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

Cheese, Organs, and the Alps

Postcards from Europe — Ten Years Later (Part Three: Switzerland and France)

As I reread my Postcards From Europe book for its special tenth anniversary edition, it was fun to consider how the lives of its real-life cast of characters and their hometowns have changed since 1999.

Here’s the latest from Switzerland and France:

Up in Switzerland’s Alps, my favorite village of Gimmelwald has gone through some tough times. The only real restaurant closed, resulting in a big hit to the town’s commercial metabolism. Locals pulled together with creative ways to parlay the products of a humble alpine village into sustenance for visitors, and thankfully, the restaurant seems to have new and energetic owners. Petra’s youth hostel is stronger than ever, and the talents of her handy husband, Wally, complement her own. And Walter is more and more the eccentric and generally lovable old man of the town — with two new hips, he still shuffles around, refusing to retire and still feeding his hungry hikers. Olle and Maria still share the village’s only teaching position. Every time I visit I remember how Gimmelwald was the scene of our Swiss Alps Christmas show for public television. Olle helped heroically — he cranked up the town’s traditional charm, and turned the entire village into bit players as we filmed a traditional Christmas under a delightful blanket of new snow.

In Paris, Rue Cler is more Rue Rick Steves than ever — busy with my readers but still a delight. My friend, Marie-Alice (for whom cheese smells like “zee feet of angels”) is mad at me because I gave her hotel a bad write-up, so we no longer communicate. It’s complicated maintaining objectivity while also trying to maintain friendships for people who — when you get right down to it — sometimes see you more as a source of free advertising than as a friend.

Daniel Roth, my musical hero, still welcomes visitors into his St. Sulpice Cathedral loft to enjoy the finest pipe organ experience in Europe up close and intimate. He performs with an elegance that creates a glorious little interlude just for you, where there is no kitschy, shrill, garish, frustrated, rag-tag, mind-numbing world out there. While in Daniel Roth’s loft, your world is simply ivory keys, inlaid stops, and a timeless heritage of great music powering worship, appreciated by silent and humble pilgrims contained in a Gothic box lovingly carved of stone in centuries past.

Checking In on My Italian Stallions

Postcards from Europe – Ten Years Later (Part Two: Italy)

Ten years is a long time. As I reread my Postcards from Europe book for its special tenth anniversary edition, it was fun to consider how the lives of its real-life cast of characters and their home towns have changed since 1999.

Here’s the latest from Italy:

Venice continues to lose real residents while gaining tourists. Asians are famously buying up and running the shops and locals now admit that no restaurant can survive without being “touristy.” Sexy Piero is no longer quite the playboy. He’s grown a full head of hair, but his voice is as sonorous as ever, and — with his partner Robbie — still seems to get great joy out of running their wonderful Hotel Guerrato.

My buddies Roberto and Manfredo are well. Their conversation was the greatest fiction of this book. All the sentiments and quotes were true — but taken from isolated times with them and they never actually got together until after this book was published. Roberto is the hardest-working guide in Siena and a big help with any projects I have in Tuscany. Manfredo burned out of the hotel business and has gone on to other things.

My Roman friends, Stefano and Paola, who contributed the sweetest romance to this book, are sadly no longer married. Stefano is still my Rome buddy and with each year, his hotel gets better.

Gene, my original travel partner back on the high-school grad trip, remains a key collaborator — co-authoring many guidebooks with me and contributing mightily to our teaching program at Europe through the Back Door.

In Vernazza, Monica and Massimo are happily married with a lovely child and Grandma still makes the pasta at the family restaurant. Vittorio (which is a pseudonym because of my portrayal of him as a playboy) is now too old to effortlessly sweep tourist women off their feet. His story saddens me as my guidebook lets many business owners repeat the sentiment of Sr. Sorriso (who said, “Rick Steves make me a rich man”). Vittorio still shuttles around from restaurant to restaurant, serving anchovies but never really getting a piece of the pie.

Paolo Sorriso passed away. His wife was long my only real enemy in Europe. I believe it was because of my candid listing of their humble pension; she was just filled with anger for me. She spooked me. She demanded to be out of my guidebook (even though she already was). Villages are small and for years I walked quickly past her door. Just last year, their children took over the family business, we sorted through our problems, and Pension Sorriso is back in my listings.

While Vittorio seems to be out of the game, Ivo — while gradually morphing into a grizzled old Italian man — still holds court at Riomaggiore’s Bar Centrale. Each year, when I pass through, he’s the master of hedonistic ceremonies in his Cinque Terre town.

When I consider all the places I work, I am frustrated by not having good local contacts and friends in some countries. I travel there year after year … and just don’t make the right connections. But in Italy, being connected comes easily. Hmmmm. I think I just stumbled into one of the reasons I like Italy so much. Its people are the low-hanging fruit of European travel.

Postcards from Europe – Ten Years Later

As I reread my Postcards from Europe book in preparation for its special tenth anniversary edition, it was fun to consider how the lives of its real-life cast of characters have changed since 1999.

In general, an affluence has swept Europe and European unification continues to march forward. Thankfully, my fears that this would steamroll the Continent’s charm and diversity have proven unfounded. And, as my favorite restaurateurs and hoteliers slip from active years into retirement, the next generation routinely overcomes my anxiety by picking up the torch and carrying on with new energy. And today, as in 1999, it remains the people who carbonate our travel experience.

While this may not mean much if you haven’t read the book or met them in your travels, here’s an update on European friends who starred in my book:

I learned that John Konig, the old piano salesman whom I speculated was “probably dead now,” is not dead. When this book came out, he emailed me from Europe saying, “I’m not dead yet.” (John, I hope that’s still the case.)

Frans (not Franz), the stressed-out Dutch hotelier who ran Haarlem’s Hotel Carillion, finally burned out and sold his business. Marjet and Hans, who run a B&B in Haarlem, are the same as ever, still ribbing their guests about American ethnocentrism. They call me each New Year’s Day from their winter hideout on the Spanish coast with a reminder that my resolution should be to work a little less and play a little more.

My friends in Bacharach on the Rhine are doing well. Herr Jung, the retired schoolteacher, was already quite senior in 1999. He’s still taking my tour groups through his town and charming them with his intimate and inspiring stories from World War II. At Hotel Kranenturm, Kurt still plays the DJ in his medieval cellar when he’s done cooking and, for his wife Fatima, a job well done remains a prayer.

I still look forward to the tradition of dropping by Hotel Goldene Rose in Rothenburg to enjoy the stammtisch (a “locals-only” table) with Henni and the Favetta family. If I get really drunk once on a trip…you can bet it’s at the Family Favetta’s stammtisch. The parents retired in 1999 and now Henni is running the show. Karen is still the loyal knave.

Photogenic Georg, Rothenburg’s Night Watchman, still charms tourists with stories of his medieval town and the curly locks of a 14th-century fantasy. Some envious local hotels have put up competing Night Watchmen…but there’s still only one.

While independent Asian travelers, like the Taiwanese girls I met in Rothenburg, were rare in 1999, today with the economic rise of China and India, the complexion of European tourism is fast changing.

While I included Munich as a stop on my Postcards route back when Berlin was a forest of construction cranes, today Berlin is rebuilt and has eclipsed Munich as the happening city of Germany. In fact, compared to Berlin, Munich is now flat beer and stale strudel. My friend Alan, who made me promise not to reveal the location of his favorite beerhall, has finally released me from my vow. It’s Unionsbrau — which remains many beer aficionado’s favorite Munich beerhall.

I’ll get an update on my Postcards from Europe friends from Italy, Switzerland and France to you soon.

Sarah Palin’s Small World

In a recent CBS interview, Katie Couric asked Governor Sarah Palin why she’d never had a passport and hadn’t traveled outside of the USA until about a year ago. Palin answered, “I’m not one of those who maybe came from a background of, you know, kids who perhaps graduate college, and their parents get them a passport and a backpack and say, ‘Go off and travel the world.’ No…. I was not part of, I guess, that culture.”

I understand that many people just can’t afford to travel. But anyone with the money to own a snowmobile and the time to hunt moose has the money to learn a bit about our world through international travel. What Palin lacks is not money, but curiosity.

The value of travel is nothing new. Nearly 1,500 years ago, Muhammad said, “Don’t tell me how educated you are. Tell me how much you’ve traveled.” Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Travel makes a person wiser, if less happy.” Mark Twain wrote: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.” Today, Europe has a well-funded “Erasmus Program” that enables millions of students to study and professors to teach in foreign countries.

Many Americans will never bother to get a passport and travel. But, especially since 9/11, I believe that any politician asking for the trust to run our country should be interested enough in the other 96 percent of humanity to have figured out a way to get out there and actually see some of it in person.

These days, the brand of America is hurting overseas. Our ambassadors routinely don’t speak the language of the countries they are stationed in. Cities are shut down by security when our president passes through. We are routinely outvoted in the United Nations 140 to 5 on issues that matter to the developing world. Our country, with 4 percent of this world’s population, feels the need to spend as much as every country combined on its military to feel safe (and, it seems, you can’t get elected without promising more). And meanwhile, half of humanity is trying to live on $2 a day. There may be all sort of good excuses for these facts. But they are facts, nevertheless…and it’s not a pretty picture for our nation.

The stakes are high and the challenges confronting America are complex. We need to engage thoughtfully with the family of nations because the most serious problems confronting us right now cannot be solved without international collaboration. The “go it alone” approach of the last eight years has proven not only ineffective…we can’t afford it. Now, more than ever, we need smart leaders who, at a minimum, acknowledge the importance of travel and the urgent need for America to connect constructively with the world beyond our shores.

P.S. If a Democratic candidate for national office said what Palin said, I’d write the same editorial.

Capitalism Outlives Communism by 17 Years

People keep asking how our business is doing. I’ll tell you in a minute, but first, we all need to rant.

While I’m personally generally isolated from the realities of “hard times” caused by war and bad economics, this crisis is a tide that will envelop all of us. The mortgage thing is hitting my friends and family, and I feel like just one little guy in a big team, throwing around sandbags filled with futility.

It is a scary time in our country. It seems like our government — Democrat and Republican — has been goosing the economy (to score political points) for 20 years. With all that goosing, one day reality will come home to roost. I am saddened by the basic silliness of a world that believes it can buy a house for $300,000, see it increase in value in a couple years to $500,000, and think they really gained $200,000. And, if it suddenly drops in value to $400,000, they think they lost $100,000. America is not as wealthy as it wants to be.

My personal business ethic is you must actually produce something of value to really earn money. (I don’t even enter contests to win things. I hate wasting time in my lectures when the organization hosting me has to do a raffle. It insults the hundreds of people who came to hear a lecture, as we all wait for someone to win a tote bag. I know, I’m boring.)

I have tried to instill this into my 80 employees as well as our kids: Design your business well, work hard, produce things that people need, and deserve the profit you reap. The macro-economics of all this are certainly beyond me. Sadly, they seem to be beyond the “experts” too.

Apparently 20 percent of our nation’s economy is in “finances.” Those who are just cleverly rearranging things to make a profit are not earning money…they’re scamming it. It just seems sleazy to me. And the next time some conservative says “get the government off our backs” when it comes to banking regulations — send him a bill for $700 billion. I’m sure Europe has its own problems here, but I believe other countries regulate their aggressive capitalists in the interest of their people. Given the creed of greed in our society, I believe we need a government to regulate our own aggressive and tricky capitalists.

And, while we’re at it, let’s tar and feather a few big shots whose employees are being aced out of their retirements while their bosses walk away with millions of dollars in bonuses. With all the despair among hard-working American families who are losing their homes, how can people be so quick to defend these guys who made millions overnight? I know, it’s not a zero sum game…but that money came from somewhere.

Okay, now for our travel business. I just met with our accountant and I was prepared for the worst. But our profit last year was as good as the year before. We have 80 people solidly on our payroll. We just hired a wonderful new man who was a key web designer at one of those huge Internet sites, and have plans to take our website to new heights. We are producing books, TV shows, and radio like never before. I just spent three days at the radio programmers’ convention and I hear we have a couple dozen new stations interested in picking us up.

We had to raise our prices for 2009 tours to cover the big drop in the value of our dollar, but our tours continue to sell on pace with 2008. To be more specific: We’re currently 9 percent ahead of 2008 sales at this time last year. But 50 percent of those signed up are alums (who’ve traveled with us before) — who tend to sign up early. Sales of our exotic new tours (Baltics, Croatia, etc.) are up, while sales of our bread-and-butter tours (Best of Europe) are down (which is what you’d expect if half of the people are coming back for seconds).

You can imagine that, since most of our expenses are in euros (buses, hotels, and restaurants for 15,000 people’s vacations), when the dollar drops so does our profit. The cost of euros recently dropped from $1.56 to $1.39. I was feelin’ good. Then we have this financial crises and it’s back up to $1.47. We just face the weather and carry on.

With the fragility of our economy and jittery consumers, I expect we’ll all (including my business) take a hit coming up. With the imminent Wall Street bailout, our dollar deserves to plummet. When Germany printed money to pay off the French after WWI, their currency became worthless. It’s a force of nature. While there will always be enough wealthy Americans to keep my company in business, I am saddened to think that, because of the general gullibility of our electorate lately (I don’t blame the president), our shrinking middle class will be less able to travel in the future. Could it be we need real change?

Hey Sarah, Jesus was a community organizer.