The Daily - A Bit of Relief: Rick Steves' Travel Dreams

Episode Date: May 8, 2020

Rick Steves is a travel evangelist, always in motion, traversing faraway places and inspiring others to do the same. So when the world shuts down, and Rick Steves can no longer travel, then who is Rick Steves?Sam Anderson, a writer for The Times Magazine, profiled the travel guru last year. Today, Sam asks Rick how he’s been expanding his horizons from home. Dreaming of travel, we learn, is nearly as sweet as the real thing.

We are recording. Okay. Hi, Rick. Sam, nice to see you. Rick Steves, one of my favorite people on the planet. Sam, nice to hear from you again. We had a good conversation a while ago, and now it's a whole different world. Yeah, so I profiled you.

My profile of you came out in the New York Times magazine last year, and part of the reason I wanted to call and talk to you was you and I are supposed to be hanging out. That's right. It was one of the last things I deleted from my calendar. I'm Sam Anderson, and I'm a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine. And last year, I wrote a profile of the travel guru Rick Steves.

Hi, I'm Rick Steves. For many travelers, the quintessence of Spain is found here, Andalusia. So Rick Steves, for anyone who doesn't know, he's really an evangelist of travel. Today, like Turkey in general, Gazilyurt is Muslim. The power of Rick Steves is that this is not just a business for him. It's a whole life philosophy. Akavit. What does that mean? It means the boat of life. It tastes like that when it goes with the herring. Okay, well this is the learner's dose here, but I'll give it a go.

He wants to empower average everyday Americans who might not otherwise leave the country to get out of their comfort zone and go explore the world. They give an insight into a people who in a thousand years have evolved from fearsome marauding Vikings to people like me. And I've been thinking about him a lot since we've all been hunkered down. Because here's a guy who's in constant motion. He just thrives on moving from one place to the next.

He's always traveling. And suddenly, the entire world is shut down. It's like a switch was flipped and his whole life mission is just canceled. All these dreams that have been dashed are actually put on hold. So I was wondering, what does Rick Steves do with his time? And maybe an even bigger question, if Rick Steves can't travel, then who is Rick Steves? There was nothing on my calendar. It was just a complete blank slate for my future.

Wow. So what have you been doing day by day instead of hanging around with me? Well, the big part of my life is a part that was always squeezed away by my workaholism, and that's just enjoying being alive in this privileged little world. I've got a nice place in Edmonds, half hour north of Seattle. I've got a view of the mountains. It seems like the volume of the birds have been cranked up. When I step out of the morning, there's less traffic and more bird sound. And I've been thinking about dusting off old passions. I got out my trumpet and the valves hadn't wiggled for literally decades.

And I could still play the trumpet, which is fun. I didn't even know you played the trumpet. I thought I knew everything about you. I like to keep a few things to pull out later. What other elements of life have you been finding yourself enjoying? I mean, it sounds ridiculous, but I have never cooked in my whole life. I have never cut into an onion in my entire life. What? I had never really made pasta until now. Oh, my gosh.

I've had a bad attitude about it. I've always, you know, I've been at parties and people put on a, what do you call it, a bib or what was that? Apron? An apron, yeah. Yeah, that's called an apron. They put on an apron and everybody having a good time, convivial, slicing, you know, mushrooms in the kitchen.

And I just was awkward. And I would just go to the living room and I'd sit there alone with my chips and dip, you know. And now I'm realizing what I've missed. Wow. It's like somebody just told me there's a whole new world out there. You can do something more than go out to eat, bring home leftovers, and make picnics. So, I mean, that's just a delight. So, you're really expanding your horizons. Yeah, well, you know, I'm learning to travel without any airplane tickets. Wow, this is a huge change. It's a great thing. But I have to be mindful that I'm really privileged and I hope that

when people think about this they think about it mindful of the fact that it hits a lot of people who don't have the ability to weather it as well as we do pretty brutally but one way or another we'll get through this I guess one of my big hopes Sam is that

social distancing doesn't become the norm. I just love the way the French kiss each other on the cheek. I love a nice high five when I get to the top of a little peak in Switzerland. And you want to sit next to a stranger and share your French fries in an English pub. I think one of the great pleasures that you provide people all the time is the fun of traveling vicariously. And I remember people telling me that you often get letters from prisoners saying that even in prison, people watch your show and feel like they're out in the world. And so I wonder if that aspect of your teaching is even more powerful now, if you've heard anything from people about that. I actually have, because one of my themes lately is this virus can stop our travel plans, but it cannot stop our travel dreams.

We're not in business to make money right now. Our mission is to keep people's travel dreams alive and to give people something positive. Our mission is to keep people's travel dreams alive and to give people something positive. We just, a couple days ago, designed Rick Steves Europe Bingo, where the cards have all of the little goofy cliches that show up in almost every one of my shows. And we've made that available. And you can turn it into a drinking game if you want. Okay, hold on.

Wait, what are the key triggers in the Rick Steves travel drinking game? Oh, well, it's a bingo board, so you've got all of your, if I use alliteration, both stirs the soul and stokes the appetite. Or if I have a thinly veiled guidebook plug, I've been recommending the Cascadale Farm in my Britain guidebook now for over 20 years. Or a dorky joke, or if I use the word evocative or convivial, I like to use that a lot. You'll enjoy a convivial camaraderie. This is the convivial, charming conviviality. If I enjoy a drink locally. Oh boy, here comes another wine change.

This is the Vinsanto. If I say, oh comes another wine change. This is the Vinsanto. If I say, oh, baby. Oh, baby. If I have innuendo. Towering high above is a skyscraper built in the 1970s. An erection like this was a big deal in communist times. You know, I can't say anything explicit, but I can have plenty of innuendo.

The lady strokes the unicorn's horn. And the lion looks out at us to be sure we get the double on time. Okay. It's kind of what I do in almost every show. So you can certainly get bingo if you watch the show. And keep on traveling. Ciao.

I'm developing this notion that you can play a little game of bringing Europe into your home. Oh, okay. Which might be kind of fun. Maybe it's not. Yeah, tell me about that. Well, people who are addicted to European travel, this is kind of a

frustrating time for them, so I've been thinking about a few ways that you can bring a little bit of Europe into your home. And I don't know how workable it is for everybody, but you know, you can wash your socks in the sink. You can actually serve coffee to your quarantine mates in tiny cups and charge for refills. When you get real desperate, you can eat a slug with lots of garlic and call it escargot. And I actually made a little table with a dish for coins outside of the toilet in my house. And you can charge family members for a few sheets of toilet paper. If you're desperate for Europe.

Yeah, yeah. Always an entrepreneur, even in your own home. So I make Europe my beat. That's all I do. For me, Europe is the wading pool for world exploration, even though my favorite country might be India. I didn't know that. Your favorite country is India?

Yeah. Oh, I love India. Oh. When did you first go to India? I've been to India. My best trip was in uh 78 after i graduated from college um these are from the days of those great those great photos of you with the long hair and the beard and oh yeah i was the classic traveler and i mean the first time i ever smoked marijuana

was in afghanistan i knew that yeah yeah and i think that one of the happiest days of my life was hanging out in katmandu with a bunch of people who didn't have to climb a mountain to get high you know yeah right and you the the straight-laced uh repressed protestant kid right well you know they were selling marijuana in the market as a medicinal herb and uh it just seemed quite natural there so i thought okay i'll be like do as the locals do. I'll be a temporary local. There's a place in Kathmandu called Pai and Chai. And they were famous with all the travelers for their fresh out of the oven apple pie in the Himalayas. And you'd be surrounded by all this Nepalese wonder. And people that clasp their hands together and say,

Namaste, I salute your virtues. It feels like a Tibetan dream, you know. And I just thought, life is so good. And that was, I mean, I hate to say, one of the happiest days of my life. And I must have been smoking pot in the same breath but you know it was a beautiful thing and yeah and you you became a real powerhouse in that battle for legalization in Washington your home state and then traveled around to other states on these kind of barnstorming tours to get it legalized and that's my big I see that as a contribution to our democracy in our society not that it's pro-marijuana, but it's pro-civil liberties.

You know, I'm a traveler. And for me, high is a place. And sometimes I want to go there. One of my favorite things that I learned about you when I was at your house was the existence of this journal that you've been keeping for most of your life now. And you write in it only when you're high. Not many people know about that until you wrote about that in our article in the New York Times Magazine. And that book is a, yeah, that's a treasure. And someday, well, I'm going to continue adding to it, but it's 40, what is it?

It's probably 40 years of brilliance that came to me. Absolutely. Actually, this is what I do when I'm traveling anyways, is I always have a little Moleskine book, a little notepad in my pocket. And you grab whatever flutters by. It's like butterflies. If you don't grab it, it's gone forever. Would you read a couple of them? Okay. Getting high releases the human in me. A baby doesn't know if the hanging is on the wall, or if the wall is on the hanging. Here's an idea. Make a rug with vacuum marks so it always looks freshly vacuumed.

That's a good one. I've been craning my mind to see you. I love using a word in a little different environment. Craning my mind, why not? As soon as I stop mattering so much, I'll be happier. That one's deep. Getting high is like roasting an English muffin. You start out cold and doughy,

and you toast it to a crisp brown, and just a little more, and you get all black and burned. Love it. Love it. Love it. I feel like a hungry bird, but I won't eat any worm I don't like. I don't even think that's funny. No, it's just intense. And then at the very end, I said, when I die, scatter me all over the budget hotels of Europe. Love it. I love it.

I guess this is a precious thing because it's me. Okay, one last thing. As a favor to everyone stuck at home right now, I'm wondering if you can transport us for just a few minutes. Can you bring us to one particular place in Europe and guide us through a perfect meal? I love that idea. Oh, I could be anywhere in Europe. When you have that coincidence of this perfect storm of ambiance and local ingredients and an appetite and good company. Let me take you to a farm in Tuscany. I'm sitting at this polished hardwood dinner table surrounded by murky portraits of ancestors, of the family that's sitting at the table with me.

And everything at that table was produced on the farm. And you were there walking through the fields, you know, petting the sheep, hearing the squeal of the pigs being butchered. You were there that afternoon. And now, people with calloused hands have joined you at the table. The little kids learning how to roll spaghetti with their forks are there at the table. The grandma, who doesn't walk very well anymore but still joins the family at the table, she's there looking the table. The grandma, who doesn't walk very well anymore but still joins the family at the table,

she's there looking with pride. And the man of the house picks up the wine and the family name is on the wine. And he pours that wine and he's sort of gripped the bottle so that I can see the family name on the label. And then we have the prosciutto, we have the cheese, we have the bread. So you've got that conviviality, you've got that heritage,

you've got that terroir, you've got the sweat of generations that's fertilized that land. You've got your pasta. You've got your meat course coming, and I'm sure you've got dessert later. But right now, it's just that very, very elemental bread, cheese, beautiful prosciutto, corposo, that means full-bodied red wine, and the pride of that family. That's a moment. That's a good, good me. And that's why I can hardly wait for this crisis to get over

and we can get back together and celebrate not only that kind of culture, but sharing that kind of culture from their hemisphere to ours. Spectacular. That was a fun thing to think about there. And I think that can help inspire people to let their dreams take them away. Well, thank you so much, Rick. This felt almost as fun as hanging out in your living room and looking out at Puget Sound. And maybe even sharing a toke of a dube with you. Sam, you're great.

Rick, you're the best. Man, oh man, that was fun. Thank you.