Vintage

As a kid, my treehouse was my castle: no parents reining me in, a ladder that pulled up, and nails sticking down through the ceiling — just long enough to keep out bullies taller than me. With my sliding tongue-in-groove panels, I could see who was coming. My refuge was the envy of other little kings.

The treehouse is long gone, but I still tap into that king-of-the-castle feel when I visit fortified towns in Europe, where thick stone walls that once protected citizens from enemies now corral Old World charm. Recently, I wrote about my favorite fortified towns.

If you’ve been to a great fortified town that you think I should check out, let me know!

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Yesterday, I shared a page from the original manuscript of my first guidebook. And today, I thought you might enjoy a peek at my first website. Here’s how ricksteves.com looked when it went live in 1996. It’s funny how much things change — and how much they stay the same. Our AOL email address is long gone, but we’re still working to help you make the most out of every mile, minute, and dollar on your next European adventure.

In 1979, a little battle was waging in my mind: Should I build a log cabin or write a travel book? I had the wooded lot in the Cascade Mountains, had picked the spot for the cabin, and took a log-cabin building class. I even had a line on the trailer I’d live in while constructing the cabin. But when the reality of peeling and aging logs set in, the competing big project — writing a travel book — won out.

Here’s a peek at the original manuscript of my first guidebook. I wrote it by simply writing out my lectures. (As you can see, I have always been evangelical about packing light!) I sweet-talked my girlfriend into typing it on a rented IBM Selectric, and my college roommate sketched the illustrations with a ball-point pen. Corrections were typed, carefully cut out, and glue-sticked onto the pages. Then I drove the precious bundle of pages to Snohomish Publishing, and — on my 25th birthday — returned to pick up 2,500 bound copies of the first edition of Europe Through the Back Door.

Click to enlarge.

I was so green, I didn’t know to put on an ISBN. And the cover was so simple, people in the media thought the finished product was a pre-publication edition. But it sold. What a long, strange trip it’s been since then!

The first edition of Europe Through the Back Door.

Thank you for sharing all your hilarious travel stories this week! I’ve had so much fun reading your comments. I’ve got one last topic for you, and it’s a good one: romantic culture shock. I’m sure many of us travelers have experienced this, and we can laugh about it now.

I remember one time, I fell in love with a Japanese girl I met in Europe back in my student vagabond days. I later traveled around Japan with her. We ventured to the island of Kyushu so I could be introduced to her very traditional family. I couldn’t visit their actual house, as we were not supposed to be that serious yet. So, this gathering was in a kind of mountain spa lodge. Before dinner, I had to soak in a hot tub with her father. He was drunk, and we were both naked. He didn’t speak English, and all he knew about America was how horrible we were to the Indians. While the hot tub was designed to relax you before dinner…all I could do was endure a righteous lecture about American atrocities…in Japanese. He was obsessed with the topic. At dinner, he continued his rant, stabbing the table with his chopsticks to emphasize his points. That was trying…but the girlfriend was well worth the trouble.

How about you? Have you ever experienced romantic culture shock?

It’s rare that I laugh out loud while reading comments online. But I’ve been doing exactly that over the last few days, reading all your crazy travel stories here on the blog and over on Facebook. Thank you! Let’s keep those laughs going. Up next, please share your memories of the most ridiculously awful experiences we’ve had at hotels. (It’s funny after the fact, right?)

For 20 years, I spent a good part of my travels visiting and assessing hotels for my guidebooks. From Helsinki to Lisbon to Istanbul, I’d assemble a list of places in the morning and then spend the entire day looking for winners. When it comes to hotels, I’ve seen just about everything.

Back when I led tours on a minibus, I once checked into a B&B with a small tour group. The place was right on a pagan “ley line” in England’s New-Agey town of Glastonbury. Within five minutes, we were all in the hallway, certain that the place was haunted. We grabbed our bags, and — like characters in a Halloween cartoon — we all ran to our little bus, loaded up, and hightailed it out of there.

While hotel beds are reliably good these days, in the old days, you always had to check them. Mattresses in the Mediterranean region were often big yellow sponges (very sweaty), and saggy bed frames routinely had me moving my mattress to the floor for some support.

In France’s Champagne region, a hotel I was staying at was wonderful in all regards — except for its rubber-lined bottom sheets. (These make me sweat. When I encounter one anywhere — even in the USA — I make a point of taking it off the bed, folding it up, and setting it in the hallway). I asked the owner, “Why the rubber sheets?” He said that using them is the only way he can protect his expensive mattresses…because so many tourists sample too much Champagne, then vomit in bed.

And in a dusty village in Turkey, I remember complaining to the man at the hotel reception desk that my sheet was dirty. He came up, checked the sheet, agreed with me…and turned the sheet over.

What about you? Any hilariously horrible hotel experiences?