Bill Bryson’s Neither Here Nor There

I’ve been re-reading Bill Bryson’s Neither Here Nor There, Travels in Europe. He says all the rude things that I wish I could think of and manages to unfailingly offend every nationality in Europe with his acerbic wit.

Bryson travels 2000 km to somewhere near the North Pole in the Nordics in search of the Northern Lights and endures two weeks of excruciating boredom before witnessing the Lights, which apparently are magnificent and not like anything you’ve seen. He then goes on to tour the rest of the Continent, and the book details his adventures in various European capitals. He narrowly manages to avoid getting killed by Parisian cab drivers, gets repulsed by the breathtaking ugliness of the new Pompidou Centre in Paris, encounters ominous food (Kalbsbrann, anyone?) in Germany, compliments the Dutch for beautifully maintaining their historical streets and houses in Amsterdam and gets ripped off by the Swedes. My favorite chapter is the one on Rome, that describes the glorious chaos and indiscipline of the Italians. (“Romans park their cars the way I would if I had just spilled a beaker of hydrochloric acid on my lap”). This book is pure joy.