This is another of his diary (blog) type of book, which are my favorite types of Twain books. In this he is tripping around Europe and just writing down everyday events, however in the witty (smart ass) way only Mr. Twain can do it. This one has some wonderful posts in it but it also has some long ones that drag a bit (filler?) and therefore the low star count. It is still a great book and highly recommended if you enjoyed Roughing It, and Life on the Mississippi.

As a teacher of German, this was a must read if nothing else than for the short text at the end about "the Awful German Language." Suprisingly, the rest of the book was highly readable and highly amusing. Twain's anecdotes are antiquated, but filled with a humor that translates even to today, such as his description of climbing the Matterhorn... by telescope...

Mark Twain is my favorite author of all time, having earned a permanent place in my library for his hilarious and blasphemous autobiography. I'm on a mission to read his other works, one by one.

A Tramp Abroad purports to be Twain's semi-fictional account of a "pedestrian" journey or "tramp" around continental Europe in the late 1870s. For a man who writes in the first sentence of the book that he plans to walk around in Europe, he certainly doesn't do much walking! Most every chapter opens with an excuse about why he decided to take a train here, or a carriage ride there.

Highlights of the book for me included Twain's account of his ascent of Mont Blanc via telescope, his experiences at a German opera performance, and his absolutely hysterical appendix about "The Awful German Language." (Anyone who's studied German will surely find this as funny as I did.)

Some parts of the book were a little bit dragging but overall I enjoyed reading this book.

It's funny and sometimes educational. I know Mark Twain sometimes played the trope of an ignorant tourist but quite often it's a bit over the top.

Fascinating, fraught and hilarious. I'm pretty much besotted by that part of the world anyway and I enjoyed travelling back in time. This is the book which contains the famous essay "The Awful German Language" - read it for that alone - and it relates an episode which will put you off forever from attempting to scale the Matterhorn.

This isn't an actual review, just a note as to why I didn't finish the book. Though Twain is one of my favorite authors on the strength of his fiction, I've never been as enamored with his nonfiction. I've also never been a fan of reading other people's travel narratives. (I'll turn 70 in August and have been reading independently at least since I was six; I've read exactly two of them in my life, and wasn't bowled over by either one.) The only reason I tried this one is that it was picked as a common read in a group that I help moderate, and I feel an obligation to join in with those (since the group only does one a year). But although I gave it an honest, good-faith effort, reading 71 pages of it, I just got to the point where it was a time-consuming chore, and the contrast between soldiering on with it vs. reading something I would actually enjoy became too sharp to ignore.

A problem with Twain's nonfiction for me (and that's based mainly on The Complete Essays of Mark Twain, which I actually did read in its entirety as a teen) is that, whereas in his fiction he can employ a serious tone where it's appropriate, without the discipline of a fictional plot and the demands of verisimilitude, his temptation to play court jester tends to take over, and over-the-top humor gets dragged into serious discussions, making it hard to take him seriously. And while I enjoy humor as much as most people, much of Twain's humor takes the form of satirical ridicule --whether the targets really deserve ridicule or not. Here, the main objects of his ridicule (at least in the first 71 pages) are the French and the German people, in ways that come across to me as invidious and as cheap shots in a medium where the victims can't reply. This is not a book which attempts to be a serious account of his actual travel experiences, as I'd initially expected; and the one case in the first 10 chapters where he does provide this is a description of the grisly dueling practices of German students, which he recounts with a morbid fascination that I definitely didn't share. So, in my third session with this tome, I decided to bail, and the effect was like a weight lifted off of me!

I love to see a new place by walking in it. It's one of the best ways to experience the unfamiliar since it gives you time to explore and absorb the scenery. Maybe that's why I found it fascinating to read one of Mark Twain's lesser known works about his walking travels in Europe around the alps while I'm here in Germany. Twain's descriptions of university life in Heidelberg aren't so different from the way things are now even if they are a little more the 19th c variation.

What I really love is how his humor and love of local folklore and legends really comes through here. I've found several places I want to visit in the area from reading his descriptions of walking (and sometimes rafting) in Germany (and some of the surrounding Alpine countries).

If you don't want to read the whole book (free on Kindle, by the way), you should AT LEAST check out his excellent essay from the book, "The Awful German Language" ...especially if you've had a go at trying to master the language yourself: http://german.about.com/library/blmtw...

THE ALTERNATIVE BAEDEKER?
Published in 1880, 'A Tramp Abroad' is a mix of autobiography and fiction covering the author's travels in Southern Germany, the Swiss Alps and Italy.

The title sets the tone for the book in that "tramp" - in either sense of the word - is a deliberate misnomer, as Mr Twain/Clemens rarely travels by foot, taking advantage of the transport available at the time - trains, rafts, carriages, steamers, mules - and the services of that all-important courier.

This is a very long book and one that I found extremely mixed in its entertainment value. When it's good it's very very good, but when it's bad it's just dull. Although I read it diligently all the way through, I would advise skipping whole sections or chapters if they don't take your fancy in the first couple of pages. For example, I found the chapter 'Harris climbs Mountains for me' - a skit on travel writing of the time, where foreign words are hurled indiscriminately into the narrative - a clever idea at the start, but it dragged on and on, labouring the point ad infinitum.

As a contrast, a chapter such as that in which the narrator attempts the ascent of the Riffleberg in evening dress with half a mile of men and mules tied together, or that in which he attempts to descend a mountain via glacier are brilliant - absurd and hilarious. The essay 'The Awful German Language' in the Appendix is also not to be missed - this is a classic with such marvellous observations as 'In Germany a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has.'

A small point on the Kindle version - unfortunately the pictures don't work that well - most of these need to be zoomed in-on to appreciate them, which disturbs the flow of reading.

Although the book feels a little 'stuck together' as a work, I would recommend it to anyone travelling to Germany or the Alps - so much of the observation on the Germans remains true nearly 150 years later, and it's definitely one that you'll dip into again from time to time.

"A man accustomed to American food and American domestic cookery would not starve to death suddenly in Europe; but I think he would gradually waste away, and eventually die.

He would have to do without his accustomed morning meal. That is too formidable a change altogether; he would necessarily suffer from it. He could get the shadow, the sham, the base counterfeit of that meal; but it would do him no good, and money would not buy the reality.

To particularize: the average American's simplest and commonest form of breakfast consists of coffee and beafsteak; well, in Europe, coffee is an unknown beverage. You can get what the European hotel-keeper thinks is coffee, but it resembles the real thing as hypocrisy resembles holiness. It is a feeble, characterless, uninspiring sort of stuff, and almost as undrinkable as if it had been made in an American hotel. The milk used for it is what the French call 'Christian' milk - milk which has been baptized.

After a few months' acquaintance with European 'coffee,' one's mind weakens, and his faith with it, and he begins to wonder if the rich beverage of home, with its clotted layer of yellow cream on top of it, is not a mere dream, after all, and a thing which never existed.

Next comes the European bread - fair enough, good enough, after a fashion, but cold; cold and tough, and unsympathetic; and never any change, never any variety - always the same tiresome thing.

Next, the butter - the sham and tasteless butter; no salt in it, and made of goodness knows what.

Then there is the beefsteak. They have it in Europe, but they don't know how to cook it. Neither will they cut right. It comes on the table in a small, round pewter platter. It lies in the center of this platter, in a bordering bed of grease-soaked potatoes; it is the size, shape, and thickness of a man's hand with the thumb and fingers cut off. It is a little overdone, is rather dry, it tastes pretty insipidly, it rouses no enthusiasm.

Imagine a poor exile contemplating that inert thing; and imagine an angel suddenly sweeping down out of a better land and setting before him a mighty porterhouse steak an inch and a half thick, hot and sputtering from the griddle; dusted with a fragrant pepper; enriched with little melting bits of butter of the most unimpeachable freshness and genuineness; the precious juices of the meat trickling out and joining the gravy, archipelagoed with mushrooms; a township or two of tender, yellowish fat gracing an outlying district of this ample county of beefsteak; the long white bone which divides the sirloin from the tenderloin still in its place; and imagine that the angel adds a great cup of American home-made coffee, with a cream a-froth on top, some real butter, firm and yellow and fresh, some smoking hot-biscuits, a plate of hot buckwheat cakes, with transparent syrup - could words describe the gratitude of this exile?"

There really aren't any superlatives to add to anything written by Mark Twain. It's Mark Twain, and therefore wonderful.

I will say that the first three-quarters of the book, representing his time in Germany, moved much more quickly and had more permanence than the final quarter. His experiences in Switzerland and Italy were rather hurried and lacked the humor of the first leg of his "pedestrian tour of Europe."

You should read this, if only for the spectacle of laughing constantly and having the other person in the room give you strange looks.

Slow in spots but in other places hilarious, Twain recounts his travels through (mostly) Germany and Switzerland. Don't miss his essay on the German language in the appendix.

Good fun, but lacking the exuberant sparkle of his earlier travel books.