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Best of Blog: Well-Fed Ex-Geese

With elbows resting on a rustic windowsill on a farm in France’s Dordogne, I lost track of time watching Denis grab an endless line of geese one at a time in a kind of peaceful, mesmerizing trance, filling them with corn. Like his father and his father and his father, Denis spends five hours a day, every day, all year long sitting in a barn on a rolling stool with a machine that looks like a giant vacuum cleaner filled with corn, surrounded by geese.

He rhythmically grabs a goose by the neck, pulls him under his leg and stretches him up, sliding the tube down to the belly and fills it with corn. He pulls the trigger to squirt the corn, slowly slides the tube up the neck and out, holds the beak shut for a few seconds, lets that goose go and grabs the next.

When I told friends we planned to film geese being force-fed — the traditional way they fatten the livers to make foie gras, the prized delicacy in France’s Dordogne region — many expressed disgust and even thought I was wrong to show it on TV. There are actually people who want to boycott French foie gras for what they consider inhumane treatment of the geese. That’s why I was on Denis’ goose farm…to learn more about le gavage (as the force-feeding process is called).

Elevage du Bouyssou, a big, homey goose farm a short drive from Sarlat, is run by a Denis and Nathalie Mazet. The geese are filled with corn three times a day for the last month of their lives. They have expandable livers and no gag reflex, so the corn stays there, gradually settling as it’s digested, making room for the next visit from Denis and his corn gun.

Watching Denis work, I wondered what a life like that would be…actually knowing an endless cycle of all those geese. Did geese populate his dreams? How did it affect his relations with his wife?

While Denis squirts corn, Nathalie meets tourists — mostly French families — who show up each evening at six to see how their beloved foie gras is made. The groups stroll the idyllic farm as Nathalie explains how they raise a thousand geese a year. She stresses that the key to top-quality foie gras is happy geese raised on quality food in an unstressed environment. They need quality corn and the same feeder.

I join the group as we un-force-feed the baby geese. We stroll into the grassy back lot where the older geese run free — backlit by the low, early-evening sun, they look like a Muesli commercial (perfectly fulfilling my goose dream for the TV show).

Two geese are humping. I can’t help but notice the boy yanking feathers off the back of the girl’s head as he (I suppose) enjoys his orgasm. Nathalie said she can tell which girls are getting any action by the bald spots on the backs of their heads. There’s plenty of action, as about half the birds in the yard sported the souvenir — that fowl equivalent of wife-beating — that comes with a roll in the hay.

The Mazets sell everything but the head and feet. The down feathers only net about 30 cents a goose. The serious money is in the livers. A normal liver weighs a quarter-pound. When done with the force-feeding process, the liver weighs about two pounds. (With a thousand geese, they produce a ton of foie gras annually. Nathalie said, “Barely enough to support one family.”)

These geese actually have a special shape — like they’re waddling around with a full diaper under their feathers. Just the sight of this shape — which is a sales icon in shops throughout the Dordogne — is enough to make visiting English travelers (who come here in droves for the foie gras) salivate.

Why the Dordogne? It’s on the geese migratory path. Ages ago, locals here caught geese on their migration, livers enlarged for the long journey (like traveling with a topped-off gas tank). As French are inclined to do, they ate the innards, found them extra-tasty and decided to produce their own. Those first French foie gras farmers didn’t know it, but the technique of keeping geese and enlarging the livers for human consumption goes back to ancient Egyptian times.

Nathalie, like other French enthusiasts of le gavage, says that while their animals are calm, in no pain and are designed to take in food this manner, American farm animals are typically kept in little boxes and fed chemicals and hormones to get fat. Most battery chickens in the US live less than two months and are plumped with hormones. Her geese are free-range and live six months.

Dordogne geese live lives at least as comfy as other farm animals (that people so upset with the foie gras process have no problem eating) and are slaughtered as humanely as any non-human can expect in this food-chain existence.

Some people raise geese as a hobby. On a different farm I met Cyril, a retired Parisian realtor. His dream: To live his golden years in the Dordogne region with a little barn full of geese to force-feed. He claims to “speak goose” and will feed his geese any time…just drop by, so I added him to our guidebook.

After a few days in the Dordogne, where farmers in the markets are evangelical about their foie gras and constantly passing out little goose-liver sandwiches — and where every meal seems to start with a foie-gras course — I always leave with strong need for foie gras detox.

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Best of Blog: From 9/11/01 to 9/11/11

As a gesture of post-9/11 solidarity, we were proudly shown these stars and stripes while filming at Burgundy’s Château de Rochepot — a keepsake from France’s liberation in 1944

Dear Traveler,

As our nation remembers the horrible events of 9/11 on its 10th anniversary, along with commemorating the victims and how so many people suffered on that tragic day, many of us are sorting through our thoughts with the perspective that comes with a little time. Growing from personal tragedy by thoughtful reflection can be a way to honor those who died or suffered.

I was in Italy’s Cinque Terre on 9/11, filming a TV show. I figure that the first plane hit the North Tower just when we were filming the romantic Via dell’Amore, the “Pathway of Love,” which is a lovers’ meeting point between the towns of Riomaggiore and Manarola. I’ve walked it on five or six trips since, and for me, the Via dell’Amore is no longer the “Pathway of Love”… it’s the “Pathway of 9/11.”

Hiking with our TV gear into the next village, we found a tiny bar packed with people as if it were a makeshift theater. Everyone was staring, jaws dropped, at the TV. I saw the smoldering tower and thought it was some kind of a disaster movie. Then people told me the news. My crew and I gathered outside and decided the only thing we could do was to keep on working.

We had a Rick Steves tour group in Vernazza at the time. That evening, all the Americans were huddling together, wondering what would happen next. There was a line at the town’s one public phone booth. There were two distinct camps of travelers: those who thought, “It’s tragic, but there’s nothing we can do, so keep on traveling”; and those who, psychologically, couldn’t continue with their vacation — but also couldn’t get back home.

My enduring memory was of solidarity — Americans caring for each other and locals caring for Americans. All the people of the Cinque Terre were Americans with us; they did what they could to help us out during that disturbing time, when no one knew what was coming next. My Italian friend reminded me of how, a few years earlier, he had taken me to his village war memorial and told me that America had never really experienced a war like Italy had. Shaking his head sadly, he said, “Now, in a way, you have.” (On my website, you can read a compilation of what I wrote back then, along with a poignant collection of emails travelers sent us in the days after 9/11.)

I played out many scenarios in my mind about what would follow. Might this horrible event be a bridge that connected us with a world that already well-understood suffering and national grief on the scale of 9/11? Might it give us empathy? Or would we seek revenge? Would we respond to this despicable act as a crime or as an act of war? And, if an act of war, whom would we fight?

Looking back over the last decade, it seems that by reacting with such fervor to a tragedy Bin Laden had engineered precisely to get that reaction, we as a society richly rewarded his actions. Bin Laden was unable to radicalize Islam himself, but he knew the USA could do it for him. And, from my perspective, we did. In the interest of “national security,” we would compromise the values so fundamental to what makes us Americans. Instead of aspiring to be the gentle giant who responded to overseas crises swiftly and with compassion, or who patiently stood up to the oppressive communist ideology through a Cold War that spanned generations, we became a reactionary, vengeful country that threw out the rulebook — unilaterally going to war, employing torture techniques, and holding suspected terrorists without trial for years on end. And with each step away from our bedrock morals, we unwittingly demonstrated to the Arab world that America was to be feared and hated. Looking back, I don’t think Bin Laden — whose deputy has said, “More than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media” — could have hoped for a better result. Could it be that the USA is a different place today not because of 9/11, but because of our extreme reaction to 9/11?

In the travel industry, people stopped buying tours for a while. Many on my staff wondered if we’d be able to survive. For the first time in my career, simply making our payroll was a challenge. I gathered my co-workers and told them, “We’ll be giddy flagships of confidence — for the good of our business and even more important, for the good of our nation.” I knew that in order for Americans to understand things from a broader perspective — and there would be lots to try to understand in the coming years — travel was now more important than ever. While some considered those of us who tried to “take 9/11 in stride” unpatriotic, I had a strong sense that for our very national security it was more important than ever that the USA find ways to be a part of the family of nations. We made a huge effort to keep people traveling.

In the months after 9/11, I remember giving my travel talks to large groups. There was some question whether it was even appropriate to encourage travel and vacationing while our nation was in mourning. But the organizations who invited me to talk soldiered on. The Society of American Travel Writers asked me to be their keynote speaker in Las Vegas, and the AARP hired me to come to Houston to give a big talk at their convention. In my first big speaking gigs after 9/11, talking about packing light and catching the train seemed silly considering the trauma our nation was going through. My message morphed into a political one, encouraging Americans to travel because we need to better understand our world with firsthand, people-to-people experiences. It was a scary experience from a speaking point of view. But, in a nation that seemed determined — in lockstep — to shrink back from the world, I felt driven to advocate the opposite response, to embrace the world. By standing in front of a group and saying, “Get a grip, America,” it seemed people needed permission to move on. People found it cathartic. The SATW and AARP talks were perhaps the most exhilarating of my career. This was the year I came to see the role of a travel writer as being like the medieval jester — to go out, learn what’s happening outside the castle, come home, and tell the king the truth.

In the long run, the impact of 9/11 on our business has been both expected and surprising. Predictably, our tour sales took a big dip in 2002, and we no longer sell Swiss Army knives (because you can’t carry them onto an airplane). Just as predictably, after a couple of years of post-9/11 jitters, demand for travel surged once again. But 9/11 also inspired me to speak out more boldly about the politics of travel. I now routinely give talks about the value of travel as a force for peace all over the country. And that talk spawned a new book that was named the travel book of the year in 2010 by the SATW — Travel as a Political Act.

I noticed that the US State Department has issued a travel advisory for the 10th anniversary of 9/11. In our post-9/11 world, considering the importance of building bridges rather than walls, I’d like to issue an advisory against not traveling. In fact, on 9/11/11, I’ll be in Europe myself…traveling on and immersing myself in our beautiful world, just as I have been for the last decade.

Happy Travels,

Rick Steves

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Best of Blog: The New Tangier Is No Tijuana

I love Morocco. But I’ve always called Tangier the Tijuana of Africa. That has changed. Tangier was a neglected hellhole for a generation. It was an international city — favored by the West and therefore disdained by Morocco’s last king. He made a point to divert all national investment away from his country’s fourth city.

The new king, who took the throne in 1999, believes Tangier should be a great city again. The first city he visited after his coronation was Tangier. The difference — as I just learned — is breathtaking. The place is still exotic…but likeably exotic.

Checking into Hotel Continental, flamboyant Jimmy, who runs the shop, met me. Six or seven years ago, I told him I was from Seattle. He said, “206.” Now I test him again, saying I’m from Seattle. He says, “206, 360, 425…new area codes.” He knows every telephone area code in the USA.

Hotel Continental has you looking for the English Patient. Gramophones gather dust on dressers under mangy chandeliers. A serene woman paints a figure eight in the loose tiles with her mop, day after day, surrounded by dilapidation that never goes away. As I updated the information in my guidebook, I found a rare and nonchalant incompetence. My guidebook listed the hotel’s phone and email data more accurately than their own printed material. It’s a 70-room hotel with not a sheet of paper in its office.

Roosters and the Muslim call to prayer work together to wake me and the rest of that world. When the sun is high enough to send a rainbow plunging into the harbor amid ferries busily coming and going, I stand on my balcony and survey Tangier kicking into gear. Women in colorful, flowing robes walk to sweat shops adjacent the port, happy to earn $8 a day sewing for big-name European clothing lines. Cabbies jostle at the pier for the chance to rip off arriving tourists.

It’s an exciting time in Morocco. The king is modernizing. His queen was a commoner. Moroccans say she’s the first to be seen in public. They have never seen the king’s mother. They actually don’t know what she even looks like. Walking the streets, you see a modest new affluence, lots of vision and energy, and no compromise with being Arabic.

They don’t emulate or even seem to care about the USA. Al Jazeera blares on teahouse TVs — with stirring images of American atrocities inflicted on fellow Muslims. But people seem numb to the propaganda. I felt not a hint of animosity to me as an American, something I was concerned about. There was no political edge to any graffiti or posters.

My guide, Aziz, explained to me the fundamental difference between Islamic and Islamist, and then said Morocco is Islamic.

Wandering — especially after dark —  is entertaining. It’s a rare place where signs are in three languages, and English doesn’t make the cut (it’s Arabic, French and Spanish). Aziz said when he wanted someone’s attention he says, “Hey, Mohammad” (or “Hey, Fatima” for a woman). It’s like our “hey, bub”…but very respectful.

The market scene is a wonderland — of everything but pork. Mountains of brilliant olives, a full palette of spices, children with knives happy to perform for my camera. Each animal is slaughtered in accordance with Halal: in the name of Allah, with a sharp knife, head to Mecca, drained of its blood.

Until now, I’ve recommended that day-trippers from Spain just hold their nose and take the organized tour (with all the groups from Spain’s Costa del Sol). A Tangier guide meets you at the ferry (after the hour-long ride from Spain). They take you on a bus tour of the city, a walk through the old town, lead you to a few staged Kodak moments (camel ride, snake charmer, Atlas mountain tribal musicians) and then you go to a clichéd restaurant where you eat clichéd food with a live band and a belly dancer (which has nothing to do with Moroccan culture, but tourists don’t seem to care). Then you visit a shop.

They must make a healthy commission, because the round-trip ferry ride with the tour cost essentially the same as the round-trip ferry ride without the tour.

During my stay, I met gracious Moroccans eager to talk and share. About the only time I saw other Western tourists was when I crossed paths with one of the many day-tripping tour groups. Those finishing up their tour walk in a tight, single-file formation, clutching their purses and day bags nervously to their bellies like paranoid kangaroos as they bundle past one last spanking line of street merchants, and make it safely back onto the ferry.

I was so comfortable and they were so nervous and embattled. The pathetic scene reminded me of some kind of self-inflicted hostage crisis.

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Best of Blog: My Five Most Spiritual Places in Europe

In June, U.S. Catholic magazine published an interview with me on how to travel not as a political act, but as a spiritual one. The entire Q&A is now available online.

As a Christian, I enjoy being open to spiritual experiences while on the road, and there’s no more spiritual experience than traveling to the developing world. To be with the world’s struggling and downtrodden is to be with Christ. My expertise as a writer and guide, however, is traveling through Europe, which also offers plenty of opportunities to get close to God. Here’s my guide to five places in Europe that stoke my spirit.

 

As I walk high on a ridge in Switzerland, the Alps strike me as the greatest cathedral in Europe. Ride the rack-railway train from Wilderswil (near Interlaken) up to Schynige Platte, then hike along a ridge to Faulhorn, with its famous mountaintop hotel, and on to the perch called First. As you tightrope along the ridge, lakes stretch all the way to Germany on your left, and on your right is a row of cut-glass peaks — the Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau. The long, legato tones of an alphorn announce that the helicopter-stocked mountain hut is open, it’s just around the corner…and the coffee-schnapps is on. It’s enough to have even a staid Lutheran raising his hands in praise.
  

There’s a reason pilgrims have hiked from France to the distant northwest of Spain for more than a thousand years. Trekking with people of all spiritual stripes — or none at all — across the vast expanses of Spain, it’s easy to be one with nature and get caught up in a private talk with your maker. Everyone’s heading for the same point: the Cathedral of St. James in the city of Santiago de Compostela. And to be there as well-worn and sunburned pilgrims step on the scallop-shell pavement stone in front of the towering cathedral, overwhelmed with jubilation to have reached their personal goal and succeeded in their quest, is a joy in itself.
 

I have a personal ritual of sitting quietly on the rampart of a ruined castle high above Assisi, the town of St. Francis. I look down at the basilica dedicated to the saint, then into the valley — where a church stands strong in the hazy Italian plain that marks the place where Francis and his “Jugglers of God” started the Franciscan order, bringing the word of God to people in terms all could embrace. Hearing the same birdsong that inspired Francis, and tasting the same simple bread, cheese, and wine of Umbria that sustained him, I calm my 21st-century soul and ponder the message of a saint who made the spirit of God so accessible.
  

Worshiping upon the tomb of St. Peter under the towering dome of Michelangelo in the vast expanse of the greatest church in Christendom — where incense gives earthly substance to ethereal sunrays — I ponder the centuries of devotion and tradition that have gone into building both this magnificent church and the Catholic faith. Throwing out my Lutheran cynicism, I appreciate it all as a humble and noble quest by countless people through the ages to better understand and get close to our heavenly Father.
 

In the wine country of Burgundy, just down the road from Cluny (where the greatest monastic order of the Middle Ages was born), a rough lane leads to the ecumenical monastic community of Taizé. It welcomes all to gather with no regard to culture, language, or denomination. With a perfectly ecumenical embrace, people come together at Taizé to celebrate diversity, tune in to God’s great creation and the family of humankind, and become comfortable with silence, praise, meditation, singing, and simple living. Taizé gets you close to God.