I bought this book by mistake in one of those charity shops that make any idle and rainy Saturday in Oxford a treasure hunt. What I thought I had found was actually "Innocents Abroad" by the same Mark Twain, but somehow the word "tramp" was left out of my raptorous glance. Well, "A Tramp Abroad" revolves around pretty much the same topic of "Innocents Abroad" which is Mr Twain touring Europe proud of being an American but at the same time eager to get all that the Old Continent has to offer to h...

Hilarious first chapter (of Vol. 2), walking in the Swiss alps with his agent and courier. He sands his Agent Harris on ahead to scout out and report back, which he does after a few days, “all felt the heat in the climb up this very steep bolwoggoly, then we set out again…until from the Finsteraarhorn poured down a deluge of haboolong and hail” (11-13). Several pages feature such incomprehensible words. Clemens compliments his report, but asks about the words, turns out from Fiji, Zulu and Choct...

Even after all those years still very amusing.

This isn't an actual review, just a note as to why I didn't finish the book. Though Twain is one of my favorite authors on the strength of his fiction, I've never been as enamored with his nonfiction. I've also never been a fan of reading other people's travel narratives. (I'll turn 70 in August and have been reading independently at least since I was six; I've read exactly two of them in my life, and wasn't bowled over by either one.) The only reason I tried this one is that it was picked as a

There are some magic chapters in this rambling tale of Twain's rambles in Europe. His restaurant meeting with a young lady who knows they have never met but strings him along as he digs a hole deeper and deeper for himself. His descriptions of the violent German duels was surpassed by his slapstick version of a French duel. His ordering around of his travelling companion. His fondness for retelling unrelated stories or embellishing an event with impossibly unsuitable adjectives, adverbs or nouns...

Funny, but not hilarious. Mostly tongue-in-cheek hyperboles, Mark Twain recounts here his 15-month walking trip through Central Europe and the Alps in 1878-1879. I have only one kind of test for humorous, or supposedly humorous, books: the sound test. Five stars if it made me laugh out loud; four stars if it made me chuckle; three stars if it made me smile; two stars if it just made light up inside; a star if I found it funny without any change in me, or if it wasn't funny at all.In his Introduc...

First, I'm glad I've already read The Innocents Abroad, or else at some point I'd have little to no idea what Twain is talking about when he refers to incidents on that trip, which happens occasionally. This seems a slightly more 'serious' book than that, too, which shows me some of the changes (not to mention growth) in Twain himself, which adds interest.Beyond that, there's no easy way to categorize this book: humorous travelogue, social critique of both Europe and the U.S. (in which neither h...

Fascinating, fraught and hilarious. I'm pretty much besotted by that part of the world anyway and I enjoyed travelling back in time. This is the book which contains the famous essay "The Awful German Language" - read it for that alone - and it relates an episode which will put you off forever from attempting to scale the Matterhorn.

This is by far my favorite of Twain's works. When you go to Europe you need this book. "Paris and Venice are the two greatest lies ever told." Brilliant. Cause they are. When you read this you must realize that Twain is a sarcastic American debunking all the European myth and glory. Most of what you know about Europe has been sold as a marketing campaign. Twain realizes that reality lays not in a travel brochure but in the real travel and observation of that place. Excellent.

I found a 'part 1' on iBooks and read it in about an hour of a 3 hour plane trip. It was fun, made me laugh in parts. Clements was clearly fascinated by the student dueling culture in Heidelberg at the time, observing the rituals with keen interest and some excitement, I suspect. I'm not sure that I'll pursue later parts, but this was perfect in-air reading.

Very interesting reading this on the heels of "The Dharma Bums' by Jack Kerouac. There is a key phrase from "A Tramp Abroad", "comparisons are odious" which has always struck me. It appears notably in both of these books. "A Tramp Abroad" is really interesting as a travelogue, a glimpse into 19th century Europe from a sharp and acute observer. Twain's descriptions of villages, hotel's, hotel customs, restaurant fare, mountains and mountain climbing, art and artists, architecture are joys to read...

I love Mark Twain, but this is probably my least favorite book of his. There are parts with beautiful descriptions and parts that made me chuckle, but the stories and legends were annoying and felt out of place. My dad and I just wanted it to be over. He kept saying, "I miss Madeleine," referring to L'Engle, whose books we read together just before starting A Tramp Abroad. I only recommend this if you're a staunch Twain fan. I'm sure there are other humorous "travel" books out there much more wo...

This is an enjoyable read but scattered in its organization. Mark Twain is proud of his own wit and sprinkles it all over his descriptions of European culture and landscapes. This book was particularly meaningful for me because I am living in Germany and have had similar experiences as he did well over one-hundred years ago. For example, his descriptions of Heidelberg and its castle ruin are just like my experiences there: the rolling, forested hills above the Necker river; the castle on the hil...

Twain is absolutely hilarious. His satire is always firmly focused on pretension, and it never misfires. I was laughing out loud throughout the entire book. When there was nobody to humble and no pretension to mock, he could in turn give wonderful descriptions of scenery, peoples, and customs. As imaginative and bitingly hilarious as Swift, but with one foot always firmly on the ground.

I'd give it 3 and 1/2 stars if that was possible.

Haven’t read a book this humorous in quite a while. Highly enjoyable. Twain probably was a bit of an asshole.

Good fun, but lacking the exuberant sparkle of his earlier travel books.

Well, it looks like all of Twain's travel books might be getting three stars from me. So far we're three for three at three, but I definitely have a ranking. Roughing It is my favorite of the ones I've read so far because it had more anecdotal asides than the others, and those make the book. Plus I'm an American, and that one takes place in America, so I'm more familiar with the territory. In fact, Roughing It would've been a four star book if it weren't for the last section on Hawaii which was

Mark Twain is considered one of the great American writers of the 19th century, yah yah, you’ve heard it all before. While most people know him from the tales of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Twain also wrote non-fiction. In “A Tramp Abroad”, Twain writes about his experience travelling through Europe in the 1880s. It’s actually his second trip, the first trip he wrote about in “Innocents Abroad”.Then an innocent, now a tramp. Nice.It didn’t take me long to make up my mind, Twain is dope. His...

Mark Twain's voice does seem the quintessential American voice. I haven't read The Innocents Abroad: or, The New Pilgrims' Progress, so I'm not sure if there is much difference, but I loved this book.First is the voice, which is a strange, and hilarious, melange of the real Twain (I guess...), his protagonist (a fool), vivid descriptions of the sights, events, and people meet and seen on the way, and opinions that veer between complete humor and ironical common sense. And it is not just the narr...