traveling through Italy, Germany and Switzerland. The entire book is filled with drolleries, including a comic scene in which Mark attempts to exit a dark room (he traveled 47 miles and was unable leave). However the best portion of the book is a description of German grammar and vocabulary. Anyone that can make grammar hilarious has talent – if he could have written a textbook for differential calculus textbook, I might have passed.

Well, it looks like all of Twain's travel books might be getting three stars from me. So far we're three for three at three, but I definitely have a ranking. Roughing It is my favorite of the ones I've read so far because it had more anecdotal asides than the others, and those make the book. Plus I'm an American, and that one takes place in America, so I'm more familiar with the territory. In fact, Roughing It would've been a four star book if it weren't for the last section on Hawaii which was kind of slow.

This one covers his travels in parts of France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. He walked most of it, but occasionally took a train or diligence. A good quarter of it covers mountain climbing, and that got a little old, but luckily there were fun stories interspersed, just not as many as in Roughing It or The Innocents Abroad.

This is definitely not a time waster, and it kept me entertained at work when I was doing my scanning chores. Since I was busy with a lot of other tasks throughout the year, it took 11 months to read it that way, but it certainly helps the time pass when you're waiting for a machine to finish its work. Two or three minutes at a time courtesy of The Gutenberg Project; that's how I read this, so I wasn't able to get fully immersed in it. That probably affected my opinion, but I still think it would appeal to any fan of Twain's sense of humor. Also, I copy pasted just the text to a word document, and since Microsoft blows, it didn't take any of the pictures with it so I missed all those unless I went back to the site to scope them out which I did from time to time. The pictures are great, so I suggest reading a book that includes them. Some of them were doodles from Mark Twain himself.

This book has six appendixes which are entertaining and instructive. Included among them is his essay on The Awful German Language which is a scream.

Though I've forgotten a lot of the stories since It's been a while since I've read them, one that stands out in my mind is the one about French Duels which is all of chapter eight. I was going to include that entire section here, but there's not enough room. Just click on the Gutenberg Project link a couple of paragraphs back and scope it out, and maybe it will encourage you to read the rest of the book as well.

Solid recommendation for readers.

Deeply funny satire of an american tourist exploring europe. To give you an idea of the tone, one chapter describes an elaborate swiss alpine expedition with hundreds of sherpas and helpers only for it to gradually become apparent that it's a journey from the hotel to a nearby restaurant.

This is one book that would have welcomed the efforts of a hard working editor. At times Twain's brilliance and humour come shining through, especially in his fascinating observations of the lives of Germans and the tourists who walk through their midst. But too often he gets sidetracked with less stellar tales that belong in another book: drifting back to the US for "A Tramp at Home", recounting legends and folk tales that feel ripped from another writer's guidebook, and complete fantasies of his own creation. But in between the somewhat dull sidetracking, the eminent quoteability of many of Twain's passages show his sharp eye and wit; "The Germans are exceedingly fond of Rhine wines; they are put up in tall, slender bottles, and are considered a pleasant beverage. One tells them from vinegar by the label."

I bought this book by mistake in one of those charity shops that make any idle and rainy Saturday in Oxford a treasure hunt.
What I thought I had found was actually "Innocents Abroad" by the same Mark Twain, but somehow the word "tramp" was left out of my raptorous glance.

Well, "A Tramp Abroad" revolves around pretty much the same topic of "Innocents Abroad" which is Mr Twain touring Europe proud of being an American but at the same time eager to get all that the Old Continent has to offer to his transatlantic eyes.

A very good reason to grab this book is its humour.
One cannot wonder that Mark Twain was so funny a writer. Or perhaps it's just me having read "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn" when I was a kid and getting bored to death with all that exhausting fence painting business and that haughty Becky Thatcher.

And yet "A Tramp Abroad" is funny, witty and it's clear how Twain got amused in writing some of its pages. It's a kind of humour that one may find in a celebrated British author of the same period (1880s) such as Jerome Klapka Jerome, but Twain adds up his American touch: the exaggeration of likelihood.

Where Jerome (an eager traveller too) loved paradoxes and observations about the cultural oddities he found while navigating the Thames or cycling in Germany, Twain liked to put himself at the centre of the scene. But he did so in a very amusing way by pretending to be the bravest person around fooling us and himself in the process.
The travels of "A Tramp Abroad" are not particularly exotic involving Germany, Switzerland and a bit of Italy and Twain is not masterful in telling us how and why he got from, say, Heidelberg to Lucerne. Where he excels is in collecting the local stories, news and legends and reporting them on his account along with amazing fictional dialogues and expeditions deign of a maharaja.

Here you can find many gems like a passionate praise of tasty American food along with a lot of sarcasm referred to European menus thay may disappoint a German or a French gourmet, but it's actually only another example of Twain's comic exaggeration.
Twain is not afraid of despising the sense of perspective and proportions of the Old Masters in painting, in calling St Mark's church in Venice "ugly" and the edelweiss flower "cigar-coloured". There is no arrogance or sense of superiority in doing this, although someone may think and may have thought the opposite.
It seems unbelievable that Henry James lived in the same years and saw a good deal of the same British-American jet-set tourism portraying it in the most solemn and antiquated terms.

And then there are appendixes, introduced by a quote by Herodotus.
Mind you, do not miss these appendixes! And if your edition of "A Tramp Abroad" doesn't include them, raise an official protest with the bookseller who sold it to you!

Appendix D, titled "The Awful German Language", is one of the funniest things I've ever read. Eighteen pages of pure intellectual pleasure dedicated to the struggle Twain had with studying German with all the grammar exceptions, peculiarities and oddities of that language he could recall crowned by eight suggestions to make German better. I have never studied German, but I laughed till tears came to my eyes in reading this stuff. And appendix F "German Journals" is irresistible too. Not to mention appendix C "The College Prison". Etc, etc.

On the whole, this book is huge and heavy and for that reason not quite comfortable to read if you're not surrounded by pillows half-lying on a double bed, but "A Tramp Abroad" is worth a try when you want to cheer up yourselves. Not a book to travel with, but a book to travel for.

Funny, but not hilarious. Mostly tongue-in-cheek hyperboles, Mark Twain recounts here his 15-month walking trip through Central Europe and the Alps in 1878-1879. I have only one kind of test for humorous, or supposedly humorous, books: the sound test. Five stars if it made me laugh out loud; four stars if it made me chuckle; three stars if it made me smile; two stars if it just made light up inside; a star if I found it funny without any change in me, or if it wasn't funny at all.

In his Introduction Dave Eggers wrote that he "was crying because (he) was laughing" while reading this book. I find this hard to believe. But then again, maybe Mr. Eggers has a lower threshhold for humor. Or hasn't read Jorge Amado. I myself don't remember laughing, or crying, while reading his "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" which I read mainly because of its title which hinted of fun. It turned out to be a mild disappointment.

You see, of course, how many stars I gave this book

Twain regales with this satire on the The Grand Tour, which at the time was dubbed the "education rite of passage". Other classic works which poke a finger at this long established tradition include ROOM WITH A VIEW by E. M. Forster and LITTLE DORRIT by Charles Dickens. I doubt any other author had as much fun with this as Twain did. Readers living during the end of the Victorian Era and the beginning of the Edwardian Era would read and enjoy these on an entirely different level than today's reader.

My favorite laugh out loud part may have been when the main character and his traveling companion kept trying to catch a sunrise in the Alps. I also enjoyed his asides on their drinking water and especially the European aversion to ice water. I appreciated his remarks on the food. His observations on Italian art border on the hilarious.

I had received the Kindle version (a free Gutenberg book, which for some reason repeats the entire 50 chapters) before my recent 3 weeks in Germany, Switzerland and Strasbourg France. Mark Twain took a tramp abroad and WAS a tramp abroad. He is of course a great storyteller, and while sometimes serious is at times brilliantly comic here.

However, unless you're a great fan (or like me want to compare your trip to his) you may be a tad disappointed in the author of Huckleberry Finn, which I, like many others, consider one of the greatest American novels ever written. I found myself wondering why he went on so long (granted in a witty, well written manner) about the subjects he chose to tackle.

In fact I must confess that when Twain left my own travel route (we were both in Heidelberg, Lucerne and Interlaken, and like me he cruised the Rhine (though not the same part of it that I did) I skimmed, at first fairly carefully, but in the last few days just scanning quickly to finish it. Ah well, it's a travelogue, and better than most - I found myself thinking that Bill Bryson used Twain's book as a model, consciously or not, and I very much enjoy Bryson's work - but then so is that trip down the Mississippi that Huck and Jim embark on. While that great novel uses the travel to weave a powerful tale of America, A Tramp Abroad did not rise above the travelogue, for me at least..

Haven’t read a book this humorous in quite a while. Highly enjoyable. Twain probably was a bit of an asshole.