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Bill Bryson's first travel book, The Lost Continent, was unanimously acclaimed as one of the funniest books in years. In Neither here Nor there he brings his unique brand of humour to bear on Europe as he shoulders his backpack, keeps a tight hold on his wallet, and journeys from Hamemrfest, the northernmost town on the continent, to istanbul on the cusp of Asia. Fluent in, oh, at least one language, he retraces his travels as a student twenty years before.
Whether braving the homicidal motorists of Paris, being robbed by gypsies in Florence, attempting not to order tripe and eyeballs in a German restaurant, window-shopping in the sex shops of the Reeperbahn or disputing his hotel bill in Copenhagen, Bryson takes in the sights, dissects the culture and illuminates each place and person with his hilariously caustic observations. He even goes to Liechtenstein.
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IN WINTER, Hammerfest is a thirty-hour ride by bus from Oslo, though why anyone would want to go there in winter is a question worth considering. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
This one was written in 1990, first published in 1992 and the edition on my bookshelf in 1998. I enjoyed reading this travelogue of his tour of some of the major cities of Europe, many of those mentioned which I have visited myself during the last forty years. Of those that I have not I think that Sofia in particular may well have changed beyond recognition, Eastern Europe having undergone the most changes in the last eighteen years.
Whilst one might not always agree with Bryson's viewpoint it is none the less an amusing read, though one must also accept that in some aspects it can seem very dated.
Certainly worth reading if you are at all interested in any of the places in Europe he writes about but remember it was written nearly twenty years ago now.
The basic style of a Bryson book is simple - get a train to a place, wander around aimlessly, check into an average hotel, wander round a bit more, sit in a pub on your own and go to bed. And yes, many people will say that's all there is to a Bryson book. I'd have to disagree with that though - what makes this book is the humour.. a strange combination of British sarcasm and American expectation make Bryson's commentary on the places he visits and the people he sees really rather good.
In this book Bryson decides it's high time he ventured beyond Britain and visited as much of Europe as he can. To this end, he starts in Norway although he manages to visit when it's permanently dark, returns to England before venturing away on a longer trip, taking in Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Rome, Florence (probably the funniest part of the book for me), before travelling further south-east towards Sofia and Istanbul.
If you're only going to read one Bill Bryson travel book, I'd probably recommend this one. Yes, there may be better travel writers, there may be funnier writers, but in terms of humorous travel writers I think Bryson is probably the best (although Peter Moore may come close).
He started off well, with a good amount of detail and good cheer and described the locations and people skillfully, but as it went on, you could feel him getting listless and this came through in his writing. I'd look up some of his other work (eg Notes from a Small Island) rather than this one.
There are some scenes in this book (for example the author's encounter with a deceptively steep hill at... Read more
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