neither here nor there

As I'm sitting in one of my favorite coffee shops in NYC, reading a newly purchased book, neither here nor there, and I have the urge to type one of the passages that literally made me laugh out loud, quite loudly.  I love when a book does that - and Bill Bryson never lets me down.  

I recall about a year ago writing about another one of his books on this blog, and I recall it being equally as funny.  Bryson is my favorite travel writer, consistently sarcastic, brutally honest, and stereotypically hilarious.  I'll just get to it...

On Paris....

"Katz was in a tetchy frame of mind throughout most of our stay in Paris.  He was convinced everything was out to get him.  On the morning of our second day, we were strolling down the Champs-Elysees when a bird shit on his head.  'Did you know,' I asked a block or two later, 'that a bird shit on your head?'

Instinctively, Katz put a hand to his head, looked at it in horror, and with only a mumbled 'Wait here,' walked with ramrod stiffness in the direction of our hotel.  When he reappeared twenty minutes later, he smelled overpoweringly of Brut aftershave and his hair was plastered down like a third-rate Spanish gigolo's, but he appeared to have regained his composure.  'I'm ready now,' he announced.

Almost immediately another bird shit on his head.  Only this time it really shit.  I don't want to get too graphic, in case you're snacking or anything, but if you can imagine a pot of yogurt upended onto his scalp, I think you'll get the picture.  It was running down the sides of his head and everything.  'Gosh, Steve, that was one sick bird,' I observed helpfully.

Katz was literally speechless.  Without a word he turned and walked stiffly back to the hotel, ignoring the turning heads of passersby.  He was gone for nearly an hour.  When at last he returned, he was wearing a poncho with the hood up.  'Just don't say a word,' he warned me and strode past.  He never really warmed to Paris after that."

Bill Bryson, neither here nor there

Maybe I find this so funny because when I was in France I thought everyone was out to get me, poison me, shit on me (well, a bird actually did shit on me in Normandie), and it's the relateable sense of individual travelers that lures me in.