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Join Me on the Radio

As we near the fifth anniversary of our public radio program, we now have 150 cities airing us for an hour each week. And we have nearly 200 hours of shows in our radio archive.

Thinking back on the roots of this little enterprise, I remember enjoying fascinating conversations with guide friends and guidebook researchers. We’d debate the fine points of European travel and tour routes, and I’d think, “I find this so interesting…I wish more people could enjoy this conversation. If we simply had recorded this, it would have been great talk radio.” At the same time, I was spending more and more time helping stations with radio pledge work and realizing that this “travel talk” was really good at raising money for public radio — even better than the TV pledge work we do. And on Seattle’s KUOW, it seemed Steve Scher (on whose show I was a regular guest) and I were having more fun than ever talking travel on the air.

I asked my friends at KUOW if they’d run a show if I produced it. They agreed to run it for an hour on Saturday afternoon. So I gathered my staff and I announced that we’d begin producing a public radio program. I found a great producer (Tim Tattan), we designed Travel with Rick Steves, KUOW ran it and, little by little, we built our carriage.

I’m thankful to KUOW and lots of people for helping get our program off the ground and firmly on the air…and that includes the countless people who call in and take part in our interviews.

Every couple of months, I do a flurry in interviews to generate material for an hour-long show every week. Starting on Wednesday, December 9th, and finishing up on Tuesday, December 15th, I’ll be taping several new and exciting radio shows. And I’d love to include your comments and questions!

This upcoming recording session will include a wide variety of interesting guests. I get to talk with Greg Mortenson, author of the bestseller Three Cups of Tea, about his work in the villages of Afghanistan. Richard Ellis talks about his book On Thin Ice, detailing the changing world of the polar bear. Harry Rutstein describes the hardships he endured while retracing the fabled route of Marco Polo from Venice across Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Tibet, and China. Richard Starks and Miriam Murcutt were commissioned by the Royal Geographic Society to travel the length of the mysterious Casiquiare River in Venezuela…and they’ll tell us about their great adventure.

Also, Angela Nickerson explains some of the highlights of Michelangelo’s Rome, Keith Bowden chats about what he’s learned from spending months at a time on the Rio Grande, Barry Foy shares tips on enjoying traditional Irish music in its natural habitat, and Nikki Goth Itoi gives us good advice for enjoying Baja California from the border to Cabo San Lucas. And the brilliant Fred Plotkin joins us again to discuss Finland and Italian cuisine.

I will also have several “open mike” sessions for you to share your travel tips, discoveries, and questions with topics ranging from crazy people you’ve met on the road to recent discoveries and memorable meals.

If you’d like to be a part of our upcoming shows, you’d be doing me a favor. I’d love to work you in. Just go to the radio section at ricksteves.com and sign up.

Thanks.

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Let’s Hear It for Our Bus Drivers!

I’ve just received a heartwarming letter from a bus driver who has driven 68 of our tours over three million kilometers and made about three million travel thrills possible through his hard work. For 25 years, I worked personally with bus drivers (who happen to be Belgians — many actually learn to speak English from their travelers). They are away from home and away from their loved ones, surrounded by foreigners partying and having a wonderful time nonstop. They endure the stress of keeping a busload of people safe and on schedule, their guides or tour managers satisfied, and maintaining a very expensive bus often with a demanding boss back in their home city. I wanted to share François’ retirement announcement letter here to remind all who enjoy Europe by bus that their bus driver is an all-too-often un-sung hero of their travel fun. I will be forever thankful for the steady support drivers like François have given us and our travelers over the years.

Dear Rick and Staff,

After 21 years and close to 3,000,000 km, I have made my decision to end my career as a coach driver. I was so lucky to work the last 10 years for your company. I’ve done a total of 68 tours for you, and I can tell you that I enjoyed all 68 tours from day one until the last day of the tour. All the tours were so much fun with the tour guides, assistants, and especially with the tour members. I’m 100 percent sure that there was not one single day that I worked without having fun. After the first tour, you know how the system works and you can prepare the next tours better.

I was lucky to be at two reunions with you in Edmonds — the first in 2002, the second in 2006. The last one, in 2006, I also was allowed to speak four times in two days to the tour members (remember that I was so nervous). Coming to your town to see again all of our happy travelers will always be a big memory for me.

Rick, at the end of my coach-driving career, I’m a happy person with a lot of good memories, especially the last 10 years. I want to thank you for the years that I could drive for you in Europe and Scandinavia. I also want to congratulate you for the wonderful staff and guides and assistants that work for you — those people are not only wonderful, they are SUPER.

To the guides and assistants that I worked with, thank you very, very much for all the wonderful days that we were together on tour. It was never work, but for me it was like having fun doing your job and taking care of the tour members.

Last, but not least, I thank my “Supervisor Above” for letting me drive safely on the roads and for protecting me and the people in the coach every day.

Now it’s time to take care of my family: my wife, Gertje; my daughter, Sabrina; her husband , Adrie; and my two grandchildren, Alessia and Luana. Now my plan is to make up with them for all the years that I was on the road and not available for them. The date of 12-31-2009 is the end of a wonderful time in my life, and 01-01-2010 is the start for a second wonderful time in my life.

THANKS FOR EVERYTHING,

François Olaerts
Hasselt, Belgium

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Seeing America

I have just enjoyed a fascinating fortnight traveling around our country, giving talks. The trip left me inspired to explore the USA. I was hosted by wonderful people in Fort Smith Arkansas, Port Huron north of Detroit, Philadelphia, Oklahoma City, at the International House on campus in Berkeley, and at Apple and Google headquarters in Silicon Valley. Going from Apple to Arkansas, I was struck by the variety in this country. Given that, it’s a compliment to our civility that we hold together as well as we do.

My fantasy is to put together a 20-cities-in-30-days lecture tour to small towns in unlikely corners, letting locals share their pride in their communities with me each afternoon as part of the deal. (I must admit that a two-bit celebrity is treated like a four-bit one in smaller towns.)

I felt the pride and goodness of people everywhere. Philadelphians, while a bit apologetic that they are neither DC or NYC, love their city. The people of Arkansas have a good humor about their reputation. Even though they still joke “thank God for Mississippi” when it comes to leading the country in obesity, teen pregnancies, lack of education, and poverty, they are making impressive progress as a state. These days, joking about Arkansas that way is like joking about England’s food — it shows you haven’t been there in a while.

But the Deep South wears its conservatism like Seattleites wear their liberalism. Laying my head on an American flag pillowcase in my B&B, hearing people say with pride, “Eighty percent of America’s soldiers come from The South,” and the omnipresence of Fox News in breakfast rooms and lobbies made me feel a bit of a foreigner.

I met many Europeans. It seemed most were wives of locals. I didn’t realize how many German war brides came here after WWII. Apparently, most ended up in the South. Whenever I met a European spouse, they expressed how they enjoyed hearing a European perspective in a public forum. (But that yearning always seemed to be trumped by the gentility, goodness, and strong community of Southern living.)

The people I met, while culturally different from me, were smart, caring, and proud of the accomplishments of their communities. My last stop was Oklahoma City, where I enjoyed talking to a huge crowd of 1,400. People even drove in from out of state. From the big turnout to the VIP meals before and after, it was a delightful experience.

While news stories (like retired generals making fortunes on the boards of companies that sell the USA weaponry) seemed particularly annoying on this trip, traveling around the USA made me feel good about the people of this country.

 Wherever I went, people were trying to be good citizens and caring neighbors. They enjoyed the edgy message I brought with my “Travel as a Political Act” lectures, and I enjoyed the caliber of their character. I feel I planted some progressive seeds. And, at the same time, I gained more respect for Conservative America. I want to do more of this.

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Europeans Share Their Healthcare Experience, Part 4: Switzerland and Belgium

To bring some diverse experience into the discussion on health care reform here in the USA, I’ve asked my friends in Europe to share how health care works in their lives. In this final of four entries, here are comments from my friends in Switzerland and Belgium:

From Fritz in Switzerland:

In Switzerland, everyone has health insurance provided either through an employer (by payroll deduction) or by paying privately to a health insurance company. A family with two children has an annual premium of about 8,000 CHF (about $7,300). For every doctor’s bill, the insured person pays 10 percent. If a person becomes unemployed, then the goverment pays the premium based upon 80 percent of the average wage earned by that person over the past five years. The health insurance company reimburses the insured person, who then pays the doctor or hospital. There is talk of reforming this system because it has been misused.

Switzerland can no longer afford the luxury we’ve had in the past. We have over 1,000 hospitals — that’s too many for Switzerland. All the hospitals want the newest technology, scanners, MRIs, etc. Health care lobbying, corrupt politicians, an aging population, and billions in revenue makes changing the system almost impossible. So I pay and pay, this year 15 percent more than last year!

We have the system you are dreaming about, but our wishes and demands are so high that it gets unaffordable. Careless socialist politicians denied the missuse of our social security insurance and allowed hugh deficits. Now we have to stop and turn things around. When it comes to health care, no society can afford everything, top quality, any time, for everybody. Switzerland will now deal with that reality.

From Christian and Danielle in Belgium:

In Belgium we pay €20 (about $28) to see a general practitioner at his or her office. We are reimbursed 85 percent of this amount. Surgery is paid directly between the hospital and the social security system. A visit to the dentist is free once a year. Glasses are almost all at our expense.

One of the disadvantages of our system is a lack of responsibility. Patients have the right to change doctors without any reason given and then have the same exams done over. Doctors tend to charge for examinations which they did not do, or to do operations which are not needed. Retirement pensions are getting strained, because we live longer.

It seems that people in Belgium get their prescriptions almost always when their company is restructuring. That can be a problem. Half of the prescription is paid by your company and half by the state.

But as a whole, it is a good system, as we also pay for those who have no money at all.

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Europeans Share Their Healthcare Experience, Part 3: Italy

To bring some diverse experience into the discussion on health care reform here in the USA, I’ve asked my friends in Europe to share how health care works in their lives. In this third of four entries, here are comments from my Italian friends:

From Susanna in Italy:

The system in Italy is faaaaar from being perfect, but the idea behind it is the right one: Everybody has the right to have health care — it’s really one of those things that makes a democracy, a real democracy.

In Italy, I pay for the national health care system through taxes. The rate depends how much you make per year (there are income brackets to determine how much you are going to pay). Recently, the government decided to ask for a payment for examinations or medicines (we call it a “ticket,” in America you call it a “co-pay”). There are some categories — such as retired people with low income, people with chronic diseases, and the unemployed — who don’t have to pay.

What I really dislike about the system is the long lines to get appointments for any kind of tests (from basic to more complex). It depends on the region, but it’s a problem all over the country.

Italy is a country of paradoxes. We have, on one side, excellent doctors with incredible training, and, on the other side, we have “scandals” involving important Italian hospitals in which the hygienic conditions are poor and dangerous. The other problem is that Italy has an “aging” population. We have fewer people working to support the retired population, which is living longer and longer. Because of that, health care costs to our society as a whole have gone way up, while tax revenue has not.

Overall, I’m satisfied with the system, but it must be said that I’m in good health. When my father had cancer and later died from it, I have to say that we were so lucky to meet such fantastic people (doctors, nurses, and volunteers) that it made this traumatic experience less severe. Moneywise, we didn’t have to pay a penny for all the treatments he went through.

From Donald in Italy:

The Italian health system has the usual diversity of standards from north to south. In my tour guiding over the years, I have assured dubious tourists in Sicily that the hospital we were in was perfectly competent (whilst hoping they did not notice the crunch of the cockroach I had just stealthily stood on). But I have also been hospitalized in an institution in the Italian Alps where I was given a private room with balcony and mountain view, four-star meals with my choice of dishes, and treated with medical equipment worth thousands — all on national health. In the end, I would rather have national health care than be without it.

In Italy, you have to know how to work the system. A few years ago, I was spending a fortune at a private optician in Milan, who kept trying to convince me to have laser surgery costing thousands of euros per eye. I didn’t have much confidence in him, so I did the Italian thing — I talked to everyone I knew until I found a friend of a friend who knew a brilliant Russian optician working nearby. A couple of phone calls and a couple of days later, I found myself in the Russian’s office where, in half an hour, I was given excellent, unbiased, and free advice about laser surgery and a prescription for contacts and glasses. When in Rome…

I know critics will say that there is less inefficiency in a private system. Would the critics of nationalized medicine advocate the privatization of other government departments such as the ministry of defense? Might that not lead to a series of business-driven wars being fought…ooops! Call me naive, but I would rather support a country which spends more money on inefficiently curing its citizens rather than on inefficiently destroying its perceived enemies.

From Nina in Italy:

I have dual citizenship and have lived abroad for 13 years. I have experienced health care systems in the US and Italy. For me, one particular misconception about the US system is the notion of choice. It seems to be a topic that elicits such strong emotions. In the US, we are led to believe that buying into a private insurance plan means that as consumers we have more choices. In reality, the choice of care is never ours, and not even left to our doctors to decide. More often than not, it is insurance companies that decide when, where, and for how long we can receive treatment.

Here in Italy, everyone has access to a government-run system that is funded through taxes, with some private alternatives for those who want to or can afford to go beyond our public service. Health care decisions are not made by someone worried about making a profit. Even the language we use to discuss health care in America (patients are “consumers”) echoes the fact that in the US we rely on a system meant to generate profits — whereas in Italy health care is viewed as every person’s right.

It seems impossible to me that a country as wealthy as the US cannot find a way to guarantee access to health care for everyone. There are so many ways to cut costs, including eliminating all of the frills. In the US, when you walk into a hospital or doctor’s office, you are greeted by a nice reception area with art on the walls, plants, matching chairs, etc. In Italy the paint may be peeling off the walls, and the chairs in the waiting room may not be the most comfortable — but the care you get is good and thorough.