Vintage

Thanks for all of the great stories you shared yesterday about language barrier fiascos you’ve experienced during your travels. I enjoyed lots of laughs.

Let’s keep the laughs going — I’d love to hear your travel stories about the unfortunate (but funny) medical snafus you’ve had on the road. Here’s mine: While traveling through the Middle East in my vagabond days, I had a serious and persistent case of diarrhea. I finally went to a doctor who put me on a strict diet of plain, boiled rice and tea. It worked really well. In fact, after several days on that diet, I became horribly constipated. I kept plugging along, and I remember actually being nostalgic about the runs I no longer had. (The end of that painful episode, while unforgettable, is one story I’ve never told…an experience that never made its way into the “anals” of Europe Through the Back Door lore.)

How about you? Have you had any medical experiences on the road that you look back on and laugh about now?

Thirty-five years ago, we licked the stamps, mailed out our first travel newsletter, and began the process of creating a community of travelers. It was 1982 — there was no Internet (or even fax machines), and travelers communicated with loved ones via “aerogram.”

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Back then, we had a few hundred people on our mailing list, we had published only one book, and we took about 50 travelers a year on tours (eight at a time, on a minibus with me behind the wheel). Now, we’re closing in on a half-million Facebook fans, we’ve published well over 50 guidebook titles, and over a hundred guides lead 22,000 travelers on Rick Steves’ Europe Tours every year.

In 1982, I was a piano teacher. I used my recital hall, Steves Studios, to share travel tips with 50 people at a time in my “World Travelers’ Slide Club.” Now we produce a weekly public radio show (Travel with Rick Steves) that airs on 400 stations across the country. We just produced show #498, and we’ve never charged a station a penny for the program. It is, in spirit, the direct descendant of the World Travelers’ Slide Club.

When I dropped these first newsletters into the mailbox, I never could have envisioned how, over the years, employing great people and embracing technology would so drastically expand our reach. But one thing hasn’t changed in 35 years: We still teach Americans to travel smartly — enjoying, as I liked to say even back then, “maximum experience for every mile, minute, and dollar.”

I recently found this video of a talk I gave 27 years ago, with my two-minute, circa-1990 take on terrorism. While the eyeglasses may be dated, the message is timeless: Keep things in perspective, don’t turn a small terrorist event into a big one by overreacting, and keep on travelin’. The differences between then and now: More people were being killed by terrorists in the 1980s than in the 2010s; back then, only 8,000 Americans were victims of gun-related homicides annually, while now that figure is closer to 13,000; and today we have sensationalistic, fear-mongering 24/7 commercial news working overtime to keep us on edge.

Earlier today, I was being interviewed on a radio station that needed to cut away for breaking news: In a breathless voice, the announcer reported, “In London, pedestrians have been mowed down by a car and a masked man with a big knife is inside of Parliament. Stand by for more news as it breaks.” With only that information, it was easy to imagine unspeakable carnage unfolding in the House of Commons. The reality — while undoubtedly tragic — is turning out to be much less dramatic, as the police quickly took control of the situation.

There has long been terrorism, and there always will be terrorism. I like to say, “Terrorism is the new normal.” But as this video shows, it’s far from new. And something else that hasn’t changed: If our reaction to these events is exaggerated, we’re still richly rewarding the terrorists for their actions.

In my experience, the most fearful people are those who don’t get out much. But the flipside of fear is understanding — and we gain understanding when we travel.  As you watch this vintage clip, please remember: The best way to stay safe is to keep on traveling — and striving to better understand and better fit into our beautiful world.