Rick Steves’ Travel Blog

It was so much fun reading your comments on my “Hipster” slideshow, that I dug up a few more vintage photos to share over the coming days. I hope they bring back memories of your vagabonding and backpacking days of travel like they did for me. I also hope they inspire you to start planning your next vagabonding adventure. As the saying goes, today is the good old times of tomorrow.

Last month, the New York Times ran an article about hipster fashion trends that claimed sarcastically that “the Rick Steves look is next.” While I’m honored to be mentioned in any article discussing pop culture, I must respectfully disagree with the author. The Rick Steves look isn’t the NEXT hipster fashion trend–it is, in fact, the CURRENT fashion trend. While I generally lay low when it comes to making fashion statements, I believe these photos prove that I was the Original Hipster. Don’t you agree?

Children of the Sixties and Seventies, I’m sure you have similar photos of yourselves–whether hitchhiking through Europe or just hang out at home. Dig them up, and post them on my page. Let’s show the younger generation that they should have been listened to their parents’ fashion advice all along.

Groovy Travels!

As a little way to clean my palate between trips, I enjoyed a short lecture tour around the USA this last week–giving talks in the Midwest (Sioux Falls, Fargo, and Des Moines), New York (Albany and Rochester), and Alabama (Auburn). At these locations I found myself talking to (and with) librarians at their regional convention; TV and radio station staff and their supporters; venerable women’s club members at their lecture series; and professors, administrators, and foreign-study program staff at universities. I met people both proud of their cities and curious about the world.

While I was hired to share what I’ve learned through my travels, I enjoyed learning from the people who hired me to teach. In Alabama I explained how the anti-USA graffiti travelers encounter is not really anti-USA or anti-USA ideals, rather, it’s anti-aggressive US trade policies. For instance, in struggling countries throughout the developing world, hardline First World trade tariffs allow poor countries to export raw materials but often not finished goods. In other words, if you grow peanuts, you can sell raw peanuts but not peanut butter. Discussing this over dinner, my host told me back when America was living under British rule, farmers in the South dealt with the same kind of structural poverty. They could produce cotton but not refine it into textiles. Being forced to sell the raw material to England so the English could make the serious money stoked local anger–and likely anti-English graffiti.

Crossing from Georgia into Alabama, I noticed huge fireworks emporia along the freeways. I said that where I live, fireworks are only sold in the weeks leading up to the 4th of July. My host explained that in Alabama fireworks are on sale all year long. “Rednecks like to blow things up all the time. Why wait for the 4th of July?” he said. The fireworks draw lots of people from neighboring states too.

Alabamians have a particular kind of pride. When I asked about the freeway exit to “Phenix City,” they said that’s just how they spell “Phoenix.” They added, the next time I come, I must spend some time on the Gulf Coast, which they called “the Redneck Riviera.” And driving back into Georgia they had a good laugh at how, at the border, the sign still reads, “Welcome to Georgia, Home of the 1996 Olympics.”

I enjoyed a wonderful day at Auburn University, and before my lecture I was given a “golf-cart tour” of the campus by two wonderful young people whose responsibility is to show prospective students around. Here’s a little video clip which splices in a particular Alabama love of peanuts.

If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.

Perhaps you’ve noticed how regularly I’ve been posting to my Facebook page. Part of the reason is this year I’ve had the luxury of my own portable Wi-Fi hotspot device. (Telecom Square gave me one to use for my travels this season, and I’m flying to Israel with one next week.) Here’s my take on the experience:

You can now travel with a tiny hotspot that frees you from messing with the gobbledygook of getting online while on the road. Telecom Square rents a handy little unit about the size of four fingers called a Mobile Wi-Fi Hotspot that works virtually everywhere in Europe (and most of the rest of the world too). While it’s not cheap, the convenience, reliability, and luxury of being online anywhere and anytime in my travels makes it a great value for a traveler like me.

There are a few different rental options. You can get a single-country plan with unlimited data for about $13 a day or an all-Europe plan (with 1 GB per month in 40 countries) for about $10 a day. Or you can spring for the “World Wide Wi-Fi” plan which gives you unlimited access almost anywhere (which is what I had) for about $25 a day. That’s about what many hotels and airports (that still charge for Wi-Fi) cost.

The downside: When you rent your own hotspot device, you need to pay every day you have it, whether you use it or not. The upside: You have it right with you and are nearly always able to connect with loved ones or business associates back home (assuming you’re not in some Wi-Fi hole where nothing can connect). A further advantage: It allows you (and anyone with you) to connect up to five devices at the same time for no extra cost. I experimented this year with this portable hotspot on our tour buses (while I was on our Scotland tour). We’re considering using something like this in the future as a standard feature on our buses so that up to five tour members at a time can be online during long rides.

All over Europe, it’s routine to see travelers scavenging free or cheap Internet service–in hotel lobbies, sitting on the floor at airports outside the VIP lounge door, and wasting valuable shore time while on cruises. I personally am tired of putting on my clothes at midnight to ride the elevator down to the hotel lobby to get online.

Now, with the luxury of my own private mobile hotspot, I can get online without fiddling with login credentials, petty payments here and there, and worrying about time limits. And, since a single hotspot allows access for up to five devices, my travel partner and I can have all our gear–smartphones, laptops, and tablets–online as we like and need. I’ve been online–communicating, working, or being entertained–on taxis, buses, trains, and cruise ships. I’ve used it in airports and even in cafés overlooking remote beaches. I also appreciate the device even in hotels where online access is free because my signal is often stronger and faster.

These devices are easy to use and hold their charge a long time. You only need to sign in once because your computer will remember the device every time.  Getting online is as simple as turning the power on. To learn more, visit mobilewifi.telecomsquare.us.