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Rick Steves: Blog Gone Europe

I'm on the road in Spain, Italy, Slovenia, Montenegro and Bosnia — weaving my travel experiences into my business, and sharing what's on my mind. If you think it's inappropriate for a travel writer to stir up discussion on his blog with political observations and insights gained from traveling abroad, you may not want to read any further. — Rick

Filming a TV show in Burgundy this week has caused me to think a lot about the French. The great issues of the day seem to deal with food and drink.

Take the sad story of snails. Good escargot must grow wild. But as effective chemicals have successfully killed off weeds and undesirable insects, they have also decimated the slug and snail populations. These days in France, much of the escargot is farmed. Locals know the grey snails are farmed and mediocre at best.

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Perhaps the snail is to France what the buffalo is to America. The great French snail — once so common that early-19th-century train companies hired women and children to clean the tracks of them so the trains could get a grip — has gone the way of the great American buffalo. I hate to burst any bubbles...but if you’re slurping top-quality “free-range snails” in a little Paris bistro, they most likely last slithered free in Poland.

The French, in an attempt to cut back on farming chemicals, are resorting to “sexual confusion.” Farmers use an organic spray that covers everything with the scent of a female insect. Male insects smell females, find nothing, get mad, and in their sexual funk...refuse to reproduce.

Wine is another topic that arouses the French. Walking through the finest vineyards in France, the fabled Côte d’Or (or “Golden Hillside”) of Burgundy, an elegant vintner evangelizes:

“A good grape must suffer. Look at this soil — it’s horrible...just rocks. And these grapes have character. The roots of these struggling vines are thin as hairs, searching as much as 30 meters down for moisture. The vines in the flat fields” — she motions to fields just a kilometer away — “have it too easy...a silver spoon in their teeth. It’s like people. Paris Hilton, she is not interesting. The fine wines of humanity, they are the ones who have suffered.” (I found myself comparing Paris Hilton and Tina Turner.)

“The best vintners don’t force their style on the grape. They play to the wine’s strength, respecting the natural character of the sun, soil, and vine...the terroir. They play the wine like a great musician plays classical music. You don’t want to recognize the musician...you want to hear Beethoven.”

After biking through the idyllic vineyards, where road signs read like a list of fine wines, I was determined to film a restaurant set in a vineyard. Steve and I had enjoyed a place called Le Relais de la Diligence. Two years ago, the vines were lapping at its tables. Today, it’s in a wheat field. With the whole world making good wines, the French are cutting back on quantity, using marginal land for other crops, and working to build the quality.

The next restaurant we tried was aghast that we would even think of filming there. It was a matter of discretion...as if most of their clientele were enjoying affairs. (Only in France is this a major issue in restaurants. Even so, wherever we film in restaurants, we politely visit with each table and confirm that they are okay being shown on TV.)

I have long thought there was something affected and pseudo-sophisticated about all this finicky French culture. While buying wine, you ask what would be good with escargot, and the wine merchant needs to know how you plan to cook the snails. I envisioned a good Chardonnay...oh, you’re cooking it that way? Then you need something flinty — a Chablis.

Then I thought of the way I (or someone who pooh-poohs the French passion for fine points in cuisine) might celebrate the nuances of baseball. Take a Frenchman to the ballpark. All the stuff that matters to me — how far the runner is leading off first base, who’s on deck and how he does against left-handed pitchers, how deep is the bullpen, put in a pinch runner! — would be nonsense to him.

The next time I put a little ketchup on my meat and my French friend is mortified, I’ll just remember that with two outs and a full count, he’ll have no idea why I know the runner’s off with the pitch.

Posted by Rick Steves on July 30, 2007
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I just met my film crew, Simon and Peter, in Burgundy. Steve Smith — my favorite Francophile (and co-author of my France guidebook and Manager of Tour Planning) — has joined us, too. I’m done researching guidebooks and for the next four weeks we’re making TV — four new episodes: Burgundy, great Swiss cities, Czech Republic (without Prague), and Vienna with the Danube.

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It’s fun to get back into the TV production mode. Each day is an odyssey. Five of them add up to a 30-minute episode. Today was no exception:

This morning was market day in Beaune — I bought a big golden baguette to fit in. Locals treat their reusable shopping bag as an accessory. Lots of little dogs.

We’ll be cooking up some snails in this show — and I learned something a little disappointing about escargot. I always thought when I dragged a snail out of his shell, I was the first to do so. But no. Snails are purchased in a jar, prepared, and then stuffed into reusable shells that aren’t even theirs to be cooked. In a charcuterie you can buy them pre-stuffed with all the garlic and butter packed in...or by the jar with a pile of empty shells (although most French people have a huge supply of empties already at home).

Midday was in a medieval hill town — perfect for illustrating the administrative headquarters of a feudal lord whose church and castle came with commanding views of his domain. The population of Brancion is down to about one family — and François is both the grandfather and the mayor. When we stopped at his place for lunch, he couldn’t fathom the fact that we needed to eat quickly, then shoot.

The French keep lunch sacred. When I’m filming and push the schedule, I’m convinced they do their best to sabotage my mission to keep the work momentum going. I got frustrated as we fell behind schedule.

At Brancion’s stark and humble Romanesque church, I did a video trick I've always wanted to do: walk out of a serene religious space and disappear into the light (which is what you do when you expose for the inside, which causes the sky outside the door “burn out”).

Next stop: Cluny — headquarters of a chain of about a thousand monasteries that actually rivaled the Vatican as the greatest power center in Christendom back in the 11th century. We parked right in the town center, and while Simon and Peter set out to shoot, I fumbled with coins for the meter. As the meter maid walked by and saw this, she said, “J’ai fini mon travail.” (Don’t bother...I’m done working for the day.)

While Cluny’s church was once the biggest anywhere, today almost nothing is left. Great history here...but very little to actually see. That meant lots of “on-camera” presentation of information. And covering the script “on camera” means it is unchangeable later — so accuracy is critical. And it’s hard to get precise when distilling the complicated story of monastic orders into a nutshell — as we need to do for TV.

For instance, one of today's “on-cameras” had me saying, “The abbey's success has been attributed to a series of wise leaders or abbots. In fact, four of the first six abbots actually became saints. They didn’t answer to kings or bishops, but directly to the pope. They preached the principles of piety and the art of shrewd fundraising. Piety — they got people to stop looting the monasteries. Shrewd fundraising — they convinced Europe’s wealthy landowners to will their estates to the monasteries in return for perpetual prayers for the benefit of their needy and frightened souls.” I confirmed this with a delightful but not very scholarly local guide.

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We wrapped up Cluny at exactly 6:00 and drove to Taizé. After all the ruined thousand-year-old monasteries, I wanted to show a contemporary monastery. Taizé (www.taize.fr) is a Christian Woodstock with thousands of young pilgrims here on retreat each week. We staked out a square meter in the vast and simple church as, like a worshipful rising tide, 3,000 young people from 100 countries flooded in. It was all Steve and I could do to hold our spot until Simon and Peter (good Biblical names for the gig) joined us.

The immense congregation sat knee-to-knee on the floor, holding candles and singing chants of praise round and round while being led in worship by fifty white-robed brothers. Looking up from my cross-legged position at the big camera atop its tripod capturing this phenomenal gathering capped the day perfectly. (More on our shooting in Burgundy in a future blog. It’s 1:00 a.m. and I’m beat.)

Posted by Rick Steves on July 28, 2007
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Every two years my guidebook research brings me to my favorite corner of the Swiss Alps, as I visit my friends who run the little places that accommodate my traveling readers in the tiny village of Gimmelwald.

Walter, who runs Hotel Mittaghorn, is 82 now...slowing down but shuffling on. To most people, he just giggles and muses about this and that incomprehensibly. But it all makes sense to Walter. Tim from Britain looks after Walter and the hotel. Tim’s in a brace after a parasailing accident. Hard landings seem to make him seem shorter each year I visit. We have our annual meeting to lighten Walter’s workload. A new fire regulation cuts his hotel capacity to 15 — a blessing. Later, in the village center, I meet a stream of Walter’s guests...all thrilled to stay at Hotel Mittaghorn.

Down in the town, I drop in on Olle and Maria, the school teachers who share the 120-person village’s single teaching position. They cut me some hard alp cheese as we review their B&B business. Maria says she doesn’t understand why, in 12 years, they’ve never had a black visitor from the US. She promises to give a free room to the first black American family that comes. I wandered how that offer would look in my guidebook. I joked I wanted the offer for all black people for an entire year. (Anyway...if you’re a black American, you’ve got a free room here in paradise!)

I drop in on Esther, the dynamo farm girl who now, with her expanded guesthouse, has the biggest business in the village. She asked if my describing her place as an “upscale mini-hostel” wasn’t a bit off. I agreed.

Esther also rents rustic spots across the street in her barn. She's received some complaints, and was concerned we were overselling it in the guidebook. She asked, “Shouldn’t we call it a ‘stable?’ And you should tell of the smell and the flies. Americans don’t handle flies well. It smells like a barn — manure. You must tell them directly.” With my new, more frank write-up, I told her, “If anyone complains, it’s their own fault.”

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My favorite visit in the village is the Mountain Hostel run by Petra. After dark it’s a glowing light of travel happiness in this sleeping village. It was filled with a likable, well-scrubbed gang — kids any parent would be thrilled to see their teenager hanging out with. Everyone seemed to be instant friends. I meet a Jeremy, a 15-year-old with his dad. He was immersed in a raucous world of 18-to-25 year-olds with the world by the tail. This was his first hostel...we celebrated the fact. A college student from San Diego with big hair, “carpe diem” tattooed on his underarm, and a determination to be a great high-school teacher, joined in the conversation. All agreed the world needs more "Dead Poets Society" teachers. The topic turned to whether history as taught in the USA is ethnocentric. A woman who left her five-year-old daughter sleeping in the barn (swatting flies), said, “I’m a history teacher”...and joined in the conversation.

I met with Petra — sitting in the kitchen while she cooked up her famous pizzas. She grew up by the hostel in the next village, and remembered loving the way American couples called each other “honey.” She married local boy Wally, and they did wonders making the Gimmelwald hostel the money-less mountain-lovers’ El Dorado it is today. As a courageous woman with a vision, she ruffled village feathers. Her father-in-law never even visited the work of Wally and Petra for years.

Petra’s only request for the next edition of the guidebook: Shame the guys into splitting lumber for the wood-heated hot tub. I stepped out back to a gleeful gang of happy hikers in a half-barrel-design hot tub. Standing in the tub posing for photos, they looked like a bundle of white asparagus. As I always say, “If heaven isn’t what it’s cracked up to be...send me back to Gimmelwald."

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An artist sketched a funny cartoon entitled “The Adoration of Rick Steves” with hostellers using my guidebook like the Bible. And it occurred to me: If any place was a springboard for my career, it was this hostel back in the 1970s.

When I first came in 1976, goats lived downstairs. Bent old Lena (who sounded like a goat when she talked) would hobble over once a day and collect two francs. Today it may cost 25 francs to sleep here — but Gimmelwald hostel provides the same magic. I told Petra she should have a photo of Lena on the wall. She pointed to the space above the bar...and there she was.

Lena’s gone. There’s not only a shower...but a hot tub. And a generation after me, the essential magic of slumming it in the Alps is unchanged. Walking home through the darkness, I could almost hear the gnomes of Gimmelwald cheering me on. My work brings me great joy.

Posted by Rick Steves on July 27, 2007
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I’m in for the night. I’m on the valley floor. From my balcony, the view matches the 19th-century etchings I enjoyed earlier today. The bright moon gives the cliffs an edge. New floodlighting sparkles on Staubbach Falls — a waterfall tall as a skyscraper that bursts over the cliff. The arc of water, so riled up from its trip down the mountain to this climax, seems to go in slow motion as it flies gracefully away from the mountain and tumbles to the valley floor. Ever since I was kid, I’ve imagined I could follow an individual drop.

At the foot of the falls, just beyond a smooth cone of land built by centuries of rocks hurled as if the river loses its grip on earth, the only bar in town glows with activity. Its old-school neon sign says “dance.” This is Lauterbrunnen Valley’s only spit-and-sawdust pub. It’s also a gathering point, famous throughout Europe, for the ultimate daredevils — the guys who make Johnny Knoxville look like a pansy: cliff-leaping base jumpers. While farmers slump at the bar, base jumpers from around Europe share stories and lessons learned.

All week I’ve nodded my head sadly in agreement with locals who rail against the crazy base jumpers who come to this valley to own the cliffs. This is beyond thrill-seeking. This is foolhardy playing with death...just asking for a “road kill” joke. It’s a nuisance when they keep dying upon landing in the otherwise peaceful farms (as if it traumatizes the cows).

Realizing I need to get out and experience this base jumpers’ bar, I shut the lid on my laptop, put my clothes back on, and went over for a beer. Angie the wiry bartender drew me a local draft and walked me through the photos around the room showing off the best departure points. Outside, a guy in a “bat suit” (wind suit) spread his arms and legs to demonstrate the aerodynamic webbing that let him actually fly rather than fall.

I met Pauli from Finland. Frank is his base-jumping name, but I wanted his real Finnish name. (He’s a data systems engineer in Tampere, north of Helsinki.) After 25 years of skydiving, now he spends his vacation base jumping. He’s here for a week, and will probably make 20 jumps.

When Pauli said something interesting, I’d pull out my notebook and jot it down. A couple from Oregon interrupted to get my photograph, and Pauli realized I had a following among travelers in the US. He explained about this international fraternity of base jumpers. Their common passion transcends any cultural and language differences. Lauterbrunnen offers about the best jumping in Europe. It’s legal (more and more places are saying no), the access is quick and easy (allowing 3 or 4 jumps per day), and jumpers from all over congregate here at Hotel Horner. Base jumpers respect host communities. Here, in a valley busy with helicopters shuttling material to remote construction sites, they are sure to be in good with the pilots. After all, if you jump into a helicopter...end of vacation.

In the last three years, “tracking” pants and jackets — which fill with air in a way to give the jumper more surface for a slower flight with more control (or “tracking” ability) — have become popular. Pauli plans to learn tracking...but you do your learning from an airplane first before cliff jumping. The bat suits are a completely different skill. He’s not going there.

Pauli was a bit shy. He was pleased I knew about the great ski jumpers of Finland. I didn’t get the bravado I expected in this bar. For many jumpers, it’s a personal thing.

Pauli agreed jumping is never completely safe. “When you are no longer nervous, you should quit. There are uncontrollable risks. It’s a matter of risk management. We say, ‘Shit happens.’ We also say, ‘Angels don’t protect you against stupidity.’”

He shared his log book. Each jump over the years was logged with an assessment (great tracking, rough landing, and so on). As I left, Pauli asked me to sign his log book. He joked that if he survived this adrenalin-seeking stage of his life, this book would be a great conversation piece for his grandchildren. I signed it, hoping he was right. Walking back to my hotel, I was thankful I had left my balcony an hour earlier.

Posted by Rick Steves on July 25, 2007
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Swiss people are expert at living with nature. Their land, long a mountain fortress, is now a play round... "for big boys,” my friend Fritz adds. Fritz, a dynamo who runs my favorite little hotel in Interlaken, recently broke his collarbone. For the first time, I can keep up with him. He climbs a mountain on his bike just to see the sunset. I’m forever thankful to Fritz (who’s nearly my age) for alpine mountain-biking my son Andy into the ground — and then taking him “flying.”

Parasailing is Fritz’s passion. He is forever nagging me to “go flying.” Flying with Fritz (tandem parasailing) is his sideline. Andy still talks about his exhausting and exhilarating day with riding and flying with Fritz.

As a hotelier, Fritz is tuned into the phenomenon of Indians coming to the Alps in droves. “We love Indians — but they need to learn manners when staying in European hotels. We rent them a double, you turn your back, and you have seven people in the room — cooking curry on the carpet.” Fritz finds you can get out the smell, but not the stains. On regional buses, Indian tourists are so loud they even drown out the Americans.

Fritz explained that Indians are a huge part of Interlaken’s business. They come to see mountain scenes made famous in their movies. Kashmir is now too dangerous for movie production, and romantic Indian movies need mountain wonderlands for lovers to swoon with the maximum melodrama. (There’s even a restaurant now on top of the Jungfrau called "Bollywood.")

I was with Fritz when a freak hailstorm pulverized Interlaken. It had been really hot. Locals — like squirrels before a storm — sensed it and were nervous. Something big was clearly coming. It got dark. Then...bam! Typhoon in the Alps. I parked my bike just in time to take refuge in the hotel.

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Standing on my balcony, I watched flower gardens hammered into pulp. The road became a river of flowing hail balls, leaves, and flower petals. Fifteen minutes later, we went out to survey the casualties: Fabric on chairs was ripped, an entire wall of old windows was left jagged, birds were stripped of their feathers and knocked silly. Car rooftops were blanketed in dents, and windshields were alligatored. I helped Fritz shovel the hail out of his basement before it melted. He joked, “A greeting from George W. Bush.” And then said it's no problem--we Swiss are the most insured people in the world.

Of course GWB didn't cause the violent weather and this is not the first hail storm to ruin a city's cars. But, to people living close to the weather here in Europe’s Alps, the strange and changing weather is a troubling reality. There is a growing frustration with people who confuse their short term economic needs with the long term needs of the environment.

The next morning, Fritz and I went on a hike. Riding the lift to Männlichen, high on the ridge above Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen, we stepped off and into a visual symphony: Before us towered the mighty Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau. Fritz, who worked at this mountaintop restaurant as a kid and bikes here for a little fresh air a couple of nights a week, talked of the changes he's noticed here in the last decade. They’re subtle. Walking by a glacial pond, he recalls how, during his childhood, there would be hundreds of frogs singing. Now there are none.

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We studied a new ski lift being built. Before, they would just build a few towers. Now, a swath is cut right up the mountain as each lift is plumbed with snowmaking gear. Big water pipes stuck out of the concrete foundations seeming to trumpet a new age. You won’t have ski resorts in the future without manmade snow.

Today the Swiss ski industry is in crises: A third of the lifts are losing money, a third are in trouble, and only a third are good business. I pulled out the postcard Fritz gave me. Wiggling it, I saw the glacier come and go. The valley in 1907...filled with ice. The same valley in 2007...dry, with a shrunken glacier hanging like a hot dog’s tongue over the top of the valley high in the distance.

Gazing up at the North Face of the Eiger, Fritz tells me of speed climbers, leaving Interlaken on the early lift, scaling this Everest of rock faces, and getting back to Interlaken in time for a late-afternoon business meeting. Then he gets back onto global warming. As the permafrost thaws, there are more falling rocks, and mountain guides are abandoning once-standard ascents that are no longer safe.

Fritz is typical of Europeans who enjoy Americans enough to be comfortable challenging us with a political discussion. As I send them a good percent of their business through my guidebooks, they are careful not to upset me by angering my readers.

I tell him I believe part of the joy most Americans find in their travels is to be challenged by people who see things differently. I think one thing the Swiss and we Americans have in common is a self-assuredness that can border on arrogance. I asked Fritz how the American guests reacted to his interest in politics and if he saw a change in arrogance. He said there was a spike in arrogance a few years ago but that's less so now.

Posted by Rick Steves on July 23, 2007
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At exactly 11:15 in the courtyard of the royal palace in Dresden, forty Meissen porcelain bells began a sweet three-minute melody. I left the shelter of my guide’s umbrella to get a closer look at the bell tower. Squinting into a mist, I could just see the porcelain bells vibrate when hit. I was mesmerized by this little royal trick. Then I wondered why I was so thrilled. Several groups of sturdy Russian tourists who crowded the same square didn’t seem to be that impressed.

Then I realized I was on a Dresden high. In an eastern German town I’ve known for just a few years, I had enjoyed new insights and great new sights — newly restored and newly open to the public.

The Wettin Dynasty ruled Saxony from Dresden for 800 years. Their Louis XIV-style big shot was Augustus the Strong. They say he could break horseshoes with his bare hands and fathered 365 children. He loved being portrayed with the rose of Luther (symbol of the Protestant movement in Germany) being crushed under his horse’s hoof.

The Wettins taught the rest of Europe’s royal courts the art and importance of having their own porcelain works. The Wettins’ Meissen was the first. I thought I knew the best crown jewels...until I saw the Wettin jewels in Dresden’s “Historic Green Vault” — newly opened and requiring an advance reservation to see. They're absolutely dazzling, and a clear reminder that those Wettins were something in their day.

Then, after pausing to enjoy several street musicians (ever since Romania was admitted to the EU, there has been a flood of street musicians in this part of Europe), I went out to see Volkswagen’s “Transparent Factory,” where visitors are welcome to watch fancy new models actually being assembled. The factory is so politically correct that parts are brought in by “Cargo Trams” — which congest the city’s traffic less than trucks.

Finally, the highlight: the newly restored Frauenkirche. Dresden’s 310-foot-tall Church of Our Lady was destroyed during the massive bombings one night in 1945. With a huge international effort, the heart and soul of the city was put together like a massive jigsaw puzzle — using as much of the original stone as possible. Today it’s open once again. The interior is stunning: pastel to heighten the festive nature of the worship, curvy balconies to enhance the feeling of community, and with seven equal doors — to welcome all equally and send worshippers out symbolically to all corners to share their enthusiasm for their faith.

My Dresden visit started rocky. Riding the express train into town, I figured it would just stop at the main station. The train pulled into Dresden Neustadt — the New City of Dresden. Okay. Most of the passengers got out. So did I. The train took off. I walked and walked with my bag, really sweating, in a confused fog. I must have walked twenty minutes as my denial that I had gotten off on the wrong station slowly faded. After circling the big block and pretty embarrassed at my mistake, I pondered cutting my losses and just taking a taxi to my hotel. But another train was leaving in minutes for what must be the central station. I hopped on. Five minutes later we arrived. I hopped out at Dresden Mitte. The train took off and I stepped outside the station again, and it slowly sunk in: I made the same mistake again. Another train came in a few minutes. I got on it and finally made it to my intended station: Dresden Hauptbahnhof — a block from my hotel. As I tell travelers in lectures: “Many towns have more than one train station.”

One of my best skills — extremely helpful in my line of work — is the ability to make mistakes...with gusto. After a day in Dresden, the frustrating start was a distant memory. And I had a new appreciation of a city that just 60 years ago lay in smoldering rubble, just 20 years ago was in a USSR-imposed economic hole, and today seems to have caught up with Western Germany.

After the masses of Americans I saw in Berlin and Rothenburg, I saw barely one during my entire Dresden visit. Hey, travelers — check out Saxony. Those Wettins rule.

Posted by Rick Steves on July 21, 2007
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Why do I still love Rothenburg? Everyone in the town makes their living off tourism. The place is stampeded midday with visiting tour groups. The town even created its own traditional pastry — the Schneeball ("snowball") to compliment all the faux-traditional Christmas ornaments it sells. Yet when I pass through its medieval gates, I feel like a kid who just got a three-day pass for all the rides at Disneyland.

I used to think I liked Rothenburg for the medieval lifestyles on display in Germany’s best-preserved medieval town. The ramparts are intact — complete with arrow slits. The fish tanks next to the water fountains still evoke the days when marauding armies would siege the city, and it would survive on the grain in its lofts and the fish in its tanks. The night watchman stokes his lamp and walks wide-eyed tourists through the back lanes, telling stories of hot oil and great plagues. The monastery garden still has its medicinal herbs. And the crime and punishment museum shows graphically how people were disciplined back when life was nasty, brutish, and short.

But on my last visit, I realized why I like Rothenburg so much (in spite of its Schneeballs, obnoxious tour groups, and Christmas trinkets). It is a community of real characters...and a small enough community that all the characters know each other. And as a return visitor, I've learned the social scene.

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Norry — the man whose guesthouse was so creepy and whose moustache was so droopy that I had to sing the "Addams Family" theme song with each visit — invented a cross between a trombone and a saxophone. He calls it the Norryphone, and now with each visit I boogie on his honky-tonk piano while Norry improvises.

“Herman the German” has spent a thousand Wednesdays at Mario’s “Old Franconian Wine Stube” hosting the English Conversation club (where Germans hang out with tourists, sharing slang, “tongue-breakers,” and beer). Mario — a bohemian chef Gene Wilder look-alike — fastidiously checks each plate as it leaves his kitchen.

Marie-Therese sells kitschy German knick-knacks so enthusiastically that when she takes me home for dinner, her house feels like the innards of a cuckoo clock — and it doesn’t surprise me.

Reno the Italian married into the town and runs a great little hotel-restaurant. For a generation his daughter, Henni, has caused travelers to dream in German. Spry Klaus, who runs a B&B above his grocery store, takes travelers jogging with him each evening at 7:30. Every time I walk under her house, I still remember the old woman who lived in the wall who loved showing off her WWII bullet wound. She’s gone now.

George, the night watchman, is the envy of his neighbors for his lucrative gig — taking a hundred English-speaking tourists around each night for $8 a head on a one-hour tour. Then he does it again in German. (He collects for the English tour at the end. But for the German-speaking crowd, he needs to collect at the beginning...since, otherwise, they’d melt away just before collection time.)

On my last evening in town, everyone seemed to be at Mario’s. Herman the German was holding court with his table of American travelers, there for the English Conversation Club. He gave me a tiny business card that said, “If I had some of your business, I could afford a bigger card.” Norry was playing chess with Martin the potter at the next table. I was enjoying a beer with Henni and Klaus. Mario jokes that it’s impolite for me to not have my hands in sight above the table. He sits down, and the four of us make a square with our stretched left hands — thumbs touching little fingers — and he sprinkles a little snuff tobacco in the “anatomical snuff boxes” we make where our thumbs hit our wrists. "For good health," we sniff together.

After my nose stops wiggling, Henni tries to impress upon me how sick she thinks it is that American tourists are so nervous about their children having to share a double bed. She keeps repeating, “This is sick in head, krank im Kopf. Never would a European family ask for twin beds for brother and sister. Never. Why Americans? Why they insist?”

George, looking like one of the Bee Gees in his flowing hair and billowing white shirt, is done with his tour and joined by his hippie girlfriend. They dream of their next trip to Thailand. He’s chained to the town to do his tours every night for six months...then he’s free to travel.

In a small town, everyone knows everything. People get along impressively well. The only gang universally not liked seems to be the cartel of farm boys who take tourists on horse-and-buggy rides — apparently they are about as charming as their horses.

I told Henni of a wonderful new hotel I found run by Herr Baumann. I tell her he reminds me of the Wizard of Oz enjoying a relaxed retirement. She concurs, and marvels at how I am able to uncover the characters of the town.

I marvel at — in Rothenburg — how easy that is. For travelers, the challenge is to find places where you can be a part of a quirky yet lovable community...and find a way in. As a returning guidebook reseracher I have an advantiage. But I see lots of travelers having the same fun.

Posted by Rick Steves on July 19, 2007
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Yesterday, in two hours, I saw more penises than I’ve seen in the last two years. All extremely relaxed...and, I must say, I was struck by the variety.

Since the Roman emperor soaked in the mineral waters of Baden-Baden, the German spa town has welcomed those in need of a good soak. And it’s always naked. In the 19th century, this was Germany’s ultimate spa resort, and even today the name Baden-Baden is synonymous with relaxation in a land where the government still pays its overworked citizens to take a little spa time.

I happened to be here when one of our tour groups was in town. I told the guide what a great opportunity for her group to enjoy the spa. She said, “No one’s going. They can’t handle the nudity.”

It’s long been a frustration with me as a guide — getting Americans into spas with naked Europeans. My first time was with my wife and some German friends — a classy, good-looking young couple. We were swept into the changing area with no explanation. Suddenly they were naked and I felt like Road Runner just beyond the cliff’s edge. Then — we eased up, and got naked. It’s not sexy...simply open and free.

Whether on a Croatian beach, in a Finnish sauna, a Turkish hammam, or a German spa (I can't come up with an English example), a fun part of travel can be getting naked with strangers. (Am I right here? What travel memories can you share?)

For me, there are delightful road bumps in my intense research schedule--wonderful God-sent detours where I put away the schedule and notes and simply enjoy the moment. The Friedrichsbad in Baden-Baden is one of those fine little breaks. And today, I needed it: city after city, still reeling from Berlin, with lots of inputting into my laptop. I don’t care how far behind I am in my writing. Now it was spa time.

Wearing only the locker key strapped around my wrist, I weighed myself — 92 kilos. The attendant led me under the industrial-strength shower — a torrential kickoff pounding my head and shoulders...obliterating the rest of the world. He then gave me slippers and a towel, ushering me into a dry heat room with fine wooden lounges — slats too hot without the towel. Staring up at exotic tiles of herons and palms, I cooked. After more hot rooms punctuated with showers came the massage.

Like someone really drunk, going for one more glass, I climbed gingerly onto the marble slab and lay belly-up. The masseuse held up two brillo-pad mitts and asked, “Hard or soft?” In the spirit of wild abandon, I said "hard," not even certain what that would mean to my skin. I got the coarse brillo-pad scrub-down.

I was so soaped up, he held my arms like a fisherman holds a salmon so I wouldn’t slip away. As if my body was any different to him than the dozens he rubs down every day, funny thoughts went through my mind. It was still extremely relaxing.

Finished with a Teutonic spank, I was sent off into the pools. Nude, without my glasses, and not speaking the language, I was gawky. On a sliding scale between Mr. Magoo and Woody Allen, I was everywhere. Steam rooms, cold plunges...it all led to the mixed section.

This is where the Americans get uptight. The parallel spa facilities intersect as both men and women share the finest three pools. Here, all are welcome to glide under exquisite domes in perfect silence like aristocratic swans. Germans are nonchalant, tuned into their bodies and focused on solitary relaxation. Tourists are tentative, trying to be cool...but more aware of their nudity. Again, there’s nothing sexy about it...just vivid life in full flower.

A beautiful woman glides in front of me. Like a female flotilla, her peaceful face and buoyant breasts cruise by, creating barely a ripple. It occurs to me that I wouldn’t mind talking to her. But you don’t really just start up a conversation with a naked stranger. What would you say--“Nice domes”? Then she starts walking into the men’s section. Perfect. I whisper to her, “Excuse me, that’s the men’s section.” She was from Texas...and appreciative.

The climax is the cold plunge. I’m not good with cold water — yet I absolutely love this. You must not wimp out on the cold plunge.

Then, the attendant escorted me into the “quiet room” and asked if I’d like to be awoken at any time. I told him at closing time. He wrapped me in hot sheets and a brown blanket. No, I wasn’t wrapped...I was swaddled. Warm, flat on my back, among twenty hospital-type beds — only one other bed was occupied...he seemed dead. I stared up at the ceiling and some time later was jolted awake by my own snore.

Leaving, I weighed myself again: 91 kilos. I had shed 2.2 pounds of sweat. It would have been more if tension had mass. Stepping into the cool evening air, I was thankful my hotel was a level two-block stroll away. Like Gumby, flush and without momentum, I fell...slow motion onto my down comforter, big pillow puffing around my head like the flying nun. Wonderfully naked under my clothes, I could only think, “Ahhhh. Baden-Baden.”

Posted by Rick Steves on July 18, 2007
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In my research schedule, the big cities are the daunting hurdles. Berlin is not only big, it’s changing fast, and I am personally committed to having a great chapter on it in my book. Compared with Berlin, Munich is now stale strudel...flat beer. Berlin is it. It’s not only emerging...it’s cheap. And for anyone into 20th-century tumult, Berlin puts you in hog heaven.

I have a powerful image of Hitler and his right-hand man, Albert Speer (his architect), poring over plans for postwar Berlin...built up in a way to make Paris look quaint. Of course, by 1945, the city was in ruins, Hitler was identified by his dental records, and Speer was in jail writing his memoirs (“Inside the Third Reich,” which provided me with my best Third Reich images).

With my last few visits, I get this queasy feeling that Speer’s vision is coming true. The latest example: the massive new Hauptbahnhof (central train station) — the only one in Europe with major lines merging at right angles. Toss in 80 stores and local subway lines — and it’s a city in itself.

The other strong feeling I get in Berlin is that it’s a victory celebration for capitalism. Like Romans keeping a few vanquished barbarians in cages for locals to spit at, capitalism and the West flaunt victory in Berlin. Slices of the Berlin Wall hang like scalps at the gate to the Sony Center (at Potsdamer Platz, the biggest office park I’ve ever been in).

A sleek SAS Radisson hotel now stands on the place where the old leading hotel of East Berlin once stood. I remember staying there during the Cold War, and a West German 5-Mark coin changed on the black market would get me drinks all night. Now five euros is lucky to get me a beer, and the lobby of the Radisson hosts an eight-story-tall exotic fish tank the size of a grain silo with an elevator zipping scenically right up the middle. Next door, a little DDR Museum is filled with mostly East German tourists rummaging through the nostalgia on display from dreary life under communism.

Across the street, statues of Marx and Lenin (nicknamed “the Pensioners” by locals) look wistfully at the local Space Needle-type TV tower East Berlin built under communism. The best thing locals could say about it back then was, “It’s so tall that if it falls, we’ll have an elevator to freedom.”

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The victory party rages on at Checkpoint Charlie. With every visit, I remember my spooky 1971 visit — when tour buses were emptied at the border so mirrors could be rolled under the bus to see if anyone was trying to escape with us.

Thirty-six years later, Checkpoint Charlie is a capitalist freak show. Lowlife characters sell fake bits of the wall, WWII-vintage gas masks, and DDR medals. Two actors dress as American soldiers posing for tourists between big American flags and among sandbags at the rebuilt checkpoint — like the goofy centurions at the Roman Colosseum. Across the street at “Snack Point Charlie,” someone sipping a Coke said, “When serious turns to kitsch, you know it’s over.”

Brandenburg Gate faces Pariser Platz — the ultimate address in Berlin. It’s a poignant place. Within about 100 yards you have: the vast new “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe”; a memorial to the first victims of Hitler (96 men, the German equivalent of congressmen, who spoke out in the name of democracy against his rule in the early 1930s and ended up some of the first killed in his concentration camps); the new American Embassy (still under construction, with such high security that visitors will enter through a tunnel via a park across a busy highway); a big Starbucks; one of the "ghost" subway stations that went unused through the Cold War — now looking like a 1930s time warp; the balcony where Michael Jackson dangled his baby (according to local guides, the sight of greatest interest for most American tourists); the glass dome capping the bombed-out Reichstag (capitol building) where on the rooftop on May Day 1945 Russian troops quelled a furious Nazi last stand; and hills nearby created entirely of the rubble of a city bombed nearly flat 60 years ago.

The newest addition to the neighborhood is a Kennedy museum filled with JFK lore, such as the handwritten note he referred to with the phonetics for his famous Berlin speech. As I read his note, I could hear his voice: “eesh been ein Bear-lee-ner.”

Thinking of the amazing story of Berlin — Speer’s vision, Hitler’s burning body, the last stand on the rooftop, the communists, the heroic American airlift, Kennedy’s speech, Reagan’s “tear down this wall” speech, the challenge of reunification, and the gleaming city visitors marvel at today, I hopped into a cab.

I asked the driver if he was a Berliner. When he turned to me, I realized he was Turkish. He said, “I’ve lived here 31 years. If Kennedy, after one day, could say ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ — then I guess I can say I am a Berliner, too.”

Posted by Rick Steves on July 15, 2007
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I’ll be honest. As a travel writer I have an agenda. I want to help Americans better understand our world by communicating with it through travel. So I’ve got to share something that’s been troubling me lately. All over Europe I hear how the US ambassadors to various countries are buffoons when it comes to understanding the intricacies of the countries in which they serve. When being interviewed on TV, it’s American ambassadors who require a translator to speak for them. Of course, Democratic and Republican presidents alike give posts as favors to big supporters. But President Bush seems to take the cake in choosing ill-suited ambassadors. To non-Americans, this symbolizes our country’s current contempt for the notion of talking with the rest of the world.

Here in Berlin, Clinton’s ambassador, John Kornblum, is well remembered. He spoke German, went to festivals, and enjoyed mixing with the locals. Now retired in Berlin, Kornblum is still active in the community and a household name among Berliners. He invited average Americans living in Berlin to famously fun Fourth of July parties each summer. These expats no longer hear from the current ambassador.

President Bush’s first ambassador, Dan Coats, famously said that he had no idea why he was in Germany, since he had no experience, spoke no German, and had roughly no concept of what made the country tick. Locals tell me America’s current ambassador, William Timken, speaks no German, and his favorite Berlin restaurant is Tony Roma’s. Timken caused a buzz when he had guests at his Fourth of July party repeat the Pledge of Allegiance.

All stand: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.”

With their ugly recent history, Berliners aren’t big into pledges of allegiance. Their current oath is relatively mild: “I give my vow that I will serve the Federal Republic of Germany truly, and will bravely defend the laws and freedoms of the German people.”

Berliners who were children in the 1930s recall the Hitler Youth Pledge of Allegiance: “We carry the flag forward into the battle of the youth. It stands and is raised and blazes to the heavens like fire in the sky. We are sworn to be true to the flag for all eternity. Whosoever shall desecrate the flag will be cursed for all eternity. The flag is our belief in God, People, and Country. Whoever seeks to destroy it must first take our lives and prosperity. We care for the flag as a mother cares for her child. The flag is our future, our honor, and the source of our courage.”

Their fathers, most certainly in the military (and very likely killed defending this pledge), held out their arms and said: “I swear to God, this holy oath that I will devote my absolute obedience to the Leader of the German Empire and people, the supreme commander of the German Wehrmacht, Adolf Hitler, and I, as a courageous soldier, am prepared to lay down my life to fulfill this oath.”

Today, Germans fly their flag rarely outside of soccer games, and are most comfortable pledging their allegiance to a good frothy beer.

In the last few days, seeing 1945 photos of cold and hungry locals wandering through piles of bricks that were once grand cities, I’ve wondered what would cause a people to fight literally to the bitter end. Perhaps a good strong holy oath of allegiance.

Posted by Rick Steves on July 13, 2007
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I was strolling through the commotion of downtown Copenhagen, past chain restaurants dressed up to look old and under towering hotels that seem to be part of a different international chain each year. Then, as if from another age, a man pedaled his wife in a "Christiania Bike" — two wheels pushing a big, utilitarian rounded bucket. You’d call the couple "granola" in the USA. They look as out of place here in Copenhagen as an Amish couple in Manhattan.

Later I paused to watch a parade of ragtag soldiers-against-conformity dressed in black venture through the modern bustle of downtown Copenhagen. They walked sadly behind a WWII-vintage truck blasting Pink Floyd’s "Another Brick in The Wall." I never listened to the words until now. They’re fighting a rising tide of conformity. They want to raise their children to be not cogs but to be free spirits. On their banner — painted onto an old sheet — was a slogan you see in their squatter community: "Lev livet kunstnerisk! Kun dode fisk flyder med strommen." ("Live life artistically! Only dead fish follow the current.") They flew the Christiania flag — three yellow dots on an orange background. They say the dots are from the o’s in "Love Love Love."

In 1971, 700 hippies took over an abandoned naval camp in Copenhagen and turned it into a free city. It’s been run as a commune ever since — with routine run-ins with the city. But it has survived. Those original hippies are pushing 60, and their community has become the second- or third-biggest tourist attraction in town — famous for geodesic domes on its back streets, swap shops, vegetarian cafés, and shacks selling pot on its main street (nicknamed "Pusher Street").

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Biking through the community myself later that day, it occurred to me that, except for the bottled beer being sold, there was not a hint of any corporate entity in the entire free city. Everything was handmade. Nothing was packaged. And, of course, that will not stand.

The current conservative government is feeling the pressure from developers to "normalize" Christiania. There is a "take it or leave it" "final solution" on the table for leaders of the commune to deal with. The verdict is that the land (which no one wanted 35 years ago) needs more density. Much of it will be opened to market forces, and 1,600 people who aren’t in the community will be allowed to move in. Injecting outsiders and market forces into the last attempt at a socialist utopia surviving in Europe from its flower-power days will bring great change.

Marijuana has been the national plant of the free city. (Hard drugs have always been strictly forbidden.) The police have really cracked down. Pot is no longer sold from little kiosks on Pusher Street. The police drop in 10 times a day. Cafés now post signs warning no pot smoking.

It’s a classic case study in the regrettable consequences of a war on pot. For the first time in years, the Copenhagen street price is up, gangs are moving into the marijuana business, and crime is associated with pot. There was actually a murder recently, as pushers fought to establish their turf — unthinkable in Copenhagen in previous years.

I recently got an email from some traveling readers. They said, "We’re not prudes, but Christiania was creepy. Don’t take kids here or go after dark."

A free city is not pretty, I agree. But "Pusher Street" and pot is not what the free city is about. Watching parents raise their children with Christiania values as I biked the free city’s back streets, I came to believe more strongly than ever that allowing this social experiment and giving alternative-type people a place to be alternative is a kind of alternative beauty that deserves a place.

Posted by Rick Steves on July 09, 2007
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Returning to Europe, I worried that Denmark would pale after my recent Croatian experience. My first day here dispelled that concern. While Denmark has its castles and cute towns, the real experience here is the Danish modern spirit and how it copes with today’s challenges.

Wandering into an empty, sleek train car, each seat was marked “kan reserveres.” I figured that meant “not reserved,” and sat down. Then I was bumped by a friendly guy with a reservation. He said, “The sign means ‘could be’ reserved...we don’t promise too much.” Noticing several young men with shaved heads and the finest headphones listening to MP3 players on their train commute to work, I thought Denmark seemed so minimal and efficient...and so together.

Every time I politely ask, “Do you speak English” (still thinking it’s bad style to assume Europeans will speak my language), I feel silly. “Of course” is the standard answer. Thriving Copenhagen has a thin veil of tourism. Behind that, locals really do eat open-face sandwiches. Even though the country’s eateries must be smoke-free by next August, people smoke with attitude in traditional cafés. (By law, smaller places can be exempt — so many local pubs are cutting down their “usable floor space” by adding pool tables and big furniture in order to get around the law and keep the smokers.)

I find having a bike parked in the garden of my hotel is a great way to fit in and literally “go local.” Copenhagen has as many bike lanes as car lanes, and I can literally get anywhere in town faster on my two wheels than by taxi.

Today’s big-city Denmark — which is far from blonde — has me thinking about immigration. I’m a grandchild of immigrants. Three of my grandparents sailed away from the old country speaking only Norwegian. My family assimilated.

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With modern communication allowing “diasporas,” where communities of foreigners settle in more comfortable places with no interest in assimilating, “melting pots” have become cafeteria plates with separate bins. I know Algerians who’ve been three generations in the Netherlands and are still enthusiastically Algerian, raising their children with barely a hint of Dutch culture. I am three generations in the USA. While I have kept my grandparents’ religion and eat fish balls and goat cheese, I can barely say hello in Norwegian. While proud of my heritage, I am American.

At Copenhagen’s City Museum, I met a Pakistani Dane. He talked earnestly of the exhibit like it was his city...as if his ancestors pioneered the place. Thinking of assimilation, I got emotional. Surprised at being choked up, I was struck by the beauty of a Pakistani Dane.

Am I wrong to wish that a Muslim living in Denmark would become a Dane? Am I wrong to wish the USA would speak English rather than Norwegian or Spanish? Am I wrong to lament districts of London that have a disdain for being British? Immigrants energize a land — and they do it best when their vision is a healthy melting pot. Melt, immigrants...treasure your heritage while embracing your adopted homelands.

Posted by Rick Steves on July 06, 2007
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I just landed in Copenhagen and got a rousing welcome. This week Denmark’s streets are filled with graduating university seniors filling WWII-vintage trucks, waving beers, and hollering above the traffic. (Don’t they know they’re about to leave the wonderland of childhood and enter the work force?)

It’s a progressive beer party — the trucks take them from the graduation ceremony to each house, where the parents serve them beer...and things just get sloppier and sloppier. (Danes statistically finish university later than other Europeans, typically taking several years' break — the government is pushing them to get through the education system faster.)

My friend, Richard, dresses up like Hans Christian Andersen to lead walking tours. He saved a day just for me. Walking through the city with HCA in a long coat and top hat is a bit strange. (Richard becomes Richard again each winter and flees “cold, dark, rainy, and expensive” Denmark with his Icelandic partner to dance the tango in Argentina.)

Kelly Clarkson is coming to town — she’s on posters everywhere. Richard explains that the Danes have their own "Danish Idol"-type TV pop craze, and the created Danish icons are local stars — but Kelly Clarkson is big league.

We climb the highest church spire in town and look across the strait to Sweden. Through the modern windmills on the Danish horizon, Richard points out a Swedish nuclear power plant in the hazy distance. He explains, “They put it 600 kilometers from Stockholm but only 20 kilometers from Copenhagen. Danes threatened to bomb it. Swedes threatened to retaliate by setting up catapults and lobbing in their national dish — a lutefisk-style fermented herring.” The stand-off was defused. Today the plant is closed.

Signs of progressive Denmark are everywhere. The basement of the Danish Design Center is now the Flow Market (www.theflowmarket.com), a supermarket of sustainability with squeeze tubes of empathy, tins of commercial-free space, syringes of tolerance, and buckets of inner calmness. The slogan: Be not “best in the world” but “best for the world.”

Posted by Rick Steves on July 06, 2007
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Confession time: I've been living a few days ahead of this blog. Today I fly Seattle-Copenhagen after a quick break at home.

Essentially empty nesters — Anne and I wait for phone calls from Andy (our 20-year old who is assisting on our family tours, Rome to Paris in 14 days), and try to imagine what Jackie (our 17-year-old) is up to in Morocco. She is on her high school summer travel program — in a Berber village with no cell phone, email, computer, or iPod. With only a note pad to collect thoughts, she knows she's in for an African village culture shock that will change her self-described materialistic, suburban outlook and put things in perspective.

Sitting on our neighbor's deck for a plush Puget Sound sunset, we marvel at the majesty of the birds and the massive container ships gliding out to sea, and settle into a fine and leisurely dinner. Our friends note from my blog that I am wild about Sagrantino wine. They have a bottle — which I never thought I'd see outside of Umbria — and we pop it open. I say we have so much to be thankful for...nature, our health, kids embracing the world, this wine...and then my cell phone rings. My dad has had a little stroke and is in an ambulance heading for the hospital.

After spending much of the night at the hospital we learn everything's okay. The next day as I talk with my 40- and 50-something friends it's clear — so many of us are both marveling at how "grown up and independent" our children are, and, simultaneously, how dependent our parents are becoming.

Apart from family activities and fun, my mid-trip break was filled with business — making sure our radio shows were taped and good for the rest of the summer (including two fascinating hours interviewing Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler), getting ducks in a row for the four TV shows we'll be shooting next month, and meow, meow, meow (I went to a party where people said that rather than "and so on").

Now I'm on a plane for Copenhagen, ready to resume my trip. The man next to me is snoring while somehow holding a glass of Bloody Mary mix in his hand on his lap. Should I take it away before he spills it, or not intervene?

Posted by Rick Steves on July 04, 2007
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Stepping out of customs at JFK Airport, I spotted my name on a sign held by a man who looked like Kojak. I love it when people look at my luggage and say, “That’s all?” I’m stopping 24 hours in NYC for the big American booksellers’ convention.

Stepping out of the car in the canyons of Manhattan, I felt like Crocodile Dundee — actually giddy to be back in the USA and actually a bit clumsy with the whole scene. I’m out of practice with America.

News is everywhere. I’ve had no news for 60 days. Like being in a cave and suddenly stepping into the light, my mind was squinting. Noisy, stupid headlines. Paris Hilton out of jail. Bush declares he will fight climate change (but still refuses to call it global warming). 130 dead this month in Iraq…more than usual. I turned around…but the cave was gone.

At breakfast the next morning I share my take on Europe with a roomful of bookstore owners and publishers. The theme of my talk: the big news in Europe — affluence. The helpful new insight — if Italy is “the land of a thousand bell towers,” Europe has even more. As globalism takes hold, and the metabolism of Europe revs up, regionalism and local pride satisfies a deep seated hunger.

The creator of www.gather.com, who doesn’t like his site to be called “Face Book for Adults,” pitched me (quite effectively) on creating a little corner there. New York's Javits Convention Center is bursting with clever ideas, as the American publishing industry huddles. There’s a frantic, almost desperate scrambling…a clamoring for niches: Chicken Soup for the Coffee Lover’s Soul. The new niche in guidebooks is “pocket color” — slimmed down, cheaper versions of existing city guides with color photos. It's an easy retool and you fill a different price point. I don’t want to offer two versions of one book, asking, “Why can’t one book do it all?” My publisher explained, "We need to hit different price points."

I dropped by Lonely Planet. And I enjoyed telling people, I had breakfast yesterday in Zagreb. Lonely Planet founder, Tony Wheeler, was there…hands on and enthusiastic as ever. While Tony flew in from farther than me — Australia, Arthur Frommer — who was in the next aisle over — lives close enough to walk to the convention center. I’m impressed by how these icons of travel writing keep working. Rather than dream up another Chicken Soup for the Greedy Soul, their niche is a God-given love and enthusiasm for smart travel.

The big travel publishers (Fodors, Frommers, Lonely Planet, and Avalon — that’s mine) met at lunch to discuss “coop-itition”…or was it “compit-oration” (the value of working together to keep traveling consumers enthusiastic about carrying their travel information around in printed books rather than dumping guidebooks for the web and "new media" alternatives).

I signed a hundred of my new Europe 101: History and Art for Traveler books for a line of librarians and book store owners. (The fine folks I met made me recall two conversations I’ve had with taxis: In Barcelona last month during the massive Building Construction convention one cabbie told me they bused in legions of prostitutes--"the biggest brothel anywhere." Another, here in the USA, told me that at the massive American booksellers’ convention, prostitutes don’t even bother showing up for work.)

The guy who signed after me was Scott Ritter, the weapons inspector who courageously told a nation what it didn’t want to believe — that we bombed an Iraq without WMDs. He wanted to go to Ireland. I had been. I wanted to get on Jon Stewart. He had been. We talked.

I enjoyed meeting the CEO of Borders (the massive chain that sells roughly 20 percent of all travel books…less than Barnes & Noble…but impressive nevertheless). They seem really energized and have chosen travel to be one of their “destination” genres.

Everyone is thrilled with how Costco sold 50,000 of our new DVDs. The scary thing about a Costco venture is that publishers often get mountains of returns. With this foray into the “big box” world, they returned nothing. With a touch of Bill Gatesian megalomania, I said, “We can do better. I want a Rick Steves Europe DVD anthology — all 70 shows — on every American bookshelf.”

Right through the 1990s, this convention was an annual think tank for me. I’d systematically walk the vast floor, talking, dreaming, and scheming. As an old habit, I started to make another walk but abruptly stopped — enough ideas for now. I’m maxed out. It’s so intense. I just want to make old-fashioned guidebooks. Thankfully, my publisher knows about the price points, niches, and new platforms. Without their business savvy, I doubt anyone would be reading this blog right now. Coming to this convention reminds me of that.

Twenty-four hours after touching down at JFK, I was back at JFK taking off again.

Posted by Rick Steves on July 02, 2007
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