Smithsonian

June 4, 2010November 8, 2011

Dingle

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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 Dingle, Ireland.

Kathleen was old and frail, but picked up her step as she led me to the small-town cinema. She declared, “Tom Cruise is a wee little guy.” Everyone was all abuzz about where he and Nicole Kidman had slept.

I was in the town of Dingle, on the west coast of Ireland. And tonight, in Dingle’s homey theater, it seemed the entire town had gathered to watch the premiere of Far and Away — a movie that was partly filmed right here in Dingle. As the movie played, each time a bit player from the village appeared on screen, a rowdy uproar erupted. Knowing where to look in the movie, you could see telephone poles decorated like trees.

The movie depicted tough times — the 1890s, when impoverished people from villages like Dingle flocked to the New World in pursuit of a better life. These days, of course, Dingle is riding high on Ireland’s economic resurgence. But all it takes is a pensive stroll through the fields to remember the earlier pain and struggle of this land. Picking up a clod of earth, my friend Tim, Dingle’s retired police chief, explained how even the dirt had to be made by struggling peasants — sand and seaweed carried here by human beasts of burden from the distant shore.

Dingle’s a humble town. Each day, it feels like the main business is rolling out the empty kegs and rolling in the full ones. They claim to have more pubs per capita than any town in Ireland. And each evening, I walk around the block like a guy choosing a dance partner, considering where I’ll enjoy a pint.

Dingle’s town mascot has long been a dolphin named Fungie. This playful dolphin is thoroughly milked to stoke tourism. But to me, it seems that Fungie just brings people to town for the wrong reason. You don’t come to Dingle to see a freak dolphin; you come to experience a Gaeltacht town.

A Gaeltacht (a place where Gaelic — the traditional Irish language — is spoken) is a kind of national park for the traditional culture. As a Gaeltacht, Dingle gets special subsidies from the government. A precondition of this financial support is that towns use their Irish (Gaelic) name. But Dingle (or An Daingean in Irish) has voted down this dictate from Dublin. I think changing it back to An Daingean would be true in principle to the Gaelic movement, but just plain bad marketing. (It’s fun to say Dingle, but An Daingean — pronounced “on DANG-un” — is hard to say and to spell.) As a compromise, signposts spell it both ways.

The tip of the Dingle Peninsula is marked by a chalky statue of a crucifix. It faces the sea, but it seems like about half the time, it’s actually facing a cloud with zero visibility being whipped by sheets of rain. I imagine cows here have thicker eyelids, evolved over centuries of sideways rain. The Gallarus Oratory, a 1,300-year-old church made only of stone, is famously watertight — unless the rain is hosing in sideways. I’ve been splattered inside. I’ve crept over the Conor Pass with zero visibility, ragamuffin sheep nonchalantly appearing like ghosts in the milky cloud. I’ve huddled in farmhouses abandoned in the great famine of 1848, awaiting a chance to step out. Yes, the weather is a force on the west coast of Ireland. But when the sun comes out, everything rejoices.

May 26, 2010November 8, 2011

Memories of Istanbul

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I first visited Istanbul in the 1970s. Some of my earliest — and most vivid — memories of that trip are of the colorful locals. Scruffy kids sold cherry juice, and old men would grab huge cucumbers from wheeled carts, then peel, quarter, and salt them, and sell them for pennies. Traffic jams seemed to last all day…and drivers seemed to accept them as an excuse not to work.

Holding piping-hot hourglass-shaped glasses of tea tenderly by the cooler rim, I’d sip while Turks told me the wisdom of hot drinks on hot days: It heats up your body in order to make the heat of the day relatively cooler and more bearable. Sipping tea, we’d play backgammon with boards chattering all around with careening little dice — their handmade dots never not lining up.

Tourists would gather awestruck by a sound-and-light show, as the thunderous voice of the sultan, Suleyman the Magnificent, spun yarns of palace intrigue with the floodlit domes of the Blue Mosque towering overhead. (While a few tourist attractions around Europe still cling to the old sound-and-light technology, these days many of those shows seem almost comically antiquated.)

To intensify the Istanbul experience, I’d ride a dolmus (shared minibus taxi) into the suburbs, and wander through neighborhoods that had never encountered an American — places where locals would stare at me as if I couldn’t see them…as if I were an inanimate object. They just studied me like an intricate Brueghel painting. Being stared at like you’re a freak, sometimes you just decide to play the role. I’ll never forget the fun my friend and I had grabbing a football-shaped honeydew mellow, hiking it, and melodramatically going out for a pass and making the catch. Children would practice their English with me. They’d ask, “What is your name?” To confuse them I would say, “Four o’clock.”

I’d hang out in the venerable Pudding Shop, watching the older-than-me hippies gather and plan their across-Asia bus trips to India. Eating my sutlac — rice pudding with cinnamon — I’d dream about someday making that adventure. (Eventually I did.)

I visited Turkey every year through my twenties. It was the unplanned but natural cherry on top of every European adventure. Each year, the political tenor was different, depending upon who was in power there, who was president back home, and the latest propaganda. Politically naive pawns of the Cold War, the Turk on the street would flip-flop — one year, they’d say, “America: imperialist fascist.” The next year, they’d say, “America and Turkey friends” (with index fingers rubbing together in a way that seemed like some kind of sexual sign language).

While the 1970s magic in many places has been plowed under by modern affluence, exploring Istanbul in 2010 is every bit as rich an experience.

May 21, 2010November 8, 2011

Ferret Legging and Rustic Pubs: Escaping the Cotswold Cliches

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For three decades, I’ve said it’s a temptation for a travel writer to overuse the word “quaint,” and I reserve my use of that word to describe England’s Cotswold villages. The Cotswolds — while a world apart from London — are just a couple of hours’ drive away. This tidy little region of characteristic old towns is perfect for the American traveler looking to balance urban Britain with some thatched cuteness.

Each of Europe’s famous cutesy regions has a historical basis for its present-day charm. For the Cotswolds, it’s a combination of old sheep wealth (big fancy manor houses, gorgeous churches, and stately market towns — all paid for by wool) and isolation. The Cotswolds have been isolated from the rest of England both economically (since the wool trade collapsed) and physically (highway and train service to the region is sparse, making it a kind of backwater that missed the modern economic current).

Of course, these poster-child-pretty English villages are very touristy. And, as in just about any much-promoted region (Germany’s Rhineland, Italy’s Tuscany, Ireland’s Ring of Kerry, France’s Provence), the tourist circuit is a well-trampled route, with parking lots big enough for buses, hotels that can accommodate 50-person tour groups, and huggable traffic-free villages.

The challenge, of course, is to get behind the touristy facade. I make a point to leave Wiesbaden on the Rhine, Greve in Tuscany, and Killarney in Ireland to the big-bus tourists. The towns to avoid in the Cotswolds are Bourton-on-the-Water and Broadway. But there are always alternatives without the aggressive promotional budgets and favor of the national tourist board.

To get beyond the cliches, travelers need to find the rough underbelly. I have an appetite for local scuttlebutt that isn’t promoted by the sanitized, politically correct tourist boards. Ditch the glossy brochures, and gossip with locals in the pubs. Asking a native over a pint about traditions that persist even in the touristy present, I was told of “ferret legging” as a way of testing the toughness of young lads. They’d make the young man put on a pair of baggy pants, tie off the cuffs, then insert two angry ferrets (little weasel-like creatures) who would fight it out inside the pants while he was wearing them. (I don’t know if this still happens…but the image has certainly stuck with me.)

Admittedly, most Cotswold residents who can afford to live in these cutesy towns are escapees from the big city. They’re wealthy and enjoying the idyllic English retirement of their dreams. But the lanes, cemeteries, thatches, and old churches have a plush and fragrant connection with their past.

Cemeteries in Cotswold churchyards are often built up over years of burials, leaving the path to the village church actually lower than the graveyard ground level. Tolkien-esque trees seem to grip old churches. In Stow-on-the-Wold, I swear the side door to the church — flanked by two ancient yew trees — was the sight of the classic “Behold I stand at the door and knock” scene.

In the touristy Cotswolds, spend some time in the less-pretty towns in the less-pretty pubs, and be sure to talk to locals. And if someone wants to drop a couple of angry ferrets down your trousers, buy them a pint and say, “After you.”

May 19, 2010November 8, 2011

Sweet-and-Sour Lake Hallstatt

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When I think of my favorite places in Europe (other than the great capitals), they are where both nature and culture mix. While big-time resorts with big-time promotional budgets look good on the Web, in reality they’re more concrete than charm, with jammed parking lots and cookie-cutter hotel rooms. I’ll take the offbeat places, where creaky locals walk gingerly on creaky floorboards, where each balcony has a lovingly watered and one-of-a-kind flowerbox, and where swans know just the right time to paddle by for scraps from diners at lakeside dinner tables.

I like to say that the town of Hallstatt, on the lake of Hallstatt (two hours south of Salzburg, in Austria), is “where locals commune with nature.” It’s rare that a town’s charm will get me out of bed early. But there’s something about the glassy waters of Lake Hallstatt viewed from the high end of town: The church spire is mirrored in the tranquil water, and then the shuttle boat from the train station across the lake cuts through — like a knife putting a swirl in the icing on a big cake.

Back in my rented room (Zimmer in German), my hostess is Frau Zimmermann. For years I stayed in her place mainly because I couldn’t get over the idea that her name meant “Mrs. Room-for-rent-man.” Her breakfast room is where I came up with the descriptor “well-antlered.” That means more than just lots of trophies on the wall. A well-antlered place creaks with tradition, from the homemade marmalade to the down-filled comforters, and from the apron that the hostess wears to the fact that you don’t email your credit card number to make a reservation…you just phone her, agree on a date and price for your room, give her your name, and then show up.

As I dine lakeside in Hallstatt, the swans crane their necks for bits of bread. With a generous basket to parcel out, I feel like I’m running an orphanage. As they stretch greedily, reaching for each bit of crust I loft, I think they do it well enough that if they were cranes, they’d be swaning. Free bread makes the once-graceful swans a flailing gaggle of hungry grubbers.

Traditional green felt hats distinguished by jaunty decorative feathers are big in Austria. On my first trip to Europe, when I was just a teenybopper, my Dad and I each bought one of these characteristic hats and had a friendly competition filling it with souvenir pins and fancy feathers. Now, 40 years later, I happen to be in town during the annual feather-in-the-hat party, and local men are all out with their finest Tirolean-type hats — each with a very proud feather sprouting from the rim. Many men have handlebar moustaches to match. Watching them strut around in their lederhosen worn shiny by a lifetime of such rituals, I consider life before tourism here in what would have been a remote community at the deepest point of a long, dead-end lake.

Facing the lake is the home of a man who fills his house with debris he’s collected from bottom of Lake Hallstatt. Of course, the history here goes back literally millennia. But the most fascinating treasure from the lakebed dates from just 65 years ago. It’s the trove of Nazi paraphernalia he’s gathered, including piles of war medallions. As I try to sort this out, his explanation makes perfect sense: When it became clear that Germany would lose World War II, throughout the Third Reich, anyone who had won any honors would chuck them any way they could. Lakes offered a perfect solution. In a post-Nazi world, who wants trophies honoring their heroic contribution to that regime on their wall or bookshelf?

As the swans grab their bread, as Frau Zimmermann hangs her comforters over view balconies to fluff up and air, and as the men display their hat-capping finery, I gaze out at the lake. I imagine a scene two generations earlier, when once-fierce Nazi heroes, now filled with fright, came to the lakeside under cover of darkness, and hurled their treasured medals — evidence of their complicity with Hitler — into Lake Hallstatt…my vote for the most beautiful lake in Austria.

May 14, 2010November 8, 2011

Rome by Night

Once you’ve been out on the town in Rome after dark, going out for the evening in a big American city is never quite the same. Rome has a few fast-food joints, but they’re held at bay by a stony cityscape that celebrates slow food instead. Waiters have worked so long together that they seem to communicate on their own frequency as they scurry their dishes back and forth. Scruffy boys selling single roses circulate among sidewalk tables, testing a wary truce they’ve worked out with the restaurateur — and finessing sales pitches that almost add charm to the ambience. Cars are lodged sloppily on curbs, and black-and-white notices announcing the newly dead are pasted haphazardly to walls.

Each slice of downtown Rome changes throughout the day and evening. What might be a tiny vegetable market in the day (Monet painting) becomes a destination for dressy couples going out to eat in the evening (how do her high heels work on the cobbles?)…and then, late at night, an edgy gathering place for those who ate at home and are now all about drinking. Squares enlivened by fountains shine after dark. While the architect who designed those Baroque fountains had no inkling of electronic illumination, the fountains seem made-to-order for thoughtful floodlighting.

Back in 1999, I went to Rome ready to make a TV episode entitled “The Best of the Eternal City.” But as the millennium approached, the best of the Eternal City was all still under scaffolding. I was traumatized. I remember sitting down with my producer and cameraman at the hotel’s breakfast table and exploring our options. Half the visual icons of the city were marred by scaffolding. Not only would the show be ugly if we shot it as planned; but by the time it aired, all the scaffolding would be down, and the famous sights would be better-looking than ever — and just perfect for a TV crew like ours.

We considered going home; heading for Sicily to film a program there; or rewriting the script to give Rome a new angle. I had never done this before (and I hope to never do it again), but we decided to salvage something out of Rome and come up with a new script. The show was called “Rome: Baroque, After Dark,” and shooting the city after dark turned out to be a delight. Rather than arenas and temples, we enjoyed convivial piazzas with kids who kick soccer balls until midnight, hand gestures that mean “absolutely delicious,” and men fawning over their neighbors’ Vespas.

The shoot worked out fine. And two years later, in the next millennium, we came back and shot the show we had intended to shoot in 1999. The scaffolding was all down, and the Eternal City was spiffed up fit for a caesar.