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The Wrong Shade of Yellow

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About this listen

I was middle-aged and homeless, soon to be penniless, and really and truly no different from that bag lady sitting on the bench over there. I couldn't jack it in and go home, because I didn't have a home to go to anymore. The bicycle and the tent were now home. Wherever I found myself on any given night was now home. And that meant, for tonight, Genoa Piazza Principe Railway Station was home.

I was cycling across Europe in search of Utopia, a place I believed was located somewhere in Greece. When I found it, I would start a new life there. It was my big, fat, Greek midlife crisis. But now I was having a crisis within a crisis. What on Earth had I been thinking?

©2014 Margaret Eleanor Leigh (P)2015 Margaret Eleanor Leigh Europe Travel Writing & Commentary Western Europe Greece Cycling
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This should be a good book but the author spends so long telling you how bad every country is for cycling, how bad the drivers are, how awful the trains are, the ticket guards, the general population of each country she visits you grow tired of it all. I'm halfway though and have to say the author strikes me as the sort of person who can only see the bad in things. Also I've grown tired of her getting on trains instead of actually cycling. I can't think of one positive story in this whole book and one person she meets who she likes (I lie, she liked the man who hated Belgium - misery does like company).

This is all a shame. The author seems good and the story interesting but the relentless misery of a kiwi in Europe blaming everyone but her lacks a certain humility.

Also the warning at the start of this book that she loves these countries and she doesn't mean it rings rather hollow.

Such a shame

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