Neither Here, Nor There: Travels in Europe

Travel Guide

Europe

Just some of what Bill Bryson gets up to:

Homicidal motorists of Paris, being robbed by gypsies in Florence, attempting not to order tripe and eyeballs in a German restaurant or window-shopping in the sex shops of the Reeperbahn, Bryson takes in the sights, dissects the culture and illuminates each place and person with his hilariously caustic observations. He even goes to Liechtenstein.

Some highlights:

Hammerfest

In winter Hammerfest is a 30 hour ride by bus from Oslo though why anyone would want to go there in winter is a question worth considering. It’s on the edge of the world, the northernmost town in Europe as far from London as London is from Tunis, a place of dark and brutal winters, where the sun sinks into the Arctic Ocean in November and doesn’t not rise again for ten weeks.

France _ Paris

“At the Place de la Bastille, a vast open space dominated on its north easter side by a glossy new structure that I supposed to be the Paris branch of the Bradford and Bingley Building Society but which proved upon closer inspection to be the newParis opera house..”

Germany – Aachen

I had always wanted to see Aaachen Cathedral. This is an odd and pleasantly neglected corner of Europe. Aachen, Maastricht and Liege are practically neighbours -only about twenty miles separate them but they are in three countries speaking three distinct languages (namely Dutch, French and German)

Aachen was the first German city to Fall to the Allies, after a seven day street battle in 1944 that left almost the whole of it in ruins. You would never guess it now.

I went first to the Schatzkammer, the treasure, which contained the finest assortment of reliquaries I ever expected to see, including the famous life-size bust of Charlemagne, looking like a god; a carved sixteenth century triptych depicting Pope Gregory’s mass,

The cathedral was small and dark but exquisite with its doomed roof, its striped bands of contrasting marble and its stained glass, so rich that it seemed almost liquid. IT  must have been cramped even in Charlemagne’s day – it couldn’t seat more than a hundred or so – but every inch of it was superb. It was one of the buildings that you don’t so much look at as bathe in. I would go to Aachen tomorrow to see it again.

Denmark – Copenhagen

He takes a train to Copenhagen as he’s sick of taking the ferry but  says it’s more fun anyway. He’s amazed to learn that in 1982, there were only six murders in Copenhagen compared with 205 in Amsterdam which is a similar size. Some 1, 688 in New York. The city is so safe that the Queen used to go out from the palace and walk to the shops each morning.

Liechenstein

“You know when you are entering the German speaking part f Switzerland because all the towns have names that sound like someone talking with his mouth full of bread”

Istanbul – where the journey ends

He travels part of the journey on the Orient Express and imagined it’s going to be full of romance with some turbanned servant coming around with cups of sweet coffee but it’s not at all what he imagines…