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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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Istanbul: An After-Dinner Whirl

I am so enthralled with Istanbul and excited about our TV production work that it is hard to make time for a blog entry. This is very rushed, but I’ve got to share a little walk around the block with you.

Last night I went out alone for dinner. On the street level, the restaurant was dead — but a TV monitor was showing the action up on the terrace, four flights up. I sat down to dinner with the domes of the Blue Mosque on one side of me; on the other side, a fleet of freighters were patiently waiting their turn to slip through the bottleneck of the Bosporus. My dinner grace was forced on me as calls to prayer rang out all around. It was surround-sound: Allahu Akbar— “God is great.”

 

Filming the muezzin singing at the base of the minaret, we attempted to put a face on the Muslim call to prayer.
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This round of the call to prayer was particularly vivid to me because just a few hours before, I’d had the privilege of sitting at the base of a minaret of the Blue Mosque, at the feet of the man who is perhaps Istanbul’s best singing hafiz (someone who has memorized all 6,000-plus verses of the Quran). He grabbed two old-fashioned microphones, put a hand on his ear, closed his eyes, and filled his neighborhood with a soulful warbling and highly amplified call to “come join the prayer, come join the salvation, God is great.” He covered me with goosebumps.

I was gazing at the Christmas-tree lights that draped the minarets spiking into the sky above my dinner table, when suddenly my waiter’s face filled my view and he plopped down a hot, fresh-out-of-the-oven loaf, a balloon of bread shaped like some Assyrian flotation device.

Tourists at the next table told me they were here to meet some students on a study ship cruising the Mediterranean. But because of the bomb here a couple days ago, the ship had been diverted to Egypt. (I wanted to scream at this example of nervous parental over-reaction — not only because it made no sense, but because Egypt has got to be many times more dangerous than Turkey anyway.)

I decided to walk home the long way, savoring the Istanbul night. A local couple was sucking on a four-foot-tall hookah, cuddled up on one of the sofas that’s so common these days in outdoor lounges in the Mediterranean, lost in each others’ gaga eyes.

I stepped into the Blue Mosque, as if to give it another chance. It was so touristy this morning, inundated with cruise-ship visitors. Now it was once again just the neighborhood mosque in action — not a tourist in sight. A window was open for ventilation. I peeked through to find it was the ladies’ prayer zone. I drew back, suddenly feeling a tinge of peeping-Tom guilt.

A family gathered around their little boy in his proud admiral’s outfit. It was his circumcision party — celebrated as Christians would celebrate a baptism, but even more joyous. (Turks call the circumcision party the greatest party — like “a wedding without the in-laws.”) The boy was all smiles…for now.

Looking up, I enjoyed a treat that sneaks up on me whenever I find myself under mosques after dark: the sight of soaring birds swooping past silhouetted minarets with their undersides floodlit.

I was regretting eating and drinking so much. In Turkey, I have sentimental favorite dishes from my student days as a backpacker here. Because of that (and a certain pride in being able to actually say the words in Turkish), I always order sutlac (rice pudding) and visnu su(cherry juice). Even if I’m not hungry or thirsty, I say the words, eat and drink…remembering my first tastes of Turkey as a teen.

Leaving the mosque, I came upon a big electronic reader board. It was evangelizing, constantly spooling out delightful, Muhammad-praising, “love thy neighbor” aphorisms in crawling red letters. After a few minutes pondering the verses, I thought, “Good religious marketing.”

In Istanbul the dervish comes to the tourists as a follower of Mevlana whirls.
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Just outside the gate, a man was drawing tourists’ names on plates, mesmerizing a small crowd with his gorgeous calligraphy. While Western tourists in Turkey tend to assume that anyone “foreign-looking” is a local, I’ve realized that in Istanbul’s touristy zones like this, many of the “exotic locals” are actually tourists from other parts of the Islamic world.

My day’s little victory lap was just about done. Tourists filled a big patio, enjoying a single dervish whirling on an elevated platform. I have a bad attitude about dervishes doing their whirl for tourists who have no idea what’s going on. That’s because I have enjoyed the good fortune of having a dervish actually explain the meaning of this meditational prayer ritual, and how it relates to the teachings of Mevlana. (You might call Mevlana the “Islamic St. Francis.”) But I buried my bad attitude and simply enjoyed the beauty of his performance there in the Istanbul night.

I had a 7 a.m. appointment with a Turkish bath (to get in with our camera crew before the baths open to the public), so I headed back to our hotel, climbed into bed, and enjoyed reviewing the memories generated by simply spending a few minutes walking around the block after dinner in Istanbul. It affirmed my love of this city, which I rank (along with Paris, Rome, and London) as one of Europe’s top four great cities.

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Istanbul: The Day after a Terrorist Bombing

I’m in Istanbul — floodlit minarets out my window in a hot and muggy room after a great first day of filming. I’m getting this blog entry up pronto because of the horrible bombing here 24 hours ago, which killed at least 17 people and injured more than 150.

Apparently, many Americans heading for Turkey saw the news and wonder if it’s still safe. The thought honestly didn’t even occur to me until I got back into the room tonight and read my email from our office saying some of the people signed up on our tours were concerned. My first thought was not to dignify the unfounded fear with a response. But that’s not fair. When you are half a world away and just watching the news, it is understandable that you might overreact. Let me just recount my day.

In this city of well over 10 million people, this is a tragedy. But (as I commented to Simon, my TV director, as we returned after 10 hours of shooting all over town today) I’m impressed by how I felt no tension on the streets because of this event. Of course, it’s on the Istanbul news big time tonight, but the city is as fun-loving and lofty as ever.

Our last shot of the day — looking from the Galata Bridge over a churning harbor at the Topkapi Palace sitting in a green bed of trees, with huge red Turkish flags flying and a skyline spiky with minarets — I commented to Simon that this city is uniquely graceful to the eye. Even though it’s rough…it still has the fragrance of a harem girl dancing for a sultan.

Istanbul is a far cry from Denmark, where I was just yesterday. Even at the Turkish Airlines gate at the Copenhagen airport, I knew we weren’t in Denmark anymore. The Turks talked louder and their kids were unruly. The flight was a bit of culture shock — horrible sound system, grainy 1980s-vintage video, families jabbering noisily as their children bounced all over. (Just between you and me, that’s why I enjoy traveling in Turkey more than Denmark.)

Riding the taxi in from Atatürk Airport, we drove along the Bosphorus — packed with ocean-going freighters, most Russia-bound. Passing along the harborfront, I remembered it a few years ago — littered with beggars, homeless people, shantytowns of immigrants camping out and in search of jobs. Today it’s a sleek European-style park. And, as it was Sunday evening, it was filled with families out wrapping up their weekend with a picnic.

This morning, as we set out to film, I met my friend and local guide Lale (who’s helping us with this shoot). She told me of the horrible bombing. We stopped by a government office to see if we had extra concerns with permissions and getting on public transit with a big camera and our gear. There was no change in our access for filming things in town.

I was hoping to be in the hotel all day, catching up on writing, while Simon and our cameraman got all the B-roll (beautiful exteriors). But a thunderhead sent the crew in, and we changed plans to shoot indoor things.

As usual, the script is too long. It could be two shows…but I think I’d rather do Istanbul dense in half an hour. Simon and I cut the home visit to Lale’s nice suburban condo in a gated community (where I hoped to show how modern Turks live, and introduce their little 14-month-old boy to our audience).

We also cut the fancy deli, and cut the attempt to film merchants in the Grand Bazaar pitching their goofy, sentimental, and clever sales lines. (“Don’t I know you? Love is blind but never mind. Can I sell you something you don’t need? Please, where are you from? Special price today…just for you, my friend.”) Most wouldn’t talk to the camera, as they seem to have been recently burned by TV cameras doing negative stories. One guy said, “You just want to make us look bad.” I said, “No, I want to make you look good. Are you bad?” He said, “We are bad, yes. But we don’t want to lookbad.”

In the far end of the bazaar, my favorite goldsmith did his thing — melting the off-cuts and sweepings into a little brick of solid gold — for our camera. In three minutes, it went from loose shavings to molten metal poured into a mold, cooled in a bucket of water, polished with newspaper, and into my hands. Being the first to hold that brand-new, four-pound brick of gold there in that funky, ramshackle, hot hole-in-the-wall was fun…and great TV.

We worked all day. The security was as tight as London’s (where I was a couple of weeks ago). Guards with metal-detecting wands did a cursory wave over us as we entered the Grand Bazaar and the Spice Market.

I was tuned into the people around us. At first, it was the cruise-ship people — filling the Hippodrome square and the main street in the Grand Bazaar. Then, simply stepping into the thriving market streets beyond the touristy zone, there were absolutely no tourists and a festival of telegenic local faces.

There are a lot of tourists in town. At lunch, I met an enthusiastic group who took our Turkey tour last year and have returned to explore the country again. I think I met more American tourists in Istanbul today than I did all last week traveling through the Danish countryside (outside of Copenhagen, which has lots of Yanks).

I’ve always wanted to film Istanbul’s fish boats cooking up their fish right on their bobbing deck, and serving it up in hunks of bread wrapped in newspaper. (This Istanbul fast food is a sentimental memory from my teenage visit here.) With the boats rocking wildly, we bought our sandwiches. As I sat down to eat mine, a bird strafed me. It was as if yellow mustard (the expensive kind, with the grains in it) just squirted out of the sky. A streak landed on my sleeve, and another on the thigh of my pants. I heard a third squirt land in the vicinity of my sandwich. When I surveyed my fried mackerel, it was the same rustic yellow — camouflaging whatever may have landed there. Lale said, “That’s why we don’t like pigeons.” Simon tried to comfort me, saying, “It’s probably mostly mackerel, anyway.” I still couldn’t finish my snack.

The slick new city tram — notoriously crowded through the day — was not jammed after rush hour. So we hopped on and filmed it as we returned to our hotel. We met a beautiful woman in an amazing black scarf covered with bangles (imagine I Dream of Jeannie at an Irish wake). I asked her man where they were from…thinking Oman or Sudan or Kilimanjaro or something really exotic. They said Istanbul. I said, “Çok güzel”(very beautiful), and thought, “I guess if you need to cover your head…you can do it with panache.”

Oh, back to my reason for the blog entry: Should you travel to Istanbul? Who am I to say? Some people will, and some people won’t. Those who won’t…can see a great show about it on public TV this coming October.

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Denmark: A Pitch ‘n Putt Course Sparsely Inhabited by Vulcans

I’ve been in Denmark filming for a week now. When in the Netherlands, I have a running joke with Simon (my TV director). We say, “Everything’s so…Dutch.” Now, in Denmark, we say, “Everything’s so…Danish.” While our Copenhagen show is featuring a thriving metropolis, our Danish Countryside show features cuteness.

Danes enjoying the trendy new part of Aarhus (where a once-paved-over river is now revealed and lined by popular eateries).
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And Denmark is, simply, cute — cute, cute, cute. The place feels like a pitch ‘n putt course sparsely inhabited by blonde Vulcans. Poll after poll lists them as the most content and happy people on the planet. And it’s flat. Going over a huge suspension bridge and enjoying a vast territorial view, I realized how rare it is to get a “high wide” shot of the countryside. The place is so flat that we’ve been climbing silos and pulling over on the crests of bridges to get the best “high wide.”

We were at the local Disneyland: Legoland, a wildly popular place featuring 58 million Lego bricks built into famous landmarks from around the world. (They claim if you lined them all up, they’d stretch from here to Italy.) The place was crawling with adorable little ice-cream-liking, blonde children. Even with piles of sugar, it was so mellow. Kids were holding their mothers’ hands learning about the Lego buildings, or smiling contentedly as they whipped around on the carousel.

In the middle of the countryside, the newly paved roads are lined by perfectly smooth bike lanes — one for each direction. Even in the countryside, there are more bikes than cars. No one’s uptight. We got in a little traffic jam — everyone takes it in stride. Damn those Danes.

I’ve been wondering how the Danes pull it off. I think their success relates to the free rider problem and the social contract. I don’t think many Americans can conceptualize the “free rider problem.” Basically: If I do it, I can get away with it; but if everyone does it, the system will collapse. So when deciding how to act, Danes take into consideration what would happen to their society if everyone cheated on this, sued someone for that, took advantage of that technicality, freeloaded here, or ignored that rule there.

Europeans trade off individual-ism for social-ism. The Danes seem to take it to an extreme. I don’t know how well I’d fit in here, to be honest. But I am so intrigued. Danes are famous for not jaywalking. At 3 a.m., they still stop for a red light. When I jaywalk elsewhere, I do so thinking people will appreciate my lead and follow me. When I jaywalk here, Danes look at me like I’m a bad influence on the children present.

People laugh politely when I ask if they speak English, responding, “Of course I do.” Conversation flows easy. Here are a few comments I’ve heard this week:

“In Denmark, you have to work quite hard to find a crack to fall through. A few people with alcohol problems manage to be homeless. Yes, we are the most contented people. We pay, on average, 50 percent taxes — yes, worker or big shot, we pay about 50 percent. Of course, we get lots for that. We’ve had national healthcare since the 1930s. We know nothing else. If I don’t like the shape of my nose, I pay to fix that. But all else is taken care of. All education is free. And university students get $800 a month for living expenses for up to six years. When there is a student demonstration, it’s generally for more pocket money. We Danes believe a family’s economic status should have nothing to do with the quality of the healthcare or the education their children receive. I believe in the US, you pay triple per person what we pay as a society for healthcare. Your system may be better for business…but not better for service. Essentially, we already have the euro — it’s just divided not into 100 cents, but into 7.5 crowns. The Danish kroneris fixed to the Euro at that rate.”

When I saw the tombstone store with Tak for Alt (“Thanks for Everything”) pre-carved into the stones, I figured it was a message from the dead one after a very blessed life in Denmark (like “That’s all, folks”). But I learned today that it’s a message from those bidding their loved one farewell (like “rest in peace”). Still, I think when a Dane dies, they (more than their loved ones) should say, “Tak for Alt.”

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Shrimps on the Barbie…We Must Be in Denmark

I’ve been trying to analyze why I enjoy traveling so much. All I do is work all day long, every day, and it brings me pure joy.

The isle of Aero welcomes visitors with a special Danish cuteness.
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Just last night with our camera crew, I was sitting on the beach on a remote Danish isle digging into a grand picnic as the sun was sinking heavy and red into the…whatever Danish sea was out there. It was like an hourglass — unstoppable, dictating when we would be done filming. We set about shooting a great bit, and getting the open of the show at the same time.

A charming family who happened to be German (but looked Danish enough) joined us with their terrier named “Jackson.” I couldn’t stop singing the classic Nancy Sinatra/Lee Hazelwood song. Jorgen Otto, the lord mayor of the island — a wiry former headmaster of the local school, and clearly charismatic enough to be a popular small-town politician — was sitting cross-legged with us, strumming his guitar and teaching us a Danish shanty about a sinking ship in which all the sailors survived and made it home to their beloved. The picnic was all spread out, and shrimp and wieners were sizzling on the hibachi. And the tiny beach shacks behind us were looking so Danishly cute. It was perfect.

After popping another shrimp into Jackson’s eager and hairy trap, which made us all laugh, I looked into the camera, and said (with a vaguely Australian accent), “Hi, I’m Rick Steves, back with more of the best of Europe. This time we’re on the beach, got a good cold beer, and the shrimp’s on the barbie. It must be the best of…Denmark. Thanks for joining us.”

The beach was filled with Germans vacationers — whose grandfathers had invaded this place. We had just biked down from a thousand-year-old mystical burial site — a stone-lined mound the shape of a Viking ship. It sat upon a five-thousand-year-old burial chamber. Next to it was a village church with a list of pastors going back 500 years. The current pastor, Agnus, was the first woman on the list. At the rear of the nave, as if his hand were on the theological rudder, a painting showed Martin Luther standing strong with his hand on the Bible. All this history added poignancy to the experience.

I feel charmed to be turned on by all this. When I wonder why, it comes back to my studies. I got my history degree accidently. Because I had traveled, taking history classes was simply fun. One morning in the UW dormitory, I woke up, realized I had already taken seven classes, and it hit me: “Three more classes, and I’ll have my degree — and bam, I’m a historian.”

Since then, I’ve spent a third of my life exploring Europe — enjoying “continued education” with a curriculum I’ve tailored specifically for myself. And I marvel at how my travels stoke my interest in history, and the fun my interest in history brings.

Just this summer, I’ve enjoyed finding out why 7,000 Danes volunteered to fight with the Nazis against the USSR; tried to get my head around the possibility that the Vikings’ rape, pillage, and plunder image may be a bad rap (while in York, the capital of Viking England a thousand years ago); and heard stories of that monk in the Champagne region of France who double-fermented his wine, invented something new and bubbly, and ran famously down the halls of his monastery, shouting, “Brothers, come quickly, I’m drinking stars!” And, just today, here on the Danish Isle of Ærø, I learned how its “duty-free age” age as a smuggling capital on the border between Germany and Denmark created the lovely collection of captains’ homes I’ve been ogling all afternoon.

And eating my way through Europe this summer has also reminded me how understanding “food patriotism” in different corners brings out fun and fascinating facets of my favorite continent. In Scotland, I learned locals are passionate about finding and describing the whisky that fits their personality. Each guy in the pub has “his” whisky. And the descriptors (fruity, peppery, peaty, smoky) are much easier to actually taste than their wine-snob equivalents.

In Greece, I got a good, strong dose of how olive oil and national pride mix. Locals are outraged at Greek olive oil being bottled and sold as “extra virgin Italian oil,” and are determined to elevate the image of Greek olive oil so growers won’t take a hit by selling it to Greek oil companies.

And, this week in Denmark, I learn that pickled herring is almost a religion for many Danes. My friend, a local guide here, claims to eat it every morning for breakfast and three times a week for lunch.

In a few days, I fly to Istanbul — where I get to refine my appreciation for baklava again. (I get it tuned up as often as possible.)

What’s the point? When you travel, you find the enthusiasm of locals for their national dishes rubs off on you…and you fly home with more favorite foods. Travel makes life simply more tasty, and history more poignant.

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No Clogged Arteries in Copenhagen

I’m filming a new TV show this week in Copenhagen. This city has impressed me in many ways.

Copenhagen’s new subway is silent, automated (without a driver), trains go literally every two minutes, and it’s on the honor system — there are no turnstiles.

The streets in Danish towns are so quiet (most city centers are pedestrians-only) that I don’t talk to my friends from a distance…I walk over to whisper to them.

An angry young man at the train station was barking into his mobile phone…and it occurred to me that in a week in this country, those were the only angry words or shouting I had heard.

Twice in this city, my trip has nearly been cut short as I step from a taxi or sidewalk into the bike lane. I am aware of cars, of course, but there is a third dimension zipping along silently between pedestrians and drivers: Danish bikers.

London and Paris have taken lanes away from drivers to make bike lanes, but they go virtually unused. Somehow Copenhagen has it figured out. During Copenhagen’s rush hour, there are literally more bikes on their roads than cars. I look at a square in the town center, and there are 50 bikes parked (which blend into the scene almost unnoticed) and absolutely no cars. Congestion is less, parked cars don’t clog their arteries, and people are in shape. A new trend I just noticed is that fancy business hotels provide visiting guests with loaner or rentable bikes.

I was reviewing my TV production plans with a senior official from the Danish Tourist Board. Suddenly his mobile phone rang with a cartoonish voice for a ring tone, warning in an urgent Danish voice: “Hello, it’s the Prime Minister, Rasmussen. Don’t answer this call. It’s a bad man and he’s sitting with a bunch of terrorist friends and they’re planning to do something very bad.”

Later, I asked a Danish friend about the controversial cartoon image of Muhammad that offended so many Muslims. She said it’s all in fun. “We’ll take the heat, but you have to have a sense of humor. Our prime minister — who half our country loves and half our country despises — is caricatured as a caveman. He laughs, and we love him even more.”

Side-tripping north by train to Frederiksborg Castle, we film me saying, “A fun part of exploring Denmark — or just about any country in Europe — is enjoying the efficiency of the great train system.” As usual, I need about six or eight “takes.” My local guide is laughing as I work. I ask him why, and he says our train is running five minutes late, and everyone on the train around me is muttering “no, no, no” each time I say my line. Clearly, it’s all relative. While there are two trains a day serving my hometown, these trains go six times an hour and Danes here go through life never wishing they had a car — but they still complain. My friend says, “We Danes are spoiled. We love to complain.”

But, apparently, Danes end things on a more appreciative note. Today I passed a shop selling tombstones, and noticed the most common words pre-etched into the marble were Danish for “Thanks for everything.”