Transportation woes, crummy customer service, and pick-pocketing are just bumps in the road to Bill Bryson. He does his fair share of complaining but without fail he recognizes the beauty in each European city he visits. In Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe, a middle-aged Bryson travels through Europe retracing the exact route he took in the 1970s with his friend Stephen Katz, both twenty-somethings fresh out of college.
Yes, sleeping all day in cheap hostels and waking up just in time for a late lunch and a night out may have been ideal to a 21-year-old Bryson during his first trip through Europe, but now in his mid-life he complains that his hotel rooms don’t have enough light and that no one can ever him help him buy a bus ticket or replace stolen traveler’s checks without senseless questions and wasting time.
Despite the obstacles Bryson realizes that even though he has changed, Europe has not and he can convey how he feels about discovering a new city through a single paragraph, my favorite in the book:
“Is there anything, apart from a really good chocolate cream pie and receiving a large unexpected check in the mail, to beat finding yourself at large in a foreign city on a fair spring evening, loafing along unfamiliar streets in the long shadows of a lazy sunset, pausing to gaze in shop windows or at some lovely church or lovely square or tranquil stretch of quayside, hesitating at street corners to decide whether that cheerful and homey restaurant you will remember fondly for years is likely to lie down this street or that one? I just love it. I could spend my life arriving each evening in a new city.”
Bryson felt all of this simply by walking along a street in Copenhagen on his way to dinner and this was after he struggled to find a decent hotel. You may grow tired of Bryson’s complaints but they will soon be forgotten once you read about his perfect evenings, like the one quoted above, spent in cities such as Capri, Belgium, Brussels, and Hamburg. Bryson remembers what is most important while traveling and that is to sit down and enjoy the view and the people. I think that’s good advice to remember the next time you are in Europe should mishaps distract you.
<a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0380713802?ie=UTF8&tag=wanderbooklu-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0380713802″>Available on Amazon</a><img src=”http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wanderbooklu-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0380713802″ width=”1″ height=”1″ border=”0″ alt=”” style=”border:none !important; margin:0px !important;” />
If you would like to read more of my travel book reviews, don’t forget to subscribe to this blog via e-mail or the RSS Feed.