AUTHOR: Bill Bryson
PUBLISHER: Harper Perennial
RATING
5/5 "Snogging a blonde Danish backpacker in Bangkok"; 4/5 "Soaking in an open-air hot spring in the Japanese alps"; 3/5 "Driving the Great Ocean Road in a rented car with two mates from uni"; 2/5 "A weekend in Singapore during the summer"; 1/5 "Crowds and bad fish at Mont St Michel"
SCORE: 4/5
Travelogues of Europe have been around since the Roman Empire, so if you want your book to attract even the smallest iota of attention, you've got to be either a fantastic writer, or have a startlingly original tale to tell. Bill Bryson knows how to write, and more importantly, how to write a travel journal utterly different from any you've read before.
Mr Bryson's secret is his discovery that, as any journalist will tell you, people aren't all that interested in travel or foreign parts; people are interested in people. And in Neither Here Nor There, the person Mr Bryson gives us is himself, a former newspaper journalist and editor with a taste for neoclassical architecture and draft beer, and a sense of humor that is caustic, expletive-laden, scatological, even prurient at times, but never less than screamingly, hyperventilatingly funny.
It certainly isn't the most complete guide to Europe out there. By his own admission, Mr Bryson's itinerary is impulsive and random rather than methodical. He bypasses Europe's second-largest and most bull-trampled nation, Spain, as well as virtually all of Central and Eastern Europe, though in fairness these countries still lay behind an Iron Curtain that was only just beginning to lift. His 1990 journey starts off in Hammerfest, Norway, to see the northern lights, then skips down to France, and meanders to Turkey via Germany, Sweden, Italy, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, among others.
This route breaks little new ground, though Mr Bryson assuredly deserves kudos for visiting the top of Norway in the depths of winter. He travels mostly by rail, but sets himself no gimmicky limitations, and isn't above jetting off somewhere if the weather proves unappealing. Others may try hiking the continent or roaming it on a unicycle, but Mr Bryson gets around fueled by beer and irritation.
Nor is the book especially informative regarding the things to see and do. Mr Bryson visits the requisite churches and museums, but rarely in elaborate detail, talks to the locals no more than necessary, and seems far more content to simply amble about the neighborhoods and parks and take in the atmosphere. The funniest parts of the book are Mr Bryson's frequent reminiscences of his childhood in Iowa, and of his two previous trips to Europe in 1972 and 1973. Otherwise, the energy of the book comes from Mr Bryson's catalog of complaints, discomforts and misadventures.
This is precisely what makes Neither Here Nor There such a great travel book. Mr Bryson completely strips away the romance of travel, and save Angelina Jolie, none of us look our best naked--especially not if we're still wearing our socks. In his almost masochistically honest account, you feel that Mr Bryson strikes closer to the actual experience of travel rather than the ideal; the frustrations and fatigue, the queues and queue-jumpers, rude waiters and cabbies, small hotel rooms and large restaurant bills. Readers looking for more genteel fare should try Paul Theroux or maybe the adaptations of Michael Palin's BBC voyages (I love the man, but his idea of interview technique is to say "Fantastic, great" to everything).
To be fair, Mr Bryson speaks almost rapturously of some places he visits, such as Copenhagen, Capri and Hamburg. But Mr Bryson the writer is at his best when Mr Bryson the traveler is at his worst. In lesser hands this would come across as mere whingeing, but it's never less than achingly funny to watch Mr Bryson wallow in his own misery.
By now the book is dated, of course, but in a way, this only adds to the enjoyment. Neither Here Nor There forms a neat snapshot of Europe at the end of both the millennium and the cold war. Mr Bryson talks of prices in francs and marks and lire, where now there is only the euro. It is sobering to read of Mr Bryson's stay in Sarajevo, knowing that two years later the city, along with the rest of Yugoslavia, would plunge into a horrific civil war that gave us the term "ethnic cleansing". His time in Sofia, Bulgaria, gives a hint as to why the Communist system collapsed.
His decision to end his "European" voyage in Istanbul raises an issue that is contentious once again. In 2006, Turkey's talks to join the European Union were once again frozen. Where does Europe begin, where does it end? What sets it apart as a distinct region? It's instructive to note how easily Mr Bryson moves about the continent despite knowing, at best, just one language. Neither Here Nor There suggests what binds Europeans together is their ability to embrace travelers to their nations and tenderly, gently, lift the traveler's cheques out of their jacket pockets.
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