Bryson writes hysterical travel books. In this one he sets out to re-create a backpacking trip of Europe he made during the seventies when he was twenty. His descriptions of people and places will have you falling out of your chair. The beer he is offered in Belgium, for example, defies his palate. He just cant associate the taste with any previous experience, but finally decides it puts him in mind of a very large urine sample, possibly from a circus animal. (He should have stuck with Coca-Cola, nicht wahr, Wendell?) Bryson has truly captured some of the giddy enjoyment that I experience when traveling in a foreign country where one does not speak the language. I cant think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You cant read anything. You have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work. . . . Your whole existence becomes a series of interestingguesses.At the Arc de Triomphe, some thirteen streets come together. Can you imagine? I mean to say, here you have a city with the worlds most pathologically aggressive drivers -- who in other circumstances would be given injections of valium from syringes the size of basketball jumps and confined to their beds with leather straps -- and you give them an open space where they can all go in any of thirteen directions at once. Is that asking for trouble or what?Interspersed are salient comments about traveling on European trains. There is no scope for privacy and of course there is nothing like being trapped in a train compartment on a long journey to bring all those unassuageable little frailties of the human body crowding to the front of your mind the withheld fart, the three and a half square yards of boxer shorts that have somehow become concertinaed between your buttocks, the Kelloggs corn flake that is unaccountably lodged deep in your left nostril,. . .and rude comments about the Swiss: What do you call a gathering of boring people in Switzerland? Zurich. He reveals some funny stories about himself. I had no gift for woodworking. Everyone else in the class was building things like cedar chests and oceangoing boats and getting to play with dangerous and noisy power tools, but I had to sit at the Basics Table with Tubby Tucker and a kid who was so stupid that I don't think we ever learned his name. We just called him 'Drooler.' The three of us weren't allowed anything more dangerous than sandpaper and Elmer's Glue, so we would sit week after week making little nothings out of offcuts, except for Drooler, who would just eat the glue. Mr. Dreck never missed a chance to humiliate me. 'And what is this?' he would say, seizing some mangled block of wood on which I had been laboring for the last twenty-seven weeks and holding it aloft for the class to titter at. 'I've beenteaching shop for sixteen years, Mr. Bryson, and I have to say this is the worst beveled edge I've ever seen.' He held up a birdhouse of mine once and it just collapsed in his hands. The class roared. Tubby Tucker laughed so hard that he almost choked. He laughed for twenty minutes, even when I whispered to him across the table that if he didn't stop it I would bevel his testicles."It used to be -- not as common now as formerly -- that each public washroom had an attendant whose job it was to keep everything clean, and you were expected to drop in some change for his or her income. The sex of the attendant was irrelevant to the sex of the washroom and Bryson had difficulty getting used to the idea of some cleaning lady watching him urinate to make sure he didn't "dribble on the tiles or pocket any of the urinal cakes. It is hard enough to pee when you are aware that someone's eyes are on you, but when you fear that at any moment you will be felled by a rabbit chop to the kidneys for taking too much time, you seize up altogether. You couldn't have cleared my system with Drano. So eventually I would zip up and return unrelieved to the table [in the restaurant:], and spend the night back at the hotel doing a series of Niagara Falls impressions."Bryson does not mince words, and his perspective on former Austrian president Waldheim echoes mine but is perhaps more trenchant. I fully accept Dr. Waldheims explanation that when he saw forty thousand Jews being loaded onto cattle trucks at Salonika, he genuinely believed they were being sent to the seaside for a holiday. For the sake of fairness, I should point out that Waldheim insists he never even knew that the Jews of Salonika were being shipped off to Auschwitz. And lets be fair again they accounted for no more than one third of the citys entire population (italics theirs), and it is of course entirely plausible that a high-ranking Nazi officer in the district could have been unaware of what was happening within his area of command. Lets give the man a break. I mean to say, when the Sturmabteilung, or stormtroopers, burned down forty-two of Viennas forty three synagogues during Kristallnacht, Waldheim did wait a whole week before joining theunit. . . . Christ, the man was practically a resistance hero. . . .Austrians should be proud of him and proud of themselves for having the courage to stand up to world opinion and elect a man of his caliber, overlooking the fact that he is a pathological liar. . .that he has a past so mired in mis-truths that no one but he knows what he has done. It takes a special kind of people to stand behind a man like that.

You know the canonical essay question, "If you could meet anyone in history, who would it be?" My answer is Bill Bryson. He's a treasure. I'd love to watch him write. I imagine him tugging scraps of paper from him pockets, pawing through notes, scribbling a few sentences through the haze of pipe smoke, and chuckling a bit before pulling out more notes. He's hilarious. He commands the English language like Pele commands a soccer ball, etching metaphors that resonate and wonder why you didn't think of it first.

Neither Here, Nor There made me laugh-out-loud during a time I needed it the most, so thank you Mr Bryson! I had previously only read one Bill Bryson book - Down Under, while in school. My only recollection of that was Bryson's ability to describe Australians perfectly and I got an A on the related essay.In Neither Here, Nor There, Bryson loosely retraces his journey across Europe from years earlier, beginning up in Norway and finishing down in Istanbul. Ever since watching the film adaptation of his book, A Walk In The Woods, I cant help but imagining Bryson as Robert Redford, instead of, well, Bill Bryson.I regularly found myself Googling these European places and wanting to find out more. His descriptions were beautifully written (Northern Lights, Capri, Austria especially) and often made me feel like I was standing there too. This was first published in 1991 and Europe in 2017 is a very different place. Neither Here, Nor There never felt too outdated though; and on the occasions it wandered into that territory, it came across as more like a beautiful snapshot of a bygone era, instead of outdatedness. The chapter on Bulgaria was a real-opener in regards to this.Sure, sometimes Bryson will go off on a ramble that doesnt quite work or isnt quite funny. More often than not though, he gives hilarious insights into encounters with strangers, the stereotypes of a country or just complains in a laugh-inducing way. Occasionally, he comes across as a loud, obnoxious asshole American tourist, but I also feel he is somewhat self-aware of this and embraces the fact hes a prick.There is something incredibly comforting and cosy about reading a Bill Bryson book. Perhaps its the way he writes or observes the world around him, perhaps because its as close to travel you can get from the comfort of your own couch or bed. If you find yourself sharing anecdotes from a book with friends, then its probably a good sign of a quality read. This happened to me numerous times; whether it be laughing hysterically with my Italian friend as she agreed with Italian stereotypes or asking my Mum about her 1975 European travels to places mentioned in the book. The facts and historical anecdotes really brought to life many of the places Bryson visited. Some readers have mentioned that these are Bryson trademarks which are virtually missing from Neither Here Nor There. To a reader not overly accustomed to his work, I didnt notice this at all. One of my favourites was: Liechtensteins last military engagement was in 1866, when it sent eighty men to fight against the Italians. Nobody was killed. In fact youre going to like this they came back with eighty-one men, because they made a friend along the way.I was happy Brysons old mate, Stephen Katz, got a few mentions too these were always laugh-out-loud funny and kind of made me wish Katz had been accompanying him on this adventure too - though I feel only one of them wouldve survived! A small downside was the final chapter, Istanbul. After so long following Brysons journey across Europe it just seemed to end a bit too abruptly.I now have the urge to wander aimlessly around a city I dont know, with this book inspiring me to visit Europe more than ever! Neither Here, Nor There is the best travel book Ive read and has made me want to read more of Brysons work. Bring on some long train journeys, dodgy gypsies and epic European scenery!

I am a fan of Bill Bryson's. Like so many of his other books, this book did not disappoint me. Occasionally his humor is a bit over-the-top, but I love it anyway!When Bill Bryson was in college he toured Europe with his friend Stephen Katz. In this book, Bryson is much older, married with kids, and follows in basically the same footsteps, in a sense trying to recreate his earlier tour. He is alone this time, going from Scandinavia to Turkey, mostly by train and bus.Bryson makes the trip in order re-familiarize himself with the places and cultures of the countries he visits. He has no reservations about telling you what he really thinks. And his remarks are usually steeped in humor; he knows how to turn lemons into lemonade.What did I learn from this book? Well, in the future I will always prefer American Express travelers checks to those from Visa. I will avoid Austria. I will avoid gypsies, especially the kids. Communism is an economic system to avoid.This book kept me entertained; most definitely! And I definitely recommend the audiobook. Bill Bryson himself narrates his book, and he is great! He does the various accents with zest and his humor, sarcasm and wit come through with flying colors in the audiobook.

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