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DARE to Defuse a Bloody Problem

Last week, I went to Tijuana. After I made the decision to go and purchased the plane ticket, the newspapers reported a rash of killings in Tijuana. I saw my emotions stir up fear, as is human nature, and I sent in my brains to quell that nervousness with common sense. It’s a city of a million and 20 drug runners are gunned down in turf wars with the cops in the wee hours in bad neighborhoods. Let’s go.

Once in TJ, standing there on the curb, I noticed a clear military and police presence: machine-gunners in “Federale” uniforms tense atop speeding armored jeeps. I found that exciting and fun to photograph…and nothing for the tourist to worry about. As usual, the image from a distance was one of tension. With the bloody news and concerned loved ones, I wondered if my visit was wise. And also as usual, when I got there, I found no tension. Locals I quizzed discounted the bloodshed, saying, “The dead are just drug pushers — they’re killing each other, and that makes fewer of them we need to deal with.” (They’re actually killing police, too.)

I guess they’re planning on a long struggle, as I saw the next generation of drug warriors being trained. I met what looked like a Boy Scout troop in juvenile police DARE uniforms learning how to be policemen to fight a drug war stoked by the US appetite for recreational drugs (it is American consumers, after all, who make up a substantial part of the lucrative drug market). With that training, these kids will have an exciting job awaiting them when they turn 18.

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Looking at the loving teachers and the new DARE uniforms, I wondered about the cost and violence that comes with drugs. I pondered the countless American boys waiting until they’re old enough to “fight evil” funded by the illegality of drugs in poppy-rich Afghanistan. I envisioned that war heating up and the USA getting sucked deeper into a quagmire much like the one that helped bring down the USSR, when gung-ho Russians underestimated the task of fighting and winning a war in Afghanistan.

Then I recalled seeing the movie No Country for Old Men— the entire plot based on a very violent confrontation between police and drug runners. Bloody movies, shoot-’em-ups just south of the border, expensive wars in lands rich in poppies: It’s all got me thinking. Imagine if drugs were suddenly made legal (people who chose to use them were held criminally responsible for bad things they did) and the money and violence associated with drugs disappeared overnight. That would infuriate a lot of very bad people who make money because drugs are illegal. Just a thought I had in Tijuana.

(PS: I am what drug reform activists call an “incrimentalist”–I support decriminalization of marijuana but not harder drugs. The pot issue is clear to me. I’m still struggling with the more sweeping approach to taking the crime, money, and violence out of hard drug use and abuse. Except for one delightful mushroom dinner in Bali, I’ve never ventured beyond pot.)

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How Armpitty is Tijuana?

A year ago I was excited about Tangier in Morocco and wrote on this blog, “It’s no longer the Tijuana of Africa.” I didn’t realize I’d touch a nerve with people who think TJ is notthe armpit of North America.

So I went to Tijuana this weekend to give it a second look. Okay, I admit, I’ve never been there … so I’d give it a first look. (I also wanted to be in a rough border town, where First World meets Developing World, as I continue to work on my upcoming book about the value of travel as a political act.)

I had a great time. While TJ is not a destination most would fly to in itself, as a side trip from San Diego or a stop while heading south, visiting it is a great experience. As an observer of the cultural and economic riptides created where two worlds collide, it’s a fascinating case study.

At what locals claim is the busiest international border in the world, 24 lanes are busy with traffic — 24/7. It’s easy to get out of the USA … tough to get back in. A handy trolley zips tourists from San Diego literally to the border for $3 (it also takes Mexican workers into San Diego on a daily commute that thousands make). Drivers can park within 100 yards of the border for $8 a day. Pedestrians step right in without showing a passport, power past the trinket stalls and aggressive cabbies, and head for the towering arch that marks the start of Revolution Avenue (and all the fun).

Getting out of Mexico is different. Pedestrians shuffle fairly quickly through an officious passport check. Cars are generally stacked up for a several-hour wait. As taxis are dirt cheap and there’s always a very long wait to drive north across the border, there’s no reason to drive in if you’re just visiting TJ.

Tijuana, barely a century old, thrives today with 1.5 million people. A local explained there’s a big funnel from Mexico to the USA and this is the little hole through which everything flows. While there’s the cross border business — legal and illegal — there’s also a thriving local industry stoked by 650 maquiladoras:assembly factories for First World manufacturers that locate here for the cheap labor. With plants for companies such as Samsung, Sony, and Hitachi, more TVs are assembled here than in any other city.

Throughout Mexico, Tijuana is considered a place of opportunity. With this thriving economy comes a thriving culture: music, arts, an impressive cultural center, and lots of people who love San Diego’s public television station. Everywhere I walked, I met locals who were regular viewers of my travel show on KPBS — something I expect when I cross the border to the north and visit Canadians in Vancouver but something I didn’t even consider in the south.

The city, while ramshackle architecturally, is impressively clean. The streets were free of litter. Locals thank their new government that “gets things done.”

Tijuana’s tiny old town, which radiates from the arch, feels like ramshackle 1950s. You can’t miss all the things people come to a border town for: plastic surgery, pharmaceuticals without prescriptions, dentistry, cheap hair cuts, Cuban cigars, and of course jumping beans. The kitsch is riveting: glow-in-the-dark tattoos, hucksters hollering “Hello, 100 percent off today!”, donkeys painted like zebras on each street corner, ready for you to don a sombrero and pose for a photo.

Bars that feel like saloons come with cheap prostitutes wearing down their stiletto heels at their doors. Checking out a few $20 hotels, I struggled by transvestites patiently waiting for something in the lobbies … while watching Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. Apparently, the siesta is alive and well, as these places also rent rooms by the hour. (While there is a hotel strip with big high-rise places, there are plenty of decent places — without company for hire in the lobbies — renting $40 rooms on or near Revolution Avenue.)

After the salesman promised me it came with a fine guided narration in English, I hopped onto a two-hour, $10 bus tour. It was a great tour — but with no guide. I chatted the best I could with the driver for the duration. He said the USA and Mexico are brothers, stuck together. If the US gets the flu, Mexico gets pneumonia. He explained the youth culture is crazy about Japan these days, explaining all the colorfully painted hair and people dressed up as different pop culture characters. Hopping off the open top tour bus at the cathedral, I joined a Mass.

Grabbing a pew in the cathedral, I sat there with hundreds of Mexicans, enjoying a vivid reminder that the gang the tourist sees along Revolution Avenue and in front of the saloons is photogenic but not representative. This was the real Tijuana. Surrounded by well-worn people, I pondered how all were at various stages on the same ride up and down the parabolas of their respective lives. These people, taking an hour out of their Sundays to worship, wearing crude t-shirts, hooded sweatshirts, and shoes without arch support picked up for $3 at a street market, were the Joe Six-Packs and Hockey Moms of their world.

And as I poured out of that church with all those people and bought a bag of fresh baked churros encrusted in sugar, it occurred to me how wrong I was to consider Tijuana the armpit of the Western Hemisphere.

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Cheese, Organs, and the Alps

Postcards from Europe — Ten Years Later (Part Three: Switzerland and France)

As I reread my Postcards From Europe book for its special tenth anniversary edition, it was fun to consider how the lives of its real-life cast of characters and their hometowns have changed since 1999.

Here’s the latest from Switzerland and France:

Up in Switzerland’s Alps, my favorite village of Gimmelwald has gone through some tough times. The only real restaurant closed, resulting in a big hit to the town’s commercial metabolism. Locals pulled together with creative ways to parlay the products of a humble alpine village into sustenance for visitors, and thankfully, the restaurant seems to have new and energetic owners. Petra’s youth hostel is stronger than ever, and the talents of her handy husband, Wally, complement her own. And Walter is more and more the eccentric and generally lovable old man of the town — with two new hips, he still shuffles around, refusing to retire and still feeding his hungry hikers. Olle and Maria still share the village’s only teaching position. Every time I visit I remember how Gimmelwald was the scene of our Swiss Alps Christmas show for public television. Olle helped heroically — he cranked up the town’s traditional charm, and turned the entire village into bit players as we filmed a traditional Christmas under a delightful blanket of new snow.

In Paris, Rue Cler is more Rue Rick Steves than ever — busy with my readers but still a delight. My friend, Marie-Alice (for whom cheese smells like “zee feet of angels”) is mad at me because I gave her hotel a bad write-up, so we no longer communicate. It’s complicated maintaining objectivity while also trying to maintain friendships for people who — when you get right down to it — sometimes see you more as a source of free advertising than as a friend.

Daniel Roth, my musical hero, still welcomes visitors into his St. Sulpice Cathedral loft to enjoy the finest pipe organ experience in Europe up close and intimate. He performs with an elegance that creates a glorious little interlude just for you, where there is no kitschy, shrill, garish, frustrated, rag-tag, mind-numbing world out there. While in Daniel Roth’s loft, your world is simply ivory keys, inlaid stops, and a timeless heritage of great music powering worship, appreciated by silent and humble pilgrims contained in a Gothic box lovingly carved of stone in centuries past.

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Checking In on My Italian Stallions

Postcards from Europe – Ten Years Later (Part Two: Italy)

Ten years is a long time. As I reread my Postcards from Europe book for its special tenth anniversary edition, it was fun to consider how the lives of its real-life cast of characters and their home towns have changed since 1999.

Here’s the latest from Italy:

Venice continues to lose real residents while gaining tourists. Asians are famously buying up and running the shops and locals now admit that no restaurant can survive without being “touristy.” Sexy Piero is no longer quite the playboy. He’s grown a full head of hair, but his voice is as sonorous as ever, and — with his partner Robbie — still seems to get great joy out of running their wonderful Hotel Guerrato.

My buddies Roberto and Manfredo are well. Their conversation was the greatest fiction of this book. All the sentiments and quotes were true — but taken from isolated times with them and they never actually got together until after this book was published. Roberto is the hardest-working guide in Siena and a big help with any projects I have in Tuscany. Manfredo burned out of the hotel business and has gone on to other things.

My Roman friends, Stefano and Paola, who contributed the sweetest romance to this book, are sadly no longer married. Stefano is still my Rome buddy and with each year, his hotel gets better.

Gene, my original travel partner back on the high-school grad trip, remains a key collaborator — co-authoring many guidebooks with me and contributing mightily to our teaching program at Europe through the Back Door.

In Vernazza, Monica and Massimo are happily married with a lovely child and Grandma still makes the pasta at the family restaurant. Vittorio (which is a pseudonym because of my portrayal of him as a playboy) is now too old to effortlessly sweep tourist women off their feet. His story saddens me as my guidebook lets many business owners repeat the sentiment of Sr. Sorriso (who said, “Rick Steves make me a rich man”). Vittorio still shuttles around from restaurant to restaurant, serving anchovies but never really getting a piece of the pie.

Paolo Sorriso passed away. His wife was long my only real enemy in Europe. I believe it was because of my candid listing of their humble pension; she was just filled with anger for me. She spooked me. She demanded to be out of my guidebook (even though she already was). Villages are small and for years I walked quickly past her door. Just last year, their children took over the family business, we sorted through our problems, and Pension Sorriso is back in my listings.

While Vittorio seems to be out of the game, Ivo — while gradually morphing into a grizzled old Italian man — still holds court at Riomaggiore’s Bar Centrale. Each year, when I pass through, he’s the master of hedonistic ceremonies in his Cinque Terre town.

When I consider all the places I work, I am frustrated by not having good local contacts and friends in some countries. I travel there year after year … and just don’t make the right connections. But in Italy, being connected comes easily. Hmmmm. I think I just stumbled into one of the reasons I like Italy so much. Its people are the low-hanging fruit of European travel.

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Postcards from Europe – Ten Years Later

As I reread my Postcards from Europe book in preparation for its special tenth anniversary edition, it was fun to consider how the lives of its real-life cast of characters have changed since 1999.

In general, an affluence has swept Europe and European unification continues to march forward. Thankfully, my fears that this would steamroll the Continent’s charm and diversity have proven unfounded. And, as my favorite restaurateurs and hoteliers slip from active years into retirement, the next generation routinely overcomes my anxiety by picking up the torch and carrying on with new energy. And today, as in 1999, it remains the people who carbonate our travel experience.

While this may not mean much if you haven’t read the book or met them in your travels, here’s an update on European friends who starred in my book:

I learned that John Konig, the old piano salesman whom I speculated was “probably dead now,” is not dead. When this book came out, he emailed me from Europe saying, “I’m not dead yet.” (John, I hope that’s still the case.)

Frans (not Franz), the stressed-out Dutch hotelier who ran Haarlem’s Hotel Carillion, finally burned out and sold his business. Marjet and Hans, who run a B&B in Haarlem, are the same as ever, still ribbing their guests about American ethnocentrism. They call me each New Year’s Day from their winter hideout on the Spanish coast with a reminder that my resolution should be to work a little less and play a little more.

My friends in Bacharach on the Rhine are doing well. Herr Jung, the retired schoolteacher, was already quite senior in 1999. He’s still taking my tour groups through his town and charming them with his intimate and inspiring stories from World War II. At Hotel Kranenturm, Kurt still plays the DJ in his medieval cellar when he’s done cooking and, for his wife Fatima, a job well done remains a prayer.

I still look forward to the tradition of dropping by Hotel Goldene Rose in Rothenburg to enjoy the stammtisch (a “locals-only” table) with Henni and the Favetta family. If I get really drunk once on a trip…you can bet it’s at the Family Favetta’s stammtisch. The parents retired in 1999 and now Henni is running the show. Karen is still the loyal knave.

Photogenic Georg, Rothenburg’s Night Watchman, still charms tourists with stories of his medieval town and the curly locks of a 14th-century fantasy. Some envious local hotels have put up competing Night Watchmen…but there’s still only one.

While independent Asian travelers, like the Taiwanese girls I met in Rothenburg, were rare in 1999, today with the economic rise of China and India, the complexion of European tourism is fast changing.

While I included Munich as a stop on my Postcards route back when Berlin was a forest of construction cranes, today Berlin is rebuilt and has eclipsed Munich as the happening city of Germany. In fact, compared to Berlin, Munich is now flat beer and stale strudel. My friend Alan, who made me promise not to reveal the location of his favorite beerhall, has finally released me from my vow. It’s Unionsbrau — which remains many beer aficionado’s favorite Munich beerhall.

I’ll get an update on my Postcards from Europe friends from Italy, Switzerland and France to you soon.