William

“The best that can be said for Norwegian television is that it gives you the sensation of a coma without the worry and inconvenience.”
― Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe

“The whole length of Nyhavn was lined with outdoor tables, with young, blond, gorgeous people drinking, eating and enjoying the unseasonably warm weather. I always wonder in Copenhagen what they do with their old people – they must put them in cellars or send them to Arizona – because everyone, without exception, is youthful, fresh-scrubbed, healthy, blond and immensely good-looking. You could cast a Pepsi commercial in Copenhagen in fifteen seconds. And they all look so happy.”
― Bill Bryson, Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe

“Romans park their cars the way I would park if I had just spilled a beaker of hydrochloric acid on my lap.”
― Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe

“The Mediterranean, which is now only a week from us, has before our eyes shrunk into a lake; our British and Irish channels are scarcely broader than the old Firth of Forth; the Rhine, the Danube, the Thames, the Medway, the Ganges etc., have contracted their streams to infinitely less than half their lengths and breadths, and the great lakes of the world are rapidly drying into ponds!”
― Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century