Destination: Uncategorized

This year the Society of American Travel Writers recognized my public radio show Travel with Rick Steves with a prestigious Lowell Thomas Award Gold Medal. While perhaps not as well-known as my guidebooks and television show, my weekly radio show is one of my favorite endeavors. Rather than being the guide, I get to be the curious traveler–I act as a conduit between experts on travel/cultural topics and my traveling listeners.  We’re in our eighth year and air on over 200 stations, so I’m thrilled this show and its talented production crew are getting the recognition they deserve. Here’s a huge thanks to the show’s producer–Tim Tattan–and his production assistants–Sarah McCormic and Isaac Kaplan-Woolner. This show is great because of their hard work and expertise.

In particular, the award committee recognized our 2012 Mother’s Day episode that followed a mom as she relocated her family to a village in Croatia, an American raising her first child in Paris, and a tribute to my own mother after her death in 2011. You can listen to it below.

Our weekly program is available free to any public radio station, so if your station isn’t airing it, ask them why. You can also go to my radio show to browse our archive and subscribe to our podcast. All my interviews are a simple click away.

Congrats again to Tim Tattan and his staff for crafting a beautiful program.

In 2013 we took over 16,000 North Americans through Europe on more than 600 tours. But a few years ago, 100 travelers in one year was a goal hard to imagine. Here are a few photos from those days:

It was so much fun reading your comments on my “Hipster” slideshow, that I dug up a few more vintage photos to share over the coming days. I hope they bring back memories of your vagabonding and backpacking days of travel like they did for me. I also hope they inspire you to start planning your next vagabonding adventure. As the saying goes, today is the good old times of tomorrow.

Last month, the New York Times ran an article about hipster fashion trends that claimed sarcastically that “the Rick Steves look is next.” While I’m honored to be mentioned in any article discussing pop culture, I must respectfully disagree with the author. The Rick Steves look isn’t the NEXT hipster fashion trend–it is, in fact, the CURRENT fashion trend. While I generally lay low when it comes to making fashion statements, I believe these photos prove that I was the Original Hipster. Don’t you agree?

Children of the Sixties and Seventies, I’m sure you have similar photos of yourselves–whether hitchhiking through Europe or just hang out at home. Dig them up, and post them on my page. Let’s show the younger generation that they should have been listened to their parents’ fashion advice all along.

Groovy Travels!

As a little way to clean my palate between trips, I enjoyed a short lecture tour around the USA this last week–giving talks in the Midwest (Sioux Falls, Fargo, and Des Moines), New York (Albany and Rochester), and Alabama (Auburn). At these locations I found myself talking to (and with) librarians at their regional convention; TV and radio station staff and their supporters; venerable women’s club members at their lecture series; and professors, administrators, and foreign-study program staff at universities. I met people both proud of their cities and curious about the world.

While I was hired to share what I’ve learned through my travels, I enjoyed learning from the people who hired me to teach. In Alabama I explained how the anti-USA graffiti travelers encounter is not really anti-USA or anti-USA ideals, rather, it’s anti-aggressive US trade policies. For instance, in struggling countries throughout the developing world, hardline First World trade tariffs allow poor countries to export raw materials but often not finished goods. In other words, if you grow peanuts, you can sell raw peanuts but not peanut butter. Discussing this over dinner, my host told me back when America was living under British rule, farmers in the South dealt with the same kind of structural poverty. They could produce cotton but not refine it into textiles. Being forced to sell the raw material to England so the English could make the serious money stoked local anger–and likely anti-English graffiti.

Crossing from Georgia into Alabama, I noticed huge fireworks emporia along the freeways. I said that where I live, fireworks are only sold in the weeks leading up to the 4th of July. My host explained that in Alabama fireworks are on sale all year long. “Rednecks like to blow things up all the time. Why wait for the 4th of July?” he said. The fireworks draw lots of people from neighboring states too.

Alabamians have a particular kind of pride. When I asked about the freeway exit to “Phenix City,” they said that’s just how they spell “Phoenix.” They added, the next time I come, I must spend some time on the Gulf Coast, which they called “the Redneck Riviera.” And driving back into Georgia they had a good laugh at how, at the border, the sign still reads, “Welcome to Georgia, Home of the 1996 Olympics.”

I enjoyed a wonderful day at Auburn University, and before my lecture I was given a “golf-cart tour” of the campus by two wonderful young people whose responsibility is to show prospective students around. Here’s a little video clip which splices in a particular Alabama love of peanuts.

If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.