Bill Bryson is a funny guy and this book about his re-treacing of his first trip to Europe made me laugh out loud more than once. He shows his various stops on the continent warts and all - even poking fun at himself. This book is a joy for an arm-chair traveler. ( )

I had high expectations of Bill Bryson. I was expecting a witty and intelligent commentary loaded with depth, philosophy, and style. I was disappointed.

Although brief moments stood out in this book, I don't find him to be an intriguing person. He's a homebody from Iowa that seems to only enjoy himself when he is comfortable, when things are simple, and when there's CNN in every hotel room he goes to.

Most frustratingly, his broad generalizations of places and people in Europe based on a couple bad experiences lack any objectivity that an otherwise intelligent person might have. Everything sucked or everything was awesome.

His flashbacks to his time traveling with Katz were the fun parts, because they seemed the most real to me. But his traveling as a mature adult seemed to cater to a lowest common denominator of broad pop culture intelligence, reinforcing xenophobic stereotypes that the average American has of Europeans, most of which were dead wrong, but probably sell a lot of books. ( )

Of course, being Bryson, it was hilarious in parts, especially Amsterdam and the train from Austria. Much more crude than his later stuff. ( )

want to travel

Bryson, as always, makes me laugh. ( )

Hier kam der 'Amerikaner' in Bill Bryson etwas durch. In nur sehr wenigen Tagen vom Nordkap bis in den tiefen Süden zu reisen, das macht doch kein normaler Europäer, oder?

Leider muss ich zugeben: Ein normaler Amerikaner reist auch nicht in 3 Wochen von San Diego nach Vancouver und zurück, mit Abstechern in Yellowstone und Grand Canyon... ;-)

Zurück zum Buch: Eine nette Lektüre für Europa... ( )

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 can’t 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 can’t 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 can’t read anything. You have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work. . . . Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting
guesses.”

At the Arc de Triomphe, some thirteen streets come together. “Can you imagine? I mean to say, here you have a city with the world’s 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 Kellogg’s 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 been
teaching 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. Waldheim’s 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 let’s be fair again – they accounted for no more than one third of the city’s 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. Let’s give the man a break. I mean to say, when the Sturmabteilung, or stormtroopers, burned down forty-two of Vienna’s forty three synagogues during Kristallnacht, Waldheim did wait a whole week before joining the
unit. . . . 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.” ( )

One of my first Bryson's -- love his comparison of the world pre and post the fall of Communism ( )

Bryson's Euro culture shock tour; so funny, so readable. ( )

Love this author's books - I always end up crying with laughter.

Back Cover Blurb:
In this book, Bryson retraces a journey he took two decades earlier - from Norway to Istanbul - in the company of his friend Katz. His wit is as razor sharp as ever. If you've been there, it will all seem very familiar. If not you'll want to go!! ( )

Entertaining, quick read. Nor Bryson's best, but funny. ( )

Having read this book a second time over, I can't help but think that I found it a lot funnier the first time some several years ago.

Bryson's retracing of his youthful trek across Europe serves to highlight many of the cultural oddities that abound in such a cramped space with so many different languages and peoples. However, compared to my own experiences in Europe, Bryson seems to have had alarmingly bad luck throughout most of his trip, and encountered unhelpful and indifferent tourist advisors, ticket office attendents, hotel concierges, and waiters at almost every points of his journey.

Compared to his other books, this one is a much weaker offering, and is likely to remain unread forevermore in my collection. ( )

Pros: extremely funny as usual; the Europe context and the young minds of the travelers help
Cons: too brief sometimes; give the feeling of travel for the sake of travel.. ( )

Bijzonder grappig, om te blijven herlezen ! ( )

I like travel essays a lot, and have read a good few. I've read three of Bryson's other books, and I had a rollicking good time with each of them. This book was a bit different. Yes, I had fun, and Bryson's sense of humor was ever present, but this book almost seemed like a step by step of his journey across Europe, which I suppose it was. At times it seemed repetitive, but overall it was enjoyable enough, and somewhat enlightening at points. ( )

Not the best Bill Bryson. It is a mildly amusing light read, ideal for an aeroplane trip. ( )

Certainly not as laugh-out-loud funny as some of his other books, but an entertaining read for anyone who has an interest in travel. ( )

Preliminary review:

Fairly amusing in parts (and I am hard to amuse).
So far I have mostly agreed with his assessments of cities that I have also visited.

Of course, being Bryson, it was hilarious in parts, especially Amsterdam and the train from Austria. Much more crude than his later stuff. ( )

http://funkywoodjam.blogspot.com/2007... ( )

I believe this was the first book of Bryson that I've read. And, I have to say that his writing is very witty and fun to read. I bought this to read on my first trip to Eastern Europe. Having read this one, I would like to read more of his stuff. ( )

Effervescent whistle stop tour through Europe. Bryson is always fun. ( )

An overweight, slightly macho, pretend-stupid American decides he likes Europe (so quaint) and travels. He probably laughed about his own jokes more than anyone else - or maybe picked them up from others. In any case, it seems that his entire journey is but a vehicle to hang his one-liners, preconceptions and whitty-whimsical remarks on. Plain. Sometimes a bit funny. Nothing deep.

This is a sad little book, definitely not up to the standard of other Bryson works. It is written with little knowledge of the countries he visits, little or no respect of the people and customs he meets and with the kind of cheap, mean humour that borders on the insulting. This must certainly represent the lowest point of Bryson's career as a writer. Avoid at all cost. ( )