September 2017 Archives

September 7, 2017

Exploring the Unique Museums of Lausanne, Switzerland

Lausanne is an elegant town on Lake Geneva with a fine old town, towering cathedral, and charming lakeside promenade. While I was there this summer, I made a point of visiting its two main museums, the Olympic Museum and the Collection de l’Art Brut. Both are unique and worth a look.

The Art Brut Collection is like nothing else you’ll see in Europe: a museum filled with art produced by untrained artists, many labeled (and even locked up) by society as “criminal” or “insane.” Read thumbnail biographies of these outsiders, and then enjoy their unbridled creativity.

In 1945, the artist Jean Dubuffet began collecting art he called “brut” — created by untrained, highly original individuals who weren’t afraid to ignore rules. In the 1970s, he donated his huge collection to Lausanne, and it has now expanded to 70,000 works by hundreds of artists: loners, mavericks, people on the fringe, prisoners, and mental ward patients. Dubuffet said, “The art does not lie in beds ready-made for it. It runs away when its name is called. It wants to be incognito.”

About 800 works are on display at any given time. As you tour the thought-provoking collection and learn about the artists, ponder the fine line that separates sanity and insanity when it comes to creative output.

Known as the Olympic Capital, Lausanne has been home to the International Olympic Committee since 1915. The Olympic Museum celebrates the colorful history of the games, with a century’s worth of ceremonial torches and a look at how medals have changed over the years. Surveying gear from each sport (such as Carl Lewis’ track shoes and Sonja Henie’s ice skates), you can follow the evolution of equipment that was clearly state of the art — in its day.

Back at my Lausanne hotel, my hotelier surprised me by pulling out a little stack of old Steves family Christmas cards. For nearly 20 years, we had a tradition of sending a family Christmas card to all our favorite hotels and restaurants in Europe. For Andy and Jackie, it was an annual chore they dreaded — signing their names to several hundred cards all spread out on the kitchen table.

Thinking back on this tradition, it’s clear to me that this is a good example of how we have always enjoyed and stressed the people-to-people aspect of our work. To this day, we strive to build our huge gang of hoteliers and restaurateurs into an extended family of friends who understand that we are partners in helping our travelers enjoy the best possible experiences for the best possible price. If there is one aspect of our guidebooks that distinguishes us, perhaps it’s the esprit de corps between us, the legion of small businesses in Europe we recommend in our guidebooks, and our traveling readers.

(Next up on the blog, I’ll be bringing you along on a Mediterranean cruise…stay tuned!)

September 6, 2017

Switzerland’s Clear-Headed Drug Policy

If Jeff Sessions would like to learn about smart drug policy, I’ll pay for his trip to Switzerland. Like many of its neighbors, Switzerland has a progressive drug policy that aims to reduce the overall harm to its society, rather than focus on punishing users. It’s both compassionate and pragmatic. And it is effective.

When polls showed that more than 30 percent of Swiss people had used marijuana, the parliament decided to decriminalize the drug, rather than criminalize a third of its population. Hard drugs, however, remain absolutely illegal. Still, Swiss laws treat addicts as people needing medical help, rather than as criminals. Even in classy Zürich, you can see evidence of this policy. For instance, on the bridge across from the station, bolted to the railing, there’s a big, nondescript vending machine selling safe, government-subsidized syringes to heroin junkies. The basic idea: Hard drug addicts are sick people, not criminals. They need counselors and nurses…not police and lawyers. While Jeff Sessions might recommend “just say no,” the Swiss will be sure their people struggling with hard-drug addiction are not sharing needles and spreading diseases.

September 5, 2017

My Summer Adventures in the Great Swiss Cities

While most tourists in Switzerland head for the Alps, this year, I enjoyed touring the great Swiss cities: Zürich, Luzern, Bern, and Lausanne.

Perched on a rampart over Zürich, a couple of locals take a sun break.

After a long day of guidebook research, I decided to cap my day with a simple aimless stroll around Luzern. I had been wondering just how much people appreciated the tedious attention to detail we put into our guidebooks. And, as if sent by some angel, I met Don from San Francisco. He told me his wife gives him about a month a year for a personal adventure and for the last decade he’s enjoyed annual month-long trips through Europe completely immersed in Rick Steves guidebooks. He knew our work intimately and as we shared a delightful stroll together under the beloved covered wooden bridges of the city, he told me of his happy travels. I went home inspired and energized.

Luzern has a unique sight called the Depot History Museum. It’s filled with historic artifacts, like this chillingly modern and efficient guillotine. The collection is housed in one of Luzern’s oldest surviving buildings, which was long used to store military weapons and uniforms. Their collection is too big to display traditionally, so they’ve come up with an innovative and fun concept: throw all of their archived stuff together and display it on three crowded floors. You’ll wander through shelves of old weapons, stained-glass windows, sculptures, and old-fashioned tourism posters. Each shelf (sometimes each item) is labeled with a barcode — use your scanner (included with entry) on whichever one you’re interested in. You can then read about its history in English on your handheld screen. It works great. You can bet I scanned this.

This guillotine last decapitated a Swiss criminal in 1940.

Back in my hotel room, I filled the sink with what was one fine beard. Thanks for all the encouragement (both to keep it and to cut it). Your comments were a joy to read. I’ve grown lots of beards over the years, and this was the first time it actually felt like me. But my marketing team blew the whistle on my fun and the beard had to go.

Every few days I need to just stop, stay in my room all day, and input all the notes I’ve picked up in my research. When it’s rainy, my room is comfy, and I have a quiet and relaxing view like this (Luzern), it’s actually an enjoyable day. And it really feels good to have the notes thoughtfully incorporated into the next edition of my Switzerland guidebook.

I hit Bern during its annual three-day Buskers Festival. If you like street music, it’s worth planning for. The downside — crazy music until the wee hours outside my window. When confronted by a festival outside your window, rather than gripe about the noise, sometimes you have to just stay up past your bedtime and enjoy it.

Hey! Stop looking!

(Stay tuned for more from Zürich and Lausanne.)

September 4, 2017

Experience Urban Alsace in Strasbourg

Strasbourg is France’s seventh-largest city (with 275,000 people) and offers your best chance to experience urban Alsace. It feels like a giant Colmar with rivers and streetcars. Long a humanist and intellectual center, today it has a delightful big-city energy. Walking its people-friendly streets, you’ll find it progressive and livable, with generous space devoted to pedestrians and bikes, sleek trams, meandering waterways, and a youthful mix of university students, Eurocrats, and street people. With a name that means the “city of streets,” it’s the ultimate crossroads.

While the city dodged serious damage in both world wars, the people of Strasbourg have experienced a dizzying history. It was hit hard during the Franco-Prussian War, becoming part of Germany in 1870. After that, there was a period of harsh Germanization, followed by extreme Frenchification after World War I, a brutal period under Nazi rule during World War II, and then the strong need to purge all that was German after 1945. Now, while probably more definitively French than it’s ever been, you’ll feel a bi-cultural gentleness and see street names in both French and the Alsatian dialect. Bordering the west bank of the Rhine River, Strasbourg provides the ultimate blend of Franco-Germanic culture, architecture, and ambience.

After World War II, Churchill called for a union of European nations, with the goal of winning an enduring European peace by weaving the economies of France and Germany together. Noting that Strasbourg had changed hands between Germany and France so many times, it seemed logical that it be a capital (along with Brussels) of what would eventually become the European Union. And today, Strasbourg is home to the European Parliament.

Most visitors come to Strasbourg to see its massive cathedral. Stand in front and crane your neck way back. I couldn’t fit it into my viewfinder. Noting how my jaw dropped, I tried to imagine the impact this unforgettable erection would have had on medieval pilgrims. The delicate Gothic style of the cathedral (begun in 1176, not finished until 1429) is the work of a succession of about 50 master builders. The cathedral somehow survived the French Revolution, the Franco-Prussian War, World War I, and World War II. Today, it’s the big draw of the city — and for good reason.

September 2, 2017

Exploring WWI Sights in Verdun, France

The year 2018 will mark the centennial of the conclusion of World War I, the war that was billed as “the war to end all wars.” While there are no more survivors to tell us their stories, WWI sights and memorials scattered around Europe do their best to keep the devastation from fading from memory.

Perhaps the most powerful WWI sightseeing experience a traveler can have is at the battlefields of Verdun, where, in 1916, roughly 300,000 lives were lost in what is called the “Battle of 300 Days and Nights.” The battle left a barren, lunar landscape. Today, it is buried under thick forests — all new growth — and the soldiers’ vast network of communication trenches is overgrown and haunted by their ghosts.

Plenty of rusty battle remnants and memorials to the carnage are still accessible. A string of battlefields lines an eight-mile stretch of road outside the town of Verdun. From here (with a tour, rental car, shuttle bus, or taxi) it’s possible to see the most important sights and appreciate the horrific scale of the battle in as little as three hours.

You can ride through the eerie moguls left by the incessant shelling, pause at melted-sugar-cube forts, ponder plaques marking spots where towns once existed, and visit a vast cemetery.

To get a good overview, start at the Verdun Memorial Museum. The museum is rich in artifacts and delivers gripping exhibits about the battle (with lots of information in English). It works to pair German and French artifacts — for example, you’ll see a circa 1916 German rucksack completely loaded up right next to a French one.

In the Verdun Memorial Museum, I learned that the vast majority of WWI casualties weren’t hit by machine gun bullets, but by shrapnel — every time an artillery shell exploded, jagged bits of the shell’s casing sprayed like buckshot.

Shrapnel

Another key sight for visitors is Fort Douaumont. First constructed in 1885, Fort Douaumont was the most important stronghold among 38 hilltop fortifications built to protect Verdun after Germany’s 1871 annexation of this area. Built on top and into the hillside, it ultimately served as a strategic command center for both Germany and France at various times. Soldiers were protected by a thick layer of sand (to muffle explosions) and a wall of concrete five to seven feet thick. Inside, soldiers were forced to live like moles, scurrying through two miles of cold, damp hallways. Visitors can still experience these corridors (enlivened by an excellent audioguide) today.

Climb to the bombed-out top of the fort and check out the round, iron-gun emplacements that could rise and revolve. The massive central gun turret was state-of-the-art in 1905, antiquated in 1915, and essentially useless when the war arrived in 1916. From the top, look out at fields leading to Germany. From this perch, imagining the carnage here in that horrible battle is an unforgettable experience.

There is a beautiful sight at Fort Douaumont today. German, French and European flags wave alongside each other, as if to exclaim, “We learned and we won’t do this again.” Say what you like about the European Union, but it’s hard to deny what a great accomplishment it has been to weave together the economies of two historic enemies — and to subsidize the humanization and empathy that comes with getting to know each other. In 1914, most French soldiers had never met a German, and vice versa — making it all too easy to carelessly kill each other. Thanks, in large part, to the EU, we live in a different world today, built on a solid foundation for maintaining European peace.

I visited Verdun this summer with my friend and co-author Steve Smith. We did it as a very long day trip from Colmar: three and a half hours each way, on the autoroute. The time went quickly on the freeway, in part because we listened to four hours of radio interviews about France, filling the drive with conversation from fascinating French experts. (We downloaded the interviews from the France playlist on the free Rick Steves’ Audio Europe app. If you download tracks while you still have a Wi-Fi connection, you can listen to them later offline.) We both learned something and the time zipped by. And, even though we spent seven hours in the car, we had six wonderful hours to explore Verdun’s WWI sites.