Destination: Uncategorized

Before, during, and after the recent election, I wasn’t afraid to let my customers know my politics (as usual). I believe that it’s very American to openly share ideas with people you have things in common with (in the case of my fans, travel). I enjoy explaining the way Europeans view political issues…and you can take it or leave it. While this approach is risky (and I was “un-friended” by a few former Facebook fans post-Election Day), I’m relieved not to have to hide my beliefs from the people who buy what I produce. Seattle Business magazine recently ran an article about this (admittedly unorthodox) approach to running a business.

Speaking of my quirky business and travel sense, I recently gave an interview to Allyson Marrs from Bellevue Club Reflections magazine about my travel philosophy. I thought you might find my answers interesting:

Are you constantly looking for new places to explore in each country because of all the tourists who now visit previously “low key” spots after reading your guides?
Yes, but the real coup is to go to the best places (which are now “discovered”) and figure out how to experience them in a candid, “Back Door” way. Rather than find an untouristy French city, do Paris in an untouristy way. I also like to challenge people to break loose when it comes to going east or south.

What are you specifically looking for in locations, hotels, and attractions to recommend to your many fans and readers?
Mom-and-pops rather than chain hotels and restaurants and pubs. Hands-on experiences rather than sitting in an auditorium with lots of tourists to see clichés on stage.

How do you think traveling in Europe benefits Americans’ everyday lives and thinking?
If you never leave America, your worldview is shaped by our media, which has an agenda to keep us fearful and ethnocentric. When we travel, we gain an empathy for and understanding of the other 96 percent of humanity. What’s not to like about that?

You said in a Salon interview, “As a travel writer, I get to be the provocateur, the medieval jester. I go out there and learn what it’s like and come home and tell people truth to their face.” Tell me about some of these experiences in European regions.
A big opportunity here is to see how counterproductive it is for a society to try to legislate morality. Europe is pretty good at living in close quarters with people who see things differently and live differently. Europe is far from perfect, but they learn from their experiences. Think of how militaristic Germany used to be, and how pacifistic it is today. Spaniards still gravitate to the town square for the evening paseo. Italians still spend long evenings lingering over a meal. Scandinavians may be the least church-going people in Europe, but they celebrate humanism as a religion. It’s all very thought-provoking and stimulating to me.

How do you transform from a tourist to a traveler?
A tourist sees spectacles on stage, collects souvenirs, and leaves home with no desire to come back any different than when they left. A traveler becomes a temporary local, collects experiences, and returns with more empathy for people who have different cultural baggage and see things differently than he or she does. A traveler wants to grow and come home changed. I’m not saying one is right and the other is wrong. And they aren’t mutually exclusive. These are two different kinds of activities that both involve travel — one recreational and/or hedonistic, the other transformative.

Why is it important to you to make Americans more thoughtful, curious world travelers?
There are powerful forces in our society that would rather we’d all just stay home and live out our lives as mindless producer/consumers. They’d prefer we had no interest in challenging our societal norms by hanging out with people who find different truths to be self-evident and God-given. In a globalized world, we need a global outlook — or we, as a society, will be victims of change rather than shapers of change.

Anything new coming up? New book? Television special?
I’m planning on researching and producing shows on Egypt, Israel, and the Palestinian lands in the coming year. And my big challenge will be producing an hour-long special on the Holy Land that sorts out and cultural and historic foundations of the stress and strife between Israel and the Palestinian territories today — similar to the way we tackled Iran a few years ago with a public television special. Raising awareness of the context and roots of the problems in the Middle East from a sightseeing and travelers’ perspective, in a way that simply humanizes the region rather than gets bogged down on specific political controversies, is a challenge I am eager to take on.

The world’s leading democracy, in a hard-fought election with a polarized electorate, just peacefully elected a new leader.

It’s often said that the results of an American election can have a bigger impact in the day-to-day lives of people in other countries. And, as the rest of the world — the other 96 percent of humanity — watched our results come in, most of them were satisfied with our choice. (While 49 percent of Americans aren’t so sure, in many parts of the planet, President Obama is much-appreciated. As never since Roosevelt or Kennedy, Obama is a world favorite.)

Here in the world’s richest country, the dominant issue was our “financial crisis.” And we were closely split in choosing a leader to deal with our economy. Meanwhile, we basically ignored topics critical to much of the rest of the world — issues of war and peace, climate change, and support for the half of humanity struggling to live on $2 a day. But because we’ve re-elected a proven multilateralist with a track record sympathetic to those concerns, today there is happiness beyond our borders.

My European friends are particularly impressed that America has granted a second term to a president who has already expanded heath care rights and ran on a pledge to increase taxes to defend social programs–two Europe-friendly issues that were a political live wire here just a few years ago. These, along with the breakthrough state-level success of some same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization initiatives, may indicate that America is inching philosophically closer to Europe.

Perhaps most importantly, over these last several months, we’ve shown the world how a democracy works: We can stage a heated, but still respectful, debate about differing values. And, even as a huge and powerful nation of 300 million people, the title of most powerful person on earth is decided not on a battlefield or in a smoke-filled back room, but as tens of millions of individual voters fill out their ballots. The challenger was classy and statesmanlike in his concession speech, and deserves our respect and our thanks for prodding a healthy political discourse. This election demonstrated to the world not just the American values of today, but the democratic principles our nation is founded upon.

It’s pledge season again. Across the nation, public television and radio stations are reminding their viewers that non-commercial broadcasting “is possible only with support from viewers like you.” KQED in San Francisco is one of our nation’s top stations, and I really like flying down to do travel marathons with them, as I have for the last 15 years. With this clip, you can see the action from my seat during an actual break. (We’re nearly done, and my co-host, Greg Sherwood, is just wrapping up the break, thanking volunteers and groups that helped out.) There are three cameras, a floor director, a table full of gifts to fondle, a room full of volunteers hoping to answer lots of phone calls, and my co-host and me. We ad lib it back and forth for about 12 minutes per break, with video “roll-ins” showing off the gifts and reviewing the thank-you packages. It was exciting for me, because this is the first time I’ve seen our new series actually broadcast. And better yet, even though we were up against the San Francisco Giants in Game 3 of the World Series, the phones were ringing like mad. In a good six hours of travel like we did last Saturday, we raise about $80,000 for the station.

In Europe, they dispense with all this, figuring it’s worthwhile and more efficient just to have the government pay for it with tax dollars. In the USA, we do it this way — in a hundred such stations across the country. Either way, I’m thankful people recognize the value of having one place on the dial that treats its viewers as citizens rather than as customers, and broadcasts high-minded and challenging programming.

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

Last week, I squeezed in a quick trip to New York City to give three talks at an industry conference hosted by Visit Britain (the national tourist board for Great Britain). In order to fit the event into my schedule, I had to sleep on the plane and give my first talk in a pretty disheveled state of mind. The impressive conference was run to the minute with a frantic series of 12-minute, one-on-one meetings at little tables where tour wholesalers tried to sell their products (hotels, tours, experiences) to retailers (travel agents). The energy in the room was intense. I was hired to provide three breaks over two days, giving 30-minute talks on Great Culture in Britain, Great Heritage in Britain, and Great Nature in Britain. It was a bit unnerving to give my talks to a room full of professionals — half of whom were actually British — but it turned out just fine. I accepted the gig on the condition that I could talk candidly about what I really like and don’t like about Britain, and I think the crowd actually found that refreshing. But I was cornered by the Birmingham promoter, who wondered why I never mentioned her city.

In any event, here’s a quick look behind the scenes of the mainstream travel industry.

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