Against the Flow: Wading Through Eastern Europe

by Tom Fort

Twenty years ago, Tom Fort drove his little red car onto the ferry at Felixstowe, bound for all points east. Eastern Europe was still a faraway place, just emerging from its half-century of waking nightmare, blinking, injured, full of fears but importantly full of hope, as well. Things were different then. Czechoslovakia was still Czechoslovakia, Russia was the USSR, and the Warsaw Pact had not formally dissolved. But what did exist then, as they do now, were the the nations' lifeblood. It was along and by these rivers that Fort traveled around Eastern Europe meeting its people and immersing himself in its culture. Since that trip, much has changed. In more recent years around one million Poles have settled in Britain. Fort's local paper has a Polish edition, his supermarket has a full range of Polish bread, sausage, and beer, and an influx of Polish businesses opened in his town center. And it's not just the Poles, his gym has a Lithuanian trainer and the woman who cuts his hair is from Hungary. As a tide of people began to leave Eastern Europe and settle in the UK, Tom Fort started to wonder about what they were leaving behind and whether the friends he had made all those years ago remained. And so, he decided to make the journey again, traveling against the flow of the steady human stream to explore once familiar places. As he did so, many began to return as the recession took hold of Western Europe. Tom was keen to find out what had changed and how the places, people, and way of life had moved on—and of course fit in a spot of fishing along the way.

Genres: Travel

308 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2010

About the author

Tom Fort was education at Eton and Balliol Collge, Oxford. On leaving Oxford he went to work as a reporter at the Slough Observer and the Slough Evening Mail before joining the BBC in 1978 where he worked in the BBC Radio newsroom in London for 22 years.

He took early retirement in 2000, just before the publication of his social history of lawns and lawn-mowing, The Grass is Greener.

Reviews

[Punit · Rating 4 out of 5]

You know one of those books you pick up when there's a great sale or book fair underway lest you wouldn't have bought it. It is one of those that I picked up 4 years ago, putting this travelogue on a journey to multiple houses, only never picking it up to read. And when I did pick up this time, little did I know I was going to read a book about fishing.
Fishing! Yes, this book is as much about fishing as it's about the writer's travels through Eastern Europe. Various fishes, various waters, various gears, various people, various weather, various licenses; it all drew me mad to the point of leaving this one unfinished. And if you don't like (or have the patience of) fishing, this does have a tendency to make you lose interest.

However! The only and the biggest respite (that makes me give 4 stars) is the crisp, detailed, vivid, observant language used in the book. If for anything, I did pause multiple times just marveling at the usage of words or just how the sentence was constructed. Tom has a keen eye for detail and describes a person or a place just as colourfully and poetically.
For example,

"I had Smetana in my head, pictures of rolling hills, deep woods filled with birdsong, sweeping fields, market towns of ochre houses with higgledy-piggledy roofs, a gabled tavern with oak benches and tables and flagons of cool, golden beer."

Or just remarking on the sheer contrast,

"The sun was dying to my right, flooding golden light across the water to hide the ugliness of the holiday resorts."

Will I pick this for a re-read? Possibly not, but I would treasure this in my collection. To conclude in author's words,
"I learned to accept that the faraway places were no longer so faraway, that their distinctiveness, the 'otherness' that had made them so attractive, had gone and would not return.
They were hard but necessary lessons."

[Derek Henderson · Rating 2 out of 5]

A twee premise for a travelogue that never really gels. Fort's writing is less than gripping.

[Annette · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to enjoy this book because it's based on a good idea. But the author is too critical of the people who go out of their way to help him.