‘Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe’ by Bill Bryson

Laughing is so cathartic. Take the worst time and find something to laugh about and, my God, you just can’t help but feel better. The science that says just putting a smile on your face, changing the arrangement of your facial muscles and thereby affecting your mood, is right on. Cool huh?

Bill Bryson never fails to make me smile. In fact, I laughed so hard at his description of his legs involuntarily propelling him down a Belgian hill before crumbling into a ditch, I was worried the neighbors would come check on me. And they are not close by.

John, if you were concerned, it’s OK now.

Thank God, Gary the mail carrier wasn’t near by either. He caught me in a big old mess of curlers and a face mask once and now looks nervous, rightly so, when he has to come to the door.Any way … (what’s a good yarn without digression?) … Neither Here Nor There is a collection of musings on Bryson’s travel through Europe in the late 80s and early 90s. He travels fearlessly around by his lonseome. He stops where he wants to and thinks nothing of jaunting off to the unknown alone.

For all his claims to be overweight and lazy, he doesn’t appear to be. He walks everywhere. Miles and miles. He sleeps twitching on trains, dines alone, chats up strangers. He rises early, he has little fear of the unknown. In truth, he comes by his humorous impressions by being one of the more brave, adventurous men I have come across. I truly admire his nerve. His self-effacing jokes are all the funnier for their irony. I too went alone to a movie in Amsterdaam and I was more scared than amused. I too spent a sleepless night on a Greek ferry and it was no picnic (probably because I was 12, but that’s another story.) He really impresses me.

He also jokes about his appetite* but really, anyone who walks straight up the mountain of Capri, while still smiling at nuns, is allowed to eat doughnuts with abandon. He presents a bumbling, self-flaggelistic, middle aged man, who is actually the definition of ‘Diamond in the Rough.’

Humor aside, but not too far off, Bryson is dead-on in his descriptions of the European countries he visits. By not beating around the proverbial bush, he paints a precise, honest picture of each country. Anyone who has ever been aimless in Bruges will appreciate his candor.Anyone who has feared for their life in an italian intersection will laugh out loud he/she reads, “You turn any street corner in Rome and it looks as if you have just missed a parking competition for blind people.”

Anyone who has enjoyed the German-speaking towns of Switzerland with names, “like someone talking with a mouthful of bread: Thun, Bulach, Plafeien,” et al will love him. Come on, Gstaad is more fun to say than to go to.

Every minute of a Bill Bryson book is a lesson. Fact and humor abound and I can quite truthfully recommend every single thing he has written.

*In A Stranger Here Myself, he has a chapter on the reckless joy of American junk food that is practically the pinnacle of humor as far as I am concerned.