Neither Here Nor There by Bill Bryson

I was in need of a book that would give me an escape and make me laugh. That’s when I’m grateful for Bill Bryson.
Neither Here nor There is a book I keep to re-read in just such circumstances and when I opened it again the other day — it did the trick — I immediately started to giggle.

From the back cover:

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.

Mr. Bryson starts his mid-life crisis journey in Hammerfest, Norway (as far north as you can get in the world by public means of transport, he says) and re-traces his 1970 trip through Europe encountering language barriers, seedy train station hotels and delightful characters along the way.

I could quote this book for pages but will restrain myself to my favorites, get your hands on a copy and find your own:

The best than can be said for Norwegian television is that it gives you the sensation of a coma without the worry and inconvenience.

Romans park their cars the way I would park if I had just spilled a beaker of hydrochloric acid on my lap.

In the evening, I went looking for a restaurant.  This is often a problem in Germany.  For one thing, there’s a good chance that there will be three guys in lederhosen playing polka music, so you have to look carefully through the windows and question the proprietor closely to make sure that Willi and the Bavarian Boys won’t suddenly bound onto a little stage a half-past eight.  It should have been written into the armistice treaty that the Germans would be required to lay down their accordions along with their arms. 

The problem is that the pedestrian cross lights (in Paris) have been designed with the clear purpose of leaving the foreign visitor confused, humiliated, and, if all goes according to plan, dead.

She gave me one of those impassive Gallic (as in French) shrugs – the kind where the chin is dropped to belt level and the ears are pushed to the top of the head with the shoulders.  It translates roughly as ‘Life is a bucket of shit, monsieur, I quite agree, and while I am prepared to acknowledge this fact I shall offer you no sympathy because monsieur, this is your bucket of shit’. 

As you may have now surmised, Mr. Bryson is not afraid to be politically incorrect (he calls France’s population ‘Insufferably French) but he is also a devoted traveler and relishes the wonder and beauty of other cultures and lands.

One of the small marvels of my first trip to Europe was the discovery that the world could be so full of variety, that there were so many different ways of doing essentially identical things, like eating and drinking and buying movie tickets. 

I arose each morning just after dawn, during that perfect hour when the air still has a fresh, unused feel to it, and watch the city (Rome) come awake — whistling shopkeepers sweeping up, pulling down awnings, pushing up shutters.

The Thomas Cook European Timetable  is possibly the finest book ever produced.  It is impossible to leaf through its five hundred pages of densely printed timetables without wanting to dump a double armload of clothes into an old Gladstone and just take off.  Every page whispers romance:  Montreux-Zweisimmen-Spiez-Interlacken or perhaps Beograd-Trieste-Venezia-Verona-Milano.  Who could recite these names without experiencing a tug of excitement?  Who could glance at such an itinerary and not want to climb aboard?  (Sadly, this guide is no longer published or even on-line – they went out of business in 2013.)

This re-read made my travelers feet itchy.  Mr. Byrson travels with open eyes, a sense of adventure, child-like wonder and a marvelous sense of humor.  A required skill set for every traveler.

N.B.  Neither Here nor There is also educational, you’ll learn important facts about each country.  For example, did you know that Liechtenstein is the world’s largest producer of sausage skins and dentures?

N.B.2 Stay tuned, we’re planning a trip to Switzerland  …hmm perhaps this itinerary — Montreux-Zweisimmen-Spiez-Interlacken