Europe Through an Open Door
For aspiring travel writers or for just people who love to travel, Michael Shapiro's new collection of interviews with notable travel writers offers a fascinating insight into the big names in the travel writing business. Below is the Rick Steves chapter from Michael's new book (excerpted with the generous permission from Michael and his publisher). If you find this interesting, you may enjoy the entire book. We also have a printer friendly version of this article.
Edmonds, Washington
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| Rick and other travel writers are interviewed about their craft in Michael Shapiro's new book, A Sense of Place. |
Rick Steves dreaded his first trip to Europe. He had just completed his freshman year of high school and planned to spend the summer of 1969 hanging out with his buddies. But his father, a piano importer, insisted that Rick accompany him on a buying trip, and an unimagined new world opened up to the lanky kid from Edmonds, Washington.
Four year later, Steves returned to Europe without parental supervision, riding the rails on Eurail passes. Traveling on a shoestring with a friend, Steves survived for two months on a few dollars a day, pilfering apples from orchards, sleeping on trains, and sneaking into museums. Perhaps that's where he first got the phrase "Europe through the back door."
By the late 1970s, Steves was teaching courses to Europe-bound travelers and noticed that his handouts of tour itineraries kept disappearing. In 1980, he decided to put all his advice into a book, and self-published 2,500 copies of Europe Through the Back Door. Steves forgot to include an ISBN (International Standard Book Number, an identification code) making the book difficult for stores to order, but caught a break when the travel editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer serialized the book. Steves's independent, do-it-yourself tone was a hit with the newspaper's readers, but not with its advertisers, and Steves says it cost the editor his job.
During his early travel talks, Steves sold Cosmos tours, a mainstream "if this is Tuesday it must be Belgium" outfit. By getting twenty people to sign up for a Cosmos tour, Steves would earn a free trip and accompany the group. In his book, Postcards from Europe, Steves writes: "On my last Cosmos tour.we tumbled off the bus and met our harried guide. Monica, a German, picked up the microphone and said, 'I was to be finished for the season today. Finally going home. Yesterday I said goodbye to my last group. It was a difficult group. I am ready to go home. Then I receive a message that I must do you.'"
Steves knew there had to be a better way. When a friend asked him to guide her group, he rented a van and drove seven women through Europe. He knew he'd landed his dream job. In those days he often arranged lodgings as the sun set; today Steves's tours are planned months in advance. But tours are just one component of Steves's $20 million travel publishing empire — he's the author of twenty-seven guidebooks to Europe, including more than a dozen country guides and the handbook, Europe Through the Back Door. He's the producer and host of the PBS show Rick Steves' Europe, which has an audience of millions. He's become so influential that his back-door discoveries, like Italy's Cinque Terra, quickly become mainstream attractions. Steves almost single-handedly popularized Paris' Rue Cler, which San Francisco Chronicle travel editor John Flinn calls Rue Rick Steves.
Even with his renown, Steves still offers free travel classes, raises money for PBS during pledge drives, and donates time to causes ranging from his church to social justice groups. Casual viewers familiar with the folksy TV host may not know about Steves's political side. In an essay posted on his Web site, "Innocents Abroad: How Travel Made this Young Republican a Liberal," Steves tells how his global journeys led him to see the "vast gap" between rich and poor. "Lessons I've learned far from home combined with passion for America have heightened my drive to challenge my countrymen to higher ideals. Crass materialism and a global perspective don't mix."
Among the groups that Steves, a Christian who's active in the Lutheran Church, supports are Bread for the World, Greenpeace, and NORML, which advocates the decriminalization of marijuana. His trips to Holland, he says, have shown him there are more compassionate and sane policies for managing marijuana use and prostitution.
I met Steves on an overcast, mid-winter day in the coastal town of Edmonds, about a half-hour drive north of Seattle. The ground floor is a store selling tours, Eurail passes, guidebooks, and travel gear like lightweight carry-on bags.
From the window in Steves's corner office, one can see the junior high school he attended. On the wall is a map of Europe, a picture of Clinton and Gore, and an FSLN (Sandanista) placard. Steves whirled into the office like a tornado, his six-foot-two frame closing like scissors behind his desk. He answered my questions in staccato bursts, clearly enunciating each syllable.
As we spoke, I could see how all the elements of Steves's empire fit together. He's created valuable products, marketed them brilliantly, and persevered relentlessly, even when the odds were stacked against him. He even has a mission statement: maximum travel thrills for every mile, minute, and dollar of your vacation. All this brought to mind another visionary businessman in the Seattle area, this one based in Redmond. Could Steves be Bill Gates's good twin?
Could you tell me about your first trip to Europe and your first impressions?
The most important thing I remember about my first trip to Europe is that I didn't want to go there and my parents dragged me — I was a fourteen-year-old kid. I thought, I work hard as a student, and my pay is my summer break, and they're taking it away from me. And then I got over there — my dad used to import pianos and we had relatives to visit in Norway and so on — so we got over there and I remember being fascinated. There's different candy, different pop, women with hairy armpits, and one-armed bandits in the hotel lobbies. I just thought, This is fascinating. It broadened my world.
Right off the bat, I was just fanatic about keeping notes and records. I kept a postcard journal — every day I would buy a postcard and track how much money I spent, how much money I had left, what we did, what the weather was like, what my impressions were. So just as a little kid, I was sort of a travel researcher ready to happen. On the next trip I saw other kids without their parents, with Eurail passes and rucksacks and the world by the tail, and it occurred to me that I didn't need my parents — Europe could be my playground. I've vowed to go every year since then and I have. Gradually my trips dissolved from being purely adventures to research trips to help other people have adventures.
Can you tell me about the first time you went to Europe without your parents?
That was my Europe-through-the-gutter trip in 1973. I went with Gene Openshaw, who is my co-author in some of my books, one of our tour guides, and my right-hand man here. We did the whole trip — it was on peanuts, something like two dollars a day. We were sneaking into youth hostels and stealing desserts from grocery stores. We were like two little ruffians in Europe. I remember when it was harvest time outside of Rothenberg and there were apples, free apples on the trees. It was a bonanza for us because we could get this fresh fruit. If something cost, we couldn't go in, we couldn't do it.
You mean like a museum?
Right, if we couldn't get in the front door, sometimes we would sneak in the back — we were just little street urchins slumming around Europe. We finished the trip trying to get out to the airport in Frankfurt on an expired Eurail pass. The conductors were coming down from either end of the train closing in on us and we wondered if we were going to get to the airport in time. We got there just in time, jumped out, and flew home with pennies in our pockets.
Every week we'd pile our money on the bed and see where we were at, and if we were a couple of dollars over our budget we'd have to tighten up the next week. In retrospect it was the most exciting and educational trip of my life, a great, great experience. Of course now I pay for things instead of scamming them, but I sure had a vivid experience back then. That kind of tuned me in to how nice it is to have a good roof over your head and reasonable food. I came back from that trip and was literally sick. I was anemic. I ended up taking classes in nutrition so I could treat myself better.
I think we've all had one of those trips and remember it more fondly than any other.
Yup, but that was when I was eighteen.
In your writing now you espouse a very open-minded type of travel, open to places, to people. What are the keys to traveling in a way that's broadening rather than stultifying?
Psychologically you really need to be there. Too many people go to Europe never leaving home, and it's like going to a high-definition travelogue. They're looking at it onstage; they're taking photographs of it; they're seeing people wearing traditional costumes; they're not really connecting with anybody. They've got a camera just bouncing on their belly that says, Yodel. And it's not good travel. You need to stow the camera and you need to be there.
You can go to church and take a flash photograph of Michelangelo's Pieta or you can go to mass at five o'clock any day of the week, two different ways to experience a church in Europe. Most people don't go to a church in Europe to worship — they go to a church to see art. They worship at home but they think they can't worship there because they're not at home. They put an artificial barrier between themselves and experience. You can go to the market and feel awkward because you don't speak the language, you don't understand the metric system, or you can go to a market and remind yourself you're not a tourist: you're one in a thousand-year-long line of hungry travelers. Hold your ground, you're part of the scene. That's a real important approach when you're a traveler.
For a lot of people travel is seeing if you can eat five meals a day and still snorkel when you get into port. In the old days people used to stand on the decks of cruise ships and throw coins into the water and photograph black kids jumping for them. That's one kind of travel that makes a gap between you and the rest of the world. And when I grew up, that's what I thought travel was. And then I thought, Boy, if you can travel in a way that connects you with the world, then travel becomes a real constructive way to spend your time and money.
In your book, Rick Steves' Postcards from Europe, you say travel for you is a quest for roots. What do you mean by that?
A lot of people are interested in their family roots — that means looking for their name on a tombstone or going to church and paging through yellowed pages of the names of parishioners from generations ago. They are putting together a family tree. I've seen tourists under Gore-Tex parkas in a driving rain, writing down the names on the tombstones. I could care less about seeing my ancestor on a tombstone. I want to understand my cultural roots, and they happen to be European. So when I go to Europe, I am trying to put together that puzzle and I love that. The more I know about that, the more fascinating the story is. I have an appetite for the history and art of Europe. I'm not a scholar, but I enjoy it to the point where I got a history degree. So now in my teaching, I have that same enthusiasm and that helps my writing. It helps my tour guiding.
In your guidebooks you emphasize that good travel is more than seeing a bunch of sites. It's interactions with people, it's meeting locals, it's striking up conversations in a café or train station.
And it's leaving home, it's leaving your norm. To me that's the essence of good travel, plus living out of suitcase. I live out of a carry-on-sized suitcase for a hundred days a year. I spend a quarter of my adult life in Europe living out of one suitcase and it's a beautiful thing. I don't need all that stuff. I come home and I've got milkmen to deal with, car insurance, all this stuff. In Europe, it's me, my suitcase, and Europe.
And there's a freedom in that minimalism.
It's a beautiful freedom, yeah, I feel so much healthier and so much younger. I feel like I'm just surfboarding on history. You can't do that when you're encumbered by material concerns.
And that comes through in your guides and on your TV show. It's almost as though one of the commandments of the Church of Rick Steves is "Thou Shalt Travel Light." It seems to be much more than the efficiency of it — it's a philosophy.
Well, it's a philosophy that has a bigger impact on Americans — the impact is correlated to how material your normal world is. I have a friend in Turkey who is a tour guide, and she just can't believe how many shoes Americans need. She just has one pair of shoes and she can outrun any of us.
I used to work up here (in the Northwest) for a bike tour company and for a week of biking people would bring coffee makers; they would bring hair dryers.
You can't preach this to people. It's sort of related to why I would not take a group to India. It's a personal thing. India is my favorite country, but I would never take a group to India because it's unpredictable. I wouldn't want to be in charge of making twenty people happy in India. I can be in charge of making twenty people happy in Denmark or Madrid or Ireland, because it's kind of predictable. But in India it's much more mystical and spiritual.
Is that why it's your favorite country?
Yeah, the good thing about travel is it moves around your furniture, and India moves it around more than any other country.
You write about European train stations and how magical they are, the sense of possibility. I remember walking into the train stations in Milan and Venice and thinking, I could go anywhere and I can be there in a few hours.
I love that, yeah. There's a lot that contributes to that: first of all, the train system is so great; secondly, there's so much diversity or variety per square mile; and also we know a lot about Europe. I'm excited about going to Prussia instead of Franconia — you could go all over China and a typical American wouldn't know if it's Mandarin or Cantonese or whatever. But in Europe, these are Walloons and these are Flemish — I'm coming into Wallonia. There's just an ambience in the train stations — it's like molecular motion, everyone is just moving.
There's a buzz.
You can just sit there and listen to it. In the old days I'd be on a platform in Munich and in ten minutes this train is going to Prague, and in fifteen minutes that train is going to Salzburg and I've yet to decide which train I'm going to be on. That kind of thing is pretty cool. That's freedom. Travel is freedom.
And I think that's part of the appeal of the Eurail pass. You're all paid for.
And if you're frugal like me, it's nice to take the pain of the cost out of it. You get hit once and then, hey, it's a buffet.
And sometimes trains are rolling hotels, too.
Exactly. I've been doing this for thirty years and it's very gratifying to see people one generation behind me having exactly the same magic that I had back then. Essentially travel has not changed — of course we have email and cell phones and ATMs and euros and bullet trains and English Channel tunnels, but the magic of travel, being all alone on Dun Aenghus [an iron age fortress on the west coast of Ireland] or coming into a town in Poland and being completely disoriented and eating soup for fifty cents in the milk bar, the magic of travel is the same, charging across the Greek sea with the sun going down and dolphins playing in your wake, that doesn't change.
Whether you're a college kid in the 1970s with your girlfriend or a college kid in 2004 with your girlfriend, it's the same great hello-world experience. One of my favorite experiences is when things I wrote in my journal in the early 1970s — that are still in the book — inspire people now to have that same kind of magic.
Speaking of magic, what are some of the other places in Europe that you find most magical, churches, museums, nature?
Well, art. Art can be the closest thing to a time-tunnel experience Europe has to offer if you can understand the cultural and economic and historical context that it was created in. So to be standing in front of a painting by Fra Angelico, the greatest painter of the high Middle Ages, a man who was so spiritual that he couldn't paint a crucifix without crying, and to him painting was a form of prayer, to be standing there in a monastery where Savonarola worked, the guy who turned Florence into a theocracy, that's a heady experience.
To know enough about the art to be able to experience the art in the context in which it was created is a real challenge for an American, and it's very rewarding when you get it. Another thing is to just be engaged, clued in, that you're very fortunate to be able to be a traveler in 2004 and witness history in the making. A lot of Americans, a lot of tourists, are oblivious to history that's happening all around them.
An example is being in the Reichstag building in Berlin on opening week. It's a new glass dome that's open and free all the time so people can literally look over the shoulders of their legislators and know what's on their desk and keep an eye on them.
Which is such a symbolic thing given Germany's history — the people are watching.
It's incredible: no more fascism, no more communism, no more division, no more war. It's the beginning of a new century — they're free, hopeful, united, and looking into a great future. I was surrounded by these teary-eyed Germans — you know any time you're surrounded by teary-eyed Germans something exceptional is going on — and I realized they were closing an ugly chapter in the history of that great nation. It was a great new morning in Germany, and I don't think one in ten American tourists up there had a clue of the goose-bumpy experience that was for a German.
I was so thankful that I was engaged enough to know symbolically what was happening there — it was history and I was there. That makes travel much more gratifying and exciting. One thing I'm trying to do in my work is to help travelers not be dumbed down. I think so much in our society is dumbed down now and it's very, very important that Americans don't get dumbed down even if everybody wants them to be dumbed down. It's not just a shopping trip.
It's not a theme park.
Right — this is reality and these are real people having real struggles. And that's magic: we're talking about letting art take you back, about being aware of history right now. It's more important than ever that Americans are able to step away from their country to get a better understanding of what is our country's place on this planet. That's something I am more committed to than ever: helping Americans become better citizens of the planet. That's a good kind of globalism, I think. And travel is a powerful force for that.
One thing I admire about your work is that you don't hesitate to express your political viewpoints. Right now I think we're in an interesting time because of how the U.S. government is perceived overseas. I wonder if you think that's having an effect on how people from the U.S. are being treated in Europe?
There are two issues there: first of all, is it smart for me to let my political beliefs be known because I am a businessman, and I want people to buy my material so my business will work? I don't think it's smart from a business point of view to let people know where I stand because any entertainer is better off not being able to be put in a box that way. I realize Dennis Miller is a conservative or that he supports a lot of Republicans and it's strange for me to psychoanalyze my opinion of Dennis Miller's work now that I realize that he is quite a bit different than me in his politics. It shouldn't affect it, but it does.
So a lot of conservative people that love my work have sworn never again to use my books because they think I am some sort of an unpatriotic liberal. I feel I'm as patriotic as anybody. I'm so committed to my country and it's my drive for us to be smarter on the world scene. But other people hold it against me.
Now I'm sitting here in a building employing sixty people. I'm a businessman — I can't be a romantic or idealist. I gotta have my feet on the ground. I'm still right where I grew up — that's my junior high school, that big yellow-cream building right down there. Isn't that something. It's kind of fun to be thinking, this is where I belong and this is what I belong doing. So this is what I am, I'm an American and I teach Americans how to travel and this is where I live, this is what I do and I love it. I'm very thankful for it. That was a big tangent, excuse me, your question was?
Are Europeans distinguishing between Americans and the actions of the U.S. government?
First of all, everybody knows there are differences between peoples and their governments. Eighty percent of England was against unilateral American attack on Iraq and the British government supported our government. Eighty percent of Spaniards are that way, eighty percent of Turks are that way — people realize that. So thankfully nobody holds my government's actions against me. In the same way I am not going to hold a South African guilty for apartheid. Having said that, I don't know how long Europe is going to cut us that slack.
I noticed on my last trip that Canadians are making it really clear that they're Canadians. They polish their Canadian flags. I would never wear a Canadian flag — I am an American, take it or leave it. It's kind of like [the British comedy] Fawlty Towers; there's this funky little hotel in England. There is a joke when a German customer is coming to the hotel where they tell the staff, just don't talk about the war. And it's like that with Americans now, just don't talk about the war.
I went on a tour in southern France this summer in some little wine village and this dear woman had eight or ten people for a little wine tasting and half of them were Americans. She started her talk: "I just want to thank the Americans for delivering us from the Nazis — we'll always be indebted to you." There's this sort of nervousness on Europe's part that we don't feel appreciated. The point I'm making is that Europeans are bending over backwards to accept Americans. They're not going to treat you badly.
In Europe a lot of people like to talk politics, but nobody's going to broach this issue with you because it might be impolite. So if you are a unilateralist and you think that America's right all the time, and you want to go to Europe and teach them to appreciate us, nobody's going to fight with you unless you start the conversation. So you gotta look for a fight to get a fight. If you're apolitical, Europe would just as soon be apolitical, and let's enjoy the cheese and the wine. If you're multilateral or a European-style liberal, and you let Europeans know, all of a sudden, wow, you've got yourself a party. Everyone's celebrating that you are a multilateralist. So my point is: if you're going to Europe, it doesn't matter what your politics are, it's not a bad thing unless you're looking for a fight.
One quick follow-up about your own personal opinions and having to run a business. You're probably the only person I know who's active in the Lutheran Church and also is a member of the advisory board of NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), and you're open about it.
Yeah, well, first of all I don't see any contradiction. Secondly, I'm in a position where I can get away with being outspoken. I don't want to do it in a divisive way. My goal is to be challenging and cause people to think carefully about things and have a broader perspective. It's a fundamental truth that if you travel a lot you have a broader perspective of things.
I just gave a talk in Bellingham to 500 people and it was a fundraiser for a local peace group sponsored by an independent bookstore. Everybody there was so hip and progressive, I just felt like, why even bother talking politics? It was oddly disappointing. And then I talk to conservative groups in the Midwest or Texas, and I find it very challenging and very stimulating and I find it more enjoyable for my audience, if I can present this as a Christian advocate for the decriminalization of marijuana who believes that we don't lead the world in self-evident, God-given truths, and that half the people on this planet are trying to live on two dollars a day and we're 4 percent of the planet with 50 percent of its wealth who's elected a government to try to get us richer at all costs, and there's blood on your banana.
If you can say that in a caring way, everybody thanks you for it. I've been talking to rich people in gated communities and golf clubs, and they had a jar in the back of the room called Pennies for Pathways and they would toss their coins to house homeless people. I just stood right up there and in a very loving way told them: "You're living here in this gated community and you're jetting all over the world and there are homeless people with children out there and they're getting pennies. It's very poignant for me and I would imagine it's poignant for you too, if you'd think about it."
People have good hearts and they want to be challenged. And that's really a beautiful part of my work, the opportunity to do that. I think if someone can effectively share their global perspective with them, they can be happier with their affluence.
Getting back to Europe, when I hear talk of increased European unity I think of an experience I had in Aerøskøbing in Denmark: I started talking with this old mariner who'd had a few pints and he said, "Denmark has a king; England has a queen, how can we be one?" In Europe there seems to be a lot of forces moving the continent toward a greater European community. I wonder what you think are the pros and cons of that.
A very basic part of how I'm so charmed by Europe is the diversity, all the cultural diversity. The diversity is not necessarily national — it's regional — and throughout our lifetimes we've been hearing regions bickering with nations. I think there are three different levels of loyalty: regional, national, and European. In the last twenty years, nations have been withering away as Europe emerges as the power. I think the consequence of that is suddenly people in Brittany no longer threaten Paris; people in Scotland no longer threaten London; people in Basque country and Catalonians no longer threaten Madrid because the nations aren't quite as important as they used to be.
Because of the superstructure of the European community?
Yeah, because the power is migrating towards Europe as a big free-trade zone. That's my hunch, and news events sort of bolster my belief, because now Catalonians are waving their flags and Madrid doesn't really care. In Brittany, for instance, when I first started traveling, if you named your child with a Celtic name, that child would lose its French citizenship. Celtic music was illegal — you couldn't play it because it was secessionist. Celtic music no longer threatens France. For the first time since 1711, the Scottish Parliament is meeting in Edinburgh. They got their parliament back because London's really not threatened by it anymore — it's not that big a deal.
As Europe unites, some people think it's all going to be Starbucks, but I think as Europe unites the regions are going to waive their flags with a little more vigor. You'll find these minor languages thriving, and the variety is going to stay healthy. As Europe gets more powerful, regions are doing better. So that's my positive spin on the unification of Europe. From a travel point of view, it's just great. You don't have the visas, you don't have coins to worry about. As Europe unites as an economic unit, it won't unite as a cultural unit. I think people like being Belgian; they like being Dutch, and they like the difference.
It seems sometimes that Europeans have a greater appreciation of life, of time to savor what's important. Is that a myth or something you feel is true?
I don't know — I think I probably have a romantic approach to Europe. I believe what you're saying is true, but I don't know if I'm romanticizing Europe or not.
They do have more vacation time.
They live longer, they consume less, they get more vacation time, they get more of a social safety net. They don't have the stress that comes with being a driven society that believes more in this Darwinian survival of the fittest economically. Time is money in America. We're taught to talk about it in terms like its money. We save it, we spend it, we invest it, we waste it.
There's this whole idea of the social contract: how does the society live together? We are the rugged individualists like Locke. In Europe they have the Rousseau model: everyone has to give up a little bit of their freedom so everybody can live together peacefully and civilly. Part of that is because Europe has been around a lot longer than us, and Europe is much more densely populated.
And Europeans are into this. In Holland they say they cut the wheat that grows too tall. Why grow too tall? Anybody gets too much money, they lose it to taxation. There's that great equalizer. To me as an American capitalist, I'm glad I'm working here because I want to work hard and have power and affluence and make a difference. That's just what I get out of bed in the morning for.
From a quality-of-life point of view, Europeans would laugh at me. They would just say, "C'mon man, you've got those mountains over there, when is the last time you've walked in those mountains?" It's been years. So we can learn a lot from the Europeans — we really can. I don't think anybody's got a corner on truth. I don't like to be afraid of different answers — I like diversity. I'm real comfortable with the fact that I shouldn't condemn a billion Hindus for feeding their cows and starving their children. I don't understand the whole thing. I don't understand their concept of religion, of pain, of love, plus I don't know what it's like to live in a country with no trees where you have to have cow pies for fuel. There are a lot of reasons for things that we don't get, but we're quick to condemn it.
In Afghanistan I sat down in a restaurant and a professor joined me and said, "A third of the planet uses spoons and forks like you; a third of the planet uses chopsticks; and a third of the planet uses their fingers like I do, and we're all equal. Just because you use a spoon and a fork doesn't mean you are more civilized than me." That was the only point he wanted to make and then he left me. I'm not offended by it — I'm charmed by it.
Today the guidebook business is very different than it was a generation ago. In the 1950s and '60s, each guidebook line had its personality, but you've remained a strong personality. Do you think that's part of the success of your guidebooks?
I don't know for sure, but good travel is fundamentally people to people. If I'm writing a guidebook, if I'm taking a tour, if I'm making a TV show, if it doesn't have people, it's not going to be good. I don't care who lived there, that building is just as dead as they are. I don't care to see Beethoven's birthplace — a bunch of buildings is nothing. You gotta connect with people, so when I'm putting a guidebook together, I connect people with people. When I'm making a TV show, I'm scared to death if my script doesn't have people in it. My guidebooks are unique in that they have you connecting with actual people — my readers know these people. They send them Christmas cards.
People know when they read my guidebook who is writing it. It's written by Rick Steves — he's a guy who lives in Edmonds and they can learn a lot about me if they want to. You gotta be careful that you don't get in the way of information. On the other hand, I remember quite vividly reading a book about Japan. I didn't know if the author was a man or a woman. I wanted to know something about that person, but it was as if an editor came through and scrubbed out any personality.
It's natural — you want to know who your guide is.
Exactly. My definition of "funky" has some consistency — if I say this is a funky place, people who have used my book in Norway will know what funky means when they go to Dublin. After a while they know that Rick is really into open-air folk museums so he overdoes it on these things.
So do you update all of your titles yourself?
I've got people helping me now — I can't go to every place. [Steves shows me his whirlwind itinerary for the coming summer.] We're very committed to getting back to these places in person — it's very labor-intensive, but I'm thankful the books are selling enough to make that viable.
A generation ago there were all these big shots: Birnbaum, Fodor, Fielding, Frommer, and now most people don't know who the technicians are behind the cover of Frommer's books and so on. And I think publishers like it that way because they can just pay for the piecework and not have to deal with royalties — they don't have to deal with the person. They can just discard him and hire somebody else.
You've done a brilliant job marketing yourself. On my way up here I saw a flier for a weekend of free workshops. So the workshops draw people who buy the guidebooks, viewers see the TV shows then buy your famous carry-on bag or sign up for a tour.
Nothing would succeed on its own. If I didn't do tours, my TV shows wouldn't be as good. If I didn't do TV shows the books wouldn't sell as well. If I didn't do the guidebooks I couldn't research the TV shows — everything helps everything else so everything can be a better value to the consumers and we can still be profitable, which is really quite amazing. My tour guides are the best paid in Europe — I'm the second biggest fundraiser for PBS. When public broadcasting makes money, they are part of the family. When my publisher makes money, it's part of the family.
Do you still give away your shows to PBS?
Yes, that's just a choice a TV producer has to make. I could charge for them and then stations would have to decide whether to pay for Rick's shows. My profit, honestly, is how many people I'm influencing, how many people are watching the show, how many people are using the book in Paris, how many people are enjoying the fjords because of our tour guides. We had 5,000 people take our tours, 500,000 people use the books, 5 million people watch the TV show. That's really profitable to me because all these people are being affected. And with that seemingly altruistic approach to business, we are viable and profitable in a difficult economic environment because we're committed to the travel experience.
I used to charge ten bucks for people to take my travel class back in the '70s at the University of Washington. Then I realized traveling couples were having to decide that one or the other would take the class so they didn't have to both pay for it. I honestly thought, this is terrible, this is a travel partnership and only one person is going to take the class because you don't want to pay the extra ten bucks. Then I thought about it and said, Heck, lets do the classes for free and people can buy my guidebooks, so that worked out better. The classes have been free ever since.
With all the guidebooks and TV shows, you're very well known now. Can you do the work incognito?
It's a problem in some cases because I come into town and there's a buzz: Rick's coming down the Rhine River. All the B&B people are out scrubbing their doorsteps, saying, "Oh yes, Rick, I've been scrubbing all day, just like every day." One year I wrote about a little B&B and said, it's not very clean but it's friendly. I try to call a spade a spade. It was painful for this woman to hear that her place was not very clean. So the next year I'm coming down the Rhine and the word gets out. I come up to her place and she's wearing her apron and she's on her knees scrubbing. And she says, Rick, "I've been scrubbing all day — that's all I do is scrub and scrub. You can eat off these floors." I had to just laugh because I knew it was set up.
Nowadays if I come to a restaurant and they know who I am, I don't rely only on my experience — I talk to people who are eating there. That's one of the great things about having a book that's established. I can go into a restaurant or a pub or whatever, talk to four different groups who are enjoying their food and I sit down with each of them. I'll even sample off their plate — it's kind of fun. And they want to talk to me and I just ask: "How is your meal? Is the service O.K.?"
And they say, "We've eaten here three nights in a row — it's just awesome." Who am I to say it's not great? This couple here they've been in Sorrento for three nights and they love it and they're thankful I put it in the book. Good enough for me. Next. I'm realistic about it — I can't eat everything on every menu. I can't sleep in every hotel myself, but I can talk to people who do. I can get a sense of the place because I'm pretty efficient — I go through Europe like a tornado.
And you do a nice job on the Web — I imagine you get a lot of reader feedback.
I love the reader feedback — it's very, very helpful — it's crucial for us.
If by some miracle you had two free weeks, if you could go anywhere, would it be India? Just to go, not to write about it, just to enjoy it. Or would you stay here in Edmonds and hang out with your family?
That's a good question. Well, if I had two wide-open weeks, I'm such a workaholic, I would go to Europe and do things that are nagging me. I would do the Peloponnesian Peninsula and get up to date on Greece. Or I'd check out St. Petersburg and the Baltic capitals. I love sharing what I love. I've only had two jobs — I used to be a piano teacher and now I'm a travel teacher. I love music and I love travel. When you start making your hobby your work, you risk ruining your hobby. But I've always been thankful that when I teach what I really like, it doesn't take back how much I love it. I just love my work, so if I had the time I would just work more, which sounds kind of pathetic. But I get a certain vicarious joy from helping other people experience something really cool.
A couple of Sundays ago I was in Paris in St. Sulpice Cathedral. After the first mass you wait at the back of the nave and the little door opens up and people in the know can scamper up the spiral staircase and go into the organ loft and sit with one of the greatest pipe organists in Europe and see him working. There were a dozen people with my book scampering up that spiral staircase. It's pretty cool to be on the appreciation end of all those people's experience — they're all thankful to me for opening that door to them.
Right now there are probably twenty people at Walter's Hotel in a little village in the Swiss Alps on his doorstep having a nice coffee schnapps, watching the moon rise over the Jungfrau. That's pretty cool — I get selfish joy thinking of all the people who are enjoying the travel thrills I've enjoyed.
Now if I couldn't do that, I'd probably stay home and play backgammon with my children and go biking with my wife and sit in a hot tub, and go skiing. That's what I'd do, go skiing. If I was to travel, I'd go to India. I love India but I haven't been there for years because I don't teach India.
In your book, Rick Steves' Postcards from Europe, I've seen images of your postcards. You probably could be in the Guinness Book of World Records for cramming the most information in tiny writing on the back of a card. Do you still send postcards, or is it all email and cell phones these days?
That's a good question: I do not send postcards. That's funny, yeah I used to do that. I am so intense when I'm in Europe and I'm so efficient and I'm so energized, it's exhilarating. I just don't go into a post office and buy a stamp and send something. I use email.
Do you sleep?
I sleep, yeah. I'm very careful to get my sleep so I get eight hours a night, but I don't waste a minute when I'm in Europe because I've always got twice as much that needs to be done for the time I've got.
It seems that you plan very efficiently.
I won't even tell you how fast I update these books because it would discredit the books (laughs). I know what my readers need. We used to say on the back of our books, "Don't be fooled by overweight guidebooks."
Is there any unrevealed place that you love in Europe that you just thought, this is too precious or too delicate, I can't talk about it or it'll be overrun?
Arthur Frommer, I went to a talk by him, and I think Arthur Frommer is great, he's my inspiration — he opened the door to independent travel for people back when it really was radical. So I went to a talk by Arthur Frommer and he said he's got his favorite little pension in Rome that he keeps to himself because it's too precious. My gut reaction was, Arthur how can you do that, because I just work so hard to find these gems and if the very best gem I kept for myself, it would just make no sense at all. I'm there two nights a year, and there are 363 other nights — why can't people enjoy that?
And also it's real important for the economies of all these little places to get this business, and I love to support small businesses that are idealistic, that are keeping the character of their societies going. This mom-and-pop kind of thing is more than just cute — it's part of the fabric of a healthy society. So to answer your question, I'm so passionate about the experience my readers are going to have, I could never in good conscience keep a secret from them because I wanted it just for me.
Now there is the case of a place that's too fragile to send everybody to, and I'm aware of that. I take the temperature of places every year and see how much they can handle. Gimmelwald and Salema and Cinque Terre, these places are being overrun with my readers — now is that a bad thing? I go there and I talk to the locals and they're very thankful — they're naming streets after me. They're opening up new little businesses — they're not out in the field so much. They're doing Internet cafés and little restaurants and bed and breakfasts and they're having the economic boost that my readers bring, and my readers are all just having a blast.
It's not quite as romantic as it used to be, but there's a laundromat and there's a comfortable little hotel, and there are English menus, and there are boat rides you can take, and on and on. So it's an evolutionary thing. Yeah, I'm changing the character and the economics of that area but the locals are happy, the tourists are happy, I'm happy. A few people think that I should just tell them alone about it. There's something a little hypocritical about a reader who says, "How can you send everybody here?"
What you do feel is your greatest accomplishment or contribution as a travel guide?
There's a curiosity and a wide-eyed enthusiasm that my readers have that I try to stoke through my enthusiasm. It's not normal to be poetic for a lot of Americans and that's really a shame. Something I try to do in my books is let people know it's O.K. to be a poet and to be aware that Victor Hugo sat right there and he wrote about the ivy dragging its fingers down the ruins of that chapel and he looked down at the river and saw the boats coming as they had since Roman times. He was aware that this was the palace of the Holy Roman emperor. Today it's the Sleeping Beauty town that everybody left and it's sort of in a mothball situation now, reawakened only in the age of modern tourism. This kind of romantic approach is a beautiful thing, and a lot of people miss that in their travels. So that's my challenge as a writer, to give people the opportunity to be a poet in their travels.