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Baden-Baden: Globalization and Leaky Borders

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To commemorate the Smithsonian Presents Travels with Rick Steves magazine — now on sale online, and at newsstands nationwide — Rick is blogging about the 20 top destinations featured in that issue. One of those destinations is the German spa resort of Baden-Baden.

Germany’s spa town of Baden-Baden is a fun and relaxing place to splash around in a thermal bath. But, as with many resort towns, a more substantial history bubbles just beneath the surface. And, in the case of Baden-Baden, that history still has ripples today.

After the czars banned gambling, many Russians flocked to Baden-Baden, creating their own little Russian enclaves. (Many lost their fortunes, borrowed a pistol, and did themselves in on the so-called “Alley of Sighs.”) While the Russian expat community dwindled for a while, in recent years (after the end of communism), ultra-wealthy Russians have sought out safe property investments all over Europe…and Baden-Baden has re-emerged as a favorite destination. Russians have bought up property here like crazy. You’ll see Russian on multilingual signs around town. On my last visit, the lady who ran the launderette spoke German and Russian…but no English.

This is worrying to locals. The mayor — saying his town must either take action or let itself become essentially Russian-owned — recently declared that Russians were no longer allowed to purchase Baden-Baden real estate.

With immigration a persistent and complex issue in the USA, it’s good to remember that we’re not the only nation struggling with how to handle the realities of race, class distinctions, foreign investment, and use of government services. I see the same challenges all over Europe.

A vast suburb of Tallinn, Estonia, is filled with Russians. They were planted there during Soviet rule, and — although Estonia is now its own independent nation — they still refuse to embrace the local language, Estonian. They live as a separate, Russian-speaking community within Tallinn.

Norwegians — who pride themselves on not being racist — are upset with unemployed Pakistanis living in their country who, they say, don’t share the Norwegian work ethic, but take advantage of the luxurious Norwegian welfare state. I sense that Norwegians don’t know how to discuss this issue comfortably.

I was just in Gibraltar, and the buzz there was about a $20 million mosque built with money from the Middle East for the humble local community of 900 Muslims workers.

Just as people with less money go to work in wealthy lands, people with more money turn their vacation and retirement funds into maximum joy and comfort in cheaper places. I have a friend who’s a retired postman living very comfortably on his meager pension in southern Portugal. A Venetian friend of mine is excited about her new holiday home in Tunisia. No crowds, great beaches, very cheap — she said Tunisia is all the rage among Italians. Belgians have staked out their enclave in Spain’s Costa del Sol — just one more community where the stray Spaniard complains that some eateries don’t offer menus in Spanish. Americans are buying fixer-uppers in droves in rural Italy. And they’re doing it with the encouragement of a government that appreciates the economic boost these romantic Frances Mayes-wannabes bring to regions that need expat newcomers to keep from withering.

There are immigration issues everywhere you travel. Second-generation Turkish Germans can honestly say “Ich bin ein Berliner.” Construction work throughout France would slow to a trickle without Polish builders. While many are now careful to refer to Gypsies as “Roma,” there’s still not enough money to build a Holocaust memorial in Berlin to this group, which suffered a genocide that was comparable, in many ways, to what happened to the Jews.

Like the Swiss are afraid of minarets, the French are afraid of women with covered heads, and America is afraid of a leaky southern border, a lot of anxiety is driving current legislation in all these countries. In Europe, as in the USA, it’s hard to talk about immigration and race issues for fear of offending people. But one thing is clear: Race and immigration concerns are not unique to any one country, and they are here to stay.

While travel may not give us answers, it does give us perspective and a clear sense that we will all ultimately live together…whether we like it or not. The other day, a frightened white woman asked me to sign a petition, saying, “We’ll soon be in the minority.” As a traveler, I know “we” already are in the minority on this planet…and that’s fine with me.

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Harley can’t get up. What about Stalin?

These paintings in Tallinn’s KUMU museum are a reminder that Stalin said, “Death solves all problems. No person…no problem.”
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Germans love their powerful motorcycles and black leather road gear. Twice on this trip I’ve helped a big, strong German right his tipped motorcycle. They seem so ominous in their gear on their big bikes, and then so humbled when the bike tumbles in a parking lot and they can’t lift it up without help. It reminds me of a big, strong medieval knight who’s fallen off his horse and can’t get up.

Being in Western Europe, you think a lot about Hitler. Being farther east, you think of Stalin. He was evil beyond words. One of his favorite sayings: “Death solves all problems. No person, no problem.” While it seems Hitler is universally considered the worst person ever, there’s no question Stalin killed millions more than the German dictator.

Traveling through Germany, you’re really aware of the collective guilt the German people feel for the Holocaust. I don’t get that feeling from Russians about the atrocities in their history. But were the Russians collectively any less responsible for bringing us the horrors of Stalin? It seems people don’t blame the Russians for Stalin like they blame the Germans for Hitler, perhaps because Russians were victims of their own dictator more than Germans. But Stalin couldn’t do it alone any more than Hitler.

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Tourists in Siberia and a Singing Revolution

The Festival Song Grounds in Tallinn mean freedom to a million Estonians. This is where choral music helped bring down the USSR.
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It’s amazing what a stretch of water can do. The Baltic Sea separates Sweden and Finland from Estonia. And the struggles of the last couple of generations couldn’t be more different on opposite sides of the Baltic. Traveling to Estonia spices up any Scandinavian visit — especially if you connect with the people and let them tell their story.

My guide, Mati, spent his time in the USSR military driving Soviet officers around the Crimea. Estonian boys got this plum assignment because they were considered smarter (and therefore safer) than village boys from the interior of Russia.

With Finland within rabbit-ear distance, Estonians were the only people in the USSR who got Western TV during the Cold War. Mati remembers when the soft porn flick Emmanuelleaired on Finnish TV. No one here had seen anything remotely like it. There was a historic migration of Estonians from the south of the country to Tallinn, where they received Finnish TV. Nine months later, the country experienced a spike in births.

Estonia gets jerked around a lot. It hopes to get the euro in 2011. While I can’t imagine a change in currency, for Estonians it’s no big deal. Mati’s grandmother lived through seven different currencies.

When Mati asked his grandmother where his grandpa had gone, she said, “He’s a tourist in Siberia.” That was the standard answer to shield little kids from the hell they were living in. After freedom, Mati learned that his grandma had a bag packed under her bed for the surprise visit from the local police that she dreaded but half expected. We all live with stress and anxiety…but imagine living fifty years with that fear, as she did.

In Mati’s youth, one-sixth of the world was technically open to travel (the entire USSR), but there was no way to get a plane ticket or a hotel room. In an age when all Estonian recreational boats were destroyed (1950s and 1960s) because they were considered potential “escape vehicles,” one-sixth of the world was a prison.

After independence, in the early 1990s, Mati and five friends built a business importing classic American cars and selling them to rich Russian guys. One day, four of Mati’s friends went to Russia to collect payment on a car and were killed — riddled with machine-gun bullets.

Mati said, “The Russian mob makes Sicily’s mob look like a kindergarten. Putin directed the KGB. If someone thinks Putin doesn’t understand, forgive me, but you are a fool or you are blind.” Mati decided to drop his car business and become a tour guide.

Tallinn’s huge Song Festival Grounds looks like an oversize Hollywood Bowl. Standing overlooking the grassy expanse, with the huge stage tiny in the distance, my guide explained that when Estonia was breaking away from the USSR, a third of the entire country — over 300,000 people — gathered here to sing.

Imagine little Estonia, with less than a million people, free for 20 years from 1920 until 1939, but lodged between Hitler and Stalin. Mati said, “We are so few in number we must emphasize that we exist. We had no weapons. All we could do was be together and sing. This was our power.”

And that spirit of song led to Estonia’s stirring Singing Revolution. I’m embarrassed that my guidebook coverage completely missed this aspect of a visit here. I’ve visited Tallinn several times, and the thrill of this phenomenon (and the historic importance of the Song Festival Grounds) never hit me. With this visit, I was so inspired, I purchased the documentary movie The Singing Revolution online. This marked the start of a new age in tourism for me: be inspired, go back to the hotel, buy the movie on iTunes, and enhance my experience by watching it right there. In the future, this will be commonplace among engaged travelers. (Curious? Visit www.singingrevolution.comto watch the movie’s trailer.)

The Soviet Union was good at wiping out cultures. The USSR intentionally moved people all around to destroy ethnicities and make their citizens simply Soviets. The Livonian culture died out in the 20th century. They tried to wipe out the little Estonian culture, too. They moved in Russians. They drafted Estonian boys, sent them to far corners, and gave them incentives to marry into other regions. Mati recalled how Russian girls swooned at boys in uniform — especially Estonians — and there was plenty of opportunity to marry.

But there’s something resilient about Estonian culture. Mati said, “I’ve been in most of Europe and what I miss when I return is this black bread. I cannot live one week without it. I spent one week in Thailand, and we forgot our black bread. We were very unhappy.”

Having traveled with Mati, Estonia will forever be a more vivid place on my globe.

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Tonight It’s Leftovers

I’m just wrapping up this trip. And my refrigerator is cluttered with still-edible blog scraps. So tonight, we’re having leftovers.

Just like Americans used to clap when a plane landed safely after a long flight (back in the 1970s), on two successive Turkish Air flights I noticed that Turks clap today as they land safely.

English drivers monitor their driving record carefully to maintain their favorable insurance rating. Moving violations are given various points (e.g., 3 points for speeding). When they get 12 points, Brits loose their license. Points stay on their record for four years. Everyone I talked to in Britain was nursing their record along with somewhere between 3 and 6 points.

 

London’s emerging Manhattan at Canary Wharf.
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Back when Britannia ruled the waves, London’s Canary Wharf was the world’s biggest shipping harbor. Then it became a run-down wasteland. Now it’s hosting my nomination for Europe’s most impressive urban development. London is shifting east. There’s a whole new Tube network evolving east of London. The 2012 Olympics will be the district’s coming-out party, as most of the events and venues will be there. Wandering around the Docklands (Tube: Canary Wharf) was like finding a slick, futuristic Manhattan with an English accent.

I found the English were really caught up in the American presidential campaign. They say this is in part because of the popularity of the TV series The West Wing,which has educated an entire generation of Brits on American politics, and is still very popular in the UK. When I told an English friend I thought American travel to England was down, he disagreed, saying, “Americans are still coming to the UK because as Americans are less popular in the world, England is a refuge…a place where Americans can tell if people are talking about them.”

When I meet backpackers, I quiz them on shoestring travel in 2008. Most find rooms via www.hostelworld.com, which lists and assesses the countless hostels that house people who don’t stay in hotels. And most are enjoying Europe on $80 a day.

I’ve never seen a car with a bumper sticker on it in Europe. Why are we so into bumper stickers, while sticking what you think about something on your car never even occurred to any European?

I don’t make a habit of responding to comments on this blog, but Ken’s question (responding to my previous entry), implying that I was contributing to the Russian Bear’s economy and image by choosing this “monumental” time to start our tour program there, deserves an explanation. Yes, we have just added a Best of the Baltics tour that includes St. Petersburg in Russia. And it happens to be our best-selling tour right now. (You can find out more about this new itinerary on our 2009 Tourswebsite.)

Like most people, I didn’t anticipate the Russian aggression against Georgia. But, to answer Ken’s concern, this breaking development makes me more enthusiastic about a tour including Russia, rather than less enthusiastic.

I believe many people, when confronted with an enemy, are predisposed to shut off communication, hunker down, and fight. And I believe that when you travel into “enemy territory,” you can make connections that help encourage understanding and dispel fears. (That’s why I took our film crew to Iran this spring.) I believe people-to-people communication (along with the costly-but-successful US battle of economic attrition and our hard military stance) helped us get through the Cold War with the USSR without it going hot.

We will always have enemies and people whose goals are at odds with ours. While interviewing Lord Alderdice, Member of Parliament and architect of the Irish peace, for my radio show (which will air on the weekend of September 6), I learned that the only alternative to needless wars (which ironically make us weaker on the international scene) is perpetual negotiation and compromise and creative waging of peace — which, I believe, will make us stronger.

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Tehran: Heavenly Pistachios…and a Pinch of Valium?

American journalist mugs with Revolutionary Guard.
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Tehran, a mile-high metropolis of 14 million people.
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Cameraman Karel gets photographed for his press pass.
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Our welcome included building-sized anti-US murals showing American flags with Stars of David and dropping bombs painting the stripes.
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I was hesitant to tell anyone about this trip until it was actually happening. One day into this experience, we are definitely here. Revolutionary Guards who can be coaxed to smile, four-lane highways intersecting with no traffic lights, “Death to America” posters, and big warm welcoming smiles…Iran is a fascinating and complex paradox.

Tehran is a mile-high metropolis of 14 million people. With one day of filming down, I’m in a fancy hotel on the 14th floor, enjoying a view of a vast city at twilight, lights twinkling right up a snow-capped mountain. I’m munching the best pistachios I’ve ever tasted (and I am a pistachio connoisseur) from an elegant woven tray and nursing a tall glass of pomegranate juice. I cruise the channels on my TV — CNN, BBC, and lots of mood-setting programming — perfect for praying… One channel shows the sun setting on Mecca, with its kaaba (the big black box focus of pilgrim worship), in real time. In an urban jungle like Tehran, life can be so good — if you have money.

Our local guide (who doesn’t want to be called a “government minder”) is a big help and very good. Today we dropped by the foreign press office to get our press badges. There a beautiful and properly covered woman took mug shots for our badges and carefully confirmed the pronunciation of our names in order to transliterate them into Farsi.

Filming is complicated on the streets of Tehran because there is no single authority in charge — many arms of government overlap and make rules that conflict with each other. Permissions to film somewhere are limited to a specific time window. If we have permission to film a certain building, it doesn’t mean we can film it from the balcony of a teahouse that we don’t have permission to film in, or from any angle that shows a bank — as those are not to be filmed. When we film a shop window, a security guard is on us immediately. Our guide/minder is kept busy asserting himself when someone representing some different branch of government puts up a road block. He makes it all possible. People here like to say, “Iranian democracy: You are given lots of options…and then we make your choice for you.”

We can talk to whomever we like — but it reminds me of my early trips to the USSR, when only those with nothing to lose would risk talking openly to us (at least when our “guide” was present). So many who’ve commented on the blog have assumed I am not troubled by the lack of freedom here. Civil liberties for women, religious minorities, and anyone who chooses not to embrace this self-described “revolution of values” are, to me the mark of a modern, free, and, I believe, sustainable democracy. Those both for and against my trip here all agree with that. A key word here is sustainable. I believe — given time and a chance to evolve on their cultural terms — the will of the people ultimately prevails. For now, this country is not free (and no one here claims it is). A creepiness that comes with big government pervades the place. I wonder how free-minded people cope. I am excited to sort this out as our trip goes along.

At the Shah’s palace — a museum since he was overthrown in 1978 — an old aristocratic woman came up to me and said, “We are united and we are proud. When you go home, you must tell the truth.” Iranians believe that Western media makes their culture look menacing, and never shows its warm, human and gracious side. I assured her that we were here to show the people of Iran rather than its bombastic government.

I understand well-employed people here make $5,000 to $15,000 a year, and pay essentially no tax. It seems to me that the economy doesn’t need to be very efficient, and taxes don’t matter much to a government funded by oil. Measuring productivity at a glance, things seem pretty low-energy. While the Islamic Revolution is not anti-capitalism, there seems to be a lack of incentive to really be efficient.

I can tell from our first day that the people of Iran will be the big joy of our visit — everyone’s mellow, quick to smile, very courteous. It’s almost like the country’s on valium. (But then, perhaps Iranians are just not driven as we are by capitalist values to work hard and enjoy material prosperity.)

In a bookstore a woman patiently showed me fine poetry books. As we left, she gave me a book for free. At the Shah’s palace, the public toilet was far away and a guard winked and slipped me secretly to a staff toilet — I imagine used by the Shah’s lackeys. The folks at the travel agency who set up our tour gave us each a platter of lemony pistachios…the best I’ve ever had. (My lips are puckered with them now as I type, as they are my standard bedside snack.)

I step out onto my hotel-room balcony to hear the hummm of 14 million people and marvel at fresh snow whitening the mountain above the ritzy high-rise condos of North Tehran. Looking straight down, the hotel’s entryway is buzzing with activity, as the hotel’s hosting a conference on Islamic unity. The circular driveway is lined by the flags of 30 nations. (Huge collections of flags seem to be common here — perhaps because it provides a handy opportunity to exclude the Stars and Stripes. Apart from being featured in hateful political murals, I haven’t seen an American flag.)

A van with an X-ray machine is permanently parked outside the entrance. Everyone who enters the hotel needs to pass their bags through this first. It’s interesting to see that Iran, a country we feel we need to protect ourselves from, handles security the same way we do.