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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

Now that I'm home, I've sorted through my slides and added art to this blog. There are 26 photos to illustrate my last two months in Scandinavia & Germany — all with captions and all eager to be read by you. Please enjoy by scrolling through the entries below.

Posted by Rick Steves on August 28, 2009
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Checking in with my Norwegian cousin Kari-Anne and her husband Knute, we got a little dose of the Scandinavian good life — while filming the delightful Oslofjord.
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Europe is moving beyond its old-time clichés, and I'm weaning myself from these too. In fact, my theme this year, in both TV production and guidebook writing, has been to purge things that are recommended just because they've always been there. Sometimes it's difficult after decades of singing a cultural tune to realize the melody has changed. This year I find myself thinking, "That was big in the 1980s, but..." as I work to keep my take on Europe fresh.

In Norway trolls may still be in the shop windows, but they have no business in a guidebook or TV show. Goofy legends about modern-age buildings having roofs inspired by upturned Viking ships are out. Sweden used to be a porn capital — but so much modern-day freedom in that regard seems to have made that industry passé. I remember when the TV towers in Berlin, Stockholm and Oslo were as breathtaking as Seattle's Space Needle. Oslo's is now closed to the public and the others are barely advertised.

There was a time when travelers ventured to Stockholm and Helsinki to see planned suburbs like Farsta and Tapiola — suburbs that organized people as if in juke boxes...and people clamored to get in. No one even talks about these places anymore. In the 1980s it seemed every other tourist in Helsinki was an architect, there to marvel at the modern buildings. Today Helsinki's once-striking Finlandia Hall, by Alvar Aalto, is only striking out. I've always listed the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo as a must-see. It was one when it captured the imagination of would-be sea adventurers a generation ago. Today, the museum seems to be going the way of the log boat.

I have also realized that I need to be careful not to romanticize the nobility and intelligence of a people I'm predisposed to be impressed by. It's so much fun to bump into entire societies that are both good-looking and seem to have it all figured out. You could travel through a place like Norway and think everyone was brilliant and beautiful. But seeing racks of National Enquirer-type tabloids in Bergen — papers as cheesy and idiotic as ours and England's — reminds me that no society is immune from low-brow culture; there's a huge market for that everywhere.

Having spent more time in Scandinavia this summer than ever before, I enjoyed a great chance to reconnect with my wonderful relatives. My uncle Thor in Sandefjord is a patriarch with beautiful grandchildren galore. My cousin Kari-Anne is a publisher with a fascinating circle of friends; she lives in Oslo, enjoying the best of Norwegian big-city life. And Hanne, the baby I held while watching the first moon landing, has three kids old enough to stay up late and contribute to our conversation.

Ten years ago, while filming in Bergen, Hanne kept sneaking into our shots. In Norway, she said, those obnoxious types who always try to get into the picture are called "lens lice." I asked her if she'd like to be a part of the new show we're filming, and she said, "My lens lice days are over." (While I strongly disagree, I didn't argue.)

I spent an evening with Hanne's family enjoying the fun conversation. We talked about the challenges modern Norway has with immigrants. In this Lutheran corner of Europe, they explained, everyone enjoys the freedom to practice their religion, as long as the practice doesn't violate Norway's constitution, which guarantees a range of human rights — including women's rights, gay rights, and children's rights (e.g., parents are forbidden to beat their children). Fathers are intimately involved in parenting. In fact, throughout Scandinavia, rather than "maternity" leave, new moms and dads share 16 months of paid leave (dividing it as they like).

Hanne's kids sat attentively as they soaked up the conversation. Hanne's 13-year-old daughter speaks English so well that she played a game speaking American with her mom and British with her dad (as that's how each speaks English with her). I asked her about cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana. She said she and her friends had no interest in any of that. She explained that the government tried the “bad for your health” line in their education campaigns, and it was worthless. Then the schools started teaching that cigarettes made your skin ugly, stained your teeth, and gave you bad breath. They taught that alcohol lowers your metabolism, making you get fat more easily. This appeal to teenagers' vanity, rather than their health, was by all accounts wildly effective.

By my small survey, I've found that throughout Norway and Sweden there's extremely little interest in marijuana. People just don't seem to even be intrigued by it. On the other hand, among young people (other than my relatives, of course), it seems that casual sex is rampant.

I have my vices though, and so does my film crew. We like a good drink after a day's work. With the cost of alcohol here, we drink beer when we'd normally have a glass of wine. (A glass of beer here costs what a glass of wine would cost elsewhere, and wine costs much more.) And we got addicted to dropping by the ubiquitous convenience stores for a box of Iskaffe (iced coffee) — available for 19 krone ($3), the cost of a reasonably priced latte in a café. I am still fascinated by how this affluent corner of Europe seemingly prices so much of its populace out of restaurant going. Convenience stores fill the gap for people without much money — providing cafeteria lines of whatever you need, to be munched on benches or on the fly.

Posted by Rick Steves on August 23, 2009
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Oslo's new Opera House is a huge hit. And it has a rooftop that seats 8,000.
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We were allowed to film the mayor introducing the band, and then they escorted us out. Tusen Takk!
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About my “convalescence”: It's impressive what a couple of quiet days on the Mosel River can do for your spirit and batteries. Thanks for the encouragement. (Perhaps that's why this blog entry is overdue.) Being in Europe, it can be very hard to just say, “Enough.” As if channel-surfing on a great TV with an infinite number of channels, there's always something enticing beyond what you can comfortably experience.

My time on the Mosel reminded me of a critical day I spent last year in Athens. We had just produced two exciting shows on Greece. My brain was fried. I was concerned I'd get a cold. I felt like you do when you know getting sick is God's way of telling you to slow down — and you're snowballing out of control with an exhilarating project. It was the day before we flew to Iran for our 12-day shoot there, and it would be the most demanding TV production work I think I'd ever done. I needed to be fresh and healthy. I checked out of the last day of shooting in Athens and spent the entire day poolside on the rooftop of our hotel... recharging. And, thankfully, it worked.

We just finished a six-day shoot in Oslo. My plane landed here among flooded lakes. They'd had nothing but rain for a month. When it comes to producing a TV show, Oslo in the rain is just seven kinds of bad. But we had glorious sunshine, and all of Oslo was in bloom for us.

I love Norway — probably because I'm Norwegian. Three of my grandparents grew up in Norway. (Two homesteaded in Edmonton. One was a relatively famous and often-drunk ski jumper in Leavenworth, Washington.) Yesterday I told my producer, Simon, “Everyone looks like my brother.” He was shocked (having traveled with me for 12 years of TV production) and said, “I didn't know you had a brother.” I don't. But if I did, they'd look like the guys around us. But it's more than how they look. It's how they are. A fun part of travel is to feel a kinship with people from the land of your forefathers.

Norway seems so mellow and content and comfortable and successful. You have to wonder why. And you have to consider that since it's sparsely populated, it seems nearly everyone's cut from the same ethnic mold (nearly 20 percent of the population are immigrants, but they seem to live in a parallel world), and there's plenty of money. Whenever you're assessing a society (whether Norway, Iran, Alaska, Venezuela, or Texas), if its affluence is based on oil, its policies don't apply to the rest of the world.

Of course, Norway has a lavish social support system (everyone gets a home, food, money, health care, education, security). While Americans paranoid about these things might call them "socialists," Norwegians are quite enthusiastically capitalistic. There's a huge participation in the stock market among Norwegians (they say more, per capita, than Americans). While it's hard to be poor here, you can be quite wealthy. While ostentatious Norwegians are looked down upon, the wealthy elite who don't show off are admired.

I've long wondered if the incentive to work hard in order not to be poor — which is the active ingredient of capitalism — only works if there are losers. In other words, does capitalism require poverty? But Norway seems to be a land where there are essentially no losers, yet people work hard and the country thrives.

I don't think we've ever filmed in a more laid-back big city than Oslo. At every museum and important place we took our big camera, the attendants just said, “Welcome. Let us know if we can help you.”

Then we went to a concert on the Opera rooftop. (Oslo has a very exciting new Opera House that doubles as a public plaza, with a rooftop that people just have to walk on.) To kick off Oslo's jazz festival, a hot English group named Antony and the Johnsons (with a lead singer who looks like a cross between Meatloaf and Marilyn Manson) was performing on a stage raft anchored just off the slanting marble slopes of the opera house, and 8,000 people packed the rooftop for the show.

At first we had permission to film. We got there, were escorted to the media stand, and suddenly someone said our permission had been revoked. The security guards turned quite surly, trying to physically escort us out. I suddenly felt like we were dealing with the lackeys of some Batman villain. We tried to discuss the issue, and they treated us like a serious threat to Antony. We told the publicist from the opera house how un-Norwegian the security force seemed. She said, “They were imported by Antony from Britain for this gig.”

Much as I love Norway, goat cheese, and my blond cousins, it seemed I needed to inject some color into my days. Almost every night, we found ourselves walking down a street called Grønland into the immigrant district for food that was both spicy and affordable. Dining streetside, seeing a rainbow of people and a few rough edges, made the world a little less Wonder Bready.

After a week in expensive Norway, I'm comfortable with the notion that up here, beer is wine ($8 a glass). And for coffee, we'd drop by any convenience store and buy an iced latte in a box for $3. It could be some solace to think that the high prices we're incurring are just helping pay for all that lavish social support everyone here enjoys...but it's not.

Posted by Rick Steves on August 19, 2009
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Need a good place to recharge? Try the terrace of the Hotel Lippmann, overlooking the Mosel River in Beilstein, Germany.
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Jonas Lippmann made sure I took things slow and easy for a couple days. But I refused to wear his van Gogh hat.
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I'm feeling a bit burned out. Researching a string of big cities (Bergen, Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, and Tallinn) is physically and mentally exhausting, and it's frustrating because there's just never enough time to do the job I want to do.

I gave myself a week to simply travel in Germany. Stepping off the plane in Berlin, I remember feeling strangely like I had just been let out of prison. I was entering a new country without a long list of hotels, restaurants, and museums to check. I was free.

But I was also just spent. Knowing I had my TV crew flying to meet me in a week, I needed to rest.

For my big-city German stops, I let the tourist board arrange hotels and guides for me. In each city, I had local guide for half a day and a big business-class hotel. These were splurges I wanted to try (but not pay for), and places, it turns out, I'd never recommend. Each time I plopped onto a new hotel's bed, I reaffirmed my belief that a hotel's personality and location trump its glitziness.

These places, while fancy, had no personality (too big for any of the employees to have any idea who owns the place that employs them) and were in lousy locations (designed for conventioneers, people with cars, or those who didn't think twice about hopping into a taxi to go anywhere). For me, to be in a hotel where I can't just step out the door and immerse myself in the charm of my destination is a disaster. I expect to be in a glassy high-rise surrounded by freeway interchanges in Houston, but not Germany.

My Köln hotel was distant from the cathedral and old center. At first I was disappointed about it. I was so tired, I needed to just take a slow walk. Strolling aimlessly among cars, trees, sky, and pavement, I realized the bad location was a blessing in disguise. I was in Germany, and it was as mundane as suburban Anytown, USA: the same humble people, same ethnic mix, same feeling that everyone was struggling together to make it.

To make time for a longer walk, I paid extra at the launderette for the attendant to wash, dry, and fold my clothes. I returned a bit early and just watched her lovingly fold my shirts and tuck my socks into themselves, and slide it all back into my rumpled plastic bag. She did this work all day long with grace. Next door was an empty phone and Internet shop — where foreign laborers come to call home cheaply. The Turkish man who ran it stood outside his door staring at the traffic and the blocky architecture built on the cheap in the 1950s after WWII bombings.

Feeling solitary and pensive, I stepped into a church for a quiet moment. Like everything else around me here in Köln, it was rebuilt after World War II. It was concrete with fake mortar painted on to make it look like the fine stone original. Only a little of the original medieval glass survived, leaving the once-vivid Biblical messages fragmented — mostly replaced by drab, Tupperware-colored glass with no story to tell. The church seemed almost dead. With the lack of religiosity in Germany today, I wondered if the bombings occurred now, whether anyone would care enough to rebuild the place.

From Köln, I felt like I needed to actually convalesce. I've never felt so fried. In fact, I almost vowed to schedule a weekly day of rest in my future travels. (We're not designed to ignore that commandment.)

When I think convalesce in Europe, certain places come to mind: Ærøskøbing in Denmark, Walaker Hotel on Norway's Sognefjord, Varenna on Italy's Lake Como, Hallstatt in Austria's Salzkammergut Lake District, and Beilstein on Germany's Mosel River.

The nearest of those places: Beilstein — just two hours away by train. Beilstein is the Mosel River's “Sleeping Beauty town.” Without good road access until recently, it never really got any modern development. Today it's just grape vines, cobbles, fancy door knockers, the smell of dank back alleys, and Mosel River views. Midday, its charm is trampled by too many tourists. But early and late, it's a dream...just right for convalescence.

I spent an hour before dinner on the terrace of Hotel Lippmann. Sipping my sprightly white wine, I gazed at the tiny two-car ferry sliding on its cable back and forth across the river. Its slow, monotonous rhythm and the peaceful bikers that came and went with each landing were mesmerizing.

Jonas, who runs my hotel, serves wine and not beer. He explained that people who would stay away because there is no beer are people they don't want anyway. He serves homemade bread with tubs of Schmaltz (greasy pork lard). I asked him if he knew Barry Manilow. He said yes. I said, “Schmaltz is to butter what Barry Manilow is to music.” Jonas said, “Ja, schmaltzy.”

My room, which faced the river, had a small terrace. A rumble shook my room, waking me on my first morning. Stepping outside, I saw a massive barge filled with coal lumbering by. In a moment, it was gone, and I was left with the peaceful essence of the Mosel: across the glassy river, the little ferry was parked. Above it a church spire stuck like a slate spike through a hill cloaked in a green corduroy of vineyards. As if animating some symphony to the direction of a cosmic conductor, a huge and orderly flock of black birds sloshed back and forth like sound waves across the fields and around the spire. That kicked off a soothing Beilstein day.

Posted by Rick Steves on August 14, 2009
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Art helps us ponder the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Here, hammers and sickles are buried in a slice of Berlin Wall concrete.
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Thinking "Hitler" back in the 1930s, this little girl sings, "You really gotta hold on me." Sadly, the hateful power of Nazism is not entirely dead.
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The Berlin Wall fell twenty years ago. Tourists seem to care more than locals. I asked how the East Berliners have integrated into the Western ways of united Germany. Local friends told me the East Berliners were a people educated not to ask questions, not to control their destiny, and to pride themselves in manual labor.

While Westerners lived with non-Germans, Eastern Berlin didn't live with foreigners. With freedom, the least trained among them found themselves competing at the low end of the workforce with Turks and other immigrants. Their fear of foreigners and their own lack of economic hope and opportunity make the less-educated, working-class Germans from the former East more skinheady--more prone to cling to racism and support far-right-wing political parties.

While neo-Nazis are a tiny fringe in Germany, there is a smoldering fascist element in German society. I was told it's led (Lyndon LaRouche-style) by older men who spearhead young movements via websites and music. Neo-Nazis listen to hateful music with forbidden themes by forbidden bands. These jackbooted punk-style bands have nostalgic, patriotic names like “Rheingold” and sing patriotic themed tunes that evoke the 1930s.

In Germany, there is freedom of speech...except against Jews. Children can tell Norwegian jokes all they want. But if they say racist things against Jews, they can actually get their parents in legal trouble. Germans are dealing aggressively with their fascist ghosts. While there are rowdy skinhead gatherings on Hitler's April 20 birthday, there are almost always much larger counter-demonstrations at the same time, effectively drowning out the neo-hate.

A friend told me that because they grew up not allowed to travel, former East Germans are the ones who “travel like hell.” While West Berliners holiday elsewhere in Germany or in the Netherlands, people from the DDR (East Germany) travel to places farther away, like Egypt.

The importance of being free to travel is a recurring theme in my travels this year. The citizens of the former Yugoslavia fondly remember how they were always free to travel. They were free to travel because they always came back, and they always came back because they were free to travel. Citizens of the DDR risked their lives to escape the country that wouldn't let them leave. Now they “travel like hell.”

Posted by Rick Steves on August 11, 2009
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Berlin's Spree River boat tours are suddenly a major attraction as the riverfront is lined with glorious, modern, governmental architecture. You'll glide by buildings like the Chancellery — Germany's grandiose answer to our White House.
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I just spent three days in Berlin. Of any place in Europe, this city is a work in progress...a place you need to be in every couple of years to see how it's developing.

The city center is blossoming. In fact, the big change in my guidebook: I now recommend the Spree River Boat Tours simply to glide by all the stunning new governmental architecture lining the river. And, while the Hohenzollerns built their buildings right up to the river (a Prussian snub against its people), today's government seems determined to make the riverbank through Berlin a delightful park. New buildings are set back, beachy cafes come with summery lounge chairs, and the river that once had metal nets and barbed wire to keep people from crossing it to freedom now makes you want to walk a dog and hug someone.

On the down side, locals are complaining that the Berlin government is deeply in debt — $25,000 per person. Many parks are unkempt. Scaffolding is stuck in place as many building projects are on hold. The rest of Germany says that's the price Berlin should pay for its grandiose building schemes of the last decade.

Locals are concerned that the city is coping by selling itself to foreign investors. Russian mafia types invest here because they need a solid place to put their black money. They expect crazy-high interest rates (as they'd get in corrupt Russia) and are frustrated when they don't get them.

While Berlin is cheap by big city standards in Europe, and really happening if you are creative and edgy, it's not the greatest if you're filthy rich. You just can't find the super-elite social clubs you find in Munich or Hamburg. And local elites complain that their fanciest club (China Club, $40,000 per year membership fee) is becoming overrun with Russian members.

Posted by Rick Steves on August 09, 2009
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These paintings in Tallinn's KUMU museum are a reminder that Stalin said, “Death solves all problems. No person…no problem.”
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Germans love their powerful motorcycles and black leather road gear. Twice on this trip I've helped a big, strong German right his tipped motorcycle. They seem so ominous in their gear on their big bikes, and then so humbled when the bike tumbles in a parking lot and they can't lift it up without help. It reminds me of a big, strong medieval knight who's fallen off his horse and can't get up.

Being in Western Europe, you think a lot about Hitler. Being farther east, you think of Stalin. He was evil beyond words. One of his favorite sayings: “Death solves all problems. No person, no problem.” While it seems Hitler is universally considered the worst person ever, there's no question Stalin killed millions more than the German dictator.

Traveling through Germany, you're really aware of the collective guilt the German people feel for the Holocaust. I don't get that feeling from Russians about the atrocities in their history. But were the Russians collectively any less responsible for bringing us the horrors of Stalin? It seems people don't blame the Russians for Stalin like they blame the Germans for Hitler, perhaps because Russians were victims of their own dictator more than Germans. But Stalin couldn't do it alone any more than Hitler.

Posted by Rick Steves on August 06, 2009
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I spent a long day touring the Estonian countryside with my guide, Mati. It seems that the life and money are being sucked into the big city, Tallinn. Country people are moving there for work. The Estonian countryside seemed pretty dead — enjoyed by holiday-makers and offering work to those who can telecommute.

Estonia's Baltic coast was once the wall of its Soviet-maintained prison. Now the ruins of that cage are a place that free Estonians come for peace, rest, and to celebrate their nature.
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The forests are thick, but the country is flat. Its highest “mountain” is under 1,000 feet, nicknamed “Big Egg Hill.” The endless pine forests are carpeted by wild berries and mushrooms. It is a part of the lifestyle to pick the berries. Mati said, “We have many berries. If you are very sick, some can make you well. Others can kill you. We pick them now for the joy, but during communist times, we picked them because we needed the food.”

The coastline is littered with souvenirs of Soviet occupation. Each little lip of land had a track for a gun and a searchlight. The metal used to keep the Estonians down is everywhere. Estonia's first post-independence millionaires made their fortune selling scrap metal to the West. Today, Estonians enjoy their mellow, peaceful Baltic coastline, playing amid the ruins of their former prison.

History was tough even before the Soviet Union. If it wasn't Russians, it was Germans...making life miserable around here. Until the mid-19th century, a good hunting dog was worth more than an Estonian peasant worker. And it was even tougher east of Estonia. In fact, Mati said that the vast majority of Soviet movies set in past centuries were shot in Tallinn, Odessa, or Riga. He said that was because these three towns were among the few from the former Soviet Union with an old quarter that survived the tumult of the 20th century.

And there was nothing charming about the architectural heritage of the Soviet Union. Ugly buildings, which dominate most cityscapes, are just assumed to be “from communist times.” Hotel Viru, long the only skyscraper in Tallinn, was an infamous Soviet hotel. Mati said it was built of a new Soviet material: “mico-concrete” (60% concrete, 40% microphones).

Doing my research, I asked Mati about a good Italian restaurant. He said these days, Italian restaurants are common in Estonia...but no good. They're generally based on couples: Italian guy marries Estonian girl. His mom was a good cook, so they think, “Easy. Let's open an Italian restaurant.” Mati said, “It's always Italian boys and Estonian girls — not the other way. Italian boys think Mediterranean women (Portuguese, Spanish, Italian) don't age well. Let's face it: For this, God created the Catholic religion...so they can't divorce.”

Mati explained his theory that Italian boys see Estonian women as the best bride material: They are the ideal Russian/Scandinavia/Estonian mix: deep, poetic, and romantic like Russians; free-spirited like Scandinavians, but without the problematic feminism of a Scandinavian; and the hands-on, can-do practicality of Estonians...the perfect woman.

Posted by Rick Steves on August 03, 2009
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