A New Season of Rick Steves' Europe is Ready for Take-Off
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| Buckling in for a speedboat tour of Norway's Aurlandsfjord. |
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| Getting to know an Orthodox priest in the Serbian section of Bosnia-Herzegovina. |
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| Cameraman Karel Bauer zooms in on the watery wonderland of Croatia's Plitvice National Park. |
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| Karel and I get set for the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain. |
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| Rehearsing my lines at Gibraltar. |
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| Cameraman Peter Rummel mugs with my stunt double. |
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| Enjoying a beer with a view outside Slovenia's Predjama Castle. |
This month my TV production crew and I are wrapping up a two-year project, releasing a new season of Rick Steves' Europe, with 11 half-hour episodes ranging from Estonia to Bosnia-Herzegovina to Morocco and beyond. During the next few weeks, the shows will be rolled out on more than 300 public television stations across the USA (check your local public TV station's website for air times).
The new season includes four episodes on Spain, three on the former Yugoslavia, and four on Nordic Europe. In Spain, programs include Córdoba & Granada, Andalucía with Gibraltar and Tangier (in Morocco), Basque Country, and Galicia (northwest Spain, the Camino de Santiago, and Running of the Bulls). Covering the best of the former Yugoslavia, we've dedicated episodes to Slovenia, Croatia, and one venturing from Dubrovnik into Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro. Then, heading into Europe's far north, we are featuring stately Stockholm, striking Oslo, the lavish beauty of Norway's fjord country, and a final episode on Helsinki and Tallinn in Estonia.
Our new shows celebrate cultures that embrace life on their terms by sharing the complex stories of resilient peoples: The Basque Country, home to the fiercely independent Basques, is a "nation without a state" wedged between France and Spain. In rugged Galicia, Spaniards play bagpipes and Riverdance meets flamenco. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the cultural tectonic plates of Christendom and Islam rub, making peace a constant challenge. And in Estonia, less than a million people stand strong between the behemoth cultures of Germany and Russia, owing the amazing survival of the local culture to their secret weapon...song.
In Season Six, festivals enliven travel television. It's a Holy Year in Galicia, and pilgrims gather under a garbage can-sized incense burner swinging from the cathedral rafters in Santiago de Compostela. We survive the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona and share witness to the intoxicating mix of religiosity and revelry in Córdoba, as flamenco dancers glistening in sweat and carnations construct towering crosses. From the rooftop of Oslo's marble opera house, packed with jazz aficionados, to candle-toting pilgrims remembering a miraculous Madonna in Zagreb, we connect with cultures via their festivals.
With the vivid power of high-definition television, exploring the natural wonders could leave you gasping for breath. From a speedboat tour of Norway's fjords, to hiking through the misty waterfall wonderland of the Plitvice Lakes in Croatia, to sailing Stockholm's vast, hedonistic, and graceful archipelago, to tracking breathtaking kite-surfers zipping into the Atlantic in southern Spain, all this action will certainly burn off calories.
And, because food is culture, this season comes with lots of calories: savoring lefse and goat cheese in a farm hamlet stranded high above a fjord in the west of Norway, slurping fish in a Tangier market, and devouring deluxe cream cakes in Slovenia, gourmet tapas of San Sebastián, and lingonberry-drenched reindeer in Sweden.
But as you know, it's people who carbonate your travel experience. Anyone can see Europe, but to experience it with European friends — that's what distinguishes our shows. Join me as I cruise the Oslofjord with not so distant relatives, learn about neighborhood challenges from a Muslim convert in Granada, follow pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago trail, struggle to understand the horrors of war from a woman who lived through the siege of Mostar, sweat with a Finn in a Helsinki sauna, and get a bearded take on things from an Orthodox priest in Bosnia's Serbian Republic.
Culture communicates through art, and this new season is heavy on artistic surprises. It winds its way from the embroidery woven over 25 years by a woman using her own hair in a Montenegrin island church, to Munch's expressionistic Scream, to "naive" peasant art collected in Zagreb, to the dazzling reminders of Al-Andalus (Spain's Moorish civilization), and to the fish-scale whimsy of Gehry's Guggenheim modern-art museum in Bilbao.
Stow away with us to experience a vivid and tactile Europe — crossing treacherous bridges in vast Slovenian caves, hearing angry hoofs on Pamplona cobbles as drunken fools scramble for their very lives, stirring saffron into a massive paella with a shovel on a Costa del Sol beach, and locking eyes with sultry Gypsy musicians. You'll experience it all, from lightning-quick jai alai hits in French Basque Country, to lazy soccer on the beach in Morocco, to prancing show stallions in Jerez.
Watch our video preview and hold onto your castanets. You've got a thrilling and vivid dose of travel thrills coming your way on the new season of Rick Steves' Europe.