Excerpts from the book I'm currently reading

"...It fascinated me that Europeans could at once be so alike- that they could be so universally bookish and cerebral, and drive small cars, and live in little houses in ancient towns, and love soccer, and be relatively unmaterialistic and law-abiding, and have chilly hotel rooms and cozy and inviting places to eat and drink- and yet be so endlessly, unpredictably different from each other as well. I loved the idea that you could never be sure of anything in Europe."

"...I had an itch to roam. I wanted to wander through Europe, to see movie posters for films that would never come to England, gaze wonderingly at billboards and shop notices full of exotic umlauts and cedillas and No parking-sign o's, hear pop songs that could not by even the most charitable stretch of the imagination be a hit in any country but their own, encounter people whose lives would never again intersect with mine, be hopelessly unfamiliar with everything..."

-Bill Bryson

Neither Here Nor There: Travels through Europe