'50 Years in Europe' Doles Out the Anecdotes

For those of us unable to afford a round trip from Logan to Heathrow and a two month Eurailpass and too lazy to take more than the required amount of Foreign Cultures courses, Jan Morris compresses 50 years of Europe into fewerthan 400 pages. Amazingly, she man-ages to capture much of the flavor, the undefinable essence of the myriad nations and cultures that compose the European community. Even more amazing, though, is the fact that the book is actually, at times, boring.

But don't get the wrong idea. 50 Years is a thorough, sensitive look at what is probably the world's most fascinating area. Starting in Trieste, in the former Yugoslavia, and working her way through nearly every square inch of every country, nation, state and community from Portugal to Russia, Morris picks out the perfect details to animate the people and struggles that she has observed for half a century. With chapters that focus on meandering themes like "sacred complexities" and "the mess the Europeans have made of their continent."

Morris manages to capture the conflicts, the tensions and the joys of living in or visiting, say, Lichtenstein. The chapters are comprised of small, easily digestible sections, usually less than a page, which flow into each other smoothly.

The book draws on varied sources; Morris quotes everyone from Vaclav Havel, former president of Czechoslovakia, to ancient Irish folk songs. She does not focus only on large cities, or even large countries. She gives equal time to villages like Shnackenburg and countries like France and Germany. A few sections in the book are small lists of interesting tid-bits; for instance, in "An interlude on food" Morris explains that "The Italians eat most sensibly. The British eat most unhealthily. The Spaniards eat most abstermiously," and so on. And Morris has enough experience and writes genuinely enough that these pronouncements seem almost unquestionable.

Morris tries, almost successfully, to balance the amount of commentary and observation--political and social--with a fair amount of cute little anecdotes about her spur-of-the-moment picnics on the Swiss hillsides or her random run-ins with Margaret Thatcher on a busy street.

And she really does have many good stories to tell, as we would expect her to after 50 years of wandering aimlessly around. Unfortunately, though, both her anecdotes and her comments, genuine as they are, get tiresome. Too many small, talented beggars and quaint roadside cafes, too many slightly tragic principalities with curious histories litter the pages of this book. The nations and cultures blur into each other: Luxembourg, San Marino, Monaco, Andorra are each different but by the end of the book seem remarkably similar and indistinguishable. After hearing about the Brittons, Sorbs, Wends and Karaim, it becomes difficult to remember which, exactly, was the hea-then tribes near the Czech border of Germany and which were the radical splinter-group that broke off from Judaism in the eighth century.

Perhaps the sluggishness of the book is a result of Morris' style. Quaint and engaging at first, her sentences meander through her paragraphs like a peaceful country road winding its way through the hills of Denmark. Yet, after a hundred pages of strolling through the highways and byways of Europe, the laid-back pace of the prose begins to grate on the nerves. Morris seems almost the quintessential kindly, old British matron and as a result, listening to her drone on is like having an especially long lunch with your grand-mother. She usually has good stories to tell, but, boy, does she ramble.

To her credit, Morris does not attempt to summarize Europe with her commentary. She does try to encapsulate some of the trends behind the major political and social upheavals in European history, and uses Trieste always as her reference point, example or microcosm. The book holds together nicely, and the subtitle seems very apt--the book feels like the photo album of a dedicated, lifelong traveler. Anyone with a real hunger for the European experience would probably enjoy a leisurely read of Fifty Years in Europe. Yet, like someone else's photo album, more than anything else the book inspires a desire to see Europe for yourself, to have your own adventures and create your own memories.