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Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe
Unavailable
Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe
Unavailable
Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe
Audiobook (abridged)5 hours

Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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About this audiobook

Bryson brings his unique brand of humour to travel writing as he shoulders his backpack, keeps a tight hold on his wallet and heads for Europe. Travelling with Stephen Katz-also his wonderful sidekick in A Walk in the Woods-he wanders from Hammerfest in the far north, to Istanbul on the cusp of Asia. As he makes his way round this incredibly varied continent, he retraces his travels as a student twenty years before with caustic hilarity.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 4, 2000
ISBN9780553752915
Unavailable
Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe

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Rating: 3.7406789480692413 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

1,502 ratings65 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is an interesting travelogue, with Bryson retracing the journey he had made about 15 years prior with a friend of his. This time, he goes solo.As travelogues go, this is entertaining, chuck full of humorous anecdotes, and some useful information. After a while, though, you get the feeling that Bryson is something of a curmudgeon, seeing some of the bad in most things, and quick to anticipate misfortune. This might be a useful way to go about life - if you anticipate the bad, when good happens (even a little good) you appreciate it all the more. But it's an unfortunate way to write something that should be pleasant.Part of the real problem here is that Bryson takes a whirlwind tour of Europe in a couple of weeks - France, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Italy, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Austria, Germany, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey. The only time he flew during the trip (apparently) was from Norway to Italy. Everything else is by train or bus. By the time he gets to his final destination he is clearly tired, worn out, unhappy, and certainly in no frame of mind to deal with the apparent confusion that is Istanbul.Bryson can be a very entertaining writer - he should learn to take it easy when travelling. You can't enjoy yourself if you're spending half your time in train stations queueing up to buy tickets. From people who don't (or won't) speak English.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I love travel books and I can't believe it has taken me so many years to get around to reading this one! What a great trip, the odd flight here and there, but mainly place to place by train all over Europe. Bill Bryson was recreating a trip in this book that he had first experienced as a student, with his friend Katz. His observations include the hotels he stays in, what to see in different towns and cities as you wander around and what the restaurants and museums are like. It was a four star read, not five star for me purely because it was dated. This is no fault of the author - the book was first published twenty three years ago! But I did wonder whether some of the observations are still accurate - there were two oppostite views which stood out for me. One was the description of Rome - 'the Romans will decorate it with litter - an empty cigatette packet, a wedge of half eaten pizza, twenty-seven cigarette butts, half an ice-cream cone with an ooze of ice-cream emerging from the bottom, danced on by a delirium of flies, an oily tin of sardines, a tattered newspaper and something truly unexpected, like a tailor's dummy or a dead goat'. I was in Rome a couple of years ago and cannot relate to this image of rubbish in the streets - hopefully this means the city is a cleaner, tidier place now! However, the observation I agreed with wholeheartedly was this one about Liechtenstein - 'restaurants were thin on the ground and either very expensive or discouragingly empty. Vaduz is so small that if you walk for fifteen minutes in any direction, you are deep in the country. It occurred to me that there is no reason to go to Liechtenstein except to say you have been there'. Spot on! We went last year and came to exactly the same conclusion.It would be fascinating, I think, if Bill Bryson were to recreate this trip for a third time and republish this book with an update. The sections on Yugoslavia and Sofia would be very obviously different but I wonder what else would change - the ease of ticket bookings given the availability of mobile access/wifi would undoubtedly be something that would have to be significant.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Well written, but I found his attitude toward travelling off-putting. The expectation that everywhere else should be exactly as convenient as home permeated the writing.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Funny enough but also superficial and a bit too easy. Bryson is a real tourist and not a very well informed one at that. He doesn't really get involved in local life. Expect a good laugh but little insight.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Bill Bryson is the king of travel writing, with a turn of phrase that sticks in the memory long after reading. "Neither here nor there" has Bryson reminiscing about the time he spent travelling around Europe as a young man and then recounting his more recent experience around Europe.One of the highlights of "Neither here nor there" is the introduction of Bryson's friend Stephen Katz, his travelling companion from days of yore. Katz makes a number of appearances throughout Bryson's oeuvre and I'm pleased to say that after I told my then girlfriend that Bryson's travel companion was Stephen Katz, she though Bryson was travelling around Europe with Cat Stevens, which I have to admit would be pretty cool.Bryson has a gift of digging up obscure facts about the places he visits and while you have no idea whether television hosts in Sweden are forever being caught picking their nose on air, you enjoy reading about it nonetheless.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    No indication in this whingeing, whiney, sweary mess of tired stereotypes that the author would go on to be a fabulous, amusing and clever travel writer.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A pleasure - Bryson's apt observations and low-key humour are such fun to read, and it's great to get his perspective on places in Europe that we have been - and others we haven't.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Another laugh-out-loud travel book from Bill Bryson.This one has him travelling through Europe around 1989/90. While I loved his humour, and enjoyed his travel commentary, perhaps the most striking aspect of the book was the changes in how we travel over the last 25 years.Bryson arrives at train stations in new countries and heads off to the travel bureau to find a hotel. No advance bookings by Internet; no AirBnB, no capacity to research and compare prices and facilities. It truly was a different world.Read Sept 2017
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Bryson simultaneously complains and laughs about his travel experiences. Like many tourists, he is looking for his impression of what a place should be like, and naturally never finds it. Still, it was entertaining but not one of his best.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Bill Bryson is such a joy to read. In particular, his travelogues bring out his curmudgeonly voice and dry, honest viewpoint on his environs. This is no sunny, city-sponsored assessment of the local tourist spots. No, he dishes on the homicidal drivers of Paris and Rome--and the different tactics involved--and the miserable opulence of Milan and the impatient wait for persnickety northern lights in Norway. He underwent his travels in 1990, with the book published in 1993, so he definitely captured the mood of a particular time--especially in Yugoslavia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. I can't help but wonder how some of his commentary on other places and people holds up. Certainly, some of the language is dated, and must be regarded within the context of the time.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I never really liked reading travelogues by Bill Bryson and this didnt change that opinion. I listened to this because Im planning a trip to Europe. Humorous at times but not very informative for someone planning a trip. Except here you learn that in all Europe Sofia in Bulgaria has the most beautiful women.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Audiobook read by William Roberts Subtitle: Travels in EuropeFirst published in 1993, this is not aged well. Bryson had fond memories of his youthful adventures when he backpacked around Europe, one summer solo and the next with his friend, Katz. He attempted to re-create those magical summers, though this time having traveler’s checques, a travel agent, and full-service (mostly) hotels. I’ve read several of Bryson’s books and found some of them hugely entertaining. But not this one. He seems far too snide and complaining, the “Ugly American” come to life. Now, there are a few interesting and engaging scenarios when he’s not being a pain-in-the-a** complainer, and for that I give him two stars. The audiobook is read by William Roberts, who, if possible, makes Bryson sound like even more of whiner than he is in print. There is also an Abridge audiobook, read by Bryson himself. I wonder if I would have enjoyed that more …. I guess that would depend on whether he cut the complaining part in favor of the nicer interludes, or vice versa. But I’m not going to bother to find out myself.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Pro: a snapshot of Europe in the early 90s. Traveling on your own on a budget can have a lot of mundane discomfort, and it’s good to have a reminder that a lot of it won’t be joie de vivre. That Bryson is an Iowan transplanted to Little England probably sharpens the discomfort perceptions. As someone who dreads traveling, much of it rings true.Con. Next to traveling, I dislike those get-togethers with neighbors, friends, relatives etc. for interminable slide shows of their trip to wherever, with pictures of said neighbors etc., with a commentary about how awful the prices are, other peoples’ body odor and so forth. All the good things are given clichéd raves, and the slides of vistas and other beauties are blocked out by the families posing before them. Even worse if the commentator is a wannabe comedian of snark with the sensibility of Philip Larkin. These unpleasant memories were summoned up again by Bryson’s book. Lately, much of this has migrated to social media, so now you can lie about scrolling through the selfies. Also, could use more detail on the meals, and it’s a major disappointment that he seems to prefer coke (the beverage) to wine at the many bistros he visits.Alternatives. For European travel, I would recommend Patrick Leigh-Fermor’s A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water. This is a walking tour of Europe pre-WW II, beautiful writing. Bryson pads the rather uneventful log of his trip with flashbacks to his youthful journey through Europe with his friend Katz. For travel combined with a memoir of the earlier trip, look into Paul Theroux’s Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, where he retraces the route used as the basis for his classic The Great Railway Bazaar.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Neither Here Nor There: Travels In Europe (1992) by Bill Bryson. This is one of Mr. Bryson’s earlier books. Herein he attempts to recapture some of the magic and delight he had 20 years before when he and his pal Steve Katz ventured around Europe just after high school, their hippie tour as it were. This time Bryson is alone, Katz is recalled in some reflections of times past, and Mr. Bryson’s family is back home in England abiding his whimsy.Over a 4 month period he visits more than 20 different cities to various degrees of experience. He opens with a trip to the Arctic clime of Hammerfest in the far, far north of Norway in search of the Northern Lights add ends in Istanbul looking longingly across the Bosphorus toward the mystery that is Asia. Between he marvels at city parks and grand vistas of mountains or waterways, takes great pleasure in finding a good cafe with great beer or coffee, picks up a few great meals whereas the majority of his dining just provide sustenance, and meets with many, many, many bored autocrats whose main function is to impede his pleasure.Be it Paris or Rome, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland, Germany or Yugoslavia, his humor shines through. There are many great insights into places to go and things to see and do, but I was left with the overall feeling that the trip wasn’t worth the hassle. It seems the greatest impediment to a tourist having a great time traveling, is, well, all the tourists traveling trying to have a good time. Every place worth seeing is sought out by thousands of sightseers from around the globe making the smaller cities and towns jam packed with humanity. The locals accept this crush as a necessary evil but by and large they don’t like it, thus making many a surly attitude toward the self-important foreigner part of the local decor.And this was in 1992. Think how it is 30 years later. I love watching the Rick Steve’s tours of Europe, but I can’t but feel that unless you have a camera crew in tow, you won’t get treated as genially as he doesAlthough well written with the kind of humorous insight he is known for, this book left me feeling I would rather stay here than go there.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This was the one Bill Bryson travelogue I've been most looking forward to hearing since I've never yet not loved every place I've been in Europe.  So of course it stands to reason it's the one I enjoyed the least. Let me start by saying that the narrator, William Roberts, does an excellent job.  He adds life and personality to the narration so the you often forget he's reading a book. Neither Here Nor There is obviously one of Bryson's earlier works, written when he was younger and apparently not at all concerned that he might give readers the impression that he aspired to becoming a modern day Benny Hill.  It's definitely rawer in language and cruder in thought that any of his other work I've read to date.  It didn't offend me, but I found it jarring after reading his later works where he's a kinder, more subtle, more thoughtful writer. Overall, I enjoyed the listen, but as the places he loved are places already on my list and the places he did not love were places I've never been interested in (except Amsterdam - how do you not love Amsterdam?!?!), I didn't take anything away from this one beyond the knowledge that Bill Bryson's internal, younger self was a bit of a letch.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Funny, funny book about his trip across Europe in the early 90's. My favorite line from the book is

    "tourism is. You fly off to a strange land, eagerly abandoning all the comforts of home and then expend vast quantities of time and money in a largely futile effort to recapture the comforts you wouldn’t have lost if you hadn’t left home in the first place.”



    What sums up a travel book better.

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    For a book about a road trip in the 2016 Reading Challenge, I chose a road trip in Europe.Synopsis: Bill travels around Europe recreating a trip he took in his early 20s. He writes about his experiences and reminisces about his earlier trip.Review: This was in interesting book to read since I'd been to many of the places he visited. The book was fun in that the author related some highly entertaining events while commenting on the culture of a particular country. Even though it's a bit dated, it's got good information about traveling in Europe.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I generally don't rate books unless I finish them, but after reading other reviews I do believe I got far enough in to be able to judge this. Here's Bryson wittily whining again - sharing little bits of interesting insights into bits of Europe amongst lots of boring stuff about him and his inability to admit he'd have a lot less to whine about if he planned ahead just a little bit. A line of Americans for the Louvre!? Really?! Who'd've thunk!!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Look, I enjoy Bill Bryson’s writing quite a lot. The first Bryson book I ever read was Notes from a Small Island (1995), an account of an American man’s travels around Great Britain. I remember finding it ripsnortingly funny at the time, and also on a subsequent re-read a few years later. I went on to enjoy quite a few of his other humorous travelogues over the years, as well as his memoir, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006).So over the past few years I’ve found more enjoyment in his more straightforward histories, such as At Home: A Short History of Private Life and One Summer: America, 1927(2010 and 2013, respectively). But when I found Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe (1992) forgotten on my bookshelves, I decided to give it a try before donating it to the library book sale.Neither Here nor There has some funny passages, to be sure. The book opens with Bryson’s nearly futile quest to see the Northern Lights in the far north of Norway without freezing to death in the process. But other sections are a little too freighted with an unattractive provincialism, as when he disparages a Swedish clerk in a train station for not speaking English, apparently forgetting that he is the one visiting her country who did not bother to learn even the most rudimentary Swedish phrases to ease his travels.So, yeah. If you’ve enjoyed Bryson’s other travelogues and don’t find them to be distastefully xenophobic, I suspect you’ll enjoy this one as well. The themes here are well established in his other work; only the names and places have changed.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    nonfiction/travel-humor
    you have to take everything with a fistful of salt; Bryson is prone to hyperbole (most often at the expense of other people, but he also makes a buffoon out of himself on a regular basis).
    I occasionally get tired of his tongue-in-cheek, self-centered, self-righteous perspective, but mostly he is fairly funny most of the time.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I liked it, but it got old. By the time he got to Bulgaria I was wishing he would cut it short and go home.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I loved aloud continually.. great travelogue and very human experiences.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Started this book awhile ago but never finished it. Restarted it this past week and was amused to find that the first 3rd of the book covered almost the exact route we took last year to Europe. Made the imagery more vivid being able to visualize the places talked about. Also was interesting to note changes that have happened in Europe since this was written in 1991.
    Yugoslavia anyone?? Amusing stories, fun read even when I completely disagreed with his assessment of a city.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A charming book that talks about a fun adventure through Europe with some good laughs along the way. Although the book suffers from a lack of a common theme/point, and Bryson has a tendency to whine a lot, the book can be highly entertaining and as long as you don't take it too seriously, it's a fun read for just about any traveler.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I think I'm about done with Bryson's travel books. Every time I get the urge to try one, I end up feeling the same way about it: there are a few funny moments, but they're so well hidden amongst the constant complaining as to make them hardly worth seeking out. You've got the time, resources, &c. to travel all around Europe and yet you spend far more time kvetching about the food, the hotels, the lines, the minor travel kerfuffles than on anything else? C'mon. Enough's enough - no more of these for me.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I like this but didn't love it.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Bryson's Neither Here nor There takes you on an adventure from the coldly beautiful Hammerfest, Norway to the cafes of Paris, onward to Belgium and Germany, meanders through the crowded, chaotic streets of Italy, the stern cities of Switzerland, and even into the exotic markets of Istanbul.

    With his usual dry wit and personal anecdotes regarding the locals, the local food, and the local highway robbery of hotel rates, Bryson spends his time regarding the landscape with either pleasure (Italy, one finds, is impossible to love) or mild disdain (in Austria's case, the mild is removed).

    There is a line that struck me as especially poignant, not least because it is a recurring lament in Bryson's works: "We used to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls" (105). His vitriol against city planners who spend pittance on great works of art that cannot be replaced but bestow lavish amounts of money on commercial districts usually inclines me to sympathy, though I have to admit some discomfort when he did the same to the poverty-stricken area of Sofia. Though he makes a few perfunctory motions to the people who live there and who benefit from such capitalism, he openly bemoans that the beautiful city he once visited has disappeared. Well, yes, I'm sure it has, but that is a small price to pay for people being able to eat things not bought out of unmarked tin cans.

    It is pleasing, however, to note where our perceptions are right - and wrong. Let's be honest: we have stereotypes of each country, to some extent, built from scraps of news, film, and stories. France, for instance, is filled with people who are unconscionably rude (Bryson does not deny this, and, indeed, even finds it charming in its own way). Switzerland is peaceful, clean, and scarily efficient in a way that befits a country known - to be frank - for its watches and tiny knives. Even Italy, with its dreamers and romantics live up to the ideal.

    Happily, our perceptions may be accurate to some extent, but can never encompass the full spectrum of people - just as not every American chows down on hamburgers while watching reality tv shows, there is a wealth of diversity to be found in abundance throughout the world, and Bryson offers a small glimpse at this happy truth.

    There is nothing better than personal experience, but in the meantime, the second best is to read Bryson's adventures.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Based on Brysons' travels around europe, slightly better than The Lost Continent' but still left me wanting more.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    As a collector of travel literature, I have been aware of Bryson for years. I have avoided buying his books, however, based on a presumption that they were rather shallow, albeit humorous. I broke down and finally bought this as my first. My presumptions wee correct.Bryson had toured Europe as a young man in the early 70s with a friend. Years later he attempts to reprise that trip by himself. The book alternates in time between the two journeys. Bryson is funny, almost relentlessly so. He does manage some true wit, but you have to suffer a lot of potty humor in the meantime. He does not dwell much on the history, culture or cuisine of the places he visits. He revels in his linguistic ignorance. Much of the book is spent on humorous encounters with locals and observations based on obvious cultural stereotypes.As a traveler, Bryson is basically a curmudgeon. In this respect he is like Paul Theroux. Theroux, however, writes with intelligence and insight. Bryson reaches for the obvious joke. Bryson writes well and is entertaining; however, reading him is like eating fast food.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I’ve read a few of Bryson’s books, and like those, this didn't disappoint and I found myself laughing out loud on more than one occasion! His books are so enjoyable and so easy to read - reading him is like putting on a pair of comfy slippers or having a chat with a mate over a pint and a packet of pork scratchings!

    This one covers his travels around Europe – a journey almost entirely undertaken on public transport. From Denmark (at a time of year when it was dark nearly all the time) to Sofia, with various stops in between, Bryson describes his experiences with his usual touch of humour. Sure, it’s a little dated now, and some of his stereotyping can seem a little near the mark, but I don’t think Bryson intends to be insulting and if one reads with a large pinch of salt then this is a very enjoyable book!