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

Tehran: Heavenly Pistachios…and a Pinch of Valium?

American journalist mugs with Revolutionary Guard.
Enlarge photo
Tehran, a mile-high metropolis of 14 million people.
Enlarge photo
Cameraman Karel gets photographed for his press pass.
Enlarge photo
Our welcome included building-sized anti-US murals showing American flags with Stars of David and dropping bombs painting the stripes.
Enlarge photo

I was hesitant to tell anyone about this trip until it was actually happening. One day into this experience, we are definitely here. Revolutionary Guards who can be coaxed to smile, four-lane highways intersecting with no traffic lights, “Death to America” posters, and big warm welcoming smiles…Iran is a fascinating and complex paradox.

Tehran is a mile-high metropolis of 14 million people. With one day of filming down, I’m in a fancy hotel on the 14th floor, enjoying a view of a vast city at twilight, lights twinkling right up a snow-capped mountain. I’m munching the best pistachios I’ve ever tasted (and I am a pistachio connoisseur) from an elegant woven tray and nursing a tall glass of pomegranate juice. I cruise the channels on my TV — CNN, BBC, and lots of mood-setting programming — perfect for praying… One channel shows the sun setting on Mecca, with its kaaba (the big black box focus of pilgrim worship), in real time. In an urban jungle like Tehran, life can be so good — if you have money.

Our local guide (who doesn’t want to be called a “government minder”) is a big help and very good. Today we dropped by the foreign press office to get our press badges. There a beautiful and properly covered woman took mug shots for our badges and carefully confirmed the pronunciation of our names in order to transliterate them into Farsi.

Filming is complicated on the streets of Tehran because there is no single authority in charge — many arms of government overlap and make rules that conflict with each other. Permissions to film somewhere are limited to a specific time window. If we have permission to film a certain building, it doesn’t mean we can film it from the balcony of a teahouse that we don’t have permission to film in, or from any angle that shows a bank — as those are not to be filmed. When we film a shop window, a security guard is on us immediately. Our guide/minder is kept busy asserting himself when someone representing some different branch of government puts up a road block. He makes it all possible. People here like to say, “Iranian democracy: You are given lots of options…and then we make your choice for you.”

We can talk to whomever we like — but it reminds me of my early trips to the USSR, when only those with nothing to lose would risk talking openly to us (at least when our “guide” was present). So many who’ve commented on the blog have assumed I am not troubled by the lack of freedom here. Civil liberties for women, religious minorities, and anyone who chooses not to embrace this self-described “revolution of values” are, to me the mark of a modern, free, and, I believe, sustainable democracy. Those both for and against my trip here all agree with that. A key word here is sustainable. I believe — given time and a chance to evolve on their cultural terms — the will of the people ultimately prevails. For now, this country is not free (and no one here claims it is). A creepiness that comes with big government pervades the place. I wonder how free-minded people cope. I am excited to sort this out as our trip goes along.

At the Shah’s palace — a museum since he was overthrown in 1978 — an old aristocratic woman came up to me and said, “We are united and we are proud. When you go home, you must tell the truth.” Iranians believe that Western media makes their culture look menacing, and never shows its warm, human and gracious side. I assured her that we were here to show the people of Iran rather than its bombastic government.

I understand well-employed people here make $5,000 to $15,000 a year, and pay essentially no tax. It seems to me that the economy doesn’t need to be very efficient, and taxes don’t matter much to a government funded by oil. Measuring productivity at a glance, things seem pretty low-energy. While the Islamic Revolution is not anti-capitalism, there seems to be a lack of incentive to really be efficient.

I can tell from our first day that the people of Iran will be the big joy of our visit — everyone’s mellow, quick to smile, very courteous. It’s almost like the country’s on valium. (But then, perhaps Iranians are just not driven as we are by capitalist values to work hard and enjoy material prosperity.)

In a bookstore a woman patiently showed me fine poetry books. As we left, she gave me a book for free. At the Shah’s palace, the public toilet was far away and a guard winked and slipped me secretly to a staff toilet — I imagine used by the Shah’s lackeys. The folks at the travel agency who set up our tour gave us each a platter of lemony pistachios…the best I’ve ever had. (My lips are puckered with them now as I type, as they are my standard bedside snack.)

I step out onto my hotel-room balcony to hear the hummm of 14 million people and marvel at fresh snow whitening the mountain above the ritzy high-rise condos of North Tehran. Looking straight down, the hotel’s entryway is buzzing with activity, as the hotel’s hosting a conference on Islamic unity. The circular driveway is lined by the flags of 30 nations. (Huge collections of flags seem to be common here — perhaps because it provides a handy opportunity to exclude the Stars and Stripes. Apart from being featured in hateful political murals, I haven’t seen an American flag.)

A van with an X-ray machine is permanently parked outside the entrance. Everyone who enters the hotel needs to pass their bags through this first. It’s interesting to see that Iran, a country we feel we need to protect ourselves from, handles security the same way we do.

The Pilot Said, “This Plane Is Heading for Tehran” … and Nobody Was Alarmed

Flying from Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport to Tehran’s Khomeini Airport, I considered airports others on the flight had used: Reagan, DeGaulle…four great leaders in recent history who have left their mark on entire nations. I was entering a society 30 years into the Islamic revolution of the Ayatollah Khomeini. The lives of 70 million people in the Islamic Republic of Iran have been shaped by this man. More than half the country has no memory of living under anything but a theocracy.

Buckling my seatbelt, it occurred to me that someone could come on the plane’s loudspeaker and say, “We’re taking this plane to Tehran” and no one would be alarmed. The plane was filled with Iranian people — their features were different from mine, but they dressed and acted just like me.

These people were well off — well dressed, healthy. It was horrible to think of fighting them in a war. Then I wondered if it is easier to bomb a society ground down by years of sanctions. Are scruffy, poor looking people easier to shock and awe? As we all settled into the wide-body jet, I wished the big decision-makers of our world weren’t shielded from an opportunity to share an economy cabin with people like this.

I made this same Istanbul-to-Tehran trip 30 years ago. Last time it took three days on a bus and the Shah was on his last legs. Wandering Iranian towns in 1978, I remember riot squads in the streets and the Shah’s portraits seeming to hang tenuously in market stalls. I also remember being struck by the harsh gap between rich and poor in Tehran. I was 23 years old. I believe that was the first time in my life I was angered by economic injustice.

The trip is quicker this time — three hours rather than three days. And now every main square and street that was named Shah is named Khomeini. Back then all denominations of paper money had one face on them…like today. At the Khomeini International Airport the only hint of the Shah was the clientele (many of those flying in were likely his supporters who’d fled Iran for the West in 1978 and who were flying in today to visit loved ones).

As the pilot began the descent, rich and elegant Persian women put on their scarves. With all that hair suddenly covered, I noticed how striking long hair can be, how it really does grab a man’s attention. Looking out the window at the lights of Tehran, the sight reminded me of flying into Mexico City at night. Tehran, with 14 million people, is more populous than all of Greece (where I was just traveling).

I’m starting this trip a little bit afraid. I don’t know what’s in store for us. We are anticipating a challenging and extremely productive 10 days here.

Mission: Understand Iran

A friend from the Washington State chapter of the United Nations Association called me six months ago and asked what I could do to help them build understanding between Iran and the US, and to defuse the tension that could be leading to war. I answered, “The only powerful thing I could do would be to produce a TV show on Iran.”

I remember when the bombs first fell on Baghdad, thinking I’d missed an opportunity to make a travel show that could humanize Baghdad and give “collateral damage” a face. I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to do this for Iran. My government would let me go. The Islamic Republic of Iran actually wanted the publicity. I threw together a proposal for a TV show — no politics, just travel. The working title: Iran: Its People and Culture, Yesterday and Today.

After months of fitful applications and negotiations, we were given visas and the government’s support for our mission: a 10-day shoot in Iran — Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, and Persepolis. The permissions were so slow in coming that the project was only a certainty last week when we picked our visas up in Athens. (I had a contingency plan for filming in Istanbul.) Like parents-to-be who want to tell the world but hold back until everything looks okay, I couldn’t announce our plans until we knew for sure the trip was a go.

In the US (where our current policy is not to talk with enemies), the only way we could communicate with Iran was indirectly, via the Pakistani consulate. (The US has more diplomatic dialogue going with North Korea than with Iran.) In Greece, it was strange to go into a relaxed, almost no-security Iranian embassy…and then walk out with visas. We were on our way.

As I prepare to fly to Iran (from Athens via Istanbul) it occurs to me that this is a huge, time-consuming, and expensive headache. Pondering my motivation, I keep thinking of those strong-hearted Americans who enlisted in our military in the days after 9/11. What motivated them? Love, revenge, freedom, a deep-seated male thrill to kill, patriotism? While the fire in my gut is just as hot and the concern in my heart just as real, my choice of weapons is different. Like them, I don’t care about my safety, the cost, or the work…I want to do this. I have to do this.

I know almost nothing about Iran — and it’s still a lot more than the average American knows. With something as tricky as US-Iran relations, the foundation of wisdom is to be aware that we can’t know the truth from news coverage. Just like I had to actually visit the USSR in 1978 and Nicaragua in 1988, I need to visit Iran in 2008. If war is at stake, I want to know the truth. Because, as I’ve said before, as an American taxpayer, I believe that every bullet that flies and every bomb that drops has my name on it.

Preparing for this adventure, I’ve been thinking about the similarities between three countries that are, or have been, notorious thorns in America’s side: Nicaragua, Cuba, and Iran. In each of them, we supported an American-business-friendly dictator who was ultimately thrown out by the poor people in that country: Somoza, Battista and the Shah. Then we proceeded to demonize the dictator’s successor and traumatize their people with economic embargos and noisy saber rattling. In the next 10 days, I hope to learn more about why Iranians chant “Death to America.”

I travel to Iran with plenty of anxiety and questions. How free will we be? Will the hotel rooms be bugged? Is there really absolutely no alcohol — even in fancy hotels? Will crowds gather around us and then suddenly turn angry? We have a good Persian-American friend on our crew with family in Iran. We want to be free-spirited, but don’t want to abuse the trust of the Iranian government and possibly cause problems for our Persian friend’s loved ones.

I’m nervous — we considered leaving our big camera in Greece and just taking the small one. I even made sure all my electrical stuff was charged up. Will the food be as bad as my memory from a 1978 backpacker trip through Iran, back in the last days of the Shah?

You might wonder why Iran is letting us in. They actually want to boost Western tourism. I would think that since Western tourism would bring in unwanted ideas (like those which threatened the USSR, which prompted its government to keep tourists out), Iran would see no point in allowing tourists in. But they want more visitors nonetheless.

They also believe the Western media have given their society an unfair image. They did lots of research on my work, and apparently my politics gave them faith in my motives. They don’t like Fox News or CNN, but say they’ve had good experiences with PBS crews in the past. (I heard we’ll get the same minder that Ted Koppel got for his Discovery Channel shoot.)

I want to show the state of Iranian women and this will be very delicate. Cafés that allow crews to show women breaking modesty regulations lose their license.

It’s a cash society. Because of the 26-year-old American embargo on Iran, Western credit cards don’t work there. No ATMs for foreigners.

I am tired after 24 relentless days of work (in Portugal — eating, drinking, sightseeing and embracing life there while updating that guidebook; and in Greece — producing two new TV shows). I need to be fresh and quick-minded on camera for interactions with people on the street (we hope for lots of this in Iran) and simply to stay healthy. I’ll lose a night’s sleep as we fly in, arriving at about 4 a.m.

Simon (director), Karel (cameraman) and I vowed to be respectful and keep a professional mindset. We must do nothing cute, clever or flip. (For instance, when our visas were printed with the wrong dates, we couldn’t resist calling it a “clerical error.”) Once in Iran, however, it’s serious business. The tourist board is part of the Department of Guidance.

Who’s paying for this production? Me. I figure this adventure will cost me roughly what each household in the US is already paying for Iraq. If I can help avert an extra war — even just a little bit — this will be a brilliant personal investment — and lots of people will owe me big-time. (Do the math: $3,000,000,000,000 divided by 300,000,000 US citizens; cut the zeros = $10,000 per person…that’s about $40,000 per family. Care for another war?)

This will be a journey of discovery for me. We have a very sketchy script to start with. It will evolve over the next 10 days. Each day, after a long day of shooting, I’ll massage what we’ve shot and learned into the script, print out a new version and come up with a shooting plan for the next day. My hunch: By Day 10, we’ll have a fine show.

I’ll try to send a blog report about every two days. I hope you can travel along.

[Interesting development: U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates urges more nongovernment contacts with Iran — Reuters, 5/15/08]

Your Questions Answered

Question: Why does Rick hate Greece? Was he beat up by a Greek bully as a child?

Many reacted defensively when I opined that, when it comes to beauty, mainland Greece and Athens don’t compare to many other European countries and cities. If France and Italy are at the top of the cuisine list, someone has to keep Norway company at the bottom. It doesn’t mean I don’t like Norway…or souvlaki. I had a great time in Greece (and I was not beat up by a Greek bully when I was a kid). I am open to Greece’s differences. I celebrate differences in my travels — that’s why I do it so much, really. And my observations about the rusty and ramshackle Greek mainland were just that: observations. If I said everything was sumptuous, “to die for,” magical…well, I wouldn’t be a travel writer. I’m the first one to admit that if I don’t appreciate a place, it’s often because I don’t know it well enough. I look forward to learning more about Greece.

Question: How do Greeks feel about Americans?

I’m sure there are Greeks who don’t like Americans and Greeks who like our president. But in these last two weeks in Greece I never met a Greek who liked our president. And I never met a Greek who didn’t give me a warm welcome as an American.

Question: How can you really know a hotel without staying there and paying for it like everyone else?

You can’t. I didn’t say that I learn all the hidden little warts. My point is, no guidebook writer can stay in all twenty hotels they mention in each big city. It is dishonest to say you can. You do your best to pick up all the little quirks and describe them honestly, whether you slept there for free, paid to sleep there, or didn’t get to sleep there. A charade of “quality research” based on the boast that someone doesn’t accept free rooms is a hollow sham that I just don’t embrace.

Question: Rick complains about Americans having the shortest vacations in the rich world yet doesn’t give his employees paid vacation. What gives there?

Fifteen years ago, when my company was little more than a gang of travel bums, we didn’t have paid vacations. We didn’t have any perks except an excuse to go to Europe and call it work. Today our 80 employees enjoy at least the American standard of paid vacation (admittedly nothing to brag about) and something much more. As an employer who’s never really worked for anyone else, I sometimes don’t empathize with employee needs, but I’ve also come up with creative alternatives that work really well. For the last several years we have given bonuses across the board equal to about a third of our salaries. Rather than paying people less and forcing them to take paid time off, we pay people more and encourage them to take time off without pay as they need it, while maintaining the option to take less time off and keep the money. We also let people with families work less than full time and keep all the responsibility they would normally have with a full-time position.

Question: When will Rick’s new TV series air?

Our new series will air starting in October on PBS stations across the US. New shows include: Barcelona, Istanbul, Athens and Side Trips, the Peloponnesian Peninsula, Dordogne, Burgundy, the Czech Republic, Copenhagen, the Danish Countryside, Great Swiss Cities, “Little Europe” (Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, and so on), and a surprise destination.

Question: How could an experienced traveler like you be caught off-guard by Greek Easter?

I wasn’t caught off-guard by Greek Easter. It just complicated our filming schedule. I had no flexibility in our production schedule, so we designed an itinerary that had us shooting through the holiday season and around the closures the best we could. This required mixing up two shows in one 12-day stretch — something we try to avoid. When you have a city of 4 million people all going on vacation at the same time, what is normally the cutest nearby island can be suddenly inundated. We knew we’d find most things closed and lots of family action on Easter Sunday, and that we needed to be in the right place to let that not mess up our filming. Therefore we flipped from one show’s destination to the other in order to not be in Olympia, for instance, when the ancient sight was closed. We secured our jet-boat tickets well in advance for the island, and so on. As it turned out, except for a few traffic jams and museum closures, we shot around Good Friday, Easter, and May Day just fine, and the extra pageantry and family action was actually a plus.

Question: Are your tour sales down from last year?

Our 2008 tours are a few percentage points below our best ever sales year (2007). Whether we take 14,000 or 13,000 people to Europe each year is not my concern. (For example, just yesterday I got an email from my staff suggesting we add Morocco to our list of destinations. We all love Morocco and it is less expensive than most of Europe, so it’s potentially more affordable for our travelers and more profitable for us. But I suggested that we not do Morocco, explaining that it’s not our realm of expertise, and I didn’t want to mess up our focus to sell a few extra tours in challenging times.) The cost of our buses, guides, hotels, and meals are in euros. This is what threatens our business — or at least our profit. Our costs have jumped about 25 percent in the last year — what we charge has not. Look for a big jump in tour costs (ours and everyone else’s) for 2009.

I’m in an exciting travel panic, heading off to a country that may surprise you. I don’t want to tell you anything more than that it’s a cash society where my credit card is no good, where ties are not worn because they symbolize the previous regime, and where urinals are non-existent for religious reasons. I’ll take you there in a couple days…In ša’ Allah.

Catching a Culture With Its Pants Down

We just finished filming two great shows on Greece. Any careful observer knows I haven’t been that hot on Greece compared to other European destinations. I’m happy to admit, after these last two weeks, I am warming up. And I’m appreciating the uniquely Greek charms (food, people, history, pace of life, love of life) that explain why it is such a popular destination. But let me offer some frank observations (and open myself up to some enthusiastic criticism).

The Greek countryside has been depopulated in the last few generations. About one out of every three Greeks — roughly four of 12 million — live in Athens now. This leaves the towns feeling gutted of youthful energy. Granted, towns on the islands have that impossible-not-to-love iconic and exotic white-washed beauty. But driving through small towns on the mainland is like catching a tired culture with its pants down.

Sure, there are some cute towns. But, if you’ve been anywhere else in the Mediterranean you have to wonder, where’s the paseo…the passeggiata…where are the people? And I generally wondered what happened to the sublime sense of aesthetics that characterized the Golden Age — so inspirational that the best the ancient Romans could do would be to copy it. I find more classical Greek heritage of aesthetics is apparent in Paris or Florence than on mainland Greece. I don’t think money is an excuse. There seems to be plenty of money.

I asked myself, “Aren’t you being harsh?” But I compared the surface beauty of non-descript work-a-day towns in Germany, France, Ireland, and even Sicily, and I concluded it’s fair to say the Greeks channel their concern for tidiness and beauty to things other than fixing up their towns.

Except for some fine town centers, it’s a makeshift world with barely a hint of building codes or planning requirements. For example, next to the front door of an old church a rope dangled from the bell tower, as if strung up by a grade-schooler. I thought, this must be a temporary fix. With my eyes I followed the rope up to the cornerstone just below the bell and saw the groove worn by generations of pulling that rope. Stepping inside I just cleared electric wires strung across the nave. They were jerry-rigged, just tall enough to clear people’s heads, to light a bare bulb lashed to an old oil lantern that no longer worked and had been collecting dust for years. I find the rinky-dink stuff charming and photogenic. But if I went to church there, I’d fix it.

Driving in Greece is like Italy used to be. Parking is chaotic. Sidewalks and curbs are broken. And when there is an intact sidewalk, it’s been interrupted by a strip of ridges to guide the canes of people who can’t see. A compassionate sentiment…but these are rendered unusable by parked motorbikes, flower pots, and sales racks spilling out from kiosks. I’ve never seen a blind person try to use this sidewalk aid and if they did, it would only be frustrating. The result…smooth sidewalks are a rarity.

Ironically, amidst what I’d call the most littered country in Europe, I found two heroic attempts at hygiene that I’ve encountered nowhere else. Restaurants serve napkins in sanitized plastic wrappers. And I was actually startled in a men’s room when, as I passed a garbage can, its lid opened. It was equipped with a well-meaning motion sensor. But merely entering the space caused it to give me the trash-can body-language equivalent of, “Feed me.”

Athens is hugely improved and filled with the youthful energy I found missing elsewhere. An even-number, odd-number license plate system allows people to drive into town only on alternate days. That, along with a marvelous underground system, have made the city less congested. While it used to turn my hanky black in a day, the air now seems much cleaner. And it’s much more people-friendly with welcoming pedestrian boulevards and squares filled with benches, shade-giving trees, and inviting cafés rather than parked cars.

Forgive my harshness. Grecophiles will be up in arms I’m sure. (I’d welcome comments.) I’ve spent a month out of the last year in Greece and am really enthusiastic about our upcoming book on Athens and side-trips. It was strange to be in a country where travelers had no option for a Rick Steves guidebook. With the help of my Grecophile collaborators, our book will be a winner and I am enthusiastic about heading off ASAP with the first edition of this book (due out in early 2009) to update it and learn more about Greece.