Rick Steves: Blog Gone Europe
I'm on the road in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia and Germany — 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
- Check out Rick's new blog, Travel as a Political Act.
Polish Booby Prize
This is the final of four reports that my Eastern Europe guidebook co-author Cameron Hewitt sent me from his travels:
In Poland, the big news is that several Polish cities are hosting matches for the 2012 Euro Cup soccer championships — which in Europe is only a small step down from hosting the Olympics. Everything's under construction. They're building new high-speed rail lines like crazy, which will be good news in a few years, but is bad news now since most journeys are substantially delayed. The Gdansk-Warsaw trip, usually about four hours, took closer to six.
Warsaw's Central Station — my vote for most depressing and confusing rail station in Europe — is slated for a desperately needed overhaul soon. It can't happen fast enough. In the five-minute walk from the ticket office to my platform, I ran into three different American couples who were toting my guidebook and hopelessly baffled about what to do next. Pointing them in the right direction, I felt pretty good-Samaritan about myself...until I realized that they were just the tip of the confused-tourist iceberg. Normally I'd take their confusion as a sign that the book needs improvement; in this case, I think it's the station that needs improvement. (But I'm revamping the "Arrival" section anyway, just in case.)
There's always something new in fast-developing Poland. Every time I go back to certain towns (like Gdansk), I discover that several good hotels and restaurants have opened. Occasionally I've had to list a hotel (with ample "last resort"-type caveats) that I know isn't that great, just because there are no acceptable alternatives. It's so satisfying to visit a few new hotels or restaurants, discover that they're better than the old standbys, and delete the duds from my book. (There's even a good sushi restaurant now in Gdansk — so long, "Pierogi Restaurant Under the Boar.") In a few cases, if you compare my hotel or restaurant listings from five years ago to today's, you'll find only a couple of overlaps. That's not the case in most books, but in Poland it just shows how things are steadily improving.
A couple of Poles bragged to me that Poland is one of the only countries in Europe that's not suffering so badly from the financial crisis. It's actually had positive economic growth last year. But it's sort of a booby prize. When pressed for reasons, they acknowledged that it's probably because the Polish economy is a bit backwards and not as well-integrated into the global scene, making it less prone to worldwide fluctuations.
I usually have total tunnel vision about my work, but this trip I've been trying to chat more with people I meet. This has reminded me how rewarding it can be to strike up a conversation — whether with a couple from Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire, or a woman from Friday Harbor who's about to embark on an epic journey that will take her to the Baltics, the "-Stans" of central Asia, and the prettiest stretch of the Camino de Santiago. Most fascinating was the pair of young Scottish women who quit their jobs and were traveling all around Europe for four months — sleeping in their car, cooking on a camp stove, showering once a week ("10 days was the longest"), and making a go of it on a budget of €50 a day, most of which went toward gas and experiences.
But, as always, my favorites have been interactions with Polish people. It's amazing the connections you discover with people you'd think you have nothing in common with. On the long train ride from Gdansk to Warsaw, I shared a compartment with a woman whose husband is a cognitive psychologist/memory researcher. It turns out he's familiar with the work of the professor I was a research assistant for in college.
And just now, as I write this on the train from Warsaw to Krakow, I've been chatting with Monika. She told me she was going to a very remote little village northeast of Krakow to visit her father. I prodded her for more details, and it turns out she grew up in a small town (Szczurowa) that's just a 20-minute drive from the villages where my great-grandparents were born. I've been in her middle-of-nowhere town twice in the last few years. She knows several people with the same surname as my ancestors. And I have to assume that she's probably a distant cousin of some sort.
A few minutes later, "Cousin Monika" became my guardian angel when my computer crashed after I spritzed a little water on the keyboard. She called her brother-in-law, who's a tech support guy, and got some tips. Now my computer is humming away on my lap again.
When traveling, we focus so much on the museums, the cuisine, and the scenery. But it's often these strange, funny, serendipitous little interactions that we remember the most fondly.
Posted by Rick Steves on September 23, 2009
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Making Friends with Mr. GPS in Switzerland
This is the third of four reports guidebook researcher/writer Cameron Hewitt sent me just this week from his travels in Switzerland and beyond:
One highlight of my time updating our Switzerland guidebook was making friends with the computer voice of my rental car's GPS system.
When I picked up my car, the rental agent said, "Sorry, I don't have the size of car you requested, so I have to give you something a little bigger." It turned out to be a Skoda Superb (made by my favorite up-and-coming Czech automaker) and was literally at least double the size of the car I'd reserved. You could fit our Norwegian rental car in the backseat, and have room left for a Smart Car in the trunk. While it was nice to have essentially a luxury sedan for the trip, it was sometimes challenging to nudge my tank through narrow mountain roads and tight city parking garages.
The car came with a GPS system that spoke in a buttoned-down British voice. I developed a real love-hate relationship with the GPS guy, who occasionally saved me tons of time and stress, but more than once steered me very wrong. Like an over-earnest navigator desperate to make a good impression, Mr. GPS periodically suggested bizarre and impractical routings. On our first day together, he sent me up narrow mountain roads (in some cases, ones I wasn't sure I was legally allowed to drive), where I dodged cows and looked longingly down at the big, fast highway in the valley just below. (I'm guessing my GPS wanted to treat me to the "scenic" route. Yeah, thanks.)
On another occasion, I drove halfway across the country (from Gruyeres to Appenzell) at rush hour, hitting big traffic jams around Bern and Zürich. In order to "help" me avoid traffic on the Bern outerbelt, my GPS directed me to an exit to take surface roads through the city. Little did I know that he planned to send me straight through the heart of downtown. He was as confused as I was... "Turn left in 100 meters. Turn left now. No! Wait! Please make a U-turn if possible." As I found myself doing a three-point turn right in front of the Bern train station, trying to ignore the bewildered stares of rush-hour commuters, I decided that Mr. GPS was on thin ice.
My increasing wariness proved useful a few days later, when — on the way from St. Moritz to Lugano via Italy's Lake Como — I realized Mr. GPS had just directed me right past the Lugano turnoff. Hitting the brakes and checking the map, I figured out he was aiming to send me on the freeway, then on a ferry across the lake. I stuck with the slower roads on the correct side of the lake, and got in an hour earlier. (It reminded me of a recent news item, in which a Swedish couple touring Italy mistyped "Capri" as "Carpi" — and wound up several hundred miles from their intended destination.) The lesson: GPS is only useful in conjunction with a good map and some common sense.
The GPS guy would talk right over any music I was listening to. This created some odd duets. One time, listening to Janis Joplin on the radio, I heard, "Come on, take another little piece of my heart, now, baby... Please make a U-turn if possible."
Pondering why I'm so fixated on my GPS experiences, I realize it's probably because Mr. GPS was my main company for a few days. Now that he's pestering some other driver, I kind of miss him.
Posted by Rick Steves on September 21, 2009
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Fringe Switzerland and Stinky Cheese
This is the second of four reports that editor/writer/researcher Cameron Hewitt sent me from his travels in Norway, Switzerland, and Poland as he's updating our guidebooks. — Rick
Only when coming from Norway does Switzerland seem reasonably priced. Dropping $20 or $25 on a decent Swiss dinner felt like a big relief. (Later, when I was in Poland, I could eat like royalty for $20. In Warsaw I had lunch for $2...banana, egg-salad sandwich, and a bottle of water. But, as the stray hair I found in the sandwich attested, sometimes you get what you pay for.)
In the past I've usually focused on the Germanic core of Switzerland, so I forgot how diverse this little country is. This time, I zipped around the Romance language-speaking fringe — Lausanne and Gruyeres (French), Appenzell (OK, that's still German), St. Moritz area (Romansh), and Lugano (Italian). Every day or two, I switched languages. Though I never crossed a border (aside from a 30-minute detour into Liechtenstein), there was as much culture shock from place to place as if I'd traveled from Paris to Munich to Rome. By the time I got to the Romansh area — where they speak an obscure Latin dialect that's completely unfamiliar to me — I was so confused, I found myself grunting to my waiter in Croatian.
It's not just language — the people in each part of Switzerland have their own quirks. For example, in France, people have a distinct formality, with protocol that visitors are expected to follow. The Swiss are known to be a bit aloof, with a focus on orderliness. And, while I actually appreciate those qualities when I'm in those respective countries, when they're stacked together in French-speaking Switzerland, it feels overly uptight. It often seemed like I could do no right.
Meanwhile, Italian Switzerland — while certainly tamer than Italy proper — also has a dollop of Italian chaos. Usually, super-organized Switzerland is a dream for updating a guidebook. But Lugano kept me on my toes. Rushing around on Saturday night to check out some restaurants (which I knew would be closed on Sunday), I was told by two different restaurateurs, "It's busy now. Can you come back tomorrow?" When I reminded them they were closed the next day, they'd wink sheepishly and answer my questions. And three separate times, Italian Swiss locals who I was using to update my information brushed aside my questions with, "Well, if it's in that book, I'm sure it's correct." While I appreciate their faith in our book, how do they think it gets to be correct?
Fortunately, some things never change, no matter which language the people speak. Rivella, my favorite Swiss soft drink — which is made from milk serum, tastes like chewable vitamins, and comes in four different flavors — is available nationwide. Over a week, the front seat of my car filled up with (I hate to think of how many) Rivella empties.
It's always interesting to hear observations from the local tourist industry. Middle Eastern travelers flock to Switzerland. A ticket seller at the boat dock in Lugano said that he had tons of Mideast tourists until a couple of weeks ago. Then Ramadan started...and he's only seen one Middle Eastern family since (Christians from Egypt). Since Ramadan starts even earlier next year, Swiss hoteliers are predicting a short but very intense spike in demand early in the season.
I had one particularly cow-heavy stretch that combined Switzerland's best cheeses and milk chocolates. One day I woke up in the town of Gruyeres (famous for its Gruyere cheese), toured two different cheesemaking facilities (with free samples), visited the Broc chocolate factory (more samples), then drove to Appenzell — another town famous for its stinky but delicious cheese. I like to do as the locals do — tea and a big English breakfast in Britain, croissants in France, borscht in Poland — but after a couple of days eating my way through Switzerland's two cheese capitals, I needed dairy detox.
One highlight was arriving in the cutesy Germanic town of Appenzell on what happened to be one of the two or three days a year that the cows come down from mountain pastures. I made sure to be on main street when the farmer proudly paraded his several dozen cows through the village.
Posted by Rick Steves on September 18, 2009
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Norway's Lofoten Islands: Cod Only Knows Their Beauty
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I almost always enjoy the places that I travel to for work. But only a few special destinations thrill me enough to lure me back on my own dime. Norway's one of them. After a week driving around southern Norway's mountains and fjords to update our Scandinavia book a couple of years back, this summer I brought my wife with me to venture to an almost mythical pinnacle at the end of the earth: The Lofoten Islands.
The Lofoten are a chain of spiky islands way up at the northern end of Norway, well above the Arctic Circle...comparable to the northern reaches of Alaska. Why make the effort to travel so far? For years I've drooled at photos of astonishing scenery, like fjords on steroids cast away in the sea. In reality, it was even more astonishingly beautiful...the most breathtaking scenery we'd ever laid eyes on.
To reach the islands, we went to Oslo (already at Alaskan latitudes), then flew due north for about an hour and a half. For the final hop to the islands, we loaded onto a tiny propeller plane, making a brief stopover to pick up two passengers at a practically uninhabited hunk of rock halfway across the sea. The tiny plane had to jam on its brakes the second its wheels hit the tiny runway.
Even here in the northernmost point I've ever visited, the warm Gulf Stream keeps the climate mild. We had great luck with the weather: After a rainy first day, we enjoyed perfect sunny skies and temperatures in the mid-60s the rest of the week. While we were a bit late for the midnight sun, the sky glowed until well after midnight.
Things are casual in the Lofoten. When we picked up our cheapo rental car at the airport and asked about dropping it off before our return flight, the rental agent said, "You can yoost leave the keys above the visor with the door unlocked. Or give them to that guy," pointing at the security agent. (Sure enough, a week later, "that guy" happily took our keys.)
We spent our first two nights in a charming little fishing village called Henningsvær, with a smattering of galleries and cafés. From there, we side-tripped into the main town of the Lofoten, Svolvær, where we took an RIB (rigid inflatable boat, a.k.a. Zodiac) high-speed boat tour bouncing across the waves to the surrounding inlets, fjords, and islands, at speeds approaching 50 knots. It was a thrill ride punctuated with incredible views.
Everywhere we went, we stayed in rorbuer, which are little fishermen's cabins that stand on stilts above the water. These have been rehabbed to varying degrees to house tourists, and come with modern bathrooms and kitchens. The rorbuer were perfect for relaxing in a rustic environment, enjoying the scenery, and tuning into the pace of village Norwegian life.
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The Lofoten feel impossibly remote. It's improbable that this chain of islands is even populated. But those warm Gulf Stream waters flush schools of cod way up here in the winter, making local fishermen very happy. Rickety-looking wooden cod-drying racks are everywhere.
It's clear that these days, tourism has eclipsed fishing as the main industry. Even this distant corner of Norway feels civilized — we paid for most everything with our credit card, and everyone we met spoke perfect English. And yet, amenities are sparse. Each village seems to have a catch-all store that combines the bare minimum necessities: convenience store, grocery, gas station, and post office. After stumbling onto a good latte on the first day of our trip, we never found one again. Missing were all the little trappings of a resort area...no ice-cream parlors, tacky trinket shops, Internet cafés, and so on. While this sounds idyllic, we were surprised to find ourselves wishing for some of those comforting little subconscious signposts that we were on vacation. One night, after wandering through a desolate village searching for an after-dinner ice-cream cone, we finally settled for an ice-cream sandwich from the convenience store's freezer.
The few restaurants we splurged on ranged from excellent (a melt-in-your-mouth Arctic char) to...memorable. We were determined to try bacalao, the dried-and-salted cod dish that's a local staple. Even dressed up in a flavorful stew, it was tough to swallow. Another night, one of the cheapest items on the menu was whale steak. Feeling adventurous — and despite the server's description ("quite gamey, similar to elk or reindeer") and the animal-rights controversy that the menu acknowledged — I went for it. It came out bleeding-rare and reeking of game...which I suddenly remembered makes me gag. In general, food is not the big attraction here. (When we got back to Oslo, we gratefully wolfed down a cheap Indian meal.) And food prices, like all other prices, are almost comically high. When a candy bar or a can of pop costs $5, you really have to do some soul-searching with each purchase: OK, do I really need this?
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Posted by Rick Steves on September 15, 2009
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Hairspray and Vikings
I'm back in Edmonds now, finished with research and filming for the year. Like a big-game fisherman, finally back in port, I am pleased that we have six great shows in the cooler.
When filming I don't give my wardrobe a second thought (obviously). The idea of putting on makeup is laughable. And I've never put anything on my hair...but the hair causes me problems. While I'm not picky about other things, I don't like my hair blowing funny. If the wind is coming at me head-on, it'll actually give me a good wind-blown look. But if it's blowing against the grain, we have to wait for the wind to die down before we keep shooting. For a decade we've been waiting. We routinely lose great on-camera bits because of the wind and my hair. A couple times I've toyed with "product," but I just can't bring myself to use it.
As we were wrapping up our last show of the season, we were grabbing some glorious sun in windy Stockholm for on-cameras, and my hair was causing everything to grind to a halt. The weather was changing and we had to get the on-cameras shot. Someone said "hairspray," and our local guide popped into a fancy hotel and bought a can. Simon, my producer, took me aside and spray-painted it all over my head. I stood on the pier with the wind coming at me from the wrong direction, nailed the on-camera, and the hair was perfect. It was like I'd just discovered hairspray. For ten years I've been fighting the wind. Now, as we wound up this shoot, I finally discovered hairspray. I have a new (and unlikely) friend.
Along with hair, I worked on taming Nordic history. I discovered how Scandinavians define their Middle Ages (which they do differently from the rest of Europe, because there was no Roman Empire to fall up in the north). The Viking Age is defined by the first and last Viking raids on England: 793 and 1050 A.D. And in Scandinavia, medieval times are also called the "Catholic Era" — stretching from the end of the Viking Age and the coming of Christianity (around 1050) until the Reformation (1527).
I got some more clarity on Scandinavian history. There were different Viking groups in each country. As Vikings, Norwegians went west to Iceland, Greenland, and America; Danes went south to England, France, and the Mediterranean; and the Swedes went east into Russia. (The word "Russia" has Viking roots.)
While Swedes went abroad readily, they were slower to open their doors to non-white immigrants. But Sweden has come a long way when it comes to accepting immigrants, as a popular story illustrates. In 1927 a black man worked in a Stockholm gas station. For Swedes who hadn't traveled, he was the first black person they'd ever seen, and people journeyed from great distances to fill their car up here, just to get a look at him. (Business boomed, and his job was secure.)
Posted by Rick Steves on September 11, 2009
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Photos: Navigating Norway
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As a TV producer, it's a challenge when my crew sees a gorgeous view and I want them to wait for a better view that I know is just up ahead. After driving all day across Norway, from Oslo to the fjord country in the west, we descended from the mountains, and this was our very first fjord sighting. Even though I knew better vistas awaited, the crew had to get out and film the sight. This is the farthest point inland of Norway's longest fjord — Sognefjord. | When the sun came out, we made sure we were in position for vistas like this to show off the fjord's wonder. Simon Griffith (producer) and Karel Bauer (cameraman) worked tirelessly for 20 days last month, helping me bring home three exciting new shows on Scandinavia. | A big part of my research work is running down leads. Most are dead-ends. At the end of a busy day on the fjords, I followed one such lead up a gravelly road to a cluster of 27 abandoned farmhouses — once a goaty gang of farm families, then abandoned, and now coming back to life. Thanks to Lila, who's monitoring this project, Otternes Farm is a place where travelers can connect with Norway's past on a breathtaking perch high above Aurlandsfjord. It's in our upcoming TV show and covered in the new edition of our Scandinavia book. |
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For years, I've told the story about the eureka moment I had as a 14-year-old kid in Oslo's Vigeland Sculpture Park. I noticed how my parents were loving me so much, and I looked around and saw a vast park speckled with others' families — parents loving their children just as much. Right then it occurred to me how our world is filled with equally lovable children of God. While I've traveled with this wonderful truth ever since, I've never been able to capture that feeling on film. And every time I'm in Oslo I try. | As a teenage ragamuffin vagabond slumming through Europe (with high-school buddy then and co-author buddy now, Gene Openshaw), I'd pop in on relatives in Norway. It was a much-needed depot for a bit of family warmth and some good food (notice the bulging bag Gene is toting). Thirty-five years later, Uncle Thor still meets me at the train station in his little town of Sandefjord. While I no longer need the free food, I still enjoy the dose of family warmth just as much. | |
Posted by Rick Steves on September 03, 2009
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Photos: Illustrating Scandinavia
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A million people on this planet speak Estonian. When visiting Estonia, I'm inspired by a distinct and proud culture that somehow has survived living between Russia and Germany over the centuries. The language is unrelated to most European languages — and so are many of the deep-seated customs. For instance, Estonians bury their loved ones in forests so that they ultimately "live" with the trees. | For years I've flown over Stockholm's famed archipelago, or glided by it on a big cruise ship heading for Helsinki. Eighty miles of scenic islands stretch out from downtown Stockholm. (Locals love to brag that there are 34,000 islands — but that must count mossy little rocks, so I ignore that figure.) A hundred of them are served by ferries, providing Stockholmers with the ideal island escape. This year, finally, I did good research on the archipelago. It's covered in our upcoming Scandinavia guidebook, and we had a gloriously sunny day that allowed us to include it in our upcoming Stockholm TV show. | Ice bars must be good moneymakers — $25 entry includes one vodka drink not "on the rocks" but "in a rock" — because they are popping up all over Europe. While they're environmentally stupid, if it ever felt right to be in an ice bar, it would be in Stockholm. Apart from an actual ice hotel (in north Sweden's Lapland), this ice bar is the original — with ice actually shipped down from Lapland. |
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All over Europe, stupid torture exhibits are cleverly marketed. They make lots of money by appealing to the lowest desires of dumbed-down travelers. Nearly every major city has a "torture museum." None have any real artifacts. I think there must be a catalog somewhere allowing people to equip a building with the scary and gory gear needed to open up a torture museum. The catalogue must promise that there will be an endless stream of bored tourists willing to pay $15 to ponder creative ways people have maimed and mutilated other people through the ages. | Even in notoriously expensive Scandinavia there are cheap ways to enjoy the good life. In Stockholm — the least expensive of the Scandinavian capitals — the old town is filled with feisty and competitive restaurants offering lunch specials for $10 (hot plate, salad, bread, and a drink). I can't get that in my home town of Edmonds. | Those darn Scandinavians are so socialistic. Here some pinko dad is enjoying paid paternity leave with his new baby. Can you believe that each Swedish couple gets to split 16 months of parental leave? What ever happened to family values? And who's paying for that? They probably have to raise their families with some single-payer health care system too. Incredible. |
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Berlin must be one of Europe's cheapest and liveliest capitals. And when you want to eat cheap and lively, find the neighborhood Currywurst shop and munch with the locals. | The remains of your Currywurst plate might stoke the appetite of an abstract artist. |
Posted by Rick Steves on September 03, 2009
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Photo Fun — Check it Out
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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Killing Clichés and Chasing Lens Lice
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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. |
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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Norway: Meatloaf and Mellow
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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! |
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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