Uncle Dan’s Notes: “Neither here Nor There: Travels in Europe” Book

Posted by Uncle Dan on April 11th, 2008 | Categorized as Blog | 246 views and 13 Comments

A few weeks ago, as a bit of a thank you for my contributions to this and that in my college, a few students and staff bought me a book. One of them, as a TCK, knew I’d be interested in travel, so chose a book related to that which they’d heard was particularly good.

It’s not your typical travel book. As in the title, Bill Bryson travels around Europe in almost story-form and offers his own perspective of things. It’s cited as probably the funniest travel book of the year, due to his experiences, viewpoint, and so on.

And quite often it’s true.  It can be hilarious, particularly when you’re familiar with the cultures involved and it rings true. The emotional and emphatic body language of Italians and their complete lack of any sense of punctuality or organization, which has a kind of charm to it unless you want to actually live there, haha. And so on, and so on.

But sometimes you really disagree. He passed through Switzerland and seemed to miss the point. I know this, being pretty intimately familiar with the country. Oh, you can’t expect someone who’s just passing through to gain an in-depth knowledge, but you don’t expect them to judge an entire country by that short impression.

I thought his view of Germany was particularly slanted, too… To be fair, he’s American-living-in-England, born in the 50’s and first travelled in the 70’s, writing this book in the 90’s. So I understand that he grew up in a generation which felt “Germans were Nazis and bad.” It probably didn’t help that he was travelling through Belgium accompanied by a book about the Second World War, looking up the names of the towns he passed and the various massacres that happened in these quaint towns he liked so much. He found it hard to accept that German soldiers had once committed these 60 years before, and now young Germans were coming with their families and girlfriends. His travels in Germany come to a point where he seems to grudgingly accept some things about them… but can’t seem to forgive the current generation of blameless Germans for the sins of their grandfathers… of which many were soldiers’ sins which can and do happen on any side of a war.

It’s an American thing which I find constantly annoying. When they hear that people in Europe don’t like them, they say “They’re being ungrateful since we liberated their countries.” It annoys me on a constant basis when people make fun of France for surrendering, utterly ignoring a long and often-distinguished military history, and it’s almost always Americans who do this. Interestingly, a couple of weeks ago I had a conversation with a Swedish/Serbian who felt strongly about the Russians who really liberated Europe, directly and indirectly, which American film, education and general knowledge tends to forget.

Yes, I’m a history buff. And a lot of people think they know things, without really understanding them. When a soldier shoots an unarmed prisoner, civilian, or whoever, they’re acting on the basis of their orders, their sense of discipline, and their own potentially skewed perception that doing what they’re doing is acceptable. I find it hard that someone can somehow make a connection between a grunt soldier 70 years ago being told by a frankly scary government to do some horrid stuff in a war full of all kinds of horrors, and the waiter serving him beer today.
But it bothers me that no small number of Americans travelling to Europe still have these preconceived notions. And passages of an otherwise-very-insightful travel book propagate that. I think it’s great that he travels budget, and not through the chosen routes, often off-the-beaten-track. I love that he can capture some cultures and countries so well with his words.

But sometimes inevitably, it fails. He found Norway and Sweden to be depressing places to be, in which the governments apparently attempted to suck “all the pleasure out of life.” He was surprised that the Germans of the 90’s were often good-looking, healthy and confident, rather than overweight and guzzling on sausages and beer. He judged his entire experience of Switzerland on a trip through Brig, Bern and Geneva. It’s a book woth reading, but there are times I have to put it down in annoyance.

Coincidentally, a German friend of mine who’s working now in China told me in conversation, “All these Chinese people are so happy to see me! In Europe everyone hates Germans, but over here I’m a celebrity for having blonde hair!”

Daniel Nguyen-Phuoc

Vietnamese in ethnicity, born in Houston, Texas. Lived in Jakarta, Indonesia for 14 years while going to a British International School to finish with the International Baccalaureate. Survived only two years in the University of Michigan before ending up in Switzerland. Graduated from an international (and that's meant in every word) hospitality college. Interesting life, to be sure. But not the only one.