Bill Bryson

This is not the first Bill Bryson book I have read but it's the first I've reviewed and I loved it. By the very nature of human psychology it's difficult to sit on your own somewhere reading a book and laugh out loud. Anyone within range will think that you are just laughing to make them jealous or that you are a lunatic since no book could be that funny or that you're a pseud: the kind of person who used to walk around a campus with a hard back edition of Lord of the rings under your arm.

A few years ago I read Notes from a small island and followed that fairly swiftly by Notes from a big country. I liked them both but thought small was much better than big: however, I've got a most memorable quote from big, how can I hep yew?; but no memorable quote from small. Spooky!

Anyway, Neither here nor there is a cracker. I really, genuinely did burst out laughing whilst reading this book. I really, genuinely did have tears rolling down my face too. I've marked a few passages in the margins and I hope anyone who reads this copy (since I borrowed it) doesn't mind me pointing out the winners!

In brief, Bryson goes off on a jolly around Europe to relive part of his youth and to find himself (I think). Bryson went to Hammerfest (sounds like a DIY competition doesn't it!) and Oslo and Aachen and Liechtenstein and Sofia ... all the hot spots of the continent! OK, so he went to Amsterdam, Paris, Vienna and Rome and a few other hot spots as well!

Bryson reports the results of a survey of British (?) executives who were asked to name the three things they despised most in the whole universe. The report claimed that the three most despised things were garden gnomes, fuzzy (he meant fluffy) dice hanging in car windows and ... wait for it ... the French! Then he launches into a tirade of his time in France and concludes with a that's why we don't like the French!

The Dutch are famous for speaking German with a ridiculous accent; but Bryson gets to the heart of it with this: I once [asked a Dutchman] whether the correct ponunciation of the artist's name was Van Go or Van Gok. And he said, a little sharply, 'No, no, it Vincent Van ... 'and he made a sudden series of desperate hacking noises, as if a moth had lodged itself in his throat. I really did once as a Dutchman the same question and whilst I could never have come up with Bryson's astonishingly accurate record of what followed, I can reveal that it is Vincent Van Choch: try pronouncing the ch combination as a Jock would, as in Loch, as in Loch Ness and you'll get there!

On a train in Denmark, Bryson turns Pooteresque when he tries to eat a sandwich he just bought. ... carefully peeled away the cellophane, but just as I lifted it to my mouth the train lurched violently over some points ... causing the meatballs (a meatball sandwich, who would think of that? Ed) to jump off the bun, like sailors abandoning ship. Then read about the reactions of his travelling companions: whose descriptions beggar belief.

I love the way Italians park. You turn the street corner in Rome and it looks as if you've just missed a parking competition for blind people ... Romans park their cars the way I would park if I had just spilled a beaker of hydrochloric acid on my lap.Then read, pages 165-166, what happened when the hopeless Italian driver crashed resoundingly into a parked Renault!

How to put down your fellow Americans (in Rome) as he tagged on to a tour group in St Peter's ... I would have stayed with them longer but the guide quickly spotted me because I wasn't wearing a baseball cap, a warm up jacket and trousers in one of the livlier primary colours.

In Florence, on phrase books: At the very least I thought it might be useful, upon finding oneself on a crowded train or in a long queue, to be able to say in a variety of languages, 'Can you kindly direct me to a leprosy clinic? My skin is beginning to slough.'

On German as a romantic language ... not: If you want whipped cream on your coffee in much of the German speaking world, you would order it 'mit Schlag'. Now does that sound to you like a frothy and delicious pick me up or does it sound like the sort of thing smokers bring up first thing in the morning? Then there's the ashtray incident on pages 222-223!

Given that Bryson wrote this book around 1990, I can exclusively reveal an update: the Cyrillic alphabet is largely forgotten in Sarajevo since they use the Latin alphabet now. However, were you to go, say, to Banja Luka further North in Bosnia and Herzegovina, you would find the Cyrillic alphabet adorning street signs, shops and public buildings.

And so on. I really enjoyed this book enormously and the 14 years or so that have passed since it was written have done nothing to wither it. I heartily recommend this book as a tonic: it's a travel book if you wish, it's an insight into human frailty and it's a rip roaring good read.

© Duncan Williamson

10 May 2004

© Webmaster Duncan Williamson 2004