Behind the Camera 1997: Filming the Fourth Series
by Rick Steves
Stepping into the ramshackle elevator of our Cairo hotel, I asked the boy who ran it if he spoke English. He said, "Up and down." I said, "Down." He babied the collapsing door shut and flipped the brass crank, expertly stopping within an inch of the ground floor. We stepped into Cairo and began to film.
Egypt is one of 13 new "Travels in Europe ®" episodes which began airing on PBS TV stations throughout the USA in November 1997.
After shooting Egypt's famous ancient sights, we biked into a village just south of King Tut's tomb. Rural Egyptians welcomed our camera. Proud women led us through mud-brick homes fluttering with chickens and pigeons. A little girl walked by, balancing a headful of grass — salad for the family water buffalo.
This is the real Egypt we set out to film...how the majority of Egypt's 60 million people live. The Egyptian tourist board provided us with a police escort, which we assumed was protecting us from local fundamentalists. It was in the village that we learned they were also protecting something else — Egypt's image. Suddenly we were bargaining with our own "security guards" to let us film calloused peasants whose lives seemed closer to Biblical times than ours.
Israel — just a quick flight from Cairo — was next. Admittedly, with the recent headlines, I was a little nervous. While the security surrounding our El Al flight was suffocating, once we were in Israel, the tension was gone.
In Jerusalem, pedestrian zones are filled with people strolling...teenage girls gabbing on cell phones with their spare hand slipped under their boyfriend's rifle strap. Soldiers — just teenagers — keep their weapons slung over their shoulder even when off duty. After a few days, the Hebrew neon, guns, and cell-phone-chic of Israel felt normal.
Israel's a complicated country. What you can film depends on who you are. For instance, while a Jewish crew could never get permission to film inside the Muslim Dome of the Rock, we Christians got the green light — and a cup of tea to boot. All my life I've seen photos of only Jewish men worshipping at their most holy sight, the Wailing Wall. This is because a male photographer can't get near the women's section. Our photographer was a woman...so our show features female heads bobbing prayerfully at the wall.
For us the "land of miracles" was the land of surprises. Stepping into the "shabbat elevator" of our skyscraping hotel, we stopped automatically at each floor. The strictest Jews don't operate machines on their Sabbath — kosher hotels come with elevators that get you where you want to go without pushing a button.
A Texan who fell in love with an Israeli and joined her kibbutz took us on a walk through his adopted home. He joked that a lazy Christian could marry a Jew and raise their kids Muslim to get three days of rest a week: the Friday, Saturday and Sunday sabbaths. As we wrapped up our Israel shoot, he waved "Shalom y'all."
We arrived in Paris 938 days before the year 2000. At least that's what we learned as we turned the corner ready to film a classic view of the Eiffel Tower. Shining across its first level, a giant banner of lights read "J-938"...the "jour" or day countdown has begun. When we're filming, anything dating our work is bad news. Thankfully, grand views were clean from other directions.
To capture the Parisian art of urban living, we joined the owner of our favorite Left Bank restaurant on her morning market chores. At a butcher shop she picked up a duck, examined its feet, and said, "Ah, callouses from running in the dirt...this will be tasty." In the cheese shop she held a blob of stinky cheese close to her nose. Taking a long whiff, she looked up and said, as if agreeing with God, "Yes, it smells like the feet of angels."
Later we piled into her car and cinched our seatbelts as she dove directly into the six-lane traffic tornado which constantly swirls around the Arc de Triomphe. Wedged into a backseat corner, our photographer filmed an avalanche of near misses as Francoise calmly narrated the rules of the Parisian road. "We have a priority on the right. So, if I know who is there, this is easy..."
Next we featured France's Alsace. Standing on the German border like a flower-child referee, Alsace changes hands after each war. It's a fascinating blend of two great cultures: French and German, Catholic and Protestant, a romantic joy of living with just enough discipline. Restaurants serve sauerkraut with fine sauces.
The people actually speak a dialect of German called Alsatian. Many family names are German, but in the wake of World War II, parents preferred French first names. To prove the point, we filmed a montage of locals introducing themselves...Maurice Flatz, Monique Freudenstadt, Domenique Freyburger.
In Reims our script called for building a Gothic cathedral out of 13 people. Our budget of $300 for this stunt was plenty as a quick trip to McDonald's netted us 13 strapping French lads happy to earn a quick 100 francs each. We lined them up: six "buttresses" supporting six "columns" with arms raised high to make pointed arches. And as the triumphant "spire" hoisted himself high above his friends, I had the teaching thrill of explaining to the camera the fundamentals of Gothic.
We closed the show on a bubbly note in nearby Epernay, the birthplace of Champagne. It was here in 1670 that the monk Dom Perignon ran through the abbey, shouting, "Brothers, come quickly, I'm drinking stars!"
Next we headed to family-friendly England, joined by my wife Anne, our seven-year-old Jackie and ten-year-old Andy.
Getting the kids to act was tough. After four takes, it made no sense to them to eat food that had gone cold. And doing it with a smile was out of the question. When I asked Andy to "look happy," he said, "But Dad, that's not honest." But a child doesn't need to be an actor to enjoy England. Poling a punt down the Cam River, swinging from the torture rack in Warwick's castle dungeon, and tooting whistles in York's world-class railway museum, smiles came naturally.
Surviving Europe's greatest collection of white-knuckle rides, our children declared Blackpool "better than Disneyland." As I was strapped into the world's highest and fastest roller coaster, the attendant bragged, "You can see the Isle of Man from the top." All I could see was my hand pressing my glasses to my face as we hurtled down the summit.
Celebrating our survival, we asked the grandmotherly waitress who brought us our fish and chips for advice on a good night out. She raved about the latest rage in Blackpool — "Funny Girls." This nightly burlesque-in-drag act did its best to bring our show to a new cultural low.
Wiping the lipstick off our zoom lens, we moved from incredibly tacky Blackpool to the divinely pristine Lake District. The Cumbrian Lake District was the home of great poets and writers such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Potter.
In these remote valleys, sons follow in their father's muddy footsteps, leaving school as soon as possible to prepare to take over the farm. Market trends are killing the small farmers, but wives make the equation work by running farmhouse B&Bs. At our photographer's request, a father, son, and revved-up dog rounded up the sheep and pulled one out to shear. After 10 minutes the skinny sheep ran free. After folding and tying up its fleece, the farmer tossed the heavy bundle to me, asking, "What would this fetch in the market?" I guessed ten pounds ($15). He said "Only a quid" ($1.50).
Our England shows featured "the rainiest month in a century." This caused us to scramble. Drying off our camera in a steamy pub, a hiker — chipper in his woolens — reminded us, "In England there's no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing." "Rain mixed with bright spells" was a weather forecast to celebrate.
At Durham Cathedral, two vergers spent 15 minutes in an animated debate over fine points in our script: Was St. Cuthbert a scholar or a missionary? Was the sanctuary the church provided to medieval criminals a right or a privilege? Were the pointed arches early Gothic or proto-Gothic? We filmed the cathedral in glorious action — during an evensong service. And our verger-tuned script was thoroughly blessed.
We shot three shows on Scandinavia. After sailing through sunny Denmark, I started our Stockholm shoot in trouble. Our photographer was angry at me for putting us on the night train to Stockholm rather than flying. Thankfully, on our first afternoon, he looked over the camera eyepiece and said, "Did I tell you I'm moving to Stockholm?"
In Stockholm, the queen's palace theater is famous for putting on the most authentic Baroque performances in Europe. On creaky floorboards, under candlelight, with lutes and a harpsichord accompaniment, we saw "Euridice." From 1600, it was the first opera ever performed. I bet it's the slowest as well. Like ghosts on Valium, the performers seemed to enjoy keeping fidgety Americans in their seats. Of the seven hours of footage we bring home for each program, only 30 minutes makes the cut. Don't hold your breath for "Euridice."
Filming in Norway was old-home week for me. My Hans Christian Andersen-type uncle, Thor, was my pal for Oslo sightseeing. In his gentle Norsk English, he described the City Hall's mural of the Nazi occupation. Recalling the end of the war, his voice broke as he said, "Then once again, we could sing our national hymn."
In 1988, "Travels in Europe" was only a dream...52 shows in four 13-week seasons. Now, after the tireless support of my partners at Small World Productions and from so many people in public television, those 52 are done. The next best thing to a plane ticket remains public television.
Rick Steves is the host and writer of the Public Television series, "Travels in Europe ®," and the author of "Europe Through the Back Door" and 14 other European travel guidebooks. "Travels in Europe" is produced by Small World Productions in Seattle, Washington.