SingaSongaSongaEurope — The Evil Inspiration for Rick Steves' Tours

This is Part I of a four-part series running monthly on the origins of Rick Steves' tour company (excerpted from Rick's Postcards from Europe, a book of his travel memoirs).

A travel writer alone with his notepad in a Munich beerhall is like a music lover sitting in the middle of an orchestra. The sounds and sights of Germany and travel swirl everywhere: Old Bavarians cling to the past, tour guides hawk clichés, hormones rage far from home, and even shy travelers shout brassy anthems to drinking. As Cosmos tours march in and out following the raised umbrella of their guides, I remember my early years of tour-guiding fun.

Each spring through my college years I bought my plane ticket before I knew how I'd pay for the trip. Loans from my parents — who got me hooked on Europe in the first place — allowed me to deficit-finance those early journeys. I worked the debt off by teaching piano. For several years, I earned a free airplane ticket by escorting groups of travelers from Seattle on Cosmos tours. (I'm sure Cosmos has many satisfied customers today, but my experience working for them in the seventies was quite an eye-opener.)

With the sponsorship of Dale Torgrimson, a travel agent friend, I'd choose a basic three-week Europe tour. When I sold twenty seats during my travel lectures, I earned a free flight and tour. The tour came with an official guide; I was the "escort" for my group — generally half the tour — and a wannabe guide for the entire busload.

While most of my travel time was still spent exploring Europe without groups, for several years mass tourism was my free plane ride. The joy of independent travel mixed with the ugliness of group travel helped strengthen my desire to teach smart travel.

On my last Cosmos tour, my group and I tumbled off the boat in Belgium in search of bus #3112. Packing onto #3112, we met our harried guide. Monica, a German, picked up the microphone and said, "I was to be finished for the season today. Finally going home. Yesterday I said goodbye to my last group. It was a difficult group. I am ready to go home. Then I receive a message that I must do you."

She was a hardened, chain-smoking woman in her fifties who plotted potty breaks as if on a military campaign. She could sense the pain in your bladder even before you got the nerve to raise your hand. Clenching the mic, she'd splice in a terse "cross your legs" midway through a lecture on Mad King Ludwig.

There were forty-nine tourists on this forty-nine-seat bus. Everyone rotated, moving up one seat each day — except for a chubby little New Zealander who wore kiwi T-shirts and stayed in the middle of the five-seat back row. Every time I'd look at him he'd make a strange but polite squawk. His accent was so heavy that over three weeks I never understood a sentence he uttered.

I remember three retired Belgian brothers, slow-moving shoppers in dapper little hats. There was a gentle old guy from San Mateo who had an embarrassing crush on a petite Japanese girl. An Indian engineer who worked in Saudi Arabia explained that his wife packed twenty-four saris, one for each day of their trip — for better scrapbook photos. And I remember a lawyer's wife with tight lips, frizzy hair, and a son who was so excited he had to blow on his hands to keep them cool.

Scott, a childish twenty whose parents sent him on the tour to grow up and get a little culture, was less thrilled. He packed Gatorade from home. Staying on the bus during most stops — for his own safety — he wondered out loud why they just don't tear down the old buildings and make modern, efficient ones.

Marv was newly retired and also on his first trip. Figuring a bribe was the standard best way to ensure a great time, he tucked a $100 bill into my shirt pocket on day one. That was a lot of money to me then — enough for five days of travel. I tried . . . weakly . . . to give it back. I failed. But moving that bill from my pocket into my wallet, I was determined not to let this get Marv a better trip. But the money made it clear: This trip was important not only to Marv but to each person on that bus. To give him a good return on his investment, I decided to give every person in my group 110 percent.

My frustration with big-bus travel grew as the trip dragged on. Waiting for the bus to pull out was the exasperating norm. Pressing my nose against the window, I scanned the parking lot ten minutes past departure time. Cliques of tourists passed the time merrily complaining about last night's hotel. Disgruntled husbands — who would prefer that the European experience be distilled neatly into a large park in California — compared things to "back home."

Squawking at my Kiwi friend and waiting for the Belgian gentlemen to finish their shopping, I'd stew and develop both a passion for tour group punctuality and tricks to enforce it. And jamming a pillow against the speaker to muffle Monica's harsh voice, I developed an appreciation of tour guide charm.

I learned about expensive sightseeing "options" on those Cosmos tours. My mission as group escort was to spare my group the extra expense but not the experience. After reviewing with my group which sightseeing options were worth taking, Monica's sales pitch went over like a bathless double.

As I left the hotel with my hearty splinter group, Monica said, "Really, you will see nothing in town without taking my ' Munich by Night' option."

With a battle cry of "Double the oompah for half the deutsche marks!" I led my group of renegades into the tram and on to the beerhall.

Mathauser's wasn't overrun with tour groups back then. With a little organizing of chairs we sat directly under the band — three tables closer than where I sit now.

To meet the neighbors, we'd fly a coaster like a Frisbee into a happy gang at the next table. With glasses raised in our direction, they'd roar a lusty welcome. The happy sound of my tourists clinking mugs with new German friends fired my determination to save tourists from the greedy grip of European guides.

Guides like Monica hate guidebooks. On a bus, guides know good travel information spreads like a cancer and pretty soon, no one's taking their optional sightseeing excursions.

I saw the greedy dance of tour guide and merchant as Monica prepped us for cuckoo clocks, dazzled us with a merchant's demo, and gave us twenty minutes to buy. While shoppers compared newly purchased treasures back on the bus, Monica shared a cigarette with the owner of the shop and picked up her fifteen percent.

As we traveled through Europe , our group hardly realized it was one tiny link in a steady chain gang of groups going from tour-friendly hotel to restaurant to shop. The only locals we encountered were vendors who slapped on a smile with the arrival of our bus and expertly put up with us for their livelihood.

On the last day of the tour, Monica, wearing her payday smile, gave an inspirational plea for big tips. We'd long remember Monica. But on the keyboard of a jaded tour guide's memory, goodbye and delete are the same key.

Merchants appreciate the business but marvel at blitz tour itineraries. Any bus driver can rattle off the basic route:

Day one: Wake up in Amsterdam ; morning at Anne Frank's, the Diamond polishers and Rijksmuseum; noon to seven o'clock drive to the Rhine hotel, wine tasting, sleep.

Day two: 7:00 to 7:30 breakfast, 7:30 to 8:00 Stein talk and shopping, 8:15 depart to Dachau , Olympic Stadium, and the beerhall in Munich .

Day three: Drive to Venice with a quick stop in Innsbruck to see the Golden Roof.

And so on.

Bus drivers call these "pajama tours" because the tour members might as well stay in their pajamas.

On the Road is the tour industry magazine. It's distributed free at better kilt, stein, Swiss clock, crystal, wooden shoe, and stocknegel dealerships. On the Road is a tour guide's grapevine filled with news and warnings: "Due to staff shortages, Pompeii will close on Sundays." "Buses are no longer allowed into central Florence ." "Non-local guides risk stiff fines and expulsion in Venice ." "In Rome , bus drivers who don't park in the 'mafia lot' behind the Colosseum can buy back their tires at the Porta Portese flea market." "The British Tourist Board is now accepting nominations for its annual 'Loo of the Year' award."

On the Road reports on the best commissions (Bucherer in Lucerne for Swiss clocks), clever ways to sell optional tours ("sell Paris tours after the champagne tasting at Reims when everyone's in a bubbly mood"), and even tips on getting a break from your tour members (crank up the heat on the bus after lunch to put everyone to sleep).

And when groups aren't sleepy, they need games. On the Road suggests awarding a bottle of Chianti to the tourist who correctly guesses the number of tunnels the bus goes through between Florence and Orvieto. It even lists handy tour guide trivia: Did you know that Churchill's statue is wired with a weak current of electricity to keep pigeons from mistaking his bald head for a potty stop?

The folks at On the Road also produce a cassette with all the necessary tunes to fit your tour route — from the Blue Danube waltz to "Climb Every Mountain" to "Arrivederci Roma." Their "Super SingaSongaSongaEurope" tape is packed "with favorites from Europe and around the world that your clients will hear at folklore shows, banquets, and gala evenings. Plus three songs written all about taking coach tours!"

Imagine being stalled in an Autobahn traffic jam with your endlessly energetic tour guide leading you in the SingaSongaSongaEurope theme ditty:

Up with the lark each morning,
On the bus by eight o'clock,
Our driver loads the baggage,
Our leader counts his flock.
Take a seat by the window,
Remember we have to rotate,
Rest stops are twenty minutes,
Hurry back 'cause the bus won't wait!"

My time escorting big Cosmos tours 25 years ago taught me a lot about the mainstream tour business, inspiring me to design better tours.

Part II: The Very First Rick Steves ' Tours.A Cross between Woodstock and a Slumber Party

This is Part II of a four-part series running monthly on the off-beat origins of Rick Steves' tour company (excerpted from Rick's Postcards from Europe, a book of his travel memoirs).

A travel writer alone with his notepad in a Munich beerhall is like a music lover sitting in the middle of an orchestra. The sounds and sights of Germany and travel swirl everywhere: Old Bavarians cling to the past, tour guides hawk clichés, hormones rage far from home, and even shy travelers shout brassy anthems to drinking. As Cosmos tours march in and out following the raised umbrella of their guides, I remember my early years of tour-guiding fun and the strange birth of my tour company.

In 1978, after three years of escorting Cosmos tours, I was more adamant than ever about the importance of teaching independent travel. After one of my travel lectures at the University of Washington , a family friend, Patty Price, took me out for pizza. She had an agenda: to convince me to organize, sell, and lead a tour. Flattered by Patty's vision but already sure my answer would be "no," I nevertheless heard her out.

I was a content and satisfied twenty-two-year-old piano teacher who did enough lecturing on the side to pay for my annual European vacations. My life was extremely simple: teach twelve piano lessons in six hours and call it a good day's work. My girlfriend — also a piano teacher — and I were going to marry, move our grand pianos in together, and play duets. While I sensed that there was more of a limit to teaching piano than teaching travel, I was satisfied with my life.

The major ideas in my career — writing a guidebook, leading tours, and producing a TV series — were the brainstorms of friends and family. I rarely took such suggestions seriously. But a good idea keeps knocking.

Looking back, becoming a tour organizer shouldn't have surprised me. When traveling with college friends, I was the self-appointed tour guide eager to park my travel partner with the bags while I ran around to find a hotel or line up a bus connection. Even back then, I'd assemble impromptu groups of English-speaking tourists to get a group discount or merit an English guided tour. And several times, when indecision slowed our momentum or I felt unappreciated for my tour-guiding services, I'd go on strike. By pouting on the curb and letting my travel partner figure out our next move, I immaturely hoped to demonstrate the indispensability of my hard work.

In other words, getting me to organize a tour was easy. By the time Patty and I finished our pizza, we had a complete itinerary scribbled on a napkin.

We concocted an easy plan that I recommend to anyone trying to build a tour business: start small — eight in a minibus. Charge only enough to cover expenses. With a small group and small expectations, I could experiment. With experience, I gained confidence — and promotional photos of me happily sharing Europe with my traveling customers.

That first tour — so cheap it sold itself — was a commune on wheels. Wanting hearty travel mates, I actually auditioned customers for those first seats. There was no itinerary. Each participant signed a form that promised, "I understand that on some nights we may find no accommodations. If we need to sleep in the van, I will do so without complaint."

Tour Number One was me and eight women (which I don't think had anything to do with the audition). Each day was filled with experiences no tour organizer could reserve in advance. We picked up a hitchhiker in Switzerland 's remote Engadine on the condition that he'd teach us to yodel. We tied our belts together to lower the frightened ones down a tough part of the Schilthorn. We dropped by Oberammergau 's Passion Play and snared tickets at the door. For super-scenic stretches — under Admiral Nelson oak trees and past Cotswold sheep — we'd take turns riding on the rooftop luggage rack. And we'd ponder our place in creation with Sunday morning fellowships.

Parking on market squares of towns that had never seen a tour bus, we looked at each other for a group "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" and either explore it or head on. If confronted by a hill town with a locked tower, we'd sweet-talk the barber with the key into closing his shop just long enough for a private tour. We brought tourism to virgin hill towns, climbed crumbling castles, and paddled fantasy canoes down sweet brown rivers at Swiss chocolate factories. And to overcome tension within our traveling family, whenever necessary we'd unload for a group hug.

Driving was my "alone time." Leaning over the steering wheel, I'd crank up my Walkman. With the one boy on board wrapped in earphones, it became a girls' bus. I learned a lot about the feminine side of crudeness — puns, songs, and jokes not meant for male ears. Driving out of Amsterdam 's red light district, the conversation floated from comparing lace souvenirs to a lilting chorus of "How much is that dildo in the window?"

Each day at about mid-afternoon, I'd hit a phone booth and find beds. Occasionally I failed and we'd pull into a new town roomless. Parking on the main square, I'd give the order to "Fan out, search for rooms, and meet back here in twenty minutes to compare notes."

Getting rooms on the fly honed my room-finding tricks. I didn't realize it, but I was also finding key listings for future guidebooks.

For several years, I did tours with no reservations — free to meet nightly with my group and explore tomorrow's options. Spreading out the map, we'd discuss and debate which of Europe 's treats to sample next. Like settling into an ultimately comfortable spot on a rocky beach, eventually this itinerary experimentation left me with winning routes for future books and tours.

But finding comfortable routes had nothing to do with comfortable beds. Back then I had a personal crusade to put "soft" Americans into miserable hotel rooms, forcing them to experience the ugly side of being on the road . . . if only to understand how comfortable they had it back home.

When Americans complain of hardships on the road, I crank up the voice of my grandmother telling stories of her immigration from Norway to Canada . The boat ride was miserable. The only thing she could keep down was beer. She's been a teetotaler since the day she saw the Statue of Liberty. Having entered America like a bad traveler — not speaking the language, packing too much luggage and not enough money — she navigated the immigrants' road to Edmonton , Alberta , where she eventually met her Norwegian husband. The physical hardship, uncertainty, and risk my grandparents endured became the foundation for a big, happy, typically American family.

Two generations later, I'm safe and comfortable. But I regret that my life will never know this adventure and struggle. For me, raw travel provides constructive hardship. Maybe that helps explain my sadistic tendencies as a rookie tour guide.

My determination to help travelers realize rich experiences from hard times also came out of my own vagabond experiences. I'd suffer through an all-night stint on the blistered black vinyl floor of a Yugoslavian train — farmers bouncing bags of potatoes, peppers, and chickens over my hostel sleep sack — in order to wake up in Sofia . I'd stumble out of the Sofia station into a blue new Bulgarian day. Dragging the sleep from my eyes, I'd consider my options for the day. Just being off the train made Sofia a thrilling destination. Travel is best with a few rough edges.

Seeing fear in the eyes of my group after telling them, "I'm not sure where we're sleeping tonight, but, hey, let's have dinner," drew from me an irrepressible giggle. The sight of a culture-shocked tour member lying in the middle of a lumpy bed above a rude pub in an Italian port town was a triumph. If she was afraid of bugs it was even better. My goal: to forcefeed a global perspective on my suburban American tour groups. My first aid kit: a baggie of Valium.

Back then, we'd spend our Munich evenings here at Mathauser's beerhall. Then, bellowing German drinking songs out open windows and slap-dancing in our seats, we'd follow the tracks of tram #17 out to "the Tent," Munich 's giant circus tent crashpad.

I didn't know how to drive there because, without a group, I'd only been there by trolley. So, year after year, we'd follow the tram tracks through midnight Munich to the huge park at the edge of town. Picking up our blankets and mattresses, we'd stake out a corner to call home for the night. With 400 roommates under the big canvas, the Tent was a cross between Woodstock and a slumber party.

Those minibus groups were a small family — intense socially. With nine travelers slumming through Europe together, either you got along or you didn't. There was no escape. It was three weeks in a petri dish of love and loathing. I've learned a lot since then, and my tours are still fun, but more comfortable. As you can see, they could only have improved.

Part III: The Early Tours : A Petri Dish of Love and Loathing

This is Part III of a four-part series running monthly on the origins of Rick Steves' tour company (excerpted from Rick's Postcards from Europe, a book of his travel memoirs).

In the early 1980s, our tour groups would spend Munich evenings here at Mathauser's beerhall. Then, bellowing German drinking songs out open windows and slap-dancing in our seats, we'd follow the tracks of tram #17 out to "the Tent," Munich 's giant circus tent crashpad.

I didn't know how to drive there because, without a group, I'd only been there by trolley. So, year after year, we'd follow the tram tracks through midnight Munich to the huge park at the edge of town. Picking up our blankets and mattresses, we'd stake out a corner to call home for the night. With 400 roommates under the big canvas, the Tent was a cross between Woodstock and a slumber party.

Those minibus groups were a small family — intense socially. With nine travelers slumming through Europe together, either you got along or you didn't. There was no escape. It was three weeks in a petri dish of love and loathing.

One group was particularly intense. It featured Arlene, who gave me tension headaches; Gloria, who caused perfect strangers to hum the "Wicked Witch of the West" theme song; Lorraine, a psychologist who pushed people's buttons for sport; Tammy, a slut in hot pants who couldn't understand why the local guys were tripping over themselves to be alone with her; and Lana.

Lana talked nearly as fast as I can think. She loved history much the way a little kid loves putting black olives on her fingers. She likened her sense of fashion to a troglodyte's but had a figure that hardly needed clothes. While older than I, Lana had had a child young and raised him alone. Lana was just now discovering the world. She embraced the romance of Europe and I managed to be in between.

Any tour guide knows the danger of mixing work and romance. You cannot favor one person romantically without causing major problems with the rest of the group. Many guides have tried. None have succeeded. Even the sleaziest bus company on the road — Top Deck — tells its guides, "If you sleep with one, you gotta sleep with them all."

We were in yodelin' good moods after our beerhall evening. Somehow we managed to get the minibus to the Tent and park. We were issued our mattresses and blankets and staked out places under the big top. Managing to cross paths behind our bus, Lana bellied up to her tour guide and said, "Hold me."

I did.

She was a head shorter than me and as we hugged, I gazed out into the lantern-lit crowd of vagabonds. There in the distance, by the ping pong table, I saw the Wicked Witch of the West. She had spied us. That tune sprung, fast and fortissimo, into my head as she ran to the group.

That night our group lay in a corral of mattresses. Lana and I got as close as we dared . . . together in a sea of roommates with the sound of drunk Australians rutting in the corner. I believe I'm the only tour organizer who ever opted for the Tent. Our group survived. But Lana's and my love lasted only until the end of the tour.

Several tours later — long after Lana, but in the same tent — I woke up to the amorous grunting of a nearby couple. Next to me was one of my tour members, sitting up, shaking, and silently sobbing. Sounding as if she feared disappointing me she admitted, "Rick, I don't think I can take this anymore."

I realized then that sharing a tent with 400 rutting roommates was not really a prerequisite to a broader perspective. As she swallowed the last of our tour first aid kit (Valium), I decided it was time to find a gentler way to introduce Americans to Europe . From that point on, I upgraded our accommodations.

The psychological makeup of my tour groups was changing. As tour prices went up, the carefree gangs of friends who left the worrying to me were replaced by customers — the kind who couldn't concentrate on the sightseeing if we didn't have hotel rooms reserved by mid-afternoon.

There is a delightful irony about tourists from a country that leads the rich world in homelessness, being so nervous about the remote possibility of a single bedless night. Only my growing business sense prompted me to make hotel reservations part of my fledgling tour business. Today, 25 years later, nearly everyone gets a double room with a private shower and very few remember the days when bedtime was a cross between Woodstock and a slumber party.

Part IV: Ethnocentrism, Circumcision, and Monastisism — Accelerated Living on a Tour Bus

This is Part IV of a four-part series on the origins of Rick Steves' tour company (excerpted from Rick's Post Cards from Europe, a book of his travel memoirs).

Twenty-five years ago, there was one ETBD tour guide — me. A summer's tour calendar was nonstop: typically a total of forty-eight people on six three-week laps around Europe . Successive groups passed me like a baton between relay runners.

Often this transition would take place in a London theater. To save time and get discounted big-group tickets, I'd finish one group and start the next at the same play. After our tour-ending group hug, I'd step into the theater as the guide of one group. Two hours later, I'd walk out leading the next.

I learned I could handle anyone for three weeks. The first week we were all fresh and new to each other. Through the second week we were a comfortable family. By the end of the third week, our once-charming idiosyncracies began to wear on each other — but not enough to get in the way of a great last supper.

One year, the most difficult tourist happened to take two different tours back to back — forty-four days rather than twenty-two. I learned a valuable lesson: Be in charge of one individual's travel happiness for a maximum of three weeks.

Studying two groups in the same circumstance — one happy and the next miserable — taught me the importance of attitude. To one group, the arrival of a noisy group of students in a youth hostel robbed them of much-needed peace and quiet. To the next, it was an opportunity to make friends with a local teacher and learn about another country's school system. My challenge was to connect groups with the positive in whatever experience Europe doled out.

Willing to take risks for any powerful travel experience, I deposited one group without warning in the French monastery of Taize, south of Dijon . Taize offered a chance to experience modern European monasticism. The icon-oriented meditation that dominated the Mass was an exciting opportunity to grapple with the American fear of silence. And the silence was particularly profound when sandwiched between the easy-to-love music of Taize. But what my group experienced most vividly were the crude dorm beds and meals of thin soup and thick bread. Taize taught me the essential tour-guiding skill of preparing a group for the rugged experiences well in advance.

By experimenting with group after group to find the best hill town, castle, and Madonna and Child, I was managing time as well as money. Eventually, my tour handbooks became guidebooks so people could do our tours on their own.

These books were originally designed only as tour handbooks. I left them laying around at my lectures (hoping to interest people in my tours). Students began stealing these books. No one had ever stolen from me in classes before. It was clear: These tour handbooks were driving decent people to theft. They needed to be available for sale. I self-published the first 22 Days in Europe guidebook. Then came 22 Days in Britain . Eventually my publisher ran with the concept and the books spawned an entire line of guidebooks.

These "22 days" books focused on getting the most out of your vacation time. Back in the 1960s, Arthur Frommer's groundbreaking " Europe on $5 a Day" series stretched the vacation dollar of the generation that survived the Great Depression. My guidebooks addressed the needs of a new "time-is-money" generation.

Confident I could help Americans enjoy Europe , I let my piano students go, turned my recital hall into a travel classroom, and started Europe Through the Back Door, Inc.

Our key to enjoying Europe — whether through guidebooks or on tours — was connecting with its people. And many of our travelers managed to do this particularly well. My memories of one 1984 tour are dominated by the love story of Colleen and the driver, Jan.

Jan was a Belgian man born to romance. Well-dressed, with movie-star gray hair and Old World manners, he was always the best dancer on board. Jan was a romantic whose personal hardships somehow made him even more lovable. It took nearly everything Jan earned to cover the costs of his reckless son's legal problems and a ruined first marriage.

Jan's Belgian girlfriend, Huguette, was planning a romantic mid-tour rendezvous with him on the Italian Riviera. But by Venice , Jan was hopelessly in love with a stately Seattle blonde named Colleen.

Colleen, straitlaced into a predictable suburban life with a flat marriage, was traveling to explore her options. Tall as Jan but twenty years younger, she saw in him the finer points of European life.

As we neared the Riviera , the entire group was buzzing with speculation. At the last freeway rest stop, Jan climbed wearily down from the bus. Amazed at his tragic predicament, he said, "Rick, I don't know what I gonna do."

Huguette met us at the Riviera hotel. The group was wild about Jan. The anticipation was electric. Not wanting to take sides but being the all-powerful room assigner, I went person by person through the rooming list. When I said, "In room twenty-four, Colleen and . . . Huguette," twenty-four tourists gasped. For some reason, it seemed right to me.

Colleen went home, got a divorce, sold her house, and moved to Belgium . Today she speaks Flemish and — to this day — lives happily with the bus driver of her dreams.

A big part of my early tours was introducing American friends to European friends. One year I'd visit Herr and Frau Moser, the Swiss parents of my sister's ski teacher. The next year I'd drop by with a busload of tourists. The Mosers would take us on a tour of their mandatory bomb shelter. Then, slicing hard, sharp, and curly pieces from an ancient brick of alpine cheese, they'd tell tales of Swiss military readiness: hidden jets ready to rip out of mountains like airborne Batmobiles, bridges designed with self-destruct explosives, and loaves of bomb shelter bread so hard they doubled as weapons. We'd conquer Alpine ridges with the Moser children, romping like mountain goats up one side to glissade down the loose shale slopes of the other. Landing on the doorstep of an uncle's lonely high meadow hut, we'd ring the bovine bell choir hung from his eaves before playing spoons and drinking schnapps at his hearth.

Much of my Europe was like the Mosers — a place I discovered alone that can be shared in small groups. But as groups grew, the experience inevitably drifted from a friendly show-and-tell to canned culture on stage. Sadly, my visits to the Mosers became a Swiss folk show as our groups grew from eight to sixteen, eighteen, twenty-one, then finally twenty-five. Now I tell stories of the Mosers from my bus microphone as we zip by their town on the Autobahn. While I still lead an occasional tour, most of the 3,000 people who take a Europe Through the Back Door tour each year never meet me.

A happy ending is that my biggest tour group of all, the viewers of my TV series, can still fit through the "back door." My couch potato travel partners have joined me thumping empty wine kegs in Etruscan cellars, gambling at the dog races in Belfast , and celebrating five-year-old Ibrahim's circumcision in Cappadocia . And, thanks to our public television camera crew, which travels where a tour group can't, countless Americans know my friends the Mosers. They're right there with us carving the cheese, visiting the bomb shelter, even seeing the grandkid pull out his tooth and put it in the oven (where the Swiss tooth fairy looks). And as TV brings European lives into American living rooms, I hope it inspires a few Americans to turn their travel dreams into actual firsthand experience — on one of our tour buses or on their own.