The thing that really struck me with this book was how annoying it would have been traveling in Europe back in the late 80s and early 90s (or even earlier). Okay, automatic teller machines were starting to appear, but it wasn’t like now where you basically had a common currency over much of the continent, nor do you have to load yourself up with traveler's cheques to make the journey. In fact I have never seen a traveler’s cheque in my life. Sure, I have heard of them, especially the famous American Express ad:

‘Mr Wong, Mr Wong, I’ve lost all my traveler’s cheques’;

‘oh, what kind where they’.

All I can say is that I felt sorry for anybody with the name Wong in the telephone book because no doubt they would gets lots of prank phones calls, and you pretty much work that out when you are the one making the prank phone call and the response is ‘and f**k you too!’. But seriously (yes, I was young once), when I first decided to leave the country and explore the world it was 2011, which meant that we had smart phones and google maps, it was nowhere near as frustrating, and I certainly wasn’t wandering around blind. Okay, on my first trip I didn’t have any internet access, so I was reliant upon a road map when we were driving, tourist maps when we were in a city, and basically stumbling around with my eyes bulging out at seeing Venice in the flesh.

The thing about travel is that it is addictive, and a book about traveling around Europe brings out the part of me that wants to say ‘stuff this, I’m out of here’. In fact I did do that once, and jumped on a plane to London simply to go and watch a live performance of Les Miserable (I had just seen the film, and staring at the poster while wandering through the London Underground just made me want to see it all the more). Fortunately that second, and third, time I did work out that the best way to deal with the internet problem is to buy simcards over there, and I have to admit that Vodafone turned out to be a life saver – namely because I ended up buying one in the Netherlands and using it for the next three weeks as I wandered around Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Pas de Calais.

However, it must have been a pain in the neck having to change currencies every time you crossed the border, though my understanding was that traveler’s cheques solved that problem by being accepted wherever you go – though I suspect that you later had to cash them at a Bureau de Change, and then change currencies whenever you went into another country. Mind you, crossing from France to Switzerland, Germany to Czechia (Czech Republic), and France to England proved headaches enough, especially in Czechia where it was impossible to actually work out what the value of the money actually was. In Hong Kong I simply divided the price by 10, in the Eurozone I multiplied it by three quarters (or just hazarded a guess) and in England I basically doubled the price.

Another really interesting aspect to this book is when it was written. Apparently when Bryson went backpacking with his friend in the early seventies he was able to pass into the Eastern bloc, namely Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. Mind you the stories that he tells of his experience in Sofia makes you wish you were young, American, and backpacking through the Eastern Bloc in the Early Seventies. However things had changed, and Bryson was pretty fortunate that he was able to go there when he did because within a couple of years Yugoslavia would explode into a massive war. As for Bulgaria, he got to witness the breadlines first hand, though his comment about walking into his hotel and having a full buffet available is rather interesting. In fact it is also noticeable that it appears that only foreigners were even allowed in the hotel. As he said, it is surprising that he simply wasn’t mugged because it was pretty obvious that he was American, and quite a wealthy one at that (he followed in his father’s footsteps and became an editor in a London newspaper).

I could write a lot more on this book, namely sharing my experiences in 2011 with Bryson’s in 1991, however I think I will leave that for my blog (which you can find the link here). Mind you, if you are interested in reading about my travels there is always my travel blog, and one of the main reasons that I went to Europe in 2016 was to actually have something to write about that didn’t involve suburbs in Australian cities. However, one thing that I should mention before I sign off, is how Bryson mentioned that with the collapse of Communism, tourism was only going to get worse – however it wasn’t something I noticed. In fact I suspect that what it has done is not so much brought more tourists from the Eastern Bloc – they still happen to be quite poor compared to the rest of Europe, but it has actually opened Eastern Europe to tourism.

Well, he I am, sitting at one of my favourite coffee shops on a blustery and wet winter morning in Melbourne having just finished another book of which I have known the story since I was a little boy but having never actually read the book. I'm sure we all know of the story of Robinson Crusoe, who was shipwrecked while out at sea and ended up spending years (about twenty three of them) alone on an island, forced to make do with what he could scavenge from around him (including off a couple of ships that had become wrecked along the coast). Sure, he eventually finds some company, first with the native whom he rescues and names Friday (because he rescued him on a Friday, but the term has now become a part of our language to basically refer to a gopher – I remember reading job advertisements for positions as a Person Friday), and then a couple of Spaniards, before he is finally rescued by an English merchantman, though he initially has to help the captain wrestle the ship back from some mutineers.

I'm not necessarily going to say that this is the first story about a person trapped alone on a desert island – the concept goes back as far as the Ancient Greeks with the story of Odysseus (and one might also suggest The Tempest) however what differs is that Robinson Crusoe is entirely focused on Crusoe's life on the island, where as the earlier works have the island (in the case of The Tempest) as a backdrop, or (as in the case of The Odyssey) as another hurdle that the hero must overcome to reach his ultimate goal (and the protagonist may not actually be alone either). The story of Robinson Crusoe is a story of survival against the odds – not just adapting to a life outside of civilisation, or even trying to create civilisation where there is none, but also surviving the fact that he has been left here alone for so long.

The idea has been picked up by numerous stories later on, including Gulliver's Travels, the Mysterious Island, and The Swiss Family Robinson, however, unlike Robinson Crusoe, these stories aren't about a person who has been left alone on the island, and a part of me feels that maybe Dafoe doesn't necessarily understand the true nature of loneliness. The question that I raise is how is it that Crusoe manages to survive for twenty-five years on this island, alone, without either going mad or simply becoming an animal? I guess this is one of the major things that challenged me in the book because I am sure that a human cannot survive mentally, for such long periods, alone without going insane.

Okay, I'm not a psychologist, and I don't pretend to be one, nor am I familiar with other stories of people who have lived a bulk of their lives outside of human contact, either willingly or not. Sure, we have the stories of the crazy cat ladies (and we used to live next to one), who would never leave the house, and never answer the door (which raises the question of how they managed to buy food and stuff before the age of the internet and home delivery, though the one we lived next to had a supermarket just across the road, which I have to admit was really convenient). However a part of me feels that for us to maintain our humanity, and not descend into our base animalistic instincts, we need to have human company, and to be able to interact with humanity. This, I have to admit, seemed to be one of the major flaws in an otherwise quite entertaining book (ignoring the fact that the end dragged on for a bit – the fight with the bears and the wolves as they were travelling across France at the end was quite unnecessary, though it probably did work to suggest that travelling in those days, whether it was either by sea, or by land, was always going to be a very dangerous exercise).

Oh, before I continue, here is a map of the Island of Robinson Crusoe:

Interestingly enough there is actually an island off the coast of Chile that is called the Island of Robinson Crusoe, though it was my understanding from the book that the island is actually located in the Carribean Sea, off the North Coast of South America, and the reason I believe that is because Crusoe was ship wrecked while travelling between his plantation in Brazil and the Carribean. However, according the Wikipedia, the reason the island received this name was because it was where the sailor Alexander Selkirk was shipwreck, which some believed inspired Dafoe to write this book, as opposed to being the island that Dafoe selected as the setting of his story (and I am doubtful that Dafoe would have been all that familiar with the Carribean islands in any case).

I'm not sure if we can actually consider this book to be because while in some aspects it is an adventure novel (which has been picked up by numerous renditions since its publication, especially when it was turned into a children's book), it doesn't come across as such. Most of the book is basically Crusoe's life on the island, and it is only the last part where the adventure begins. Some have suggested that it is a travelogue, but once again I'm going to have to disagree since a bulk of the action is set on the island.

Interestingly there is an awful lot of theology in the book, and in a way could be connected to Pilgrim's Progress, but once again I'm going to have to say that I don't believe that it is necessarily a Christian allegory. Dafoe suggested at the end, when Crusoe discovered that his plantation in Brazil ended up doing exceedingly well, and as such there is a relation between Crusoe's adventures and the Biblical book of Job. However time and time again Dafoe suggests that Crusoe lands up on the island because he refused to listen to his father and instead wanted to sail to the seas. Every attempt to makes he comes across misfortune, first a storm off the coast of England, then he is captured by the Moors and enslaved, and finally he lands up on the island for twenty-eight odd years. This isn't the story of Job, but the story of a man who wanted adventure, and got it, and then came to realise that adventure wasn't as exciting that he anticipated – twenty-eight years trapped on an island with a bunch of cannibals as neighbours isn't my idea of a really fun time. Nor do I believe that it is a psychological story, as I have suggested about.

Yet time and time again Crusoe talks about his puritan (and quite Calvanistic) belief in God. Maybe it is his unwavering belief in God that enables him to survive for so long. He even goes as far as evangelising Friday, yet I note that he never actually leaves the island to become a missionary to his neighbours (viewing them as savages who through their actions are deserving of God's judgement, which isn't really a Christ-like attitude). Sure, in the end he becomes wealthy, but it isn't exactly the type of book that I would consider labelling as either Christian, or Allegory.

The final thing that I find interesting is the idea of how he brings civilisation to the island, but then again it is more a story of survival as opposed to the civilising aspect that comes across in books such as Verne's mysterious island. He doesn't actually turn the island into some English utopia, but rather simply does what he needs to survive with what he has at hand. Even then things, such as the crops, and the second shipwreck, simply happen through luck as opposed to any purposeful family, though of course Crusoe (and in turn Dafoe) wouldn't see it as such, suggesting that these events are once again a reminder of God's providence. In the end, though, I'm just going to suggest that it is an adventure.

This wouldn't be the first travelogue that I have read, and in fact it would hardly be the first of its kind (but then considering that the Book of Ecclesiastes says 'there is nothing new under the sun' this is not surprising). In fact, in the ancient and early modern times this is how travelogues were actually written, namely as a story of somebody who is travelling around and visiting the various places themselves. I guess in the more mechanical and scientific 19th and 20th centuries travelogues morphed into the Lonely Planet guides that we have today. Hey, don't get me wrong, Lonely Planet Guides are very practical, and as I have discovered, quite useful when travelling around a foreign city (or even looking for things to do in your own backyard) but I would hardly call them entertaining (though they have become somewhat obsolete in the age of social media).

Bill Bryson certainly is entertaining, even though this is the first book of his that I have read. Actually, I think that it is one of the first books that he actually wrote, because before that I believe he was mostly writing articles for some newspaper in England. It wasn't until 1995 (at least according to Wikipedia, if you can believe anything that actually comes out of that site) that his first popular book, Notes from a Small Island, hit the shelves, which suggests that this particular book somehow slipped under the radar for a while.

Not that it is actually a popular book, if you take the opinion's of the American's into account. Mind you, Booklikes gives it an average rating of three and a half stars, which is pretty good (since Booklikes is out of 5). However, on one blog (and this blog went by a title along the lines of 'a quite contemplation while living in the end times' and included some Bible verse from Thessalonians, or some passage like that - I can't remember it, and I can't be bothered looking for it). Anyway, it was clear that this particular person was an American because she opened her commentary with 'I so very much wanted to like this book, but I got to page 8 and I had to put it down – he had nothing good to say about anything (and then proceeds to list a bunch of things that relate to the United States of America that I actually struggle to find anything good about).

I can understand this particular American taking offence at Bryson's take on the country because there was a time that I actually liked the Simpson, in fact I loved the Simpsons with the exception of two episodes, one being the one where they have the Barbershop Quartet: I was quite repulsed by the scene where they dump Chief Wiggan in the middle of the forest (suggesting that it is okay to dump unwanted dogs), and the second one was when they went to Australia. I found that that their version of Australia was so off the mark, and that the Simpons behaved so much like a bunch of disrespectful, well, Americans, that it was bordering on, no let me rephrase that, it was incredibly offensive.

The difference between Bill Bryson and the Simpsons portrayal of Australia is twofold. First of all Bill Bryson is an American, and secondly this story is a story of his return to the United States after a twenty year absence to see how things had changed, and the feeling that you get from this particular book is that they have changed, and in fact they have changed a lot. Bryson practically travels all over the continental United States, and visits many and various places, some of them famous (such as the Grand Canyon) and some of them not so famous (such as Walls Drug Store). All the while he is describing his emotions, his feelings, and his frustrations as he crosses this vast continent (and that is something that I pick up a lot, that it is actually quite vast, and empty). All the while he is providing some quite insightful commentary on what he sees as the American way of life.

For instance, his disdain of the motor home, or recreational vehicle. He describes it as simply bringing your home along with you, and all the comforts of home, without having to experience any discomfort. Look, in many cases it is either the motor home, or it is the motel, and if you are doing a lot of travelling, the motor home will end up being cheaper. However, I probably fall more onto Byrson's side with the motel room (and the ceremonial opening of the toilet) and driving around in a not too big vehicle. I have actually done something like that here in Australia (and I must tell you about it sometime) when my brother and I jumped into my sister's car and went for a drive around the East Coast of Australia, all the way up to Noosa, and then back inland to Adelaide. We were going to do the same thing with Europe, but my Dad made me book ahead and plan the entire holiday.

Well, it seems like I have been writing for about twenty to thirty minutes and not actually said all that much on this book, but I guess you can get the gist of it from reading by meandering, about the place, commentary. However, there are others who have also liked it, so I am not the lone voice in the wilderness here. So I think I will finish it off here, go and return some utter rubbish to the local library (not this book, remember, I did give it a nine) and then go and do something else (maybe apply for a real job, or continue writing about my third trip overseas because, well, I can – write that is).