Hi from Rick: Happy Birthday ETBD! Celebrating 30 Years of Travel, Teaching and Europe
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| Thirty years ago, our first travel guide's simple cover and typewritten text led reviewers to think it was a rough, pre-publication draft. See the timeline! |
It's "nostalgia month" here as we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the first edition of my first guidebook — now in its 28th edition — Europe Through the Back Door.
It's so fun to look back and see the growth of our teaching program: 30 years ago, our first guidebook; 25 years ago, our first tours using full-size buses; 20 years ago, our first TV show; 10 years ago, we built and moved into our own building; 5 years ago, we launched our weekly public radio show; and this month we'll debut Rick Steves Audio Europe (offering our entire library of radio interviews and audio tours as a free iPhone/smartphone app and podcast). What's ahead? We have no idea. But if the past is any indication, we'll maintain the laser-focus we've had from the start: to help Americans travel smartly, smoothly and economically in Europe.
Exactly how and when my schoolboy "Europe Through the Gutter" days became "Europe Through the Back Door" days is blurred. But from the start, one thing was clear: Europe was my rut.
I can vividly remember, as a 14-year-old, meeting an old Austrian with a handlebar mustache who claimed to have witnessed the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand — the spark which ignited the First World War. I also remember watching Neil Armstrong on Norwegian TV stepping on the moon and saying "En liten stæp før manner, und en gross yump før månnerkind" (or something like that) and asking my Norwegian cousin "What did he say?" On another trip I was on a "video bus" coming into Ankara trying to enjoy an episode of the Flintstones in Turkish (Fred almost sounded right). Suddenly the cartoon was interrupted with Elvis songs and sadness swept through the bus. The world — if not actually one — seemed inclined to be.
Back then, budget beds were spineless, with foam mattresses and nylon sheets. Pensions used to brag they had hot and cold running water. And spiral staircases housed Escher views…not elevator shafts.
But in our generation, travel in Europe has undergone tremendous changes. The USSR is gone. Germany is one. And a tunnel links the UK with the Continent. Ten years ago if you told me about a "bullet train" in Spain I'd think you were talking about Basque terrorism.
New technology has revolutionized independent travel in a generation. If someone in 1980 told me we'd have a united Germany, no borders, a single Euro currency, ATMs rather than travelers' checks, cell phones rather than coin op public phones, catching up with Skype rather than picking up mail at American Express, the internet, discount airlines competing with bullet trains, GPS systems guiding us down super freeways even in Europe's most humble corners...and that I'd be writing something called a blog while I travel...I'd say you were crazy.
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