Happy Travels with Rick Steves

Edmonds native Rick Steves, genial host of the popular public television television series Rick Steves’ Europe, has been called a master of the low-budget travel experience—with the emphasis on experience.

Much more than a leading expert on European travel, Rick has perfected the art of educating American audiences about engaging in local cultures, or what he describes as becoming a ‘temporary European’ rather than a tourist when traveling in Europe. He views travel as “a way to connect much more intimately and authentically with Europe — and Europeans — for a fraction of what mainstream tourists pay.”

The 57-year-old took his first trip to Europe in 1969, visiting piano factories with his father, a piano importer. But, “…as my Dad was busy doing business with European piano-builders, Mom was my first travel partner,” he says.

Rick reflects on that first trip with his mother. “Back when I was a 14-year-old who had hardly set foot on an airplane, together we were immersed in the wonders of Europe. On that first dip into Europe, we stood in front of our hotel in the Netherlands watching bicyclists gather at a stoplight on the way to the fields — wooden shoes filling their little handlebar baskets. Together we collected souvenir pins to fill my Bavarian felt hat. Venturing into our first subway ride ever, we found our way to a stop called Trocadéro, emerged, turned the corner, and set eyes for the first time on the jaw-dropping Eiffel Tower.” They also traveled with Norwegian relatives to a fjord to find the actual house his mother’s mother left for the “New Land” — in her case, Canada.

“On that first trip, I was attached to my Mom — literally — as back then a mother and her child could share the same passport. And flying home… I have a hunch my Mom had a hunch she had helped plant in me a seed that would sprout into a lifelong passion for travel.”

And sprout it did. By the time he reached 18, Rick says, “I realized I didn't need my parents to travel!” He began traveling each summer on his own, funding trips by teaching piano lessons.

“On a super tight budget I made lots of mistakes and learned the hard way.” His passion for travel, he says, showed itself in a powerful interest in teaching others from his mistakes. “Eventually I was giving talks about budget travel at the University of Washington, throughout Seattle and even using my piano studio recital hall more for travel lectures than for piano concerts.” He finally had to decide: teach piano or teach travel. “I chose travel and the rest is one very well used passport.”

“The rest” includes starting ‘Europe Through the Back Door’ (ETBD), a business that has grown from a one-man operation to a company with a well-traveled staff of 80 full-time employees.

According to the ETBD website: “This summer marks the 30th anniversary of the first edition of Rick's budget travel handbook, Europe Through the Back Door. Compiled from his travel-on-a-shoestring experiences in the late 1970s, Rick sweet-talked his girlfriend into typing it on a rented IBM Selectric, and his college roommate into doing the illustrations with a ball-point pen. Rick drove that precious pile of pages to nearby Snohomish Publishing, and — on his 25th birthday — returned to pick up 2,500 bound copies. And what a long, strange trip it's been for Europe Through the Back Door since then!”

Rick is now the best-selling author of over 50 European travel books, including Europe Through the Back Door, which is updated annually. His Travel Center in Edmonds, “with its free travel classes and savvy trip consultants is like nothing else in the United States.” ETBD offers a European Railpass Guide, free travel newsletters, and runs a European tour program—not to mention Rick’s television series which airs on more than 300 stations across the country. This fall Rick Steves’ Europe will debut season seven on KCTS 9. His radio program and podcasts can be heard around the world each week on 130 public radio stations.

Rick spends about a third of every year in Europe, researching guidebooks, filming TV shows, and making new discoveries for travelers. When not traveling, Rick lives and works from his hometown of Edmonds, where his office window overlooks his old junior high school, harkening back to the era of that very first trip to Europe with his mother.

Travel continued to be a family affair when Rick had kids of his own. “I think one of the most gratifying things for me as both a dad and a travel teacher is to see our kids enjoying Europe sans parents,” says Rick. “While our annual family vacations to Europe were often not the kids' first choice and I had no idea if they'd end up enjoying traveling, both Andy and Jackie have picked up the travel bug from their parents... a particularly virulent strain I might add.”

His son Andy has created a travel business of his own, Weekend Student Adventures (www.wsaeurope.com), which fosters fun and meaningful travel experiences for students and backpackers. Both Andy and Rick’s daughter Jackie have written about their far-flung travel experiences on Rick’s website. Jackie first explored Europe without her parents in the summer of 2008. She writes of the experience: “I am following in the footsteps of both my dad, Rick, and my brother, Andy, who also went on trips to Europe right after they graduated from high school. Just like them, I have taught piano to fund my trip.”

It’s not far off the mark to call Rick Steves and his ventures a travel institution, but believe it or not, when Rick first tried breaking into the travel industry, his style of travel advice caused something of an uproar. “When I wrote the first edition of Europe Through the Back Door, ‘back door’ style travel was seen as counter-culture stuff, and not welcome in the travel industry,” says Rick. “Bob Davis, a wonderful travel editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, was the first to recognize the public’s interest in our brand of real, non-package travel. In 1982 he ran a series of columns, each featuring a ‘back door’ destination from my ETBD guidebook.” The resulting furor from advertisers caused Davis to lose his editorial position, says Rick. “Later, I had a weekly newspaper column in the Bellevue newspaper, which I called The Budget Traveler. Within a month of the appearance of that column, travel agents threatened to pull out their ads and organize a boycott.” But Rick and the travel editor found a way to save the column – simply by renaming it The Practical Traveler “...same ‘subversive’ information, but with a more palatable title,” Rick reveals. Still, when Rick and company offered to pay the standard $500 for a display table at the local consumers' travel show, they were told, “not at this consumers' travel show.”

Today, says Rick, “independent travelers have become a legitimate — if perverse — segment of the tourist industry, and that's newsworthy.”

His efforts to encourage ‘back door’ travel stems from more than a way to save money or authentically engage in a local culture – he feels travel will make you a better person. “[Travel] can make you a happier American, as well as a citizen of the world,” he reports. Rick feels that becoming a “temporary local” allows Americans to fit better into our planet by broadening their perspectives.

Rick is also committed to his own neighborhood. He's an active member of the Lutheran church and has provided his local YWCA with a 24-unit apartment building to house homeless mothers. His business supports global causes such as Bread for the World and American Forests as well as being a major fundraiser for public television. And Rick is a board member of NORML (working to reform marijuana laws in the USA ).

Rick wrote a moving tribute to his first travel partner after his mother passed away in December from complications following a heart attack. In part, Rick writes of his mother, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease: “We are so blessed that she was cheery and a joy until the very end. She sang her heart out by candlelight at church on Christmas Eve. The day before she died, an unusually big and joyous assembly of grandchildren gathered with Mom at a Chinese Restaurant. Mom was high-fiving, singing, spinning a lazy Susan heavy with yummy dim sum, and snatching dumplings off Dad’s plate.

“I appreciate that divine love in how my Mom and Dad were such a great couple. Their love inspired people in its simple purity. The way they loved each other, especially those years when it was within the dictates of Alzheimer’s, was emblematic of what love is all about. While Alzheimer’s disease is a terrible curse, with my Mom’s death, I found it actually had a silver lining. Alzheimer’s, while a horrible shroud that keeps out so many joys of life, also blanketed away the aggressive and shrill dimensions of modern life. Alzheimer’s made Mom and Dad’s love more simple: two children of God together. Not fancy — just pure. To me, their love became even more inspiring.”

Happy travels, wherever your journey may take you.

The material for this article was gathered from www.ricksteves.com

This article appeared in the July/August 2012 issue of Northwest Prime Time, the Puget Sound region’s monthly publication celebrating life after 50.