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Edmonds

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The Name Game

We’re hosting over 100 guides this week. They flew from all over Europe to Edmonds (just north of Seattle). While they may be aces, with all the tour-guiding experience in the world, we’re dedicating this week to making sure they know what our travelers expect and what distinguishes a Rick Steves tour.

You can be a French foodie, and Italian art historian, a Spanish dancer who fights bulls on the weekend, or the top Blue Badge guide in all of England. But if you don’t know the Name Game, you’re not a Rick Steves guide. On our tours, we want everyone to know everyone else’s name — so our groups do this little memory aid exercise. And this morning, I met with 25 of our newest guides to actually do the Name Game together.

Still fuzzy with jetlag, we gathered in a circle and went systematically around (as the Name Game entails) until everyone knew everyone’s name.

Here’s a fun little video clip of Liz Lister (from Scotland), who happened to stand in the unlucky spot in the circle — immediately to my right. When it was finally her turn, she needed to go through the entire group. And Liz (who was my guide when I joined our Best of Scotland tour this summer) nailed it. After this, we reshuffled so everyone was in a different spot, and the guides showed off their memory by getting all the names right again.

We hope you’ll be playing the Name Game with your small group and great guide sometime in 2014: perhaps in Vienna, maybe Lisbon, possibly Dublin, or how about Amsterdam? Wherever you end up traveling, when it’s on a Rick Steves tour, it’s with a great group of people… and they’ll all know your name.

P.S. I don’t want to keep the guides to myself.  On Saturday, January 18 at 9 am P.S.T, join me and my tour guides online for the live streaming of Test Drive a Tour Guide — eight free, one-hour slideshows on Europe’s top tour destinations for 2014. Tune in and learn more!

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

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Book Haus: Home of the Best Team of Guidebook Editors & Designers in the Business

I enjoy lining up on my windowsill the books we birth and nurture. And beyond that lineup, immediately across the street from my office, is the old building where that work is done.  I constantly marvel at how much beautiful work our guidebook staff does in what we call Book Haus. When we gathered for our annual group photo on the steps of Book Haus just the other day, I knew I was in the company of fine travelers, fine editors/graphic designers, and fine people who care as much as I do about our mission of inspiring and equipping our readers with the best information for the best possible trips. All of us are thankful that you travel with us. We look forward to bringing you even more information to turn your 2014 travel dreams into smooth and affordable reality.  Happy New Year from the Rick Steves guidebook staff!

My office-view twofer: Along the windowsill are many of the books we publish; through the window I can see the house where my guidebook staff works.
My office-view twofer: Along the windowsill are many of the books we publish; through the window I can see the house where my guidebook staff works.
My guidebook staff celebrates another successful year with me on the steps of Book Haus.
My guidebook staff celebrates another successful year with me on the steps of Book Haus.
This is a selection of the new books we created for 2014--including four radically revamped phrase books; "Pocket" guides to Venice, Barcelona, and Florence; a book covering Northern European cruise ports; a Barcelona guidebook; and more.
This is a selection of the new books we created for 2014–including four radically revamped phrase books; “Pocket” guides to Venice, Barcelona, and Florence; a book covering Northern European cruise ports; a Barcelona guidebook; and more.
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European Guides Learn to Square Dance

It’s suddenly quiet here at ETBD headquarters, as 80 European guides have packed up and returned home. Our annual tour guide summit and tour member alumni party are over, and it was a great week. Saturday was an exhilarating three-ring circus of talks and alum parties, as we pretty much took our town by storm — filling up the big venues, bars, and restaurants with our guides and well over a thousand 2011 tour alums. Each day of the last week was filled with meetings: tour itinerary brainstorming sessions, all-staff meetings, first aid and CPR training, and so on. To stockpile a few months’ worth of radio content, I managed to do 30 interviews with guides over the week. We even flew in a tax specialist so our guides could get the straight scoop on tax issues for European guides working for an American company. And each evening was social time — my favorite part of the week.

The ultimate highlight was our square dance evening. Our guides earn their living introducing American travelers to their local cultures. Now we turned the tables, encouraging the guides to dress as “Old West” as they could as we filled a school gym for a night of BBQ and learning the moves with a square dance club. The old-timers with big belt buckles, the pretty ladies in their music-box-doll crinoline dresses, and the fun of this classic bit of Americana were a hit for all. Rolinka from Holland found overalls, speckled her face with some big Texas-sized freckles, and put her long Dutch-girl blonde hair into a bouncy ponytail. She made like an old cowboy pulling his suspenders out and hollered at me, “Eeee-haw! Is this what-cha call a hootenanny?”

Now our guides want another night of square dancin’ at our next summit. Here’s a sample of the fun:

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

(P.S. Thanks for all the very kind wishes and condolences for my last post about losing my mother. It meant a lot.)

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A Flat Tax and “the New Austerity,” or…?

At Europe Through the Back Door, our tour program just sold its 11,782nd seat for our 2011 season — topping our best tour sales year ever (2007). Despite our antsy stock market and doom-and-gloom news stories, it seems that our economy is gaining some confidence. And yet, at the same time, our local symphony and arts center are in financial crisis.

As a way to celebrate, to give back to my beautiful hometown of Edmonds, and to spark a little conversation about why a society as affluent as the USA is cutting education, neglecting our environment, and defunding the arts while our wealthy class is doing better than ever, I’ve decided to make a donation of $1 million (in $100,000-a-year payments over the next decade) to our local symphony and arts center. This sum represents the money I’ve gained in the 10 years since the Bush tax cuts for the richest Americans (those of us earning over $250,000 a year) took effect.

I believe those who say that “’job-creators’ can’t afford to pay 38 percent rather than 35 percent on their marginal income over $250,000” are either misguided or intentionally dishonest. I also believe a false austerity is being foisted on our society, and its long-term consequences are bad for the fabric of our democracy.

My local paper, The Everett Herald, has picked up the story. Judging from of the comments, some conservatives may choose to see my gift as evidence that the wealthy will fund the arts with the money they save with lower tax rates. But the problem is that for every wealthy person who chooses to dig deep and bail out organizations that are in need, dozens more are pocketing their profits and not following through with their much-ballyhooed prediction that “the private sector will provide.” The beauty of a more progressive tax code — as we all enjoyed in the prosperous, Clinton-led 1990s — is that the burden of funding the finer elements of society is spread fairly among those who can pay. Imagine worthwhile local causes not having to nervously wait for a generous donation — which, all too often, fails to materialize.

With my donation, I hope to challenge people to imagine how a tax code that goes a little harder on the wealthy could be a virtually painless way to help balance our national budget while helping our communities enjoy a few fine points like schools, parks, libraries, symphonies, and arts centers. It’s just so German, Dutch, and Canadian.

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Cartooning for the Hungry

For 20 some years, I’ve supported the work of Bread for the World, and when its president, David Beckmann, is in town, it’s always great to catch up with the organization’s work.

This year I decided to share him with the public. I promoted a public “hunger-awareness” event with David Wednesday evening at our Travel Center in Edmonds. I was disappointed that only a handful of people could drop by. But, as it is with people who care about their mission, David presented his news on the fighting-hunger front with energy and passion. His delivery was no less caring than when I saw him at the state capitol in Des Moines, where he addressed a crowd of 500. That’s when he was awarded the “World Food Prize,” celebrating him (and co-laureate Jo Luck of Heifer International) as the most effective people in our country in the fight against hunger during 2010.

One of the eight people in our gathering happened to be David Horsey, Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Just today, David shared with me the cartoon and editorial he wrote that describes the passion, compassion, and hard work of David Beckmann and his team at Bread for the World.

At first, the promoter in me was disappointed in the turnout. But this event was a great reminder that we need to do what we believe is right ‘ even if you’re discouraged, have faith that your effort is worth the trouble. Thanks to both Davids. And let’s hope that we can, as a society of caring people, create a protective circle around the poorest of our citizens as we find the smartest way to be a fiscally responsible nation.

The event left me with a wonderful new quote. Thirty-one years ago this week Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated in El Salvador. Why? Because he was going around saying this: “Es una caricatura del amor cuando se quiere apañar con limosna lo que se debe por justicia.”(It is only a caricature of love, when one seeks to fix through charity what is owed to justice.)