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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

    Published by Random House UK Audio

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House UK Audio
    Release dateApr 1, 2010
    ISBN9781407083704
    Unavailable
    Neither Here, Nor There: Travels in Europe

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    Reviews for Neither Here, Nor There

    3.5/5

    31 ratings28 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Well written and intricate sense of humor. Often a little too snarky, Bill's criticism of some countries is excessive.

      Written in the 90s, it's a interesting comparison point for contemporary Europe.
    • 2/5
      Maybe I just wasn't in the mood for this one. I hesitated rating it since I stopped reading it, but since I read about 3/4 of it, I figured it was OK. Or at least justifiable.

      Bryson's writing is, as usual, whimsical. Every few pages I laughed out loud. But it seemed to lack unity. Without that, I found I just lost interest. I think I was hoping for something more Geography of Bliss or even more A Walk in the Woods, both of which seemed to have more of a unifying idea or lesson behind them. This one just kind of jumped around. I found myself wondering how his family put up with him being gone for so long with so little in the way of a plan.

      In the end, this book just didn't do it for me.

      But then, I've been very impatient with books lately, so it might not even be the book itself.
    • 5/5
      I read this as a patient in a Romanian hospital, and was crying because I was laughing so much! I've lived and travelled extensively all over the world, but most especially in Eastern and Western Europe, both before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Can only presume that those sour reviews were written by people who have travelled little, if at all, in Europe. If they ever had a sense of humour (vital for all travel adventures), it has clearly been by-passed.
    • 4/5
      Having lived in the Netherlands for ten years, I found this book amusing and interesting. I had experienced a lot of what I read or knew the areas quite well, as author Bill Bryson told his humorous tales.At first I wondered why he did this without his wife and then realized it was to gather information for the book. This choice to go alone probably gave us better insight on his travels, as it was about his adventures rather than a family experience. It would take me reams of paper to tell the best parts of this book, because it is all good, and funny. I don't laugh at many books but I had tears in my eyes with some of the exploits I read about. Even to buying souvenirs Mr. Bryson made it a amusing situation, such as buying crucifix corn- on- the- cob holders or a Musical Last Supper toilet paper holder from shops in the Vatican City. Equally amusing was his rendition of using the Italian-English phrases in Fodor's guide to Italy. Not to spoil your fun, I won't elaborate, but run out and buy this book, now in reprint form. While you are at it, buy several copies for gifts for those of your friends and relatives who want to, wanted to, or will travel to Europe. Bill Bryson's Neither Here Nor There is the perfect book for armchair traveling.
    • 5/5
      Possibly the best travel book I've read.
    • 4/5
      In this book, Bryson takes a journey through Europe that somewhat follows his original backpacking journey 20yrs prior. It is wonderful to see his reflections from then to now, as well as see his thoughts on new cities he hadn't previously gone too. Once again I was laughing out loud throughout the trip, all the while updating my list of places to go and things to see. A must read for those wanting to visit Europe.
    • 2/5
      I should have known better, after Bryson's abysmal book on Australia, which read as though it was written without leaving hotel rooms. In this, he at least gets out amongst people. One gets the impression he is just going through the motions for his book publisher; it lacks any read depth and the emphasis on stereotypes became tiresome. I had no doubts Bryson is a funny guy, but this is just lazy.
    • 3/5
      Yes, I did laugh out loud at times, but I was also surprised to notice that Bryson seems to be annoyed by more than a few things, and quite negative, too. Now I keep thinking whether that was the case with other books I have read, and I just cannot remember...?
    • 4/5
      Another lovely, and hilarious book by Bill Bryson. I read this whilst travelling, which is what I would suggest for anyone. You can share the frustrations, the joys, and even find yourself writing your own travel blog in an increasingly Brysonesque voice.
    • 3/5
      Not quitehis best, but still much more amusing and interesting than most other writers.
    • 5/5
      This was a funny book. Of course it was, it was Bill Bryson. I enjoyed it, but wondered how much things had changed in the time since he's been there until now. I think a lot has probably changed, all over Europe. Nevertheless, it was a joy to read and gave me some good ideas of places I'd like to visit someday. It also led me on to Philip Ziegler's "The Black Death," which he mentioned several times in the book. Bryson's a good summer read, but he can be quite intellectual too. A couple of the scenes made me laugh out loud, for example, waiting in a ticket booth line somewhere in Sweden. A must-read for Europhiles.
    • 5/5
      While not Bryson's strongest book, NHNT is a fun chronicle of his travels in Europe, from Norway to Italy. His recount of a visit to a dirty book store in Hamburg is funny enough to warrent the price of a book. This book is less about people and more about the places, which I think is why it falls a little short of the others. More like Notes from a Big Country than Notes from a Small Island. But there's one unique benefit -- we meet Katz, the guy who accompanies him on the Appalachian Trail some 25 or so years later. Read mroe about Katz in A Walk in the Woods.
    • 3/5
      Travelogue of Europe. At times funny, at times a bit uneventful, but it was an easy read and not boring. And Bill and I seem to be in agreement on those countries that we both visited.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 2/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      Bryson, as always, makes me laugh.
    • 5/5
      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 interestingguesses.”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 beenteaching 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 theunit. . . . 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.”
    • 4/5
      One of my first Bryson's -- love his comparison of the world pre and post the fall of Communism
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      Not the best Bill Bryson. It is a mildly amusing light read, ideal for an aeroplane trip.
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      Of course, being Bryson, it was hilarious in parts, especially Amsterdam and the train from Austria. Much more crude than his later stuff.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      Effervescent whistle stop tour through Europe. Bryson is always fun.
    • 4/5
      I've read a lot of Bryson now, and I have to admit that this isn't his best work. However, Bryson's best work is so great that this is still a marvellous little book, about the time he spent as a young man, travelling around Europe, and how he attempted to retrace his footsteps now, in maturity.
    • 3/5
      I like Bryson very much, but this must be his weakest book. It is a travelogue from his backpacking trip across Europe. He is retracing his steps, from Norway to Istanbul, from the journey he made with his friend Katz eighteen years earlier.Unfortunately, it is truly neither here, nor there. What we mostly learn about is where Bryson slept, had coffee and how many beers he had each night, and how expensive it all was. These irrelevant facts take up a disproportionate amount of text as opposed to the interesting historical, sightseeing and cultural remarks. This information is there as well, thank goodness, as otherwise it wouldn’t even be ‘neither here, nor there’, but ‘nowhere’.I enjoyed parts of it, had an occasional chuckle, but I wouldn’t have finished it, if I hadn’t read it by bits over a good few weeks.I don’t think I can really recommend it.
    • 4/5
      I loved it. Biting sarcasm throughout. Bryson is my hero. Those who complain about his "ignorance" have clearly missed the point and should stick to Fodors or Frommers if they're looking for a travel book.
    • 3/5
      I really like Bryson, but I'm not as wild about hearing him read his own stuff. Plus, this was an abridged recording, and I prefer unabridged.