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Andy

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Landing a Prizewinning Tuna…in Rome

I just spent a great week in Rome. Our son, Andy, is there for a semester abroad, and Anne, Jackie, and I dropped in for a peek at his experience. Andy and his schoolmates — most in their third year at Notre Dame — are becoming citizens of the world. As twenty-year-olds would, they have a different focus than older travelers. But even so, their lives are being enriched.

With Andy and his mates, I enjoyed seeing Rome through a different lens. I learned Italian clubs welcome the American kids with hip-hop. Then, well into the wee hours, when they’re ready for the tourists to head home, they switch over to techno. Several of the students came for a semester and (apparently undeterred by the techno) decided to spend the rest of their school days here. Rather than spring break in Fort Lauderdale, they head for Sharm El Sheikh — I never imagined all that MTV hormone activity on the Red Sea in Egypt!

The kids muscle three days of travel fun out of each weekend, hopping a plane (Andy just landed a $30 round-trip ticket to Sofia, Bulgaria) or sleeping on a train for someplace new.

It’s fun for me to see the budget traveler and tour organizer showing itself in my son. Last month, he led a gang of six friends to Gimmelwald, borrowing ski gear from our friend Olle and sleeping on his floor (and working to keep the one higher-maintenance kid happy). As soon as school’s out, Andy and his gang have their sights set on hiring a small boat with a captain for a low-budget Aegean cruise. He explained to me how eight kids sharing the rental cost is no more expensive than settling into a cheap hotel in Athens.

These are mostly Midwestern kids whose worlds — because they’ve traveled — are suddenly broader. They are insisting on fresh garlic for their bruschetta, marveling at how Italians are cynical and fatalistic about their politics (bringing back Berlusconi), and drinking tap water to afford a better wine. The boys celebrate, as if winning the lottery (at first I wrote “landing a prizewinning tuna,” but that seems a little crass), when they come home with the phone number of an Italian girl.

Andy says the rigor of the class load here is light. But as a dad — paying the tuition — I’m thrilled with the education he’s getting (and a bit envious that I never had a study-abroad experience in my college days).

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The Tyranny of a Weekly Hour

One hundred and twenty weeks ago, when I committed myself to producing a regular radio show, someone wise with experience sighed, “You’re taking on the tyranny of a weekly hour.”

That’s a funny thing — how easy it is to jump at a creative challenge, and then realize you have just adopted a chore that continues at a regular interval until it fails or until you kill it. Thankfully nothing is failing. And I like my little creations too much to kill any of them.

Lately, I’ve felt the mounting tyrannies of my ongoing commitments: annual guidebook updates, a new TV series every two years (the tempo I’ve maintained since 1990), an hour every week for public radio, a weekly column for my newspaper syndicate, and even this blog.

Perhaps the toughest is the weekly radio show. With 70 or so stations running it each week and my wonderful producer (Tim Tattan) doing such a fine job, it’s a thrill. And we have a serious responsibility not to stumble in our production schedule. We always have a few weeks of episodes in the can…but it seems we always need to be producing more. Next week we’ve scheduled a two-and-a-half day frenzy of interview recordings to get the raw material for, I hope, 8 or 10 new shows. (We’ll be streaming the interview sessions live and taking call-ins — to be announced on our website.)

When I took on the radio show, I unrealistically figured I could crank out shows with just a couple hours of work for each. But it takes much more time. We need to set up the interviews and prepare the questions. (I’m put off by interviewers who don’t prepare before an interview with me, so I feel an obligation to the experts we have on the show to be ready with a thoughtful interview.) Then, after the recording sessions, we need to write and record all the promos. I can’t bear to have sloppy promos airing all over the country — so these take a fair amount of time, too. In January, I’m looking ahead at my annual travels (being gone for April, May, July and August), which means we’ll need shows in the can to cover us until September.

And then there’s the rest of life. (We’ve got some pretty exciting projects cookin’.)

Someone just asked where our son Andy was. I said in Prague. They asked, “What’s he doing there?” I said, “Just hanging out.” Who’s he with? Alone. Has he been there before? Nope. I offered to get Andy a room. He said he’d prefer to just get there and find a hostel that felt the most fun. Andy’s confidence as a 20-year-old on the road brings me great joy. (In a week, he’ll stop “hanging out” and report for studies for his Notre Dame semester in Rome.)

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Blog Addiction…Somebody Stop Me

Two years ago my son did a blog for his first European adventure without parents. It was nostalgic for me because he was 18 and heading out with his best buddy the day after high school graduation, exactly as I did back in the “Europe on Five Dollars a Day” era.

I bribed him (with a Eurailpass) to write a blog for our website, not realizing I would become the avid blog reader — traveling with him…checking in every couple of days…anxious — even upset — if he didn’t have a new entry. I was reliving the best trip of my life (1973) while stowing away with my son via his blog.

Inspired by the fun I had following Andy, last year I blogged my own trip. I couldn’t believe how writing it complicated an already filled-to-the-brim schedule — and I enjoyed the added responsibility immensely. It’s just fun to share. It’s a joy for me to have an excuse to write more casually than for a guidebook, TV script or newspaper column. And it’s fun to see the gang of travelers responding to my quirky insights.

This year I pledged to do a “100 days blog.” It actually stretched to five months — April through August. Last years entries totaled 16,000 words. This year’s totaled 45,000 words. All of you blog readers were my late night conversation partners…and I was chatty. (I’m distilling those 45,000 words into a 64-page printed booklet — Dancing with Europa II— which we’ll give out free at my talks and so on as we did with last year’s blog. Talk about old school…going from blog to print!)

I’ve been trying to shut the book on this year’s blog…but it’s hard to do. I’ll be in Greece (a two-week tour with my wife), Rome (filming a video on the life of St. Peter for my church), and in Istanbul (breaking in our new Istanbul guide) next month and I know I’ll want to report via a blog.

Lots of you are asking for a continuation. My staff thinks it would be good business. And I enjoy it. My concern is that I won’t have the time (I didn’t in Europe either) or interesting experiences (Edmonds vs. Istanbul…). But each day, my desk is a ping pong table of little opportunities and challenges. Perhaps they’ll be interesting to share.

I appreciate travelers enjoying our TV, radio and guidebooks, and I enjoy taking them, as friends, candidly behind the scenes a bit. So, I will continue my blog. While my goal is an entry every two days while on the road, I’ll shoot for two entries a week while at home.

Thanks for staying with me. Keep your comments coming. I enjoy reading them as much as I hope you enjoy reading mine. Happy travels, Rick

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Home For a Couple Weeks…

Confession time: I’ve been living a few days ahead of this blog. Today I fly Seattle-Copenhagen after a quick break at home.

Essentially empty nesters — Anne and I wait for phone calls from Andy (our 20-year old who is assisting on our family tours, Rome to Paris in 14 days), and try to imagine what Jackie (our 17-year-old) is up to in Morocco. She is on her high school summer travel program — in a Berber village with no cell phone, email, computer, or iPod. With only a note pad to collect thoughts, she knows she’s in for an African village culture shock that will change her self-described materialistic, suburban outlook and put things in perspective.

Sitting on our neighbor’s deck for a plush Puget Sound sunset, we marvel at the majesty of the birds and the massive container ships gliding out to sea, and settle into a fine and leisurely dinner. Our friends note from my blog that I am wild about Sagrantino wine. They have a bottle — which I never thought I’d see outside of Umbria — and we pop it open. I say we have so much to be thankful for…nature, our health, kids embracing the world, this wine…and then my cell phone rings. My dad has had a little stroke and is in an ambulance heading for the hospital.

After spending much of the night at the hospital we learn everything’s okay. The next day as I talk with my 40- and 50-something friends it’s clear — so many of us are both marveling at how “grown up and independent” our children are, and, simultaneously, how dependent our parents are becoming.

Apart from family activities and fun, my mid-trip break was filled with business — making sure our radio shows were taped and good for the rest of the summer (including two fascinating hours interviewing Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler), getting ducks in a row for the four TV shows we’ll be shooting next month, and meow, meow, meow (I went to a party where people said that rather than “and so on”).

Now I’m on a plane for Copenhagen, ready to resume my trip. The man next to me is snoring while somehow holding a glass of Bloody Mary mix in his hand on his lap. Should I take it away before he spills it, or not intervene?

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Answers to Readers’ Questions, Part Three

And here’s my final set of answers to questions posted to this blog. Thanks for everyone’s interest!

Question: What brand/model laptop do you carry, and how do you typically use it to get online?
Answer: I use whatever laptop Brooke Burdick, the Communications Manager at my office, gives me for a trip. I had three or four Toshibas — each smaller and faster and equally dear to me. Then a Compaq. And now an HP. To get online, I generally take the phone wire out of the back of the phone and plug it into the gadget that lets me plug it safely into my laptop and dial up. More and more, hotels are offering Wi-Fi (wireless Internet), which I appreciate.

Question: I’d like to know how you like your new camera, and whether you think there’s enough of a difference in image quality/photo opportunities to justify carrying all the extra gear that comes with an SLR.
Answer: My new Nikon D-40 has been great so far. I really appreciate having an SLR. There’s no extra gear needed. I have one 18-55 mm lens (which came with it), a 2-gigabyte memory card, and essentially the same battery charger that comes with any pocket-sized camera. I noticed today how it seems more people are reverting back to the bigger SLR cameras like I have. The main drawback is that it’s a pain to carry. Today I left the hotel without it and, as usual, I missed two fun shots: a massive Holland America cruise ship gliding by the Venice harborfront looking like it would destroy the Doge’s Palace, and a bunch of white-bonneted chefs gathered outside an ancient building during a fire alarm.

Question: Do you have a specific camera bag, or do you keep you camera in your day bag?
Answer: I don’t believe in protective bags for my laptop or my camera. I treat them as gently as tender parts of my body and they do fine without protection.

Question: After reading Andy’s blog, I think it would be helpful if Andy had a section in your guidebooks for the college age person.
Answer: I’ll propose that to my son. He’ll be assisting on our tours this summer for six weeks and traveling on his own for 14 days (visiting a cousin in Sevilla and a girlfriend in Toulouse). I’m in Padua today with memories of how, about five years ago, 15-year-old Andy took his first solo European adventure: riding the train from here to Venice for the day to just explore on his own. His mom and I were nervous…and we all enjoyed a celebratory gelato upon his safe return. Now, Europe is Andy’s playground.

Someone responded thoughtfully to my concern about having a passport with no pages left to stamp:
If you’re out of pages for passport stamps, just go to the American citizen services desk at a US embassy or consulate. Fill out a short form, and in about 30 minutes you’ll have additional pages added to your passport. (I did this in January in Vienna, in less than 30 minutes. I suppose it could take longer in heavier travel periods.) Your passport doesn’t need to be completely filled; just down to only a page or two of space for stamping.