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Destination: Netherlands

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Wonderfully Weird: Legos, Doorbells, and Anne Frank

Imagine getting your hands on 25 million Lego bricks — a virtually unlimited supply. What would you build?

I had high hopes for the Lego House in Billund, Denmark. Not only was I eager to write up the experience for the next edition of our Rick Steves Scandinavia guidebook; as someone who grew up playing with Legos, I figured I’d also enjoy it. What I did not expect was an epiphany about human nature. But then, travel is all about the joy of unexpected discovery.

The Lego House is a giant white structure in the middle of a small park in the center of Billund — just up the street from where Ole Kirk Christiansen started his wooden-toy business in 1932. The building looks like it was built from (you guessed it) Legos. Inside, the 50-foot-tall “Tree of Creativity” — made of 6.3 million bricks, its boughs supporting delightful creations — rockets up through the atrium.

Curling up the staircase, you arrive at the Masterpiece Gallery to learn about the AFOL (“Adult Fans of Lego”) community, who specialize in assembling MOCs (“My Own Creations”). These wildly inventive sculptures — which break free from the rigid architectural plans that come with any Lego set — are displayed throughout the Lego House, each one labeled with its creator, who come from all over the world.

From this central hub, the Lego House’s exhibits are organized into “experience zones” that are color-coded to emphasize different qualities that Lego play can bring out: green for socialization; blue for cognitive skills; red for creativity; and yellow for emotional intelligence.

When evaluating sights like this for our guidebooks, I tend to approach them with a healthy skepticism, verging on cynicism. (Are you familiar with my thoughts on Salzburg’s Sound of Music tours?) And it struck me as pretty bold for a plastic plaything to make such lofty claims… covering so many developmental bases in one fell swoop. Was this attraction merely a money-grubbing incarnation of crass corporate commercialization — a massive come-on to hoodwink kids and their parents into sinking even more cash into their Lego collections?

And yet, as I wandered from zone to zone, I found myself completely won over. It wasn’t just the hands-on activities in each section — for example, creating your own “animal with emotions” to upload and dance on a giant screen; or designing and testing a race car at the test track; or the remarkably detailed model of a gigantic city packed with fun-to-scrutinize details and fascinating Easter eggs. (Though I will admit, that was pretty cool.)

No, more than the “exhibits,” what got to me were the people. Huddled around the base of an 18-foot-tall waterfall of multicolored bricks — immersed in a sea of Legos — were people playing, people building, people laughing, people enjoying.

And those people — like the bricks they were stacking together — came in every conceivable type. They were young and old, they were rich and poor, they were Europeans and Americans and Indians and Chinese and Africans… a United Nations of humanity, all playing side-by-side, like a real-life Benetton ad or a Sesame Street teachable moment. Suddenly, I found myself touched to consider how many millions of people, around the world, grew up playing with the same toys I did.

Looking back on my own childhood, I remember how I adored my Legos. I could spend endless hours stacking and unstacking them, creating my own buildings and spaceships and dioramas. Today, I have friends who still build elaborate Lego sets (a COVID-era hobby that never went away); and I also have a pair of young nephews who count Legos among their favorite toys. Something about this “simple plaything” is far from simple, and seemingly universal.

But… why?

I think it’s because life is incredibly difficult, even for kids. (Especially for kids.) Every day, we’re told what we can’t do and say and feel. And we’re not always equipped with the tools we need to grapple with those hard realities of existence. Lego provides those tools, letting us use them in whatever way we find most helpful in that moment — whether that means engineering elaborate and detailed constructions, or going wild with rule-breaking creativity, or just scattering them around the room like a spring rainstorm… for an unassuming parent to step on in the middle of the night.

There’s a reason kids love Legos — and why people who want to better understand kids also love Legos. My mother, a retired clinical psychologist who often worked with children, could learn a lot from what a young patient built with their Legos, and how they built it, and what they had to say about their creation. Legos are the Rorschach Test of our time: You can make anything. So… what do you want to make?

Another thing I noticed, as I toured the exhibit, was that the Lego House was filled with misfits… oddballs… quirky characters. Some were merely socially awkward, shy, pushy, a little too excited; others appeared to have physical or developmental disabilities. I was suddenly very aware that everything here was designed to be accessible to all. And I watched many visitors taking full advantage of those adaptations, having the absolute time of their lives, with no regard for what a clueless observer like me might see as a “limitation.” They could simply be themselves and be in the moment, enjoying the vibrant mountains of Legos along with everyone else.

Of course, I’m an oddball too — someone who spends a hundred days each year far from home, wandering around Europe, obsessing over making guidebooks flawless. I get disproportionately excited by collecting and sharing arcane tidbits with my readers. (For example, did you know “Lego” stands for LEg GOdt, Danish for “play well”? And that it also means “I put together” in Latin — but that’s sheer coincidence?) When I’m in the middle of an intense research trip, I get jazzed about heading back to my hotel for a couple of productive hours writing on my laptop — which sounds so much more appetizing a fancy dinner. Weird!

But then, each of us is “weird’ in our own wonderful way, aren’t we? Think about it: Have you ever met someone who was actually “normal”? And if so, how long did it to take you to figure out that they, too, had their quirks: an unusual hobby, an inexplicable obsession, a hard-to-explain fetish, a problematic sense of humor, a hang-up that only they could fully understand? Sometimes, the more “normal” they try to seem, the weirder they are.

And so there I was, a weirdo surrounded by fellow weirdos — united, and comforted, in our collective weirdness — each of us drawn to those heaps of multicolored plastic bricks. And we were given access to 25 million of them to create whatever we could possibly imagine… each of us empowered to make an “MOC” (or several) all our own. Imagine: No two creations will ever be the same… and not a single one will ever be boring. How staggeringly human!

So then: What did I build? I must admit: nothing. I was too busy scurrying around, taking notes, thinking about how I’d describe this place in our guidebook, pondering my own childhood and the universal appeal of Legos, and watching the clock tick down until I had to leave… if I wanted to squeeze in the other sights on my itinerary.

Wait, what?! You went all the way to Lego House, had access to millions of Legos, and didn’t build a thing?

I know… weird, right?

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My Lego House experience reminded me of a similar epiphany I enjoyed during a visit last spring to Amsterdam. I was walking along a residential street, several blocks from the touristy canals of the historical center, when a bank of doorbells stopped me in my tracks.

Instead of adhering to a standardized template for this building’s buzzers, each resident had provided their own nameplate, with their own idiosyncratic flair. And each one was as individual as the person it represented.

Scanning those nameplates, I could really imagine the face of a human being behind each one. It wasn’t just a list of names; the irregularity of the labels embodied how this building contained an eclectic mix of personalities, hopes, dreams, tastes, dislikes, desires, fears, and, yes, weirdnesses.

Later that week, in the former shipyard-turned-hipster-hotspot of NDSM, another sight grabbed my attention: A glorious, several-stories-high street art mural of Anne Frank.

What struck me wasn’t just the medium — spray paint on the side of a building, casting a patchwork of colorful rectangles on Anne’s smiling face, instead of a black-and-white photograph. It was also the message: “Let me be myself.”

Of course, that’s precisely the story of Anne Frank: She was a young girl with a big personality and an exuberantly complicated inner life, forced to hide away in a secret annex because she also happened to be Jewish — at time when her city was occupied by an antisemitic, fascistic regime.

In our cynical, overheated, politicized age, people roll their eyes at ideas like “tolerance” and “letting people be themselves.” But the cautionary tale of Anne Frank — and the 102,000 other Dutch Jews murdered in the Holocaust — reminds us of the stakes of intolerance. Everyone, regardless of their politics, loves Anne. We love Anne because she dreams so big, beyond the walls of her tiny annex; she deserved a bigger space in which to not only dream, but to live out those dreams. To be herself. What would Anne have made with all those Legos, if she’d lived long enough to see them?

The Dutch learned some hard lessons from World War II and the Holocaust, and from the centuries of Catholic-versus-Protestant carnage that preceded it. That’s why Amsterdammers, quite famously, go out of their way to let people be themselves. For example, in 2001, the Netherlands was the first nation in the world to recognize same-sex marriage. (They’re in good company: Denmark, the birthplace of Lego, became the very first nation to grant legal rights to same-sex partnerships in 1989.) It’s also why this city is synonymous with decriminalized marijuana and legal sex work. Amsterdam is built upon a live-and-let-live ethos, which is rooted in agonizing historical lessons that doing the opposite ends in tragedy.

Another thing that strikes visitors to today’s Amsterdam is its diversity. Strolling the canals, you see people from every imaginable background sharing a stunning 17th-century city that was built on profits from colonial exploitation and the transatlantic slave trade. This complicated heritage is another reason the Dutch are determined to do better.

Amsterdammers like each other, or don’t like each other, as individuals. I imagine the people represented by all those doorbell nameplates don’t always get along. But they always accept each other’s right to exist.

Consider another Amsterdam icon, the tulip: It begins life as a knotty, ugly, dirty bulb. It looks like a misshapen tumor… something you want to bury deep in the ground, if only so that you never have to see it again. But then, with proper care, it sends up a green shoot. And when it opens up, you never know quite what color and shape its petals will take — but it’s always beautiful.

That’s why, upon visiting Denmark’s Lego House — where toddlers and kids and teens and adults and seniors from around the world convene to play with millions upon millions of colorful bricks, each building their own creations that could only be built by them — I found myself thinking about Dutch doorbells, Anne Frank, and knotty tulip bulbs.

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We live in an uncertain, often unnerving time, when the political pendulum swings to dizzying extremes, and it often feels the ground is shifting beneath our feet. Perhaps understandably, we’re turning on each other: reducing one another to a political talking point, a red baseball cap, a nationality, an immigration status, a long-ago misstep or misstatement. There are powerful forces in our society that stand to benefit from this divisive trend — in fact, they’re counting on it, because it distracts us from our shared humanity and overlapping values.

But travel is the antidote to all of that. Whether you lose yourself while building with endless Legos, or learn about the cautionary tale of Anne Frank, or pause to enjoy the tulips, or simply find yourself pondering a random row of doorbells, travel reminds us that — in the end — we’re all just people: beautifully different, wonderfully weird people.

On my last train ride in Denmark, I noticed a sign in the window — a piece of instruction for passengers. The message was not “No smoking” or “No feet on the seats” or “If you ride without a ticket, we’ll fine you.” It was simply this:

It’s a simple request — but there’s so much behind it. Consideration feels in short supply these days; it’s a privilege and an inspiration to spend some time in a society that still values it.

Consideration means treating one another with respect, even when we disagree, and extending one another the benefit of the doubt. Consideration means letting people be themselves. Consideration means making sure everyone gets a chance to play with the Legos — because you never know what wonderfully weird things they might create.

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The Watchers of the Night Watch

On the upper floor of Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, a grand hall is filled with iconic Dutch masterpieces. Among its many treasures, Rembrandt’s Night Watch occupies a privileged position, hovering ethereally at the end of the hall, as if a shimmering high altar of Dutch art.

This large canvas — fourteen and a half feet wide by twelve feet tall — was commissioned in 1642 as a group portrait. The Night Watch depicts a militia consisting not of highly trained soldiers, but of shopkeepers, merchants, and local bigwigs. In mid-17th-century Holland, things were changing rapidly. A generations-long battle for Dutch independence from Spain (now called, without hyperbole, the Eighty Years’ War) was drawing to a close. By the time the members of the Night Watch assembled for this portrait, Spanish forces had been pushed deep into Belgium, allowing Amsterdam and other Dutch cities to flourish. Militias like the Night Watch, once necessary for municipal defense, had become merely ceremonial…social clubs for wartime cosplay and business networking. Amsterdam was a booming hub of commerce, on the cusp of a Golden Age. And upwardly mobile merchants — like the pepole in this painting — were already making their fortunes.

And yet, what vaults this canvas to greatness is not its subject matter, but  its shrewd, innovative artistry. Rembrandt, then in his mid-30s, took a conventional group portrait — staid, static, perfectly lit — and turned it on its ear. Instead, Rembrandt captured a mob scene: members of the Night Watch are scattered across the frame, looking this way and that, in motion, interacting with one another, sliding between dark shadow and glaring light, in some cases leaving their features mostly obscured. Individual personalities leap off the canvas. And I perceive something subversive, even sarcastic, in Rembrandt’s take. You can imagine him responding to critics — perhaps a cloth merchant, annoyed that you can only make out half of his face — by saying, “You said you were a militia. Is this not what a militia looks like?”

The painting is, no doubt, striking. And yet, on this visit, I found myself even more captivated by something else.

Rembrandt’s fragile masterpiece has been placed within a gigantic plexiglass case, giving the painting room to breathe during a recent restoration. And that case is surrounded on all sides by visitors from every corner of the earth — creating a parallel mob scene even more chaotic than the one depicted on the canvas. Museumgoers press their hands and faces against the smudged glass, as if medieval pilgrims seeking proximity to a holy relic. They become human tripods, stretching their arms to their limits as they hold phones and cameras high, angling them this way and that, trying with futility to resolve the glare separating them from Rembrandt’s greatness.

Something about this spectacle strikes me as absurd: The case, thrusting far out into the room, is filled with more than two thousand cubic feet of nothingness. It’s an airlock, insulating Rembrandt’s 17th century from our contemporary world. It’s an empty void in the very center of the most crowded room, in the most overtouristed city, in the most densely populated country in Europe.

Circling around the side of the cube — to the only part of the hall not jammed with people — I look at the canvas, distorted from this sharp angle…and then back at the scrum facing it. The Night Watch, while engaged in boisterous motion, are strong, proud, and confident; the Watchers of the Night Watch — we 21st-century tourists — have an air of disheveled desperation. Suddenly, I put myself in the shoes of the Night Watch, and see us Watchers through their eyes. What must they think of us?

The members of the Night Watch look out over a sea of faces, who came here from unimaginably remote corners of the earth. We Watchers traveled in a matter of hours a distance that would have cost the Night Watch many months’ journey — tedious, hazardous, quite possibly fatal. We dress far more casually than they do, in garish colors, revealing very nearly the full length of our arms and legs, clad for comfort above all, not a frilly white ruff or chimney-pipe hat to be seen. Observing us constantly pull small, black, mirrored rectangles from our pockets and handbags, and attend to them with intense focus, the members of the Night Watch must wonder what could possibly be so fascinating about these little devices.

There is one thing we Watchers have in common with the Night Watch: Their world was changing at a dizzying pace. And ours is, too. Just a few years ago, this grand hall — today so congested, so steamy, so deafening with rancorous conversation — was entirely empty. We Watchers weathered a pandemic of global proportions, stayed away from each other for months or even years, lived in a swirling eddy of fear, boredom, and anger. During those many long months, the members of the Night Watch looked out over an empty hall. In this vacuous space, they could have easily engaged in conversation with Frans Hals’ cheerful drinker, with Jan Steen’s merry family, even with the world-weary self-portrait of their own depicter, Rembrandt. It was so silent that, as Vermeer’s gentle milkmaid serenely tipped up the base of her jug, you could actually not hear the milk trickling into the bowl. Shhhh!

But now, thanks to a miracle of modern science, we Watchers are back, in force. And the Night Watch has never seen crowds like this. We Watchers are determined to make up for lost time, catching up on two years’ worth of unhad experiences. It has been, in a way, beautiful to observe the persistence of humanity’s determination to fulfill our deferred dreams. And yet, it has not taken long to realize that such persistence can also be destructive.

Outside of this hall, beyond the walls of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam is struggling with an unprecedented influx of visitors. We 21st-century Watchers are determined to immerse ourselves in the 17th-century core of the city…the Amsterdam that the Night Watch would recognize. All through the concentric-circle Canal Belt, block after block, canal after canal, Amsterdam has preserved its Golden Age landscape: skinny townhomes with elaborate gables and practical little winches, standing tall over even skinnier streets that tiptoe between the houses and the canals. Here and there are more elaborate mansions of the über-wealthy, and fanciful gilded towers that rocket skyward, filled with jovial carillons that jingle-jangle cheerful tunes throughout the day.

But today, this precious, unique cityscape is overwhelmed. Those narrow brick lanes are cluttered with wayward tourists, not paying attention as they wander about in a self-interested fog, seeking the ideal backdrop for their selfie or the perfect framing for that church tower, stepping in front of bicycle commuters — oblivious to the persistent brrrrring!-brrrrring! of handlebar bells — or very nearly stepping off a ledge into a brown, murky canal.

Throughout the Canal Belt, graceful bridges span those canals. And today, across several of those bridges snake long lines of tourists, stretching all the way from one bank to its opposite, patiently waiting in a well-organized queue. Walking past, I asked a random line-stander what, exactly, he was waiting for. He explained that he and his girlfriend had sought out a very famous shop that they had seen on Instagram and TikTok. They had been waiting for about 45 minutes, and he estimated they were getting close.

“So, what kind of food do they sell?” I asked.

He seemed unsure: “Some sort of sandwich? My girlfriend could tell you?” These felt more like questions than answers, quickly followed by a self-reassurance: “But I know it will be very good.”

“I’m sure it must be,” I said, and carried on across the canal. There I passed the front of the line, where carefully positioned stanchions did their best to preserve the flow of foot traffic, allowing passersby to pass by the queue without stepping into bike traffic, constantly monitored by attendants who told each customer where to stand. “Instagram sensation line supervisor” is, apparently, a whole new occupation in 21st-century Amsterdam.

Amsterdam also struggles with its global touristic brand as a city of vice. A history of conflict and suffering taught the Dutch to be pragmatic and open to other worldviews. From the Protestants-versus-Catholics wars that led to the creation of the Night Watch, all the way to the horrific loss of life during Nazi occupation and the Holocaust, the Dutch have learned that tolerance is the opposite of violence, and vice-versa. And Amsterdam’s status as a maritime shipping center — a crossroads of peoples and cultures from around the world — has deepened locals’ affinity for accepting diverse backgrounds and alternative lifestyles.

That’s why it was logical for Amsterdam, in the second half of the 20th century, to become a bastion for permitted marijuana use and legal sex work. This began as an expression of Dutch values and a social experiment in pragmatic crime reduction. But it also made the city a hub for marijuana and sex pilgrims — a breed of tourists who, by and large, tend to be rowdy, loutish, and troublemaking. (When you begin to require signs explaining the fines charged for urinating into a canal, you’ve crossed some sort of Rubicon.) That’s why, in recent years, city authorities have begun to roll back the parameters of marijuana use, and are constraining — and may even relocate — the famous Red Light District. With the “Stay Away” campaign, specifically targeting rowdy young men from Great Britain, city authorities are spending money to actively discourage certain visitors from coming to Amsterdam.

As Amsterdam’s popularity has exceeded its capacity — as Europe’s best-preserved 17th-century city has become the poster child of “overtourism” — local residents and city leaders alike have had enough. Recent legislation has forbidden groups in the Anne Frank House and Red Light District; placed a strict cap on new hotel construction; and severely constricted the Airbnb market (with methods so draconian, they are also closing down traditional B&Bs). And yet, the visitors still come — a United Nations of tourists who don’t flinch at paying €300 or €400 a night for a room in a mediocre, midrange hotel in that dreamy Canal Belt.

Amsterdam is a leading example. But all across Europe, we are back where we were in 2019: It’s very trendy to fret about “overtourism.” (For example, the New York Times just covered this topic yet again.) These concerns are legitimate, but it seems to me that we’d rather complain about this issue than tryto do anything about it. So…what can we do about it?

Is the answer as simple as not traveling to these “overtouristed” places? Maybe so. One solution could be to seek out alternatives to the most overwhelmed destinations. The Netherlands has more than its share of gorgeous, historic cities — just as beautiful, if smaller — just a short journey from Amsterdam. Lovely, largely undiscovered Leiden, a gabled university town that gave birth to Rembrandt and asylum to the Pilgrims, is less than 30 minutes by train from Amsterdam. And if you say on that same train another 20 minutes or so, you’ll pull into tranquil Delft, with its Vermeer canals, soaring steeples, and blue pottery.

This year, I have spent time in Amsterdam and in Venice — two of the leading cities of overtourism. But I’ve also spent time in places that are far less crowded: Germany’s Rhine and Mosel rivers; gorgeous Slovenia; off-the-beaten-path corners of the Balkans. Also just this year, Rick has traveled to several great, if relatively untouristed, cities in Germany (Leipzig, Dresden, Hamburg), and to several towns and cities in Portugal, and has marveled at the lack of crowds. Just this spring in Bacharach, on Germany’s Rhine River, I was chatting with a local shopkeeper who asked me, worriedly, “Where are all the American travelers? We used to be so busy. Not anymore.”

Anytime I post about Slovenia — a striking undiscovered gem of a country —people in the Comments worriedly scold me for running the risk of “ruining” this precious place. I’ve got news for them: I’ve been preaching the wonders of Slovenia — shouting it from the rooftops, in fact — for well over 20 years. And, while a few areas (Lake Bled) are no longer “undiscovered,” there’s still more than enough Slovenia to go around.

The more I travel, the clearer it becomes: There is an overabundance of lesser-known, virtually untouristed places all over Europe that could help us, collectively, spread around the demand without sacrificing quality of experience.

And yet, we Watchers are stubborn. And, quite frankly, we are not particularly original in choosing where to travel. We have our bucket lists… we have our Instagram bookmarks… we have that overwhelming FOMO. We want to go where the people are, and then, all too often, complain about all the people.

I realize that it’s easy for me, as a professional traveler who’s seen the Night Watch, the Mona Lisa, the Sistine Chapel multiple times, to suggest that others skip those icons of Europe in favor of a deeper cut. And, if we’re both being honest, you’re probably going to ignore that advice anyway.

And so, if you insist on going to an immensely popular place, all you can do is to be prepared. Book far ahead — far, far, far ahead — to get your choice of accommodations, tables at the most best restaurants, and time slots to visit the big sights. Do your best to make your visit coincide with less-crowded spells; often that means touring popular sights early or late in the day. (One afternoon, I passed an hour-long line at an Instagram-famous fry shop; the next morning, I took advantage of a much shorter line…and savored the exact same cone of truffled-mayo-and-parmesan-topped fries after just a 10-minute wait.) Or — better yet — avoid peak season entirely, and travel instead off-season.

More important than all of that practical advice — which is, frankly, self-serving — I believe it’s critical to travel conscientiously. Be aware that the places you visit are feeling the strain of their own popularity…and do what you can to avoid adding to that strain. Be mindful of local. Give up your seat on the tram to the local mom with the baby. Invite the Dutch shopper to cut the line at the grocery store. Don’t be the tourist wandering in front of a moving bicycle, as you squint into your black, mirrored rectangle. Be present, be curious, be thoughtful, and be respectful.

Is it my duty, as a travel writer,  to not tell people about Amsterdam — even to actively discourage them from coming here? Or is it my duty to acknowledge that they will come here, regardless…and to equip them to do it more thoughtfully and sustainably?

Understandably, many people these days — locals and tourists alike — are frustrated by overtourism. But let me offer another point of view, from a different poster child of overtourism: Dubrovnik, Croatia. Isn’t it interesting our our contemporary “problem children” tend to be major ports, at the historical crossroads of cultures? Amsterdam, Dubrovnik, Venice, Barcelona, Athens, Lisbon. But maybe it’s not just a coincidence…

On a recent visit to Dubrovnik, I stood on the Old City’s main drag with my local friend Roberto, observing the crush of cruise-ship passengers, who filled it so completely that going for a simple stroll down the block was impossible. I began to grouse, when Roberto stopped me.

“Yes, but Dubrovnik has always been like this,” he said. “We are an outpost. A trading center. A shipping port. A crossroads. For generations — for centuries — people have come and gone through our city gates. It is what defines the life of our city, in fact! You see these crowds and say, ‘What a problem.’ But there have been many times, through our long history, when you would have found these streets every bit as crowded as today. The faces, the clothing, the reasons for visiting may change. But the humanity is the same. Whether by galleon or by cruise ship, Dubrovnik is a place where people come.”

Which brings us back to the Night Watch — encased in their hermetically sealed glass box, designed to keep all that humanity at arm’s length.

When the members of the Night Watch look out upon us Watchers, what do they see?

I imagine that if they were to climb down off their canvas and stroll through the Canal Belt — nearly four centuries after they departed this mortal coil — the differences would be apparent: What the people filling those streets are wearing and doing and saying. The bicycles, the automobiles, the motorized party barges chugging along the canals.

But — beyond the 17th-century cityscape itself — they may also detect many similarities. The Amsterdam of the Night Watch was no ghost town; it was, as today, a thriving hub of entrepreneurs and peasants, sailors and artists, Dutchmen and outsiders, all filling those same, narrow, brick-lined, canalside streets.

And what about those long lines — those visitors from afar, spending an hour of their precious vacation for an Instagram-famous cookie, sandwich, or cone of fries? Perhaps the members of the Night Watch would understand those people better than I do. In the 1630s — less than a decade before Rembrandt painted the Night Watch — Holland was seized by “tulip fever.” Flower bulbs from the Ottoman lands became a subject of unbridled speculation, escalating prices to unimaginable, ludicrous highs. A few dozen tulip bulbs could make someone a millionaire, by today’s standards. Is a cookie truly worth spending an hour in line? You might as well ask: Is a single flower truly worth as much as several acres of land?

In fact, the members of the Night Watch — shrewd businessmen that they were — might be more impressed by the success of their city than shocked by the crowds. They built a city that attracts visitors; visitors bring money; and Amsterdam is, by any measure, a prosperous place. Is this not entrepreneurial success?

There’s no doubt that overtourism is a genuine concern. Both for the comfort of us travelers, and for the sanctity and sanity of the permanent residents of these places, it deserves to be taken seriously. But maybe these crowds are not such an outlier; they simply represent another chapter in the ebb and flow of a vital, thriving, always-evolving city of the world.

In the end, the most realistic approach may be to recognize that Amsterdam — that city of entrepreneurs, movers-and-shakers, faux-militia members building their fortunes — benefits greatly from tourism, even as they pay a different kind of price for that success. And as conscientious visitors, we can recognize our place in that awkward ecosystem. We come, we enjoy, we learn, we trade our money for fond memories…and we do our best to leave the city no worse off than when we arrived.

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Honest History Matters

Looking back on my recent travels, I’ve been thinking about what makes a country great. “Greatness” can mean strength and power. Or it can signify wisdom, maturity, respect, and an honest reckoning with the past.

In my travels, I observe a disparity in how various lands think about their history: Some societies acknowledge the more challenging elements of their past, while others only embrace the most flattering version of themselves.

As fractured as we are these days, I genuinely believe that good, caring, intelligent people can agree to disagree on a broad range of issues. Should the government take a heavy hand, or a light one, in collecting taxes, regulating guns or abortion, and guiding the trajectory of a society? What role should the USA play on the world stage? How much immigration is “too much,” and how should we treat those immigrants? You have your opinions; I have mine; sometimes they don’t align. That’s life in a healthy democracy. That’s what elections are for.

However, one thing that I believe is not a partisan issue — or, at least, shouldn’t be — is the fundamental truth of history. Facts matter. What happened, happened. And whether those events were good or bad, the only way for a society to evolve is to be honest about its past, warts and all. That’s why, when those who seek or hold political power begin to selectively reinterpret the past — dispensing with inconvenient truths — I find it alarming, not as a Democrat or a progressive, but as a patriotic American.

This is not a distinctly American challenge. Every country’s story is filled with both moments of virtue, and moments that are regrettable, even “evil.” As I travel from place to place, I’m struck by how each society makes intentional choices about how to reckon with their history. And over time, I’ve also seen how this can vary depending on the swing of the political pendulum.

And so, to provide some international context for the debates we’re having in 2024 USA, join me on a trip to a few case studies of how other societies have gotten this right…and, in my view, ones that have gotten it wrong.

Poland:  The Museum of the Second World War

In Gdańsk — the northern Polish city where World War II began — museum curators designed what was to be Europe’s definitive museum of the Second World War. It told the complicated story of wartime Poland, yes; but expanded its view to encompass a global perspective on the war, and how it affected various lands and peoples.

However, shortly before the museum’s scheduled opening in 2017, the ruling Law and Justice government — which felt the exhibit “wasn’t Polish enough” — intervened. They replaced the director with a political appointee, and installed a new mission to stir the patriotic souls of Polish taxpayers. New exhibits, mainly profiling Polish heroes and victims, were hastily squeezed into any available space. The intentionally ambiguous, thought-provoking final room was re-envisioned and now shows a rabble-rousing film (called “The Unconquered”) espousing a naively, almost offensively pro-Polish point of view.

Revisiting the museum not long ago, I stumbled upon one exhibit that I suspect was added by the politicized director. At the entrance to a room filled with portraits of Jews who were murdered by the Nazis in Polish territory stands a wall labeled “Poles in the face of the Holocaust.” Posted information and touchscreens explained how Poles saved the lives of Jews, despite the fact that Poland was the only Nazi-occupied land where such assistance could be punished by death.

This is an inspiring story, to be sure. And there were many righteous Poles who came to the assistance of their Jewish neighbors. But there were also many Poles who colluded with the Nazis, and many more who turned a blind eye to their atrocities. Is it expecting too much for these facts to be acknowledged in the museum, as well?

Soon after, in 2018, the Law and Justice party made it illegal to state that the “Polish nation” was in any way responsible for the atrocities of the Holocaust, under punishment of prison. Under diplomatic pressure from the US Department of State, the law was later softened to remove the criminal component. However, a civil court can still prosecute “whoever claims, publicly and contrary to the facts, that the Polish Nation or the Republic of Poland is responsible or co-responsible for Nazi crimes committed by the Third Reach.” And so, an important part of Poland’s World War II story goes untold.

(It’s worth noting that Poland’s Law and Justice party was defeated in late 2023 by a centrist coalition; as new, more moderate leadership reshapes Poland, it will be fascinating to see if those changes ripple down to the displays of this museum.)

A few days earlier — at the opposite end of Poland, in the town of Wadowice — I toured the museum at the birth house of St. John Paul II. The slickly produced, inspiring, touching museum did a beautiful job of telling the life story of Karol Woytyła, who lost his parents at a young age, entered the priesthood, and eventually became the spiritual leader of one billion Catholics and a critical figure in the final ideological battles of the Cold War.

The museum tells this story so well, in fact, that I didn’t realize until after I’d left that it had omitted some important topics — specifically, the child molestation scandals within the Catholic Church that were covered up under Pope John Paul II’s watch.

Chatting with some Polish friends about this, I was reminded that these things aren’t as black-and-white as they may first seem. Yes, the Pope should have done more. However, John Paul II recognized that he was in a unique historical position as a high-profile crusader against Soviet oppression, and that he played a critical  inspirational role in the democratization of his homeland, Poland. Perhaps there were pragmatic reasons for him to avoid publicly addressing a scandal that would have undermined so much of what he was trying to accomplish.

I’m not entirely persuaded by this reasoning. But it certainly got me thinking more deeply about the full complexity of that chapter in Polish (and Catholic Church) history. I don’t believe “canceling” John Paul II is the answer. Rather, his legacy deserves a complete and nuanced discussion. And I regret that this museum is so reluctant to have that conversation.

History is made by “great” people who, like all people, are flawed. Even the greatest among us have blind spots and vulnerabilities; arguably, it’s a person’s ability to navigate complicated realities and make impossible choices that propels them to greatness.So then, why are we so afraid to be honest about those flaws?

Germany: Documentation Centers and Holocaust Memorials

Let’s cross the border, to a country that dispenses with the kid gloves when handling its own history. In my travels, I have encountered few societies that more conscientiously grapple with their checkered past than Germany. Yes, Germany.

Even to this day, when many people think of Germany, one of their first associations is along these lines: backed a lunatic dictator; tried to take over the world; murdered millions through genocide and conquest; destroyed much of Europe.

Resenting Germany for their crimes in World War II and the Holocaust is understandable, even deserved. But in my 25 years of traveling around Germany, I’ve been impressed by their willingness to be open, candid, and contrite about their history. They even have a term for it: Vergangenheitsbewältigung, “coming to terms with the past.”

Throughout Germany, I’ve visited perhaps a dozen different “Nazi documentation centers.” That’s a buzzword for a museum that offers a thoughtful, entirely transparent, and no-holds-barred assessment of Germany’s culpability in its crimes of the 20th century. It’s a fascinating exercise in the defendant presenting an ironclad case on behalf of the prosecution. Germany’s documentation centers confront visitors — both German and foreign — with abundant, meticulously collected evidence, always compelling and often gruesome, of their own crimes. No excuses are offered, and there isn’t a whiff of defensiveness — just a matter-of-fact mea very, very culpa.

In the German capital of Berlin, immediately adjacent to the landmark Brandenburg Gate and just down the street from the Reichstag stands a sprawling monument consisting of 2,711 stony slabs. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, occupying this privileged position in the very heart of Germany’s leading city, is just one of countless memorials, large and small, all across the country, that constantly remind Germans of their historical crimes.

It’s hard to imagine that a country could ever “do enough” to make up for such heinous acts. But as a frequent visitor here, I’m impressed. Even younger Germans — now generations removed from these atrocities — may grow a little weary of these constant reminders. And yet, they recognize that this is their legacy.

The Netherlands: Dutch Resistance and Colonialism

Next door is a country that was occupied by Nazi Germany: the Netherlands. And on a recent visit to Amsterdam, I was struck both by how the Dutch are honestly reckoning with their role in history…and how they still have a ways to go.

The recently re-envisioned Dutch Resistance Museum traces the story of the Netherlands under Nazi occupation. It’s an exercise in stirring the Dutch patriotic soul with tales of both suffering and valiant resistance — much like the World War II museum in Poland. But, to its credit, the Dutch museum also owns up to aspects of that story that some might prefer to dismiss.

Early on, the exhibit takes pains to introduce us to Anton Mussert, who led the NSB, the local version of the Nazis. And it unflinchingly explains that 25,000 young Dutchmen volunteered to join the Waffen-SS, accepting Hitler’s invitation to stand with him in “Germanic Brotherhood.” After the war, at least 120,000 Dutch collaborators were arrested.

Of course, questionable Dutch deeds extend much farther back than the 20th century. As one of Europe’s great colonial powers, the Netherlands was fabulously wealthy in the 17th and 18th centuries. Amsterdam’s ornate city center — with its concentric canals, stately townhouses, grand museums and palaces, and gilded carillons — was financed primarily through plundered resources, the exploitation of human labor at the far ends of the globe, and Dutch participation in the transatlantic trade of enslaved human beings.

This is an aspect of Dutch history that many visitors (and, until recently, even many Dutch people)  gloss over. But that is now changing. In 2023, the former Tropenmuseum (“Tropics Museum,” built nearly a century ago to show off colonial riches to Dutch citizens) was re-envisioned as the “World Museum.” Many of those same artifacts from former Dutch holdings — as far afield as Indonesia (the “East Indies”) and the Caribbean (the “West Indies”) — are still on display. But now they are given proper context, explaining the lives of the people exploited by the Dutch, from their own perspectives.

On the one hand, it’s impressive to see the Netherlands making these strides: For example, then-Prime Minister Mark Rutte (in 2022) and King Willem-Alexander (in 2023) have both formally apologized for the Dutch role in the slave trade. On the other hand, like any society, not everyone is comfortable with the changing times. The Dutch sidekick to Santa Claus, Zwarte Piet (“Black Pete”), is still usually performed by a white man in Blackface — and in a recent poll, more than half of Dutch respondents continue to support Zwarte Piet’s traditional appearance. And in November of 2023, an anti-immigrant party took the highest total of seats in the Dutch parliament.

Progress sometimes comes in fits and starts…but it’s progress.

New Zealand/Aotearoa: Waitangi Treaty Grounds

On a recent trip to New Zealand/Aotearoa, I visited the Waitangi Treaty Grounds on the Bay of Islands. This is essentially the birthplace of the modern nation of New Zealand, where local Māori tribal leaders signed a treaty with emissaries of the British crown to establish formal colonies on the island. Today you can walk across the grassy field where the treaty was signed, but only after you’ve toured a powerful, beautifully curated museum.

The museum is the best implementation I’ve seen of a “dual narrative” approach — equally weighting the perspectives of both the Māori and the English to tell a complete story. In fact, for most of the exhibit, you see the Māori point of view on one wall, and the English point of view on the opposing wall. It’s fascinating to experience the history of this island through the eyes of its two dominant groups, simultaneously — a parallax view that is both informative and moving.

In the darkened hall that displays the actual treaty, exhibits detail how the document was translated misleadingly into the Māori language. Key concepts like “sovereignty” were phrased in such a way to give Māori leaders the impression that they, and not the Queen of England, were still essentially in control of their island.

I was impressed and inspired to see a society that — rather than try to spin past events in a way that would present the European settlers in a flattering light — plainly acknowledged their misdeeds: We misled the people who were here first. And we were wrong.

New Zealand inspires me. It’s perhaps the planet’s most forward-thinking nation when it comes to the rights of its indigenous population. This national conversation began in earnest in the 1970s — on the one hundredth anniversary of the Treaty of Waitangi — and much progress has been made. While “reparations” is an abstract and hard-to-sell idea when it comes to the descendants of enslaved Black people in the USA, in New Zealand, it’s a reality: Vast tracts of the country’s land has been formally returned to Māori control. While there’s certainly more to do, New Zealand is making real strides in owning up to its historical crimes.

And this trickles down to everyday life, as well. Increasingly, Kiwis from both Māori and European backgrounds are embracing the indigenous name for their archipelago: Aotearoa. Kiwis, regardless of their background, greet each other with a cheery “Kia ora!” — evoking the Māori origins of the land upon which they all reside together today. As an American, this inspires me to do better — so much better. (And if we need a role model closer to home, we need only look to our northern neighbor —  Canada has made impressive gains in better acknowledging the rights of its First Nations peoples.)

Hungary: Slide from Democracy

Now let’s cross hemispheres again, to a place that may be one of the worst-case scenarios for a society retconning its own narrative: Hungary.

Since first taking power in 2010, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his party, Fidesz, have aggressively revised history to suit their nativist political agenda. An exhaustive list of examples could fill volumes. But even just as a traveler who drops into the country every year or two, I’ve seen the effects firsthand: streets and squares renamed for obscure historical footnotes;  the vast plaza surrounding the Parliament building completely transformed with new monuments and memorials; and, perhaps most alarmingly, a wholesale revision of the national school curriculum to ensure that the version of history taught to every Hungarian student is perfectly in line with the Fidesz agenda.

And what is that version of history? Essentially, it’s the most flattering possible view of Hungary. Fidesz history presents the country either as a heroic warrior, or a tragically maligned victim of foreign aggression, full stop. Orbán’s story of Hungary is designed to instill unquestioned pride and patriotism: We have always been in the right, just as we are today.

Here are just three examples:

On Liberty Square, Fidesz erected a melodramatic monument to the “victims of fascism.” It’s overloaded with symbolism suggesting that Hungary was a peace-loving land, minding its own business, until Hitler invaded in 1944. In front of the monument, locals have assembled their own makeshift counter-monument — documenting how, in fact, Jews were terribly mistreated by Hungarian authorities, and tens of thousands were deported to certain execution by Hungary’s pre-Nazi leadership.

A couple of blocks away once stood a beloved statue of the communist reformer Imre Nagy, casting his judgmental gaze over the Parliament. However,  there was a problem: Nagy may have led the 1956 Uprising against the USSR (and was later sham-tried and executed). But he was also a communist himself, who sought reform from within. The Fidesz worldview simply can’t tolerate such nuance. Nagy was a communist; all communists are bad; therefore, we must remove Nagy’s statue from this favored location. Under cover of darkness and without any warning, one night in the waning days of 2018, it was relocated far from the Parliament.

Up at Buda Castle, Orbán has moved his office into the former National Dance Theater and is busily redeveloping the castle quarter, transforming it into his new seat of government. Old buildings — destroyed in World War II and never rebuilt — are being re-created from scratch, with little rhyme or reason. It’s a hodgepodge that randomly juxtaposes buildings from this and that era, based on how pretty or grand or imposing they look rather than their actual role in history — an almost too on-the-nose embodiment of this cherry-picking approach to Hungarian history.

Orbán has become a darling of certain corners of the American right.  Perhaps those Orbán supporters should travel to Budapest, talk to Hungarians on the street, and observe how his approach has eroded two decades of fragile progress in recovering from totalitarianism…including the distorted, oversimplified way that Hungarians are encouraged to view their own complicated history.

Bristol: The Empty Plinth

A couple of years ago, on a dreary late-winter morning, I wandered around Bristol, England, piecing together the story of Edward Colston. This fabulously successful Bristolian grew the wealth and reputation of his home city, largely through his participation in the slave trade.

Colston is one of many historical figures who became a flashpoint during the global Black Lives Matter protests in the spring and summer of 2020. You may recall how a giant statue of Colston was toppled by protesters, dragged down the hill, and dumped into the harbor. (Later, the statue was dredged out of the harbor and displayed in a local museum.)

On my visit to Bristol, about two years after this event, I found myself following breadcrumbs of Colston’s legacy around the city. The plinth that once held Colston’s statue — and boldly declared him “one of the most virtuous and wise sons of [the] city” — stood empty. In a parish church, stained-glass windows honoring Colston had been removed; a nearby information panel explained this decision. And in a city history museum, Colston sneered out from a composite painting of prominent Bristolians. His image was identified completely, and accurately: “Slave trader; merchant and philanthropist.”

Back home, we’ve had debates about whether and how we should remove statues honoring problematic historical figures, whether they be Confederate generals or slave-owning Founding Fathers. You may believe that tearing down these statues is just as bad as what Poland or Hungary is doing. But observing Bristol’s approach demonstrates that it’s possible, even responsible, to remember these figures — completely and honestly, in all of the ways they both aided and harmed others — without honoring them. The challenge — one that Bristol rose to — is to find a constructive way to preserve history without remaining beholden to it.

Should we replace those statues with carefully worded plaques, offering a more complete and nuanced explanation of their role in history than simply “virtuous and wise”?  Should the statues be collected into an open-air museum (as Budapest did with its communist statues, in Memento Park), so those generals can preach their racist ideology to each other, removed from polite society, without needlessly confronting passersby? Should we create a Museum of American Racism — a series of Slavery Documentation Centers — that detail the shameful crimes of our past, as a reminder and a warning to Americans in the present and the future?

Again, Bristol inspires me to do better.

Back Home: The United States of America

After hopscotching around our globe, we return home to the United States of America. With the benefit of comparing notes with other societies, how does the USA measure up?

When we’re at our best,  we make strides toward reckoning honestly with our past sins. The Museum of African American History in Washington, DC, for example, does a beautiful, complete, and even-handed job of telling the story of Black Americans and their ancestors.

Juneteenth — a celebration that originated in the Black community to commemorate the abolition of slavery — is now a federal holiday, and more and more organizations (including Rick Steves’ Europe) show their respect by closing their offices for the day.

And even in my own lifetime, I have observed the USA doing a more honest job of acknowledging our genocide against Native American tribes — though nowhere near to the righteous degree of New Zealand/Aotearoa or Canada.

However, in recent years — as the political pendulum swings to dizzying extremes — I fear that we are facing a rising tide of people who would prefer to simply edit out the most uncomfortable details in our national narrative.

In some states, textbooks are being rewritten to downplay our heritage of slavery and racism. These days, ambiguity and intentional omission trump clarity and specificity in explaining to our children exactly how certain people have been treated by our country, and still are, and why.

Critical Race Theory (CRT), paired with the deathly curse of “woke” — both concepts that originated in the Black community — have been appropriated and cruelly weaponized. Terms like these have become an excuse for (mainly) white Americans to shut down any healthy conversation about our shared national narrative that makes them uncomfortable.

Look: I’m not interested in wading into the “woke culture wars.” In fact, I’m sticking to my guns: The importance of history can and should be a nonpartisan issue. History matters, to everyone, even if they don’t realize it. And an honest and frank acknowledgement of the facts of history, by any society, is always a good thing. History tells us where we’ve been, and it helps us figure out where we’re going.

I believe this even more strongly having traveled to places where people grapple constructively with their history, and to places where people would rather hide from it. And I’m here to tell you: Societies in the first group are stronger, healthier, smarter, more successful, and more respected on the world stage than places in the second group. Honesty can be painful, but it’s how we grow and become better.

If you believe that contemporary Germans owe it to the world — and the six million Jews their ancestors murdered in gas chambers — to continue to reckon with their past crimes; if you think that child molestation scandals deserve to be acknowledged in a retelling of the life of John Paul II; if you respect the Dutch for including the stories of collaborators along with stories of victims and uprisers in their Resistance Museum; if you admire the Kiwis for acknowledging that their island was deceptively taken from people who’d been on Aotearoa for centuries earlier; if you think it’s a shame that Viktor Orbán removed the statue of a great communist reformer just because he was also, technically, a communist; if you appreciate Bristol’s nuanced approach of remembering Edward Colston without honoring him — then you should also be willing to face the discomfort of teaching our children about America’s shameful heritage of slavery and racism, and so many other topics that deserve open and frank conversation.

When you brush aside inconvenient realities, they don’t simply go away. They just fester, impacted and infected. They wait there, only getting uglier and worse, slowly beginning to stink, until they’re eventually kicked up again by some future generation — and have become an even worse problem to deal with.

It’s very easy to see blemishes when looking at other cultures, from afar. It’s much harder to see them when we look in the mirror. But we owe it to ourselves, and to future generations, to avoid the temptation to slide into denial. So the next time someone tries to dodge a conversation about less-than-noble elements of our past, consider asking them: Why does it make you so uncomfortable to reckon honestly with our nation’s history? Because that’s what healthy, functioning societies do.

In fact, it’s what makes a country great.

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In Europe, It’s the Little Differences

When you’re on the road in Europe, sometimes it’s the little differences that resonate the most: pragmatic, clever solutions to everyday problems that inspire you to do better back home.

I was reminded of this recently while updating our Rick Steves guidebook in Amsterdam. On a sunny day, I was enjoying a stroll through Vondelpark when I spotted an unusual garbage can, which appeared to have a built-in beverage caddy.

Suddenly I realized the purpose: In the Netherlands, to encourage recycling, they charge a €0.15 deposit when you buy any drink in a bottle or can; then, when you return the container, you recoup the deposit.

Of course, many places have a similar deposit system, and have for a long time. (Who could forget the classic Seinfeld where Kramer hatched a scheme to take a mail truck full of pop cans to Michigan to claim the 10¢-per-can deposit?) What struck me was the simple wisdom of making it easy to leave unwanted containers so that they’re easier to collect by someone else — presumably, someone who could use the money.

This little eureka thrilled me. As someone who tries to be a conscientious traveler, I often feel conflicted when finishing a bottle of fizzy water or Coke Zero. The recycler in me hates to stick in the garbage; the efficient traveler in me hates to carry it around (since I typically don’t carry a day bag, it has to jab awkwardly out of my pocket); and the humanitarian in me wishes I could hand it off to someone who’d appreciate the deposit. These “donation rings” (doneerringen)  — really just a few pieces of well-designed metal — are a simple, pragmatic, effective solution.

It solves other problems, too: Elsewhere in Amsterdam, I saw garbage cans (not yet equipped with donation rings) that had been rifled through, with trash strewn across the sidewalk. Clearly someone had gone looking for deposit containers in a way that was degrading to them, while also created a mess. So even if all you care about is a tidy city, donation rings are a no-brainer.

I snapped a photo of the donation rings, spent a few minutes tapping out a post about this little observation, and put it up on Facebook and Instagram, where I like to share these little epiphanies and insights as I travel. The initial response was enthusiastic — similar to my, “Wow, cool idea!”

Then a surprising thing happened. A few days later, in the middle of the night, the post went viral. It’s now been seen by more than 10 million people and “liked” by more than 150,000 — which are ludicrous numbers for someone with my modest following. That photo of a garbage can, and a few short, hurriedly composed paragraphs of text, may be the most-read thing I’ll ever write. (One colleague teased me, “This trash can will clearly be your legacy.”)

The responses were fun to sift through. Several people (in Portland, Canada, Germany, Denmark, Australia, and elsewhere) wanted credit for having a similar system on their garbage cans. (Noted!) Others pointed out that it would be even better for society to provide a proper safety net, so that people didn’t have to resort to collecting deposit containers. (Agreed! This is a band-aid, albeit a clever one.)

But the consensus was simply this: Great idea! Wish we had that here. Several commenters even CCed their local authorities. If this little post winds up inspiring a few communities to look into donation rings…I consider that a very good day’s work.

This whole episode — along with threatening to brand me “the donation rings trash can guy” for the rest of my career — reinforced my sense that when we travel thoughtfully, attentively, and with our mind and our eyes open, we notice little differences in the way societies operate. Some of these ways, we may find impractical or annoying. But many times, they can be an inspiration…even an epiphany.

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In my recent travels, I’ve been making a point to tune into these different ways…and, where possible, to share them with others. Here are just a few examples.

Just a few days before flying to Amsterdam, I was waiting for my boat in Venice when I cracked open a much-needed bottle of ice-cold sparkling water. No matter how hard I turned the bottle cap, one little plastic filament stubbornly kept the cap attached to the plastic ring around the neck of the bottle. In that moment, I realized I’d been running into this same hiccup throughout my time in Italy, and that I’d even noticed it the previous fall in other parts of Europe. At first, I chalked it up to faulty design…a defect. But it was so consistent, it must be intentional.

A little Googling turned up the answer: As of 2024, the European Union requires these “tethered caps” on all single-use plastic bottles. It’s intended to keep the entire bottle intact, as one unit, for easier disposal and recycling. Yes, it takes some getting used to. But when you imagine all of those little plastic bottle caps rolling around the cobbles, piazzas, and gutters of Europe — not to mention, getting lodged in the esophagi of untold numbers of woodland critters and sea life — tethered caps seem a very smart solution.

Also in Italy, I was reminded of the tiered pricing system at cafés: You’ll pay more (in some cases, much more) to sit out on the piazza, rather than if you stand at the counter inside. In fact, even at the grandest of grand cafés in Italy, you can always get a simple espresso (un caffè) at the counter inside for just over €1.

Testing this rule of thumb, I waltzed past the dueling orchestras on St. Mark’s Square — some of the most expensive real estate in all of Italy — and into a venerable café. Inside at the counter, I ordered a caffè macchiato, then stood in the opulent interior as I sipped it. My bill came to €1.50.

As I left, I checked the price for the very same drink at the outdoor tables: €12, plus a €6 cover charge. If you’re lingering over the amazing views and the music, this is a worthwhile investment. If you just want a quick coffee, those prices are absurd. This “progressive taxation” approach to pricing drinks has a certain pragmatic beauty; you pay based on your experience. (And it’s also a great tip for budget travelers.)

Some of these smart solutions are Europe-wide. The EU has a draconian “Air Passenger Rights” policy that protects travelers from having their valuable time wasted by airlines. Strict guidelines mandate what an airline is required to provide to a passenger whose flight has been delayed or cancelled. If I ran an airline in Europe, this would make me pull my hair out. As a frequent air passenger in Europe…I absolutely adore it.

And I have directly benefitted from it. Last year, my wife and I were flying from Seattle to Norway by way of Amsterdam, with a tight connection. The good news: Our first flight was a few minutes early. The bad news: Our connecting flight had already been cancelled due to a technical problem, with no further flights scheduled until the next day. We got nervous, imagining being stranded for hours — maybe overnight — at Schiphol Airport, missing out on reservations we had waiting for us in Norway.

But the Europeans in the waiting area with us seemed unconcerned. One of them pulled out her phone and called up a page with the details of the EU policy. “No worries,” she said reassuringly to her husband, and to all of us antsy eavesdroppers. “If they delay us for more than three hours, they have to pay each of us €250. They won’t let that happen.”

Sure enough, within minutes, they allocated a different plane to take us to our destination, and boarding commenced almost immediately. Soon we were loaded on a bus and zipping across the Schiphol tarmac to our plane. And we wound up arriving in Norway just 45 minutes after our scheduled arrival time — even with the equipment change. Without the financial accountability mandated by that policy, I’m certain we’d have been cooling our jets for much longer.

Let’s head back to the Netherlands, which seems to be one of Europe’s top incubators for these everyday innovations. The Dutch are pragmatic, solution-focused, and early adopters, to the degree that they sometimes leap before they look. When I’m updating our Rick Steves Amsterdam guidebook — as I was on this trip — frankly, it can get exhausting. There’s always some cutting-edge new technology that’s been rolled out. And, often, by the time we come back a couple of years later to do our next round of updates, that Hot New Thing has already been abandoned and replaced with the next trend.

For example: Contactless or “tap-to-pay” credit card and smartphone payments on public transit are widely used throughout Europe and around the world. But the Netherlands, as far as I know, is the first and only European country where you can pay for every single ride on public transit (whether in-city trams, buses, and Metro, or intercity trains and buses) simply by tapping your existing credit card. Using this system (called OVpay), you never have to buy a ticket.

Of course, I needed to try this out. And it worked well. Starting at the airport, where I wanted to take the bus into town, I was able to skip the tiresome chore of looking for a ticket machine. Instead, when the bus pulled up, I just hopped on and tapped my credit card against the scanner to “check in.” And then, when I got to my destination, I tapped my card again to “check out.” The cost of the ride was automatically charged to my card.

I tried this everywhere I went: on trams, the Metro, even the intercity train to the airport. And it worked brilliantly…another example of Dutch problem-solving making life easier. I can imagine a time, a few years from now, when the very idea of “tickets” for transportation are a thing of the past. You just tap in, tap out, and you’re done.

However…

When working on our guidebooks, it’s also my job to think through potential pitfalls. And even this ingeniously simple system has some serious caveats: A couple traveling together needs two separate payment cards. Fair enough. But what if you’re a family of four or five? Yes, that means that each family member needs their own credit card, smartphone payment app, etc.

On a particularly busy afternoon, a French family of five was waiting for the tram next to me. I knew this was going to be a big headache for them. Sure enough, the father wound up having to download a payment app, load up his credit card, use the app to buy five tickets, then scan each one individually. By the time he was done with this agonizing procedure, the family had almost missed their stop.

Another pitfall: Because the Dutch are all-in on this system, they are largely doing away with other ways of paying. Out in front of Centraal Station, where arriving travelers hop onto a tram to their hotel, there used to be abundant ticket machines. Now these have mostly gone away, with just a few hiding out in the Metro station downstairs. And you can no longer buy tickets once you’re on board, unless you download and set up that app that the French father was fumbling with. If you’re in the very slim majority of people who, for whatever reason, don’t want to or can’t pay by tapping your card…your life just got harder.

Here’s my point: It’s fun to notice these clever solutions when you travel. But it’s also important to avoid a “grass is always greener” naivete. Every system is flawed, and a few flaws don’t make it worthless. That’s just another problem to solve.

Smart people, around the world, come up with smart solutions. And if we all put our heads together, notice what works and what doesn’t, and commit ourselves to improving our societies, there are already a lot of great ideas out there, ripe for the picking. We just need to find them, do our due diligence to think through the pros and the cons, adapt them to be even better, and make them our own.

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One final thought occurs to me, in this very heated election year: Effectively all of the solutions I’ve described are spearheaded by some level of government, from federal all the way down to municipal. Observing Europe’s willingness to attempt creative solutions, I’m reminded that it’s largely possible because Europeans, by and large, both trust and expect their government to be proactive and effective  in crafting a better society. (And if they aren’t, they face consequences at the ballot box.)

I wonder if Europe is more innovative partly because ambitious solutions like the donation rings, or the tethered caps, or nationwide tap-to-pay must be coordinated by the state? They’re always some naysayer who goes on a crusade against even the best idea — especially in America, where rugged individualism is prized, contrarianism is practically a religion, and many are terrified of the mythical boogeyman of “Big Government.”

Anytime I share observations about Europe’s clever solutions and high-functioning societies (as I did last summer, when I marveled at the slick, well-coordinated infrastructure in Norway), some critics respond that such idealism has no place in America. “Yes, it would be great. But come on! We’d never be able to do that here.”

My response: Why not? We are our government — federal, state, local. If your leaders won’t take action to seek creative and effective solutions, if they’d rather shout and scold and scapegoat and obfuscate about complicated problems rather than trying to solve them…well, then, vote for someone else.

In this election year, support candidates and parties who are inspired by fresh ideas that help everyday people, and who are willing to implement them. (If you liked the sound of that EU “Air Passenger Rights” policy — and, frankly, any travelers should — it’s worth noting that former Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, rolled out a similar policy Stateside… only to have  a key provision of that plan later repealed by the Trump administration.)

Europeans solve problems because they have the will to work together toward those solutions. From all of these specific examples, that may be the biggest takeaway: We can do better. We just have to want it.

What are some of your favorite “slice-of-life” little ways that Europe does things differently? Which ones might you like to try out back home?

If you enjoy observations like these, be sure to Follow me on Facebook and/or Instagram. I’m heading to Europe again soon, and will be sharing lots more.

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Europe’s Best Neighborhoods: Where Should I Stay in ___?

You’re heading to Europe. You’ve chosen your destinations. And now you’re starting to daydream about your chance to be a temporary Londoner, a temporary Parisian, or a temporary Roman. The next question: Where should you stay?

As the 2023 travel season winds down, early birds are already starting to make plans for 2024. Most people get serious about this in January or so. But if you want to get a jump on the “competition” — and have your pick of places to stay — it’s smart to get started now. (And it’s a fun, constructive way to distract yourself as the days get shorter and colder.)

I have some friends who are dong just that: dreaming of a trip with their two teenagers next June in Rome and Athens. They asked me where I’d suggest staying in those great cities. And I thought to myself: That’s an excellent question! But first, I need a little more information: What kind of neighborhood are you looking for?

Inspired by that question, I’ve brainstormed my suggested home-base neighborhoods for 10 of Europe’s most popular cities. This intel is hard-earned, from years of scouring these cities for accommodations to recommend in our Rick Steves guidebooks.

Those lists are below. For each city, I’ve broken my choices down into three categories:

Central and Touristy. This is where you’d stay to have the top sightseeing right outside your door. However, that also means these neighborhoods are touristy, often a bit tacky, very expensive, crowded, and not particularly “authentic” or “local-feeling.” But sometimes having everything close at hand is worth making those sacrifices, especially on a quick, targeted trip.

Hip and Foodie. Every city worth its salt has an edgy, “emerging” restaurant and nightlife zone. These can be either central or more remote; either way, they’re typically less polished and more characteristic, and they tend to skew more youthful. If you’re in town primarily to check out all the “destination” foodie restaurants, rather than to sightsee until you drop, and if you’d like to settle in to the local version of Williamsburg, Los Feliz, or Wicker Park…then these neighborhoods are for you. (If you don’t know what those names mean, then these neighborhoods are probably not for you.)

Charming and Residential. If you don’t mind commuting to the main sightseeing and trendiest eateries, it can be worthwhile to stay a little farther from the city center. More sedate and charming than the central districts, these neighborhoods feel “older-local” as opposed to “younger-local.” Because they’re less central and less touristy, lodgings are often more affordable (though certain high-end suburbs can be surprisingly pricey). If the “Hip and Foodie” places are for hipsters, then the “Charming and Residential” places are for yuppies and retirees. Just be prepared for a longish metro, bus, or tram ride to achieve most of your bucket list.

Use the suggestions below as a starting point when searching for accommodations — whether hotels, B&Bs, or short-term apartment rentals (like Airbnb). Many room-booking search engines allow you to enter specific neighborhoods to narrow down your options, or you can search via the map. Read reviews carefully, within these areas, to make sure the lodgings you’re considering match your expectations. And here’s a pro tip: Before booking, go for a little “virtual stroll” of the surrounding area on Google Maps Street View to make sure it looks like a place you’d like to settle in.

London

Touristy/Central: Soho and Covent Garden can’t be beat for access to many of the top sights, the West End theater scene, and some of London’s best restaurants to boot.

Hip/Foodie: The East End, specifically Shoreditch and nearby, is where hipsters feel at home, with exuberant street art and many of the city’s most interesting restaurants. (Many top London restaurants began with a humble location in Shoreditch before opening a fancy one in Soho.)

Charming/Residential: Try neighborhoods just to the west, surrounding Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens (South Kensington, Notting Hill, Earl’s Court); or to the north, near the British Museum (Marylebone, Fitzrovia). In this vast city, there are countless other choices, depending on how far out you’re willing to travel; Dulwich, to the south, and Ted Lasso’s Richmond, to the west, are each a 30-minute commuter train ride out of the center.

Paris

Touristy/Central: It’s hard to resist staying near the Eiffel Tower (ideally with a view from your window); either there, or in the Latin Quarter (near the Île de la Cité/Notre-Dame and Île St. Louis) puts you very close to the sights…and the crowds.

Hip/Foodie: For something that’s still quite central, but more funky, consider the Marais, or some of the neighborhoods just beyond it: Try Oberkampf and Canal-St-Martin, just to the north, and the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine, just beyond Bastille to the east. The famous Montmartre is a strange combination of obnoxiously touristy and achingly bohemian…just as it was a century ago.

Charming/Residential: It’s hard to resist Rue Cler. This quintessentially Parisian, very central market street is that strange “unicorn” of neighborhoods that ticks only the best bits of both the “Touristy/Central” and “Charming/Residential” boxes. Another good option, slightly less characteristic but still handy, is Luxembourg Gardens.

Rome

Touristy/Central: It’s a thrill to stay as close to the Pantheon as possible, putting you right in the magical and romantic heart of Rome. For fewer tourists, look in the sleepier, more appealing streets that run from Piazza Navona west, toward the river and Vatican City.

Hip/Foodie: I just love the Monti district, tucked in narrow residential lanes basically across the street from the Roman Forum. Testaccio, farther out, surrounds Rome’s most engaging market hall and offers close proximity to restaurants filled with foodies who’ve done their homework.

Charming/Residential: Trastevere, which could arguably fit in any of these categories, is extremely atmospheric, slightly less touristy than the most central parts of Rome, and still within a long but very engaging walk to many of the top sights. The small, quiet zone just behind the Colosseum (to the east) feels a world apart from the touristy chaos.

Berlin

Touristy/Central: The city’s spine, Unter den Linden, has several big hotels but lacks personality. That’s why I enjoy the area around Hackescher Markt, just north of Museum Island, which has a little more character and enjoys about as convenient a location as you’ll find in this sprawling city.

Hip/Foodie: Not only the best neighborhood in Berlin, but one of my favorite hipster neighborhoods anywhere, Prenzlauer Berg has oodles of funky Berlin character, outstanding restaurants, a true neighborhood feel, and easy transportation connections around the city. For a deeper dive, consider Neuköln, Kreuzberg, or any number of other cool Kieze (neighborhoods) that Berlin specializes in.

Charming/Residential: The former West Berlin (now called City West) was once a Time Square-like “city center” hub; now it’s a sleepy, sedate, upscale, and charming suburb with relatively easy connections to the big sights. Savignyplatz is the centerpiece of this area, and the surrounding Charlottenburg district has a similar feel.

Athens

Touristy/Central: The Plaka, tucked at the base of the Acropolis (between the Monastiraki transit hub and the busy Syntagma Square), is super-central and super-touristy.

Hip/Foodie: Just across the street from Monastiraki, Pysrri is funky, youthful, and foodie, with an appreciation for wild street art and delicious street food, and close proximity to the thriving Central Market without being too far from the central sightseeing zone.

Charming/Residential: The sleepier streets of Makrigianni and Koukaki, on the “far side” of the Acropolis (to the south), make for a comfortable and relatively mellow home base.

Amsterdam

Touristy/Central: If you’d like to have very easy access to the sights (and to endless tulips-and-wooden-shoes souvenir shops), stay somewhere along Damrak or in the nearby streets of the Red Light District.

Hip/Foodie: The Jordaan, a short stroll along postcard canals west of the central spine, is one of my favorite neighborhoods in Europe, period. It’s an ideal combination of two categories: Both hip and residential, charming and foodie, it’s a clear winner.

Charming/Residential: If looking beyond the Jordaan, the quiet streets of Southwest Amsterdam, around Museumsplein, tick this box — though the proximity to the Rijks and Van Gogh museums can make it feel quite touristy in places.

Budapest

Touristy/Central: Pest’s Town Center (District V), with the Váci Utca pedestrian drag as its spine, is as central and as touristy as you can get. I prefer the area around the Opera House, along the most interesting stretch of Andrássy Út — just a little farther out, but very well-served by public transit, chockablock with great restaurants, and very close to the Seventh District fun (see next).

Hip/Foodie: The Seventh District, which overlaps with the Jewish Quarter just across the Small Boulevard from Pest’s Town Center, is one of Europe’s most engaging hipster neighborhoods. It comes with many of the city’s best restaurants (from street food to Michelin-starred) and the fun and fascinating “ruin pub” scene.

Charming/Residential: Buda, across the river from the modern city center, is sleepier, greener, and more sedate. It takes longer to reach much of Pest…but the views across the river are worth the commute. To stay on the Pest side, consider the streets flanking Andrássy Út once you get beyond the Oktagon, in the diplomatic quarter that heads out toward City Park.

Dublin

Touristy/Central: Look no farther than Temple Bar and the nearby streets close to Trinity College, on the south bank of the River Liffey. (As a light sleeper, I’ll suggest checking reviews carefully for noise complaints if sleeping anywhere near Temple Bar.)

Hip/Foodie: Earlier this year, I discovered the charming yet hip “village in the city” of Stoneybatter, tucked away beyond Smithfield Square to the northwest. While a bit farther from the center, it has some of the city’s hippest restaurants (especially for brunch) and an “I could live here” vibe.

Charming/Residential: South of St. Stephen’s Green, you encounter fewer tourists and a more local feel. I particularly enjoy the area along the southern canal belt; if you’d like a hipper stretch of this area, try to get close to happening Camden Street and the Portobello area.

Barcelona

Touristy/Central: There’s a good reason many tourists enjoy staying in the city center: near Plaça de Catalunya, in the Barri Gòtic, and along the Ramblas. This is Barcelona at its most vivid, touristy, crowded, chaotic, and fun.

Hip/Foodie: To escape some of the crowds of the Old City, head to El Born — an easy walk just east of the Barri Gòtic. This area, with the Picasso Museum and Santa Caterina Market, has a more bohemian feel, including great restaurants.

Charming/Residential: The carefully planned Eixample district, which surrounds the Old City on all sides, has an ritzy “uptown” vibe. This is the place to stay if you’d like to pretend you’re a Catalan urbanite for a few days. Or consider the tight, old-school Barceloneta fishermen’s quarter near the water.

Istanbul

Touristy/Central: For such a sprawling city, Istanbul has as surprisingly compact sightseeing core: Sultanahmet, loaded with hotels for tourists who want proximity to the great sights; just downhill, Sirkeci is similar.

Hip/Foodie: Kadıköy, across the Bosphorus on the Asian side, is both hip and residential. Back on the European side, consider Beşiktaş, along the Golden Horn below the New District.

Charming/Residential: The New District, across the Golden Horn from the old city center, is still quite urban and intense in places. But you’ll also find some pleasant back streets where you can settle in to a local neighborhood.

So…what did I miss? Any favorites to add? I’d love to hear your suggestions in the Comments.

I’ve gotten to know all these great European cities through updating our Rick Steves guidebooks — where you’ll find out a lot more about all of these places, including extensive lists of our handpicked hotels and B&Bs in each area.