Excerpts-

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  Chapter One
  
  To the North
  
  In winter, Hammerfest is a thirty-hour ride by bus from Oslo, though why anyone would want to go there in winter is a question worth considering. It is 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 does not rise again for ten weeks.
  
  I wanted to see the Northern Lights. Also, I had long harbored a half-formed urge to experience what life was like in such a remote and forbidding place. Sitting at home in England with a glass of whiskey and a book of maps, this had seemed a capital idea. But now as I picked my way through the gray late December slush of Oslo, I was beginning to have my doubts.
  
  Things had not started well. I had overslept at the hotel, missing breakfast, and had to leap into my clothes. I couldn't find a cab and had to drag my ludicrously overweight bag eight blocks through slush to the central bus station. I had had huge difficulty persuading the staff at the Kreditkassen Bank on Karl Johansgate to cash sufficient travelers' checks to pay the extortionate 1,200-kroner bus fare — they simply could not be made to grasp that the William McGuire Bryson on my passport and the Bill Bryson on my travelers' checks were both me — and now here I was arriving at the station two minutes before departure, breathless and steaming from the endless uphill exertion that is my life, and the girl at the ticket counter was telling me that she had no record of my reservation.
  
  "This isn't happening," I said. "I'm still at home in England enjoying Christmas. Pass me a drop more port, will you, darling?" Actually, I said: "There must be some mistake. Please look again."
  
  The girl studied the passenger manifest. "No, Mr. Bryson, your name is not here."
  
  But I could see it, even upside down. "There it is, second from the bottom."
  
  "No," the girl decided, "that says Bernt Bjørnson. That's a Norwegian name."
  
  "It doesn't say Bernt Bjørnson. It says Bill Bryson. Look at the loop of the y, the two l's. Miss, please."
  
  But she wouldn't have it.
  
  "If I miss this bus when does the next one go?"
  
  "Next week at the same time."
  
  Oh, splendid.
  
  "Miss, believe me, it says Bill Bryson."
  
  "No, it doesn't."
  
  "Miss, look, I've come from England. I'm carrying some medicine that could save a child's life." She didn't buy this. "I want to see the manager."
  
  "He's in Stavanger."
  
  "Listen, I made a reservation by telephone. If I don't get on this bus I am going to write a letter to your manager that will cast a shadow over your career prospects for the rest of this century." This clearly did not alarm her. Then it occurred to me. "If this Bernt Bjørnson doesn't show up, can I have his seat?"
  
  "Sure."
  
  Why don't I think of these things in the first place and save myself the anguish? "Thank you," I said and lugged my bag outside.
  
  The bus was a large double-decker, like an American Greyhound, but only the front half of the upstairs had seats and windows. The rest was solid aluminum covered with a worryingly psychedelic painting of an intergalactic landscape, like the cover of a pulp science fiction novel, with the words "Express 2000" emblazoned across the tail of a comet. For one giddy moment I thought the windowless back end might contain a kind of dormitory and that at bedtime...

About the Author-

• Bill Bryson’s bestselling books include A Walk in the Woods, I’m a Stranger Here Myself, In a Sunburned Country, A Short History of Nearly Everything (which earned him the 2004 Aventis Prize), The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, and At Home. He lives in England with his wife.

Reviews-

• Bill Bryson has a warm, full voice and superb timing. He reads as well as he writes. Plus, he's clearly enjoying the material. When he tells the story of Marta, the gorgeous woman who got away, you can practically see the smile on his face. The only thing wrong with this audio presentation is revealed in the title. It's neither here nor there. Not held together by a single trail, as A WALK IN THE WOODS was by the Appalachian, or by a single culture, as NOTES FROM A SMALL ISLAND was by England, there's a randomness that weakens the experience. Still, it's the work of a lively intellect, mightily amused. B.H.C. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine
• 

  February 3, 1992
  After 20 years as a London-based reporter, American journalist Bryson ( The Mother Tongue ) set out to retrace a youthful European backpacking trip, from arctic Norway's northern lights to romantic Capri and the ``collective delirium'' of Istanbul. Descriptions of historic and artistic sights in the Continent's capitals are cursory; Bryson prefers lesser-known locales, whose peculiar flavor he skillfully conveys in anecdotes that don't scant the seamy side and often portray eccentric characters encountered during untoward adventures of the road. He enlivens the narrative with keen, sometimes acerbic observations of national quirks like the timed light switches in French hallways, but tends to strive too hard for comic effects, some in dubious taste. He also joins other travelers in deploring the growing hordes of peddlers who overrun major tourist meccas.

• Winnipeg Free Press "Bryson is first and foremost a storyteller -- and a supremely comic and original one at that."

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