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    Tramp Abroad
    Tramp Abroad
    Tramp Abroad
    Audiobook19 hours

    Tramp Abroad

    Written by Mark Twain

    Narrated by Robin Field

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    About this audiobook

    In A Tramp Abroad, the ever adventurous Mark Twain brings his wit and creativity to his travels in Europe. Twain takes fictional liberty, turning his travels into an entertaining journey as he visits many of the countries of Central Europe. Listeners are sure to be delighted and humored as they enjoy what is considered by many to be one of Mark Twain's best works.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChristianAudio.com
    Release dateDec 1, 2016
    ISBN9781683660682
    Author

    Mark Twain

    Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835, left school at age 12. His career encompassed such varied occupations as printer, Mississippi riverboat pilot, journalist, travel writer, and publisher, which furnished him with a wide knowledge of humanity and the perfect grasp of local customs and speech manifested in his writing. It wasn't until The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), that he was recognized by the literary establishment as one of the greatest writers America would ever produce. Toward the end of his life, plagued by personal tragedy and financial failure, Twain grew more and more cynical and pessimistic. Though his fame continued to widen--Yale and Oxford awarded him honorary degrees--he spent his last years in gloom and desperation, but he lives on in American letters as "the Lincoln of our literature."

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    Reviews for Tramp Abroad

    4/5

    154 ratings11 reviews

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    • 5/5
      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 Choctaw (bolwoggoly et al.) Clemens asks, “Why all this Choctaw rubbish?” Harris answers, “Because I didn’t know any French but two or three words, nor any Latin or greek at all.” Twain, “Why use foreign words anyhow?” Agent, “To adorn my page. They all do it.”(20)Twain encountered the purported suicidal leaping-palace of Pontius Pilate, and the real St Nicholas, who’s buried in the church in Sachseln. “He has ranked for ages as the peculiar friend of children…He had ten of them, and when fifty years old he left them to become a hermit.” “St Nicholas will probably have to go on climbing down sooty chimneys Christmas Eve, forever, and conferring kindness on other people’s children, to make up for deserting his own”(24). During his hermit life, he partook of communion bread and wine once a month, but for the rest, he fasted. So Santa Claus was skinny. Guess Prof. Clement Moore’s account in 1823, the “right jolly old elf” displaced the thin saint.Great stories of carriage rides slowly until reaching town, then faster “with the dust flying and the horn tooting”(30). Shocking to think stages drove faster through towns, to show off. New to me, Twain’s words “Nooning,” which means lunch, and “alpenstock,” though that’s a climbing stick with an iron point. In the giant mountains, Twain finds rare cabins or hostels, near one shack— for builders of a stone house— he buys a beer “but I knew by the price it was dissolved jewelry”(74).On one of the narrow paths by the side of a torrent when he heard a cowbell he hunted for “a place that would accomodate a cow and a Christian side by side.” That torrent was so fast he had his Agent race it, and “I made a trifle by betting on the log”(58).When he gets to Florence, he assails Titian’s “Venus of Urbino” as the "foulest, the vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses,” which appallingly signals how very far from us was this writer who seemed so close in his humor. Even more astonishing his wondering that “Art is allowed as much indecent license today as in earlier times, but the privileges of literature in this respect have been sharply curtailed in the last eighty or ninety years [since Fielding and Smollett]”(267). Modernism— James Joyce and D.H.Lawrence-- would reclaim literary license.Around 1880 when this was written, Europe had not yet learned to make coffee (Germans using chicory), nor heat their “vast and chilly tombs [homes]”; I experienced a virtually unheated room in Perugia where I had to take a hot bath to warm myself. No breakfasts, and the rest of the food he critiques, excepting fish and grapes. “Sometimes there is a tolerably good peach, by mistake…Roast chicken, as tasteless as paper…One vegetable, brought on in state usually insipid lentils, or indifferent asparagus…A monotonous variety of unstriking dishes”(261ff).Now began Volume I, Twain takes up birdtalk: "A raven can laugh, just like a man" -- A Tramp Abroad (Vol I, p.23). Only one man understood birds, Jim Baker, a miner. "A jay is the best talker." One jay filled a hole in the roof, dozens of acorns, but it didn't fill. When he called over other jays, they saw all his acorns had fallen to the floor of the abandoned cabin, and they mocked him. A jay's mockery is a terrible thing. "Come here," he said, "hang'd if this fool hasn't been trying to fill up a house with acorns." Thousands of jays came, and each "fell over backward with laughter, and the next jay took his place and done the same"(p.31, Uniform edition, Vol I). Jays seldom use bad grammar. A jay's interests andfeelings cover the whole ground. "A jay hasn't got any more principle than a Congressman"(25).He visits Heidelberg and its university, the students more relaxed than they were in nine years of gymnasium (grammar and HS). But dueling plays a big part, the five "corps" distinguished by the color of their caps. They duel with swords, with body protections, but their head vulnerable. They duel in a large open room with tables where they eat. "I had seen the heads and and faces of ten youths gashed in every direction by the keen two-edged blades, yet had not seen a victim wine"(50). "Newly bandaged students are a common spectacle in the public gardens of Heidelberg"(55). "It was of record that Prince Bismarck fought thirty-two of these duels in a single summer term"-- twenty nine of them after he earned the right to retire from fighting (after 3 duels, none tied, of acceptable length).Twain becomes second in a duel with tiny silver pistols; he stands behind a huge man 35 paces from the other pistol-wielder. Two shots ring out--German law allows only one bullet--and the huge man collapses on Twain. No need for the two coroners, nor the hearses, but yes, the surgeons: no injuries to the principles, though Twain is injured by the weight falling on him: Surgeons diagnose, "I would survive my injuries"(75).Visiting a production of Lear, he notes German order, no late patrons seating themselves, no applause to interrupt, though he thinks this makes acting lonelier. American applause can urge actors onward. He finds German love of opera unfathomable, because they applaud formerly great tenors who can no longer sing. "Why do we think Germans stolid? They are very children of impulse. They cry and shout and dance and sing." Their language is filled with diminutive endearments.On that language, Twain appends his "Awful German Language" essay, where three months with tutors, a couple of whom die, results in his one perfect phrase, "Zwei bieren," two beers. He's amused that in German a woman is female, but a Weib, a wife is not. Neuter. He complains about compounding of words forming words not in the dictionary, some very long. An English woman is "die Enlangerinn" or "she-Englishwoman."
    • 3/5
      A quirky little book. Some very clever Twain humorous observations. Other parts quite bland. It was written (or he gathered material) while he was traveling with his family in Europe (mainly Germany and Switzerland) 1878-9. He makes some amusing observations about the German language, even recommendations on how to simplify it.
    • 4/5
      When Twain visited Germany in 1879 he was suffering writers block. His great work Huckleberry Finn was stuck mid-stream and he was too. What better way to shake the cobwebs off then a trip to Europe. Twain struggled through the writing of A Tramp Abroad and it shows in the sort of uneven quality and changing direction. Nevertheless it contains some excellent material. The first part about Heidelberg is the best - Twain didn't actually float a raft down the river and wreck (like what happened to Finn), this was made-up, but the descriptions of scenery and place makes it easy to follow on Google Maps and gain a sense of the place. The second best is in Switzerland as he recounts some climbs of renown up to the time, one gets a good sense of climbing culture and life in 19th Century. This is my first travel book by Twain.
    • 3/5
      The third of Twain's "travel books". Not as funny as the first (Innocents Abroad) and the writing also doesn't seem as fluent, but I still enjoyed the read. Some great little insights into life and travel 150 years ago.Read Nov 2016
    • 2/5
      An uneven read. Some parts are genuinely funny--other parts rather tedious.

      Interesting seeing long ago countries and peoples through the eyes of a tourist of that time, even if he does tend to go overboard for his audience.
    • 4/5
      A Tramp Abroad gives an account of one of Mark Twain's journeys through Europe. It is one of the author's travelogues in which he shares his observations while 'tramping' through Germany, Switzerland, France and Italy. 'Tramping' here includes the ascent of Mont Blanc by telescope. With a book as this you cannot really tell what exactly it is about apart from saying what I just said. You'd either have to tell it all or just leave it. I decided to leave it for the interested readers to explore. Just imagine an American traveling through Europe at the end of the 19th century.To my mind there are certain things that make this book an interesting, if unconventional, read. First, there is Twain's gift for humorous depictions of people and places. Twain manages to tell his stories in a lighthearted fashion that actually makes you laugh out loud at times. Second, A Tramp Abroad contains various drawings made by the author himself to support his stories with some sort of 'proof'. Those drawings further contribute to the satirical way this book is written in. Eventually I have to say that I liked how Twain constantly tries to convince the reader of the truthfulness of what he's telling. At numerous points in the book, the author uses footnotes to heighten his credibility. There is even an appendix to fit in all the accounts Twain could not get into his main narrative. This last aspect is somewhat ironic as the main narrative is just an unconnected telling of stories in which the narrator often digresses into things that are only remotely relevant to his story. To give potential readers some idea of what I especially liked about this book and about Mark Twain in general I chose some quotations that I find quite revealing as to Twain's style. Personally, I think Twain is a genius. I have since found out there is nothing the Germans like so much as an opera. They like it, not in a mild and moderate way, but with their whole hearts. This is a legitimate result of habit and education. Our nation will like the opera, too, by and by, no doubt. One in fifty of those who attend our operas likes it already, perhaps, but I think a good many of the other forty-nine go in order to learn to like it, and the rest in order to be able to talk knowingly about it. The latter usually hum the airs while they are being sung, so that their neighbors may perceive that they have been to operas before. The funerals of these do not occur often enough.(on opera visits, p. 50) The Germans are exceedingly fond of Rhine wines; they are put up in tall, slender bottles and are considered a pleasant beverage. One tells them from vinegar by the label.(on German wine, p. 84)Now, in the end I was not sure how to rate this book in terms of stars. A Tramp Abroad is certainly an interesting and funny read. However, I think to really enjoy it you have to have been in one of the countries that are depicted in the book or have some knowledge about Germany and Switzerland. Otherwise, you just would not enjoy the book that much, I assume. Living in Germany, though, I find the book highly recommendable. Finally a note on the reading experience. A book with little above 400 pages that is divided into 50 chapters and an appendix is nothing like the usual reading experience you have with novels. But then again A Tramp Abroad is not a novel. So you might need some time to get used to the structure of the book. It is more like some fifty plus separate stories as Twain usually tells more than one story per chapter. All things considered, I would rate the book with 3.5 stars.
    • 4/5
      "A Tramp Abroad", like any dated satire, is made difficult to appreciate when society is no longer innundated with the thing being satirized; in this case, 19th century travelogues from Americans travelling abroad who used a narrow lens to arrive at their impression of other cultures. Consequently I had no idea when he was kidding or not. To understand Europe in the later 1800s you'll have to seek elsewhere. Did German students pointlessly duel to the point of mutilating each other (doubtful)? Could a ship actually navigate the entire length of a winding river by dragging a chain through its belly (maybe...)? I had less patience for the chapters that were too obviously false from start to finish, like his tackling the Matterhorn.It worked best when I read each chapter as if it were a blog entry. That format would have suited Mark Twain admirably. While I was reading his travelogue in this way, I didn't mind that the chapters felt like a mostly disconnected series of episodes, some about what he saw and did on his travels, some digressing into retelling the legends he picked up, personal foibles, etc. Then I was able to fully enjoy the obvious kidding, his talent for description, and be amused with wondering how much was farce and what was fact (is there a study guide that sorts this out?). Less frequently, it felt like the days when someone invited you over to see a slideshow of their trip. Then it was someone naddering on and on about where he went, what he did, look how beautiful this bit of scenery is, here's a shot of a person we met and let me tell you her life story, etc.There's no denying Twain's skill for telling any kind of story about anything. A blog by Mark Twain would have had me reading daily and, sure, even an invitation to a Mark Twain slideshow would win my attendance. I'm not sure this book is the best way to sample him, but it is a way, and you'll definitely obtain a sense of his style. Remember to read the often quoted appendices relating to Heidelberg Castle, and the German language.
    • 5/5
      1/4 brilliant and hilarious. 1/4 wry and sometimes sophomoric puns and gags. 1/4 repetitive attempts at humor. 1/4 late 19th century travelogue. The French dueling description was a scream and the observation of German students (hacking each other up during fencing challenges) was spot-on accurate. 'Well worth the time it took to get through all this, from the perfect side story and behavioral description of a Blue Jay, all the way through the appendices. I love Mark Twain and this is one of his better works.
    • 3/5
      Twain writes a strong travelogue, and A Tramp Abroad is no exception. His xenophobia is in rare form here. While perhaps not as strong as The Innocents Abroad, it's an entertaining ride just the same. You'll never look at Germany and Germans the same way again. I'm told that Germans love The Simpsons, this book is our chance to return the good natured laughter.
    • 4/5
      As Dave Eggers says in the introduction, this book is funny. Sure, there are times when Twain's descriptions and narrative run a little long, but the many humorous vignettes in this book make up for those portions. The chapters detailing the humorously exaggerated epic ascent of a mountain when they really were just lost in the fog. The longest running joke throughout the book is how Twain and his companion hardly ever walk anywhere in their "walking tour." The appendices are also very funny as stand-alone pieces, especially the one on the "awful" German language. Overall, a very enjoyable read, even if you are not a Twain fan.
    • 3/5
      if you are not a twain addict, which I am, I'd recommend leaving this one alone. It's basically a travelogue and basically boring. What saves it are Twain's silly symphonies of scarcasm, sardonicism, and satire located in various little stories throughout the book, along with his relationship with Harris, his agent. Whether Harris is his book agent or travel agent never is clear, but Twain subjects this poor man to every test that comes along -- parachuting off a mile high cliff with an umbrella, for instance. (It doesn't happen. Chill.) I skimmed about half of the book and still took a week to read it.