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Rick Steves’ Travel Blog

Here you can browse through my blog posts prior to February 2022. Currently I'm sharing my travel experiences, candid opinions, and what's on my mind solely on my Facebook page. — Rick

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Prague Trumps Rothenburg

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To commemorate the Smithsonian Presents Travels with Rick Steves magazine — now on sale online, and at newsstands nationwide — Rick is blogging about the 20 top destinations featured in that issue. One of those destinations is Prague, Czech Republic.

I’m currently on a Central European swing, updating my guidebooks: Budapest, Prague, Vienna, Munich. Being back in Prague reminds me of how that city first broke down the Iron Curtain in my guidebooks many years ago.

On a research trip back in the 1990s, I was on a train heading to Rothenburg to update the ultimate medieval town in Germany, as I did nearly every year. For a decade, I’d been diligently visiting to check the woodcarvings, walk the old wall, visit the toy museum and the medieval crime-and-punishment museum, and check in with old friends who run the hotels and restaurants that serve the town’s hordes of tourists. The work was almost mechanical. Socially, it was a happy homecoming. The ramparts and cute lanes were filled with my readers, who cheered me on. I loved going to Rothenburg.

This was just a couple of years after the end of the Cold War. The obvious new frontier of European tourism was the mysterious East. The former Warsaw Pact countries were now wide open and eager to welcome Western travelers. I knew that sooner or later, I’d tackle the region and expand my guidebook coverage there. But it was overwhelming, and, psychologically, it was easy to just keep redoing the Rothenburgs of Western Europe. I was daunted by the job — a bit lazy…dreading the unavoidable truth that if I was to cover Europe, I would now need to stretch east.

I was rattling down the tracks in the direction of Rothenburg, when I realized the very train I was on would end its run in Prague. I started comparing the value of spending the next three days in Rothenburg versus doing a groundbreaking research stint in Prague. I stayed on that train and didn’t get off until the Golden City of a Hundred Spires. I jumbled my itinerary a bit to accommodate the new job, and what followed was one of the most exciting and rewarding weeks of research I can remember. I left with Prague now in the realm of what we covered.

That first Prague chapter needed a home, and the only home we had for it was splicing it into our existing Germany, Austria & Switzerland guidebook. What was called “GAS” in my office would now be “GASP.” (Over the years, GASP became GAS, then GA…until finally there were separate guidebooks for each of the four destinations, including Prague.)

With the beautiful co-author partnership of Honza Vihan (our good friend and super guide from Prague), Prague joined the elite league of cities that merited their own Rick Steves guidebook (along with London, Paris, Venice, Florence, and Rome). Cameron Hewitt took this Czech nucleus and expanded into another five countries (which I termed the “Louisiana Purchase” of Europe) — Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, and Slovenia — co-authoring my Eastern Europe guidebook, and then two others (on Croatia & Slovenia and Budapest). Today Eastern Europe is fully integrated into our Europe-wide program, with four different guidebooks and six different bus tour itineraries.

And it all started in that year when Rothenburg went unresearched and a seed was planted in Prague.

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Heat Wave in a Budapest Ruin Pub

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Budapest’s trendiest clubs are called “ruin pubs.” Inhabiting ramshackle old buildings in the city center, they feel like a gang of squatters made a trip to the dump yesterday and grabbed whatever was usable, moved in today, and are open for business tonight. Enjoying a drink here, I’m reminded of creatures that inhabit discarded shells in a tide pool. The formula really works. With the come-as-you-are atmosphere, these clubs attract people who make a point not to be “fashion slaves.” And, for the traveler, it’s easy to meet people in a Budapest ruin pub.

I end up sitting with Peter (who designs ruin pubs), Laura (who works at a hotel), and Sandra (whose father’s company, “Heat Wave,” introduced pornography to Hungary after freedom in the 1990s). I say how much I like the shabby lounge atmosphere of a ruin pub, and Laura declares that this one, Szimpla (which means “Simple”; Kazinczy utca 14, www.szimpla.hu), is the mecca of ruin pubs in Budapest. Sandra agrees, but is distracted when Miss Hungary walks by. With a little disdain, she says, “There’s Miss Hungary — a beauty brat with a Gucci handbag, and nobody notices her.”

Ruin pubs come with a bit of communist kitsch. The twentysomethings that love these lounges were little kids during the last years of communism. Too young to understand its downside, they have fond memories of the good times, when the pace of life was slower and families were tighter-knit. Ruin pubs sell nostalgic commie soft drinks along with the cocktails. Peter buys everyone a round of spritzes (rosé with soda water). He’s excited about the new ruin pub he just designed across town, and wants us to go there. I comment on how well the design works. He explains how these clubs are the soul of underground culture here. It’s the anti-club: flea market furniture, no matching chairs, a mishmash of colors. It’s eclectic, designed to be undesigned. On hot nights, the pubs spill out into shoddy courtyards, creating the feeling of a cozy living room missing its roof…under the stars.

Everyone seems to smoke. Here, where no one’s a fashion slave, not being a fashion slave creates a similar burden. Peter demonstrates the different ways you can smoke a cigarette in a counterculture enclave. First he does the affected “Beauty Queen” smoke, then the calculated “Godfather” smoke. Finally, gulping the cigarette in the middle of his lips, he does the “Working Smoker,” saying, “You smoke with big lips.”

Laura is talking with Sandra in Hungarian about her dead relationship. There’s nothing there, but she’s afraid to leave. When I join the conversation, she shifts to English and says it’s like she has sexual anorexia. Her boyfriend and she are drifting apart. She wants him to watch Sex and the City, and says, “To understand the soul of a woman, you must watch Sex and the City.” This topic gets Laura and Sandra talking about how Hungarian men aren’t as good as men from other cultures — not considerate, not thoughtful in conversation, and so on. I explain to her the concept of “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.” She says we’re talking beds, not fences, and doesn’t buy my theory.

Politics are in the air all over Europe, with everyone looking at Greece’s economic disaster and wondering what to do. Hungarians are used to making not much money, but having the government pay for things. While Budapest is better off, in the east of the country, people still make horrible wages and expect the government to cover the essentials. The government provides, but things are supplemented with tips. Health care is a good example of this heritage of communism. Hungarians insist on complete coverage — with no co-pay. Technically, they get it. But everyone knows the system only works with the help of “pocket money” — people actually pay cash tips to their doctors in order to get an appointment and have their concerns taken seriously. That’s how it was in communist times. And that’s how it remains today.

In 1989, with the “spontaneous privatization of the society,” the Communists in power had the inside track and grabbed up the lion’s share of the country’s economic equity. Therefore, today, the former Communists are the privileged capitalist class and, ironically, these former “defenders of the proletariat” are now defenders of industry and corporate interests. Young people, who have a Tea Party edge to their politics, are wary of any promises that are populist and founded on deficit spending. They are tired of electing politicians who tell them what they want to hear. They see other former-communist countries doing better than Hungary in fiscal discipline.

Old people are inclined to vote Communist, and young people want the new austerity. In a recent election, young people joked about how to stop your Granny from voting. Pop stars were making videos: Lock her in her bedroom, send her on vacation, ask her to babysit for a couple of days. Or be straight with her and convince her to vote for her granddaughter’s future. Thanks to Greece, populism is has taken a big hit in Eastern Europe.

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You Can’t Flush Tallinn

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To commemorate the Smithsonian Presents Travels with Rick Steves magazine — now on sale online, and at newsstands nationwide — Rick is blogging about the 20 top destinations featured in that issue. One of those destinations is Tallinn, the capital of Estonia.

Visiting a tiny land like Estonia, I’m impressed by the resilience of a small nation. How can just over a million Estonians survive the centuries wedged between Russia and Germany? With the agenda of tyrants to the East and West, I’d think Estonia would fare like a sheet of Kleenex in a flushing toilet.

And not every tiny land survives. There are countless sister cultures that are simply gone or nearly gone today. (For example, Livonia, in this same Baltic region, or the Sorbs of Germany.) But the pride and strength itself of nationalities like Bulgarians, Montenegrins, Kosovars, Icelanders, Estonians, and Basques as they maintain their traditions and language in the brutal (if not flushing) demographic currents of the 21st century is an inspiration.

With our new TV series, I find myself highlighting the Basques, Montenegrins, and Estonians. Come to think of it, even Norway (with about the population of Alabama) is a mighty mite, and we’re doing two shows on that country. Maybe, subconsciously, these days — when the media work to homogenize us all, globalization tries to convince us that selling our souls is the only option, and material values have become “too big to fail” — I’m in the mood to celebrate the cultural underdogs.

So here’s to the 1.25 million people who speak Estonian, the 700,000 people who speak Basque, the 150,000 people who speak Montenegrin, and the 5 million people who speak Norwegian. And here’s to traveling to a place where you can hear Estonians, Basques, Montenegrins, and Norwegians — in their own language — drink to your travels.

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Help Me: Should We Accept Credit Cards for Our Tours?

It’s about 2 a.m. I’m in Vienna, still spinning after an exciting day in Bratislava, but also burdened with office work. (Wi-Fi in the room is both good and bad.)

I could use some advice. Here’s the situation: Over the years with our tour program, I’ve done my best to be idealistic and think creatively of ways to keep things as affordable as possible. For example, I’ve long believed that it was a kind of “tough love” not to build in the roughly $10-a-day extra cost to accept credit cards. We’ve long accepted credit cards for individual retail purchases and for deposits on tours. But for such a big-ticket item — the tour balance — it seemed careless to invite the banks into the already tight equation. Requiring payment by cash or check has allowed us to keep our tours more affordable. (It seemed a shame to give a bank $200 so a tour member could have the convenience of using their credit card rather than writing a check to take a 20-day tour.)

As we get ready to price and promote our tours for 2011, we have a debate among our staff about the wisdom of this, and perhaps I’m thinking too small.

It’s just a basic business truth: Anyone accepting credit cards is passing that fee along to their customers. In the past, the credit-card companies have managed to make it illegal for companies like ours to accept credit cards for an extra fee (to cover the credit-card company’s fee). I’ve learned that now we are allowed to discount our tours to those who pay cash. But if we do that, we still must advertise our tours at the full, needlessly bloated cost. (I don’t entertain frequent-flier miles concerns in this debate, because I don’t believe in that marketing ploy — but that’s a different discussion.)

In this day and age, people expect to pay by credit card. So what’s better — a 12-day Portugal tour for $2,800 cash, or a 12-day Portugal tour for $2,900 with credit card? Why?

Thanks for your input.

Update as of July 2:
After reading everyone’s comments, it’s clear that people want the credit card option. Thanks so much for your feedback. This has been a learning experience for me…very interesting reading. From a business point of view, I don’t think any company simply “eats” their added credit card expenses. (When we consume in a way that adds to the cost of the product, the consumers ultimately pay for it.) I must say I’m impressed by how readily we embrace a system that adds 3 percent to the cost of everything we purchase. But I’m over it now. So: Credit cards, here we come.

For the launch of our 2011 tours this fall, we’ll find a way to give credit-card users a choice for the first time — and, to avoid passing the added cost of accepting credit cards on to our cash-paying customers, we’ll give cash users some savings. The main thing and the good news here: This change will help more people enjoy the wonders of Europe — and we’ll have the chance to turn more travelers into happy customers. Thanks again for your help.

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Help me: Should we accept credit cards for our tours?

It’s about 2am. I’m in Vienna, still spinning after an exciting day in Bratislava but also burdened with office work. (Wi-fi in the room is both good and bad.) I could use some advice. Here’s the situation. With our tour program I’ve done my best to be idealistic and think creatively of ways to keep things as affordable as possible. For example, when I learned how huge the commission was for travel insurance and how tour companies and travel agencies made it standard operating procedure to cover their exposure by recommending it for interruption and cancellation losses, I decided it was disingenuous to recommend it. We would “self-insure” and include a similar coverage in our tour price without injecting the extra cost of the insurance companies. This provided a service (taking away the stress of losing money if you needed to cancel) at a far smaller cost than out-sourcing it the conventional way. In the spirit of “keeping it in the family” rather than bringing in a needless middle man which would jack up the costs of travel that we have included it. I’ve also long believed that it was a kind of tough love to not build in the roughly $10 a day cost to accept credit cards in order to be able to keep our tours more affordable. It seemed a shame to give a bank $200 so a tour member could have the convenience of using their credit card rather than writing a check to take a 20 day tour. We’ve long accepted credit cards for individual retail purchases and for deposits on tours. But for such a big ticket item, the tour balance, it seemed careless to invite the banks into the already tight equation. But we have a debate among our staff about the wisdom of this and perhaps I’m thinking too small. It’s just a basic business truth: anyone accepting credit cards is passing that fee along to their customers. The credit card companies have managed to make it illegal for companies like ours to accept credit cards for an extra fee to cover their fee but I understand we can discount our tours to those who pay cash. But if we do that, we still need to advertise our tours for the full needlessly bloated cost. (I don’t entertain frequent flier miles concerns in this debate because I don’t believe in that marketing ploy — but that’s a different discussion.) In this day and age, people expect to pay by credit card. What would you prefer? A company that kept the cost down a bit (as explained above) but required you to mail in a check or the convenience to simply go to the web site, give your credit card, and be on board. Why? Thanks for your help.