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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

Thank goodness the flames are subsiding in Greece. The first thing I did after returning to my office last week was to sit down with my staff and crisis-manage this, since we have on-going tours there.

We have two tours going next week and our route takes us right through the hottest zones in the Peloponnese. We had visions of our bus heading south through burned-out hillsides with traumatized locals heading north. Lousy vacation.

The easy response would be to cancel the next two departures. But we have Greek friends who need the business, guides who need the work and (after an email survey) 49 out of 50 tour members who still want to go if possible. If we could do a good tour safely, we wanted to try.

The decision: Make a secondary itinerary, swapping out fire-zone days (like in the Mani Peninsula and around Olympia) with fire-free areas in the north (Metéora), get provisional hotel bookings and decide later when we know how things are going.

Anne and I are taking this same tour for our annual vacation in two weeks, so we have a personal interest in what’s going on.

I don’t think the news reports can convey the horror of this tragedy. What a sad and frightening thing for the people of Greece to go through. We’re all thankful that things seem to be getting under control.

From Greece, I fly to Rome to do a video about Peter for my church. When the Lutheran Church (ELCA) asks me to host a video and they are excited enough about the project to send copies of the video we’ll produce to all 12,000 ELCA churches in the USA, I say sure. I’m working with Tim Frakes (the one-man film production department for the ELCA) on the script now.

Someone asked about the availability of these videos. We have a single DVD that includes all five ELCA videos I’ve done so far (two hours of programming). It’s called “Faithful Travel with Rick Steves.” (We sell it for $19.95 and donate 100 percent of the proceeds to Lutheran World Relief. Or, the Luther program is available free at Youtube--search rick steves luther.)

Two of my favorite productions ever are one filmed in Papua New Guinea (where I got to share my ideas on “reading the Bible through Third World eyes” and the harsh realities of the gap between the rich and poor world) and another in Germany — the Story of Martin Luther.

The Luther show was probably the toughest script challenge I’ve ever tackled and the most gratifying...giving our church an update over the melodramatic old black and white 1960s-era Sunday school videos that I grew up with, of Luther pounding his thesis onto the door of that church in Wittenberg.

Editing a hard copy of this St. Peter script with a pen, rather than my standard pencil, I realized why I love my pencil. I must do the majority of my hard-copy editing and note-taking on a sofa or on the bed. Pens don’t work upside down.

Posted by Rick Steves on August 30, 2007
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Two years ago my son did a blog for his first European adventure without parents. It was nostalgic for me because he was 18 and heading out with his best buddy the day after high school graduation, exactly as I did back in the “Europe on Five Dollars a Day” era.

I bribed him (with a Eurailpass) to write a blog for our website, not realizing I would become the avid blog reader — traveling with him...checking in every couple of days...anxious — even upset — if he didn’t have a new entry. I was reliving the best trip of my life (1973) while stowing away with my son via his blog.

Inspired by the fun I had following Andy, last year I blogged my own trip. I couldn’t believe how writing it complicated an already filled-to-the-brim schedule — and I enjoyed the added responsibility immensely. It’s just fun to share. It’s a joy for me to have an excuse to write more casually than for a guidebook, TV script or newspaper column. And it’s fun to see the gang of travelers responding to my quirky insights.

This year I pledged to do a “100 days blog.” It actually stretched to five months — April through August. Last years entries totaled 16,000 words. This year’s totaled 45,000 words. All of you blog readers were my late night conversation partners...and I was chatty. (I'm distilling those 45,000 words into a 64-page printed booklet — Dancing with Europa II — which we'll give out free at my talks and so on as we did with last year's blog. Talk about old school...going from blog to print!)

I’ve been trying to shut the book on this year’s blog...but it’s hard to do. I’ll be in Greece (a two-week tour with my wife), Rome (filming a video on the life of St. Peter for my church), and in Istanbul (breaking in our new Istanbul guide) next month and I know I’ll want to report via a blog.

Lots of you are asking for a continuation. My staff thinks it would be good business. And I enjoy it. My concern is that I won’t have the time (I didn’t in Europe either) or interesting experiences (Edmonds vs. Istanbul...). But each day, my desk is a ping pong table of little opportunities and challenges. Perhaps they’ll be interesting to share.

I appreciate travelers enjoying our TV, radio and guidebooks, and I enjoy taking them, as friends, candidly behind the scenes a bit. So, I will continue my blog. While my goal is an entry every two days while on the road, I’ll shoot for two entries a week while at home.

Thanks for staying with me. Keep your comments coming. I enjoy reading them as much as I hope you enjoy reading mine. Happy travels, Rick

Posted by Rick Steves on August 28, 2007
Comments (59)

My trip itinerary was so intense and fast-paced that I never had a chance to completely finish up many of the guidebook chapters I researched. I’ve spent the last two days doing exactly that.

I just finished editing my chapter on Copenhagen. It’s important for good writers to diligently “kill your babies.” That means don’t force your favorite little factoids into a chapter or article if they don’t fit. No matter how much you like them, throw them out rather than mucking up a well-designed bit of writing.

I had to kill a little stack of Copenhagen babies. Then the happy thought hit me: I can blog them back to life by sharing them with you. Here are a few Copenhagen factoids that will not be in the new edition of my Scandinavia book:

The Danish weather blows through. Don’t be fooled by sun in morning. Leave your hotel prepared to layer it.

Copenhagen ruled Scandinavia essentially from 1397-1523. During that time, it put the three Nordic crowns on its seals. Even today, it still clings to the three crowns notion as you’ll see the three crown emblem all over town. During its golden age, Copenhagen bottled up Baltic Sea trade.

Copenhagen suffered lots of 18th century fires. That’s why the city center is distinctly 18th century: no timber, only bricks, lots of neoclassical blocks, wider streets and corners snipped off so fire trucks could zip around in a hurry when necessary. Modern buildings keep the snipped-corners motif to this day.

Prostitution is legal, so most prostitutes are now off the streets and work as call girls. The only prostitutes remaining on the streets are drug addicts and immigrants, mostly Slavic.

Denmark is a beer-drinking nation. As late as 1921, state schools started the student’s day with a nutritious glass of beer. Until recently, Swedes came to Denmark to get drunk. But with Swedish membership in the EU, their beer is now cheaper. These days, it’s the Norwegians coming to get drunk on relatively cheap Danish beer.

There, I feel like my babies dodged a bullet.

Posted by Rick Steves on August 26, 2007
Comments (21)

This summer I’ve enjoyed posting my submissions and then staying out of the conversation, letting all of you toss your ideas around. As a silent observer, I’ve learned lots and enjoyed the discussion. Here are a few questions asked via the blog that I think deserved a thoughtful response.

Question: You have talked about preparing for a trip, but how do you decompress from one? How do you make the adjustment back to your "other routine" in the States?

Answer: My big concern is not getting swept up in the home-front priorities before I can follow through on all my writing and get all my notes cleanly shuffled into the grey matter of Europe Through the Back Door. (With the glut of data plaguing our society lately, I am really into “design” of travel information these days.) My wife runs the show when I’m gone, and it’s an adjustment for her and me to be a partnership again, rather than two autocrats under one roof. I settle reluctantly from an active life to a more sedentary one — promising to keep in shape as I am in Europe...but never following through. My body agrees to stay healthy for the intense 60 consecutive days of work on the condition that I take it easy for awhile once home. If I cheat, I get sick.

Question: Regarding the girl in Bosnia who wanted you to pay her to take a photo: Did you give the scarved young lady the euro she requested? What is your policy on paying the locals for the privilege of taking their photos?

Answer: She was dressed up and positioned for the purpose of tourists taking her photo. I took her photo because she looked great — and happily paid her the euro. If I’m just grabbing a candid shot of a local, I never pay.

Question: Does it ever get old traveling?

Answer: For me, travel is accelerated living. I live and learn triple each day on the road what I’d experience at home. If I wasn’t assured of going home, I might think differently, but for me, travel is as fresh as ever. I still fly home pondering my next trip.

Question: You have wonderful descriptions of towns and cities in your books and blogs, with a mix of modern and historical significance, but I wondered if you could comment more on the area's natural histories, its parks and preserves? Is there any wilderness left in Europe?

Answer: I report on what I am personally enthusiastic about: history, contemporary issues, efficient travel, art, culture, cities. For an enthusiastic rundown on flora, fauna, geology, folk tales and myths, adventure sports, and shopping — topics that, while perfectly legit, just aren’t that interesting to me — you’ll do better with another travel writer. I have a particularly bad attitude about geology. I know it’s silly to think this, but to me geology is “anti-history” or maybe “history without people.” As a tour guide, I recognized my shortcoming here and once offered a geologist on my bus the microphone for five minutes a day as we drove to discuss the geology of the regions we were traveling through. I tried to enjoy his rocks and ridges moments — but it was absolutely dreadful...one of the biggest mistakes of my tour guiding career.

Question: As a Swiss fan of yours, I struck by how negative your blog became while in Switzerland. I am not particularly patriotic, and I know that you are a very critical traveler, but I get the impression that (except for your favorite alpine village of Gimmelwald) you do not particularly like Switzerland. Why? Is it too sterile? Not friendly? Too expensive? Is it because of the banking industry? And please note that my family has been eating cheese fondue in summer for generations.

Answer: Sometimes I fear I’ll stutter with superlatives about the wonders of Europe. I try to hold back on the giddiness sometimes. Maybe for me, Switzerland is like the kid at high school who’s a great athlete, has perfect hair, the best girl friend and who all the teachers love. Sometimes you just want to see him trip or get a pimple. Switzerland’s cities are great — and the tourist board is expert at shaping their image. While I like the cities, I find that there are more real travel thrills per mile, minute and dollar up in the mountains. Perhaps my agenda for Switzerland was to find flaws. (It's the opposite of humble Olomouc in Moravia, which has so little beyond its rough charm going for it.) About fondue: I’ll stand by my belief that it’s a winter meal. If it wasn’t for tourists, I think most fondue restaurants in Switzerland would shut down in the summer. Having said all this, we did bring home a show that I’m thrilled about, which makes the great Swiss cities look absolutely wonderful. Stay tuned.

[Drop by in a couple days...and we'll sum things up.]

Posted by Rick Steves on August 25, 2007
Comments (15)

Eating breakfast after two months of hotel breakfasts, Cameron, my co-author and travel buddy, asked if I get homesick. Sure I miss my family. But living on the road — even if I don’t like the cheese pastry that is today’s breakfast — puts a curve in my road, a little syncopation in life’s beat. It makes the mundane memorable. Then a chimney sweep walks by.

I like this minimalist aspect of travel. Light bag, open mind, a humble room with heavy shutters — ready to be pushed open to greet a new morning — is all I need for a springboard into the world.

At the airport ready to fly home, I survey my luggage. My mind flies back to early trans-Asian trips when you’d routinely comb through your bags at each border crossing looking for drugs planted on you by people working with corrupt police.

I remembered a backpacker who discovered a hunk of hash in his heavy army coat three people short of the Pakistani border guard. Panic on his face, he looked around, considered his options...and just ate it like the last bite of a Mars bar.

Today, the only edible I had was a Ziploc bag of sunflower seeds I carried from Seattle through the entire trip and never used — an edible security blanket I never needed. I’ve been on the road 60 days in a row (120 out of the last 150). My body is lean but tired. My brain is still spinning — yet tired.

At Heathrow, I met Jake from Toledo, Ohio. He ran to me, abandoning his parents at the exchange desk. Wow! He watched all my shows. He and his family we’re going to “do Europe.” I asked him his age. Fourteen.

It was a beautiful encounter. I was fourteen with my parents on my first trip. Jake was just like me and my family in 1969: doing it all wrong. While they had no guidebook, were changing money at the rip-off desk, and packing heavy, they were wide-eyed and hungry for the world. As I flew home, ready to embrace home and family again...I had a hunch Jake was starting something really big.

Posted by Rick Steves on August 24, 2007
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Throughout my travels this summer, I’ve been struck by the different ways societies and great cities handle their challenges. Everyone wants to live well.

Denmark is so expensive, yet so efficient. People live better than their income would suggest — in fact, they seem to live extremely well. I don’t understand the inner-works of a society, but Danish society seems to be a social internal-combustion engine in a glass box. High taxes, all interrelated and connected. It seems Scandinavians have evolved as far as socialism can go without violating the necessary fundamentals of capitalism. Communalism.

What happens when a tune-up is needed? “Who does it?” I ask. My Danish friends say, “The government.” What does government represent in Denmark: corporate or the people’s interest? Clearly the people’s. Danes say, “If our government lets us down, we let ourselves down.”

In a Danish village, you are allowed to pick berries and nuts “no more than would fit in your hat.” I saw Danish communalism in the reaction a friend had in that village when the biggest hotel in town started renting bikes. They don’t need to do that — it is Mrs. Hansen’s (who runs the bike-rental shop next to the gas station) livelihood. Of course there's no law forbidding it...it was a matter of neighborly decency.

Switzerland has its own approach to persistent social problems. Once someone pointed out Switzerland's syringe-vending machines, I saw them in every city — big, blocky vending machines which, if you read the paint-overs carefully, originally sold cigarettes, then condoms, and now syringes. The same syringes cost 1 Swiss franc in Bern and 3 in Zürich. I wondered why.

Another little difference I noticed in Swiss cities is their system of garbage collection. People buy bright-blue bags for 2 SF ($1.50) each. Each plastic bag includes pick-up service. They just fill the bags with garbage, put them on the curb, and they're picked up.

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As I travel, I have picked up these ideas in conversations. They’re not clear to me. Perhaps you can help.

Someone told me that war doesn’t shape history, successful systems and economics do. Maybe it’s roads and free trade — freedom to learn and challenge — that makes history. War powers like Sparta, Prussia, and the Third Reich have left relatively little for today’s sightseers — the warrior cultures ultimately have had little impact. English is spoken because England (and later the USA) had (and have?) the best system. Rome’s impact was thanks to trade and roads--not its centurions.

Societies advance in a Darwinian way. Like Adam Smith’s invisible hand directs the evolution of economies, what makes people happy directs the evolution of social and political systems.

As I headed to the airport earlier this summer in Zagreb, people were running to catch their trams. At the airport coffee shop, a manager had his staff scurrying to provide high-priced drinks to fast-paced, Red Bull-slurping Croats. Above the cash register was a photo of Pope John Paul II smiling on and tenderly touching the flag of a new and free nation — Croatia.

Surrounded by a shiny, new, and affluent Croatia, it was clear to me that when left to grow — nourished by democracy, capitalism, and national pride — the cultural garden of Europe (and lands beyond) can be both diverse and fruitful.

Posted by Rick Steves on August 22, 2007
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Globalization can be seen in European tourism. Europe is hosting more wealthy Indian, Middle Eastern, and Asian travelers than ever.

I got an email recently from a man who said, “Thanks for the TV shows. They will provide a historical documentation of a time when Europe was white and not Muslim. Keep filming your beloved Europe before it’s gone.”

I thought again how feisty fear is these days in the USA. Fear. A fear of African Americans swept the USA in the ‘60s. Jews have been feared throughout European history. Today, Muslims are feared. A Sienese friend told me how his cathedral — with its distinct black and white stripes, mixing both Byzantine arches and French Gothic arches—symbolizes to him how Siena was a power in its day because it welcomed the merging of east and west without fear.

In Austria, I shared a table with a young man from Kobe. I said I was from Seattle. He became all high-fives, since Ichiro (the Mariners baseball superstar) was from Kobe. A single traveler, he was backpacking, but with a big, red, hard-sided suitcase. Surprising me, he asked the waiter if he could park his suitcase inside the restaurant’s door for a couple hours and hiked off to explore the ruined castle overlooking the Danube. It's great to see Asian travelers gaining the confidence to explore Europe without the crutch of a big bus tour and guide. My Swiss friend, Fritz, earns money on the side by taking travelers tandem parasailing. Fritz says, “There are 20 million Indian millionaires. They know how to be big shots.” He tells of an obese patron he took tandem flying. With a good updraft and a normal-size passenger, you take two steps and you’re flying. On this particular day there was neither. Fritz asked his customer to help by running. His big Indian patron said, “I don’t run. I pay. You run.” It was a memorable flight, perhaps foreshadowing a harsh reality to come for Western cultures — American and European alike.

After a hailstorm in Interlaken that made all the Swiss papers, the National Guard came out with their clean-up gear. A heavy fog bank settled on the vast grazing ground that marks the center of town. The children of Saudi families were running in and out of the fog banks, disappearing and reappearing with glee as their parents photographed them. Fritz said that Arab travelers are also discovering the Alps. They come here for the fog and the rain. They love the rain.

In a strange little mental detour, I considered all the fuss over our visit to the Dordogne foie gras goose farm earlier on our trip, where I was so impressed at how decently the geese were being treated for our TV cameras. Then I wondered if that farm might be the Terezín Concentration Camp of foie gras — just set up for the media.

The discussion on this blog about candor in travel reporting got me thinking about the movie Koyaanisqatsi. There’s not a word in the entire movie until the end, when we see a printed Hopi Indian proverb about “life out of balance.” Half of the movie is insane “techno-fascism” traffic, tension, people embattled by urban sadness, spinning cranes, and ugly graffiti. The other half is soothing vistas of pristine nature as if from the eyes of a soaring eagle.

Standing in the lobby of Vienna’s Schönbrunn Palace with piles of fan-waving tourists, it occurred to me that I could produce a TV special called "Koyaaturismos": first the ugly reality of mass tourism on the road, then a pristine montage of all the glories — no words...just the rewards of exploring the natural and cultural wonders of Europe.

Posted by Rick Steves on August 20, 2007
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Here are a few random notes from the past few weeks as I near the end of my summer travels:

My Swiss friend, Olle, takes me on my annual walk through the village of Gimmelwald. We see a rack of scythes. He demonstrates how they are sharpened not with a file, but by pounding. A sharp scythe is critical for a farmer — it cuts through hay like butter. Across the way, old boots with studs nailed on them for a grip on the steep slopes are nailed to the wall of a hut with their new use — alpine flower holder. In this case, traditional alpine culture survives...but only on show.

Traveling to the remote Czech backwater of Moravsky Krumlov to see Mucha’s Slavic Epic, it occurred to me that the Czechs keeping this grand series of canvases here is like keeping the Mona Lisa in Walla Walla.

I never dreamed of wearing socks more than one day until my cameraman suggested it. After 10 minutes, you don’t notice.

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Copenhagen’s streets were noisy with grads filling decorated trucks, screaming and drinking as they went from family to family for beers at a progressive graduation party hosted by their parents. They can handle the alcohol and have promising futures. Then I saw the Greenlanders. Young people from Greenland with the best prospects often travel to Copenhagen, their colonial capital, for a higher education (there’s none in Greenland). Hoping to build their young lives, they often fail — ending up unable to handle the temptations of Danish life. It’s a sad sight — wasted Greenlanders littering the square.

I didn’t realize that in central Rome, there are no buildings from after 1938. Looking for restaurants, I noticed vines climbing the buildings and it occurred to me that the places I like to recommend have roots. Places whose regulars remember when the place was their father’s favorite. Places named for the man whose faded photo is now on the wall...or who is so old he can only pretend to contribute, and shuffles around grating cheese on the pasta his grandchildren are cooking.

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Posted by Rick Steves on August 18, 2007
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Traveling through the Czech Republic, you realize how, for Central Europe, the 20th century was a dominated by the battle between far-left and far-right politics — communism and fascism. The communist school system drilled home the evils of fascism. Honza, my Czech friend, said, “Growing up in communist Czechoslovakia, you’d think Nazis killed more communists than Jews."

I imagine "Adolf" was a popular name once upon a time. I asked Honza about it. He said his grandfather, born in 1905, was an Adolf. He was a soldier in the Czech army. As early as 1934 (just a year after the infamous Adolf came to power, and several years before the rest of Europe realized what was cooking), this Adolf was so disgusted by the fascist German leader that he changed his name to Bob.

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Honza’s father-in-law, on the other hand, was a Czech born in 1942 in the Sudetenland — Czech territory mostly inhabited by ethnic Germans, annexed by Hitler in 1938. To get along better in that German-ruled land, he actually changed his name to Adolf.

As we drove out of the Czech Republic, I could sense we were nearing the border — we seemed to be cheered on by yards full of tacky garden gnomes for sale and topless dance clubs. Suddenly we were showing our passports (which seems so archaic now in Europe). The woman in a crisp Austrian customs uniform greeted us with a terse, “In Austria, you must turn on the car lights at all hours.”

The border surprised us, as we were still hoping to shoot a couple more “drive-bys” for our Czech Republic TV show (that’s a shot of a car driving by a nice bit of local countryside to give the editor a transition between towns in a show). For a moment, we considered cheating — shooting a “drive-by” a few miles over the border in Austria. But it was clearly a different country. When you study the landscape, the visual contrast is night and day from the rustic Czech Republic to pristine and fertile Austria. The soil, roads, buildings, even the color of the grass is all distinctly richer in Austria.

Our first stop in Austria was the concentration camp at Mauthausen. Even after countless visits over the last decades, concentration camp visits are always powerful experiences for me and give me new things to ponder. In the basement next to a shower room where inmates were gassed, I noticed a German family deep in conversation. Standing in front of an exhibit showing a big photograph of a gas canister with its lethal pellets spilling out, the father was patiently explaining things to his wide-eyed children (ages about 9 and 11).

I never considered this parenting chore and responsibility, unique to German moms and dads: to tell your children what your parents did in the Holocaust. As what the USA has termed its “Greatest Generation” passes away, so does Germany’s counterpart.

[I realize this man's father probably had nothing personally to do with the horrors of Hitler's gas chambers, but a society must live with (and take responsibility for) what they allow their government to do in its name. I believe that if, for instance, some day history proves that the US was wrong to make war in Iraq that it is not the generals or President Bush who are to blame but the American people. In that sense, I don't think an electorate can claim to be "innocent civilians." I believe that as a tax-paying American citizen, every bullet that flies and every bomb that drops--whether right or wrong--has my name on it.]

Posted by Rick Steves on August 16, 2007
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On the main square in the Czech town of Trebon, the bank has a statue of a man holding a big fish over its door. The city is all about fish — farmed here in manmade lakes for centuries.

Another statue honors the town’s 15th-century megalomaniac lake-building hero, Jakub Krcín (now considered a "hero" since his medieval lakes absorbed enough water to save Trebon from the 2002 flood that devastated Prague).

At dinner, my beer glass says, “Bohemia Regent anno 1379.” It occurs to me that I’m consuming exactly what people have been eating and drinking in Trebon for over 600 years: fish from the reservoir just outside the gate and the local brew. And they are good at fish.

Just like the French have words distinguishing triple the kinds of kisses we have in English (can a French-speaker help send in a few examples, please?), the Czechs of Trebon cook fish with both passion and variety.

For maximum experience, we ordered all the appetizers on the menu tapas-style (a good trick when trying to eat your way through another culture): "soused" (must mean "pickled") herring, fried loach, “stuffed carp willet sailor fashion,” cod liver, pike caviar, and something my Czech friend and guide Honza translated as "fried carp sperm."

I said, “You can’t fry sperm.” And everyone at my table insisted that, while female fish have a whole trough full of eggs (caviar), the males have a trough full of the male counterpart — and it’s cookable. Fried carp sperm tasted like fried oyster...same texture, too.

For my main course, I had to try the rest of the carp. I thought carp just swam in hotel fountains. It was the cheapest fish for good reason — bottom-end...muddy weed-eater...mucky mucky carp.

Trebon’s other claim to fame is its spa, where people come from near and far to soak in peat. Envisioning the elegance of Germany's Baden-Baden, I had to give it a whirl. Besides, I thought it would make good TV. Stepping into the huge institution, we checked in. Immersed in a One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest ambiance, we were ushered through.

My attendant didn’t really understand why I had an entourage (local guide/translator, producer, and cameraman). She just treated my like some deaf-mute she was assigned to bathe and massage. She pointed to room number 8. I stepped in to see a huge naked lady climbing into a stainless-steel tub. She must have meant number 9.

Number 9 was a tiny shared cubicle — someone else’s clothes already hung there — which led to a big steel tub. (I never saw my cubicle mate.) She mimed to take off everything. I kept my military-green swim suit on (afraid of a prankish combination of high-definition footage, my producer Simon’s sense of humor, and YouTube). She snarled.

Camera work is slow. She was anxious. The peat muck only flows at the top of the hour. I climbed into my stainless-steel tub, she pulled a plug, and I quickly disappeared under a rising sea of dark-brown peat broth (like a gurgling sawdust soup).

Then, my tub was full and all was silent. My ten toes looked cute poking out of the hot brown and glassy-still sea. She kept acting like I would overdose if I stayed in too long. But we filmed our sequence (one of the stupidest-looking show opens we’ve ever done — I looked like a naked Al Jolson).

Finally we were done shooting. Standing in the tub, I showered off the sludge. She ushered me into the massage room and laid me face-down. It was like a nurse’s office with a pile of dirty sheets stacked in the corner. Honza translated it in our guidebook as “hand massage.” That sounded redundant at best...vaguely kinky at worst. Honza said that’s literally what massages are called in Czech (rucni masaz).

We just wanted to film my shoulders. But she insisted on ignoring the camera’s needs and giving me a hand massage from my shoulder to just about where I didn’t want the camera to go. When the crew had what they needed, they left. I tried to go, too, but she wouldn’t let me. She had to complete the massage that every patient at the Trebon spa is entitled to. (Most people at the spa were there at their doctor’s orders, with expenses covered by insurance.)

I walked out with a mucky massage cream causing my shirt to stick to me, and without a clue what soaking in that peat soup was supposed to accomplish.

Posted by Rick Steves on August 14, 2007
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The honey-colored flypaper spirals down from a thumbtack, anchored in midair by its now-empty canister. Speckled with lifeless flies, it swings each time the violin bow pokes it.

It’s very tight quarters as the string quartet plays everything from Bach and Smetana to Czech folk favorites and 1930s anti-fascism blues. The string bass player grooves like a white Satchmo — his bow sliding in and out between diners under the table. My sweater is just in the way.

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The bandleader plays a 100-year-old black wood flute. During a break, I finger its mouthpiece — worn like an ancient marble relic by countless nights of music-making. The flautist sports a big bushy moustache just like the emperor — Franz Josef — who looks down from a yellowed poster.

Above the quartet is a high window. Teenage heads bob into sight — straining and craning on tiptoes to look in. Each time a song ends, beers giggle golden on rough wood tables as the roaring crowd claps and cheers for more. As the night wears on, there are fewer tourists clicking photos and more locals singing along. As the quartet sways together like seaweed in a nostalgic musical tide, it occurs to me that in little towns all over the world, no-name bands are causing strangers to smile...and drink more beer.

Crossing the Czech border, I stow my love of wine away, and become a beer-lover. Here, the beer hits your table like a glass of water does in the States. On my early trips — before I learned Czech beer is more powerful than the beer your father drank — I used to have a big beer at lunch and spend the rest of the day wobbly...sightseeing on what I called “Czech knees.” Now, when in the Czech Republic, I resist a momentum-killing beer at lunch and finish each day with a fresh draft beer (tonight’s is still trying to kill my momentum as I type).

Honza, the co-author of my Prague guidebook and my sidekick this week as we film a TV show on “The Czech Republic Beyond Prague,” told our camera, “These days, with the EU opening things up, so many Poles and Hungarians are going west to France and Germany to get jobs. But not the Czechs. We can’t find good enough beer anywhere but here. This beer keeps us glued to these bar chairs.”

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Back in my hotel, I climb to my attic room — careful not to bean myself on a medieval wooden beam. (I feel like I’m sleeping in a playground structure built before the age of steel piping.) I lean out my tiny dormer window, the sound of the boisterous bar small in the distance.

I am so happy for the freedom, peace, and prosperity countries like this are enjoying. The new, sturdy roof tiles around me are slick with a light rain. The street, wet and shiny, is as clean as a model-railroad town. Cars, while not expensive, are new and parked tidy as a jukebox. The scene is lit by cheap yellow lampposts. After forty bleak years of communism, the lampposts seem to be intentionally cheery...like a fashion accent decorating the line of pastel facades that arcs out of sight.

In small Czech towns, the facades are humble. Three centuries ago, each was given an individual personality — with far more variety and fun designed into them than even the famous gables of Amsterdam. And today — after a grime-filled 20th century — they sport new paint jobs: A mellow rainbow of simple solid pastels, with lines that accent the individuality of each facade. And behind each facade lives a family.

Posted by Rick Steves on August 12, 2007
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Many TV producers joke that their work is all about “warping reality.” I’m working really hard to show the truth. But it occurs to me that I, too, am warping reality. I have an image of Europe that I want to share. When I learn that my wishful thinking is not the truth, it is a challenge for me to accept the new reality.

I often have a script-driven agenda: I wanted to show “typically Welsh” people in Cardiff, but could only find immigrants on the street. I wanted to show traffic that “stayed in its lanes like rocks in an avalanche” in Rome, but found only polite and law-abiding traffic. I wanted to show tough alpine peasant stock in Liechtenstein, and found only kids that looked like Americans, Swiss people on holidays, and Croatians serving them in the restaurants.

In producing our show, we don’t shoot ugly things. We want to make Europe “easy on the eyes.” (I’ve talked my producer, Simon, into showing only two toilets in 70 episodes.) Whether as a tourist, guidebook writer, or TV producer — and whether in Paris or Bergen or Prague — I acknowledge only the historic core of a city...about 5 percent of it. We just made Zürich, Luzern, and Bern look great, showing only the historic core. In doing so, we ignored 95 percent...and contributed to the tunnel-vision of prospective visitors to these cities.

Europeans cities have forests of cranes, lots of scaffolding, and plenty of graffiti. But the images we bring home — whether for our TV episodes or for your photo scrapbooks — crop that out. Cameras roll when good-looking people walk by, when slick cars roll past, and when sunshine makes colors "pop." Someone with a huge mole or a terrible skin problem is too distracting to have talk to the camera — even if they have something important to say.

Europe is full of punks, beggars, Bolivian music troupes, and immigrants violating preconceived ideas of who will draw your beer. You won’t see them on the show. We found the perfect spot on a bridge to film an “on camera” (when I talk to the camera), but had to disguise the “F**k Bush” slogan spray-painted on the wall behind me.

I want to show a Europe untainted by corporate logos. It’s just reflex to shoot around the now omnipresent Starbucks, McDonalds, and café umbrellas advertising Coke. My camera strap has a bold yellow “Nikon” on it — which is felt-penned out and flipped upside down when filming. I don’t even show my own guidebooks in our TV shows. (I get my little “ad” at the end, but just try to find any “product placement.”)

The tourist board guides who help us have an agenda, too. In Liechtenstein, they assumed we’d shoot the casino and a falconry exhibition and not talk about the Prince, who threatened to abandon his country if he didn’t get more political power. (We compromised and did none of these.) In Bern, they could get us into their parliament building, but not the needle-distribution desk at the heroin maintenance center. (We did both.)

My earlier producers had an agenda, too: film “people of color” traveling whenever possible to imply more diversity among European travelers, and avoid showing people smoking. Those two concerns aren’t even on my radar.

But I jump at the chance to illustrate a society that is committed to public transit and pedestrian zones. I enjoy showing people biking without wearing helmets (as Europeans do) as a kind of “take that” to a society that is so diligent about that issue while so enamored with guns. I also like to show the responsible consumption of beer and wine in the presence of children — because I think a social scene that is not segregated by generation is a good thing.

Any media warps reality. Travel media generally conditions you to find the Europe of your dreams. My shows — if I’m honest — show you the Europe of my dreams. I know how easy it is to warp reality in travel media. Consequently, I know that other media, as well, can also cause me to loose track of just what’s a window and what’s a funhouse mirror.

Posted by Rick Steves on August 10, 2007
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“Two centuries ago, there were dozens of independent states in German-speaking Europe. Today, there are only four: Germany, Austria, Switzerland...and Liechtenstein.” That’s how I start the bit on Liechtenstein in our “Little Europe” episode.

I love the way tiny countries are defined so clearly by geography. Liechtenstein is a bowl in the mountains — high ridges on the east, milky baby Rhine River still giddy from its tumble out of the Alps running south to north on its west, and a stout and classic castle guarding the entry to the valley on the south. About the size of Manhattan, it’s truly landlocked, with no seaport and no airport.

We had a day to shoot it, and a guide to make sure we got it right. The good news — it was gloriously sunny. The bad news — it was Sunday, and the streets were dead. We drove around looking for a few of the 35,000 people with Liechtenstein passports, and found little more than empty villages.

The prince was in the news recently for threatening to actually abandon his principality if his citizens didn’t give him more political power. Liechtensteiners, who seem pretty easygoing about these things (women didn’t claim the right to vote until 1984), accepted his demands. Now, apparently, Prince Liechtenstein has more real authority than any other royal in Europe. (Though ruling a country the size of Manhattan, with the population of Yankee Stadium on an off day, doesn't exactly give you a lot of power.)

The prince’s palace — not open to the public — overlooks his domain from atop a cliff. We knocked on the door, and the guard looked at me and my film crew like we were nuts.

I ended the segment at the literal top of the country, saying, “Like Switzerland, a big part of the principality’s modern economy is tourism and sports — hosting visitors enjoying its dramatic natural beauty. Ski lifts, busy both winter and summer, take nature-lovers to the dizzying ridge that serves as the border with Austria. Even in little, little Liechtenstein...the views are big, and the hiking possibilities are endless.”

Crossing the Rhine back into Switzerland, we snooped around to find the perfect vantage point from which to film a wide shot showing the entire country. Liechtenstein all faces west. The entire country is in shade late into the morning. And each evening it’s all bathed in the rich light of the setting sun. When our cameraman took the big camera off the tripod, our Little Europe show was in the can.

Over the last two years, we dropped into San Marino, the Vatican, Monaco, Andorra, and now Liechtenstein. In just over a year, the show will air on PBS. As we zipped back to Zürich — just an hour away on the autobahn — I pondered just how candid I want to be about the visit-worthiness of three of these little lands.

(By the way, in response to comments that I seem down on Switzerland: I really like Switzerland — from the lakefront promenades of its elegant cities to the scalps of its Alps.)

Posted by Rick Steves on August 08, 2007
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There are two kinds of Swiss restaurants — with and without cooked cheese. The Swiss eat out at a “cooked cheese restaurant” because they don’t want to stink up their house with the smell. But, when eating out, the Swiss carefully avoid a “cooked cheese restaurant” if they are not having fondue or raclette. Also, only tourists eat fondue in summer. I just saw the sorriest sight in all of Luzern: a fondue restaurant in August serving two lonely tourists.

Being just over the border from France and Italy, the Swiss seem to have an inferiority complex about the quality of their restaurants. My Swiss friend brags, “In western Switzerland, our restaurants have the most Michelin stars per kilometer.” I say, “Perhaps that’s because Michelin hides its money here.” My Swiss friend says, “Let’s talk about the weather.”

At an Italian restaurant in Luzern the menu listed everything in Italian and German. The Italian sounded more appetizing than the German to me: I was all set for scaloppini...until I read the German name (Kalbsschnitzel), and went with something else.

I asked the waitress to translate “Autruche” on the menu. She said, “It’s the one that puts its head in the sand.” She was German, from Berlin. I asked how she liked working in Switzerland. She said, “Good, except we get only four weeks vacation here. In Germany, workers all get at least six.”

I bought six liters of water for the crew at supermarket for the cost of three half-liter bottles at a convenience store. Convenience stores all over Europe are convenient...but supermarkets are a far better value.

Driving out of Beaune, in Burgundy, we came to a blight of roadside billboards and it occurred to me: Europe is generally free from highway billboards.

Driving through the Swiss countryside hoping for good weather tomorrow for filming, we notice fields blanketed in fresh-cut hay. The farmers don’t cut hay unless they figure the weather will stay dry. Love to see that cut hay. We’ve been blessed with perfect weather for the production of two TV shows in a row.

Posted by Rick Steves on August 06, 2007
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It’s interesting to think how sightseeing thrills go cold with time. I was just at Luzern’s much-vaunted Swiss Transport Museum. A huge photo-realistic map of Switzerland showing literally every building in the country (which slipper-wearing visitors would walk on as they explored their country) is now (after Google Earth) quaint and underwhelming. We went in with the camera ready to roll...and left having dropped it from the script.

The stamp museum I just saw in Liechtenstein, while as good as a stamp museum can be, was just so 20th century. “Sound and Light Shows” were the after-dark extravaganza throughout Europe a generation ago. Today, they are essentially extinct.

And as time passes, the immediacy of war memorials wilts, too. As everyone’s “Greatest Generation” passes, the pain of WWII will fade. I know many refuse to accept this...but the pain of WWI faded just like the pain of the Franco-Prussian war and the pain of Napoleon’s Russia campaign faded. Pretty soon those photos of our heroic loved ones will join the others in the three-for-a-dollar box at the flea market.

The city the Nazis burned and murdered in 1944 four days after D-Day — Oradour-sur-Glane — has been intentionally left as it was by the Nazis. With my last visit, it occurred to me that it is intentionally left “as is,” and that is evocative and good...except for the fact that the elements are literally wearing it away. As rust and rot gnaws at France’s Martyr-ville, time does the same to our WWII memories.

Six hundred years has failed to put a stop to the night watchman in Lausanne. Every night since the 1400s, on the hour, a night watchman steps out on the top of the church spire and hollers in four directions, “I am the watchman. I am the watchman. We just had ten o’clock. We just had ten o’clock.” He’s a human cuckoo clock in the land of Rolex and Swatch. He’s so irrelevant — he actually repeated his shout at 10:16 so we could film him a second time from street level...and no one noticed.

Posted by Rick Steves on August 05, 2007
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It’s August 1st — the Swiss National Holiday — and we’re in the capital city of Bern. The lakeside park is packed with beautiful people. I follow the steady stream of bathers hiking up the river to jump in and float down — the city’s wet, urban paseo.

Even with thousands in bathing suits and under a glorious sunshine, the Swiss are subdued. The most enthusiastic expression is the happy shudder I make as I plunge into the fast-flowing river. It’s a wonderfully free float until you near the post positioned so bathers can rescue themselves from the swift current and get out. I don’t know what would happen if someone missed the post — but you paddle like mad to grab it. This was great fun for TV.

Later, in the town, the sun is low. A Turkish girl and Swiss girl drink wine out of bottle under a flower-filled fountain featuring a medieval maiden pouring water from a jug. Trolley tracks, glinting in the sun, shoot like a bottle rocket up the cobbled lane.

A listless guy sits in a shipping container converted into a bike depot. The city has sponsored a free loaner bike program to both cut car traffic and create work for the hard-to-employ.

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A threesome lies on the grass in shade of the national parliament building, passing a joint. No one cares. The new big Starbucks has a code for the toilet downstairs: 1122. Opening the door, I step into a very blue space. Blue lights make it impossible for junkies to find their veins. The last public WC I was in had a garbage box with a lid labeled “syringes.”

Down the street, I study the layered ads and labels on the coin-op dispenser. I see it was a cigarette machine, converted to a condom machine, and finally converted again to become a syringe dispenser — offering heroin addicts cheap and clean needles.

Just next to the Museum of Fine Arts, a heroin-maintenance center has a yard filled with people fighting their addictions. A steady stream of people step up to a window to get their needles. Filming that was really tricky...but extremely rewarding to bring home to the USA — a “harm-reduction” approach to drug policy. For more on this and other issues related to the European drug policy — and how it differs from ours — read this article I wrote recently for a talk I gave at an ACLU convention.

We tend to see Switzerland as so efficient and impossibly successful. But they have the same problems other countries do. Just like they opted out of the EU, and just like each of their states or “cantons” is fiercely independent, they deal with their problems their way...openly and creatively.

The city center is traffic-free except for taxis and quiet trams flying flags. The streets are filled with people, mostly young. It’s quiet enough to hear the splash of the fountains. As darkness settles, the town’s artful floodlighting becomes evident. The noise of firecrackers grows. Leaving my hotel without my camera, I knew something fun would appear. Sure enough, I came upon an open-air performance by a jazz band whose lead instrument was a long alphorn. Very cool. It would have been a fine photo bridging tradition with the present. Later I joined what seemed like half the city on the big bridge to watch the fireworks show. It was just like a Fourth of July show back home — with the same oohs and aahs for the best explosions. But the pyrotechnics were underwhelming. They’ve been celebrating the First of August since 1291...being a bit jaded would be understandable.

Posted by Rick Steves on August 04, 2007
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Coming from France into Switzerland, there’s a clear contrast. France has a rough patina. Switzerland has paved over its patina with success. I had to remark as we entered Lausanne, our first big Swiss city, “There’s just too much money here.”

While the French are discreet with sex, the Swiss are discreet with money. There are actually unmarked banks — perfect for unmarked deposits. (People come from around the globe to store their black money in Swiss banks...happy to earn negative interest. They actually pay Switzerland to keep it for them — anonymously and with no questions asked.)

The tourist board put us up in one of the finest hotels in the world — the Lausanne Palace and Spa Hotel. When I notice “thread count” under the sheets, you know it’s really top quality. (Ironically, the place is so nice it actually cuts into our productivity.) There’s even an unmarked bank in the hotel.

At breakfast, I was surrounded by people speaking Russian and Arabic. I sat between an old woman talking Russian on a cell phone and a guy in a bowtie who looked like Paul Wolfowitz with nothing to do. Tearing off a bit of my warm-out-of-the-oven mini-croissant, I wondered if it’s worse to blow obscene amounts of money if you are from a poor country or a rich one. (If I were paying for my room, it would run $350.) Where did these people get their money? Cynically, I thought, “They didn’t earn it.”

Starting a new TV episode, I needed to change wardrobe. (It was good to get that Burgundy shirt off my back after five days.) I called room service. Asked if I could get two shirts and a pair of pants ironed. They said sure. Something deep inside screamed, “Ask the price.” I did. They said, “74 Swiss Francs.” I thought, “At $60, I’ll body iron them.” I then did a little laundry in the sink. Rather than succumb to the temptation to hang it on my balcony — with a view of Lake Geneva — I put my heated towel rack to good use. It dried in a jiffy.

Posted by Rick Steves on August 02, 2007
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I’m happily sunburned today — after a day barging Burgundy. We filmed the luxury barge experience, and captain Arnaud and first mate/chef Marie made sure the day was smooth and stress-free. I’ll never forget producer Simon and cameraman Peter running along the tow path to get ahead of our barge, then filming Steve’s family and me stretched out on the deck as we floated elegantly by.

It was an idyllic scene: Gliding by fields of sunflowers, playing with my tapenade, being careful not to let the fine red wine mess up my ability to remember my lines, savoring the sight of Steve’s in-laws enjoying their grandchildren so...and doing the arithmetic to try to justify the high cost of a luxury barge (while expensive, the experience includes absolutely everything: sleeping, eating, drinking, excursions, transfers, transportation...and the scenery comes to you).

It’s spendy, but it’s easy to make the case that luxury barging is a reasonable value...especially if you share a barge with three or four couples you really wanted to be decadent with. The glide is punctuated each mile or so by a lock — each a model of 19th-century Industrial Age efficiency, with a tidy lock house providing government-subsidized housing for the bohemian couple who runs the lock. These characters are fixtures in France’s lazy canal culture.

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Later we filmed Château de la Rochepot. For years I’ve had a negative feeling for the national chauvinism of this castle. Its owners, the noble Carnot family, refused to offer English descriptions of their fine rooms as a matter of principle (“As part of the patrimony of France, it should be explained only in French”).

Today, I came with my film crew, and after we filmed the wonderful centuries-old kitchen, the staff announced that Madame Carnot had a special treat for us. They opened a fine ancient chest and pulled out a huge 48-star American flag, explaining this was the flag that the Carnot family flew on the day of Liberation in 1945. And, to this day, they love their American guests.

For two decades, I led groups through France and was constantly impressed at how Americans expected the French to speak English. People would go to the post office in some little town and be frustrated and upset because there was no help in English and the people were not friendly. I had to remind them that small-town French postal clerks are every bit as speedy, cheery, and multilingual as those you'd find in the USA. It's important when we are frustrated by the language barrier that we don't expect linguistically more than we give.

Posted by Rick Steves on August 01, 2007
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