Enrique Cerna Interviews Rick Steves

Enrique Cerna Interviews Rick Steves

This is a transcript of an interview with Rick Steves on Conversations at KCTS 9 which aired on September 5, 2008.

EC: Rick Steves, good to have you here.

RS: Thank you Enrique.

EC: Well we know you as the travel guy, the travel guru, but there used to be Rick Steves the piano teacher. Tell me about that because that actually had a part of your work…

RS: Yeah.

EC: …in the travel area.

RS: Up in Edmonds I routinely run into people who knew me before I ever went to Europe and I was the piano guy. I was, I had a lot, I was going to be a piano teacher all my life. I had 40 piano students. My girlfriend was teaching in my studio so we both a lot of student we were going to get married and move our pianos together. And then I started, I had a piano recital hall in Edmonds and slowly I started giving travel talks in my recital hall.

And then in 1980, I wrote Europe Through the Back Door, the first edition. And I remember it was all boxes that book lined up along the recital hall and I was day dreaming about Europe and teaching Europe and writing books about Europe as I was trying to focus on the kids piano lessons and I thought I got to do one or the other so I gave up teaching piano and been teaching travel on the same street ever since. And both of our kids ended up teaching piano and I still love the piano.

EC: Do you still play?

RS: Oh I still play. Yeah, I love it.

EC: How old were you when you went to Europe for the first time?

RS: My parents dragged me to Europe in 1969. I was…

EC: Dragged you huh?

RS: Dragged me. I was 14 years old, a 14-year-old with a bad attitude. I didn’t want to go ever there. It was my summer break you know, and I had no interest in it at all. And I remember distinctly thinking this is a stupid idea, I don’t speak that language, I haven’t even seen my own country, I want to play with my friends. I got over there, my dad imported pianos from Germany, so we had to see the piano factories then we wanted to go to relatives up in Norway. And I got over there, and as I always say in my talks you know about day three it occurs to me that this is not bad. There is different pop, different candy, statuesque women with hairy armpits. I mean it was a wonderland for this little 14 year old.

And then again a couple years later, then I remember being in Copenhagen at the train station. Looking at kids couple years older than me with their rucksacks and their Eurorail passes and then as free as the breeze you know and I look over at my mom and dad and look at these kids that were just doing Europe you know the backpacker thing and I remember thinking looking at my parents and thinking “I don’t need you guys for this. I could be like those kids and Europe can be my playground. And I vowed to go to Europe every year after that and I have. At first I traveled just for fun and then I started learning from my mistakes and Europe became very rewarding and very easy and I was so impressed by how by Europe really lends itself to good travel. And I was also impressed by how many Americans were making the same stupid mistakes

I made the year before. And they didn’t have the opportunity to go back every year and learn from those mistakes. And I thought just if I could package the lessons I’ve learned from my mistakes into a talk or a guidebook or something other people could learn from my mistakes rather than their own and have a smoother trip and I would have a good excuse to go back to Europe every year and update my material so that’s what I do now. I’ve spent a third of my adult life since then in Europe making all the mistakes. I intentionally go to the bad taxi drivers and seeing how they are going to rip people off cause I want to know that scam you know and lose my travel checks just to see what will happen. When I get ripped off I celebrate because people don’t know who they have ripped off and I’m going to learn that scam, come home and teach it to other people. So that’s my work.

EC: Yeah, yeah. Why Europe? Why do you think this has become your playground, your work place?

RS: Well India is my favorite country and I once wrote a book Asia Through the Backdoor. I’ve traveled a lot in Asia. I love Asia. But I’m a teacher and I’ve got a calling in my life, without making it any more highfalutin than it is, I just found my niche and I am very thankful for it and I think, I’ve got a wonderful crew, staff up in Edmond. We’ve got seventy people that work together up there. We got all this wonderful technology that helps amplify our teaching and our experience and our, we are able to design this information. And for the love of travel, offer it to people in a way, I think is, is better designed and better business than anybody else in the country do what we are doing right now and, for me, Americans are needy.

We are the most isolated and ethnocentric people in a lot of ways on this planet. And, for me, Europe is the wading pool for world exploration. Go to Europe first and then use that as a spring board and you can go explore Africa, or South America, or Asia, or whatever. I love it when people finally go someplace other than Hawaii for their family vacation you know or someplace other than Reno or something like this.

EC: Why do you think that Americans have that kind of insular, whole feeling about not wanting to branch out? I mean obviously more and more Americans are traveling now but compared to other people in other parts of the world we don’t own, percentage-wise, as many passports these types of things?

RS: Well it’s related to the ugly American problem. You know, I’ve just done like a twenty year study on ugly-Americanism and a lot of people are treated as ugly Americans and it hurts their trips and I’ve concluded that those who are treated like ugly Americans are treated that way because they are ugly Americans. Does not mean they are evil, it means they are ethnocentric. They think the world revolves around them. Now we are not the only people that are ugly that way. There are ugly Germans, ugly Russians, ugly Japanese, ugly Americans. Those are the big four ugly groups that you hear about when you travel. And what do those great counties have in common? They’re big.

They, it is reasonable for them to think that they are the norm and everyone else is still figuring it out. Well you don’t find ugly Portuguese, and ugly Danes, I mean they are small enough to realize the world is different. And they’re not threatened by it, they celebrate it. And that’s the big enlightenment, or the big eureka for me is to realize we’re just four percent of this planet. You know you find a lot of truths to be self-evident and god given, but so does the other ninety-six percent of humanity and it’s just smart to give everyone a little wiggle room because they’ve got different truths that are self-evident and god given.

Especially in this day and age when we’re, when there is so much stress between cultures. It would just be really constructive if we all just decided to find ways to appreciate each other. When I go to France I, I don’t, I’m a wide eyed beginner in that culture. I’m a little bumpkin when I go to France. I’m not offended that they have sorbet between courses.

EC: Talk about your business philosophy. Because this thing snowballed, didn’t snowball overnight. It was a gradual process really that you started writing the books. You go to Europe. What do you think, was there any particular time where it just really took off?

RS: Well my business, I’ve done the same thing, same mission, for well since the late 1970’s, probably thirty years I’ve been doing the same thing.

Back then I just had me and some books in the back of my trunk and I would go give a talk to anybody who would gather thirty people. You know I’d give the talk for free and hope to sell a few books. Well now, slowing I’ve evolved and now I’ve got seventy or eighty people in my office in Edmonds and employ at least that many people as guides and so on over in Europe or whatever and, um, so it’s a sizable business. But I’ve been doing exactly the same thing but every time I get an opportunity to amplify my teaching I grab it. At first it was giving talks and then somebody said you should write a book. I thought that’s stupid.

And then I realized that’s not stupid, that’s a good idea, I’ll write a book. And then my publisher said you need more than one book if anyone is going to take you seriously. So, I wrote more books. Now I’ve got thirty books and people take me seriously in the book business. And then somebody said I should do a TV show. And I said that’s stupid. And then I thought, that’s not stupid, that’s good. And that was 1990. And we worked hard at that and very good people helping out.

And thank goodness for Public Television to recognizing this sort of grassroots enthusiasm for teaching and sharing that give people like me a platform to share with our neighbors and so on. And now the TV show is run in every city in the country. We are in our sixth season and I think like that and, and that’s a wonderful platform and then I’ve had the opportunity to do the radio show and started right here in Seattle on KUOW and now we’re aired in sixty cities for an hour every week.

The web has been a real boon for us because, my publicity stunt from the start, Enrique, has been sharing my information like, generously. I don’t charge for my TV show. Anybody can run my radio show for free. There’s no strings attached I’m not trying to get them hooked, just charge later. I’ve never charged for my lectures. I’ve been, you know, in Seattle, just let’s get a big crowd together. I make plenty of money, but I don’t do it that, that way. I have other services people can buy but I just love to astound people with the value of my information.

And then put it on the Internet so they can put it on their iPod. How much does it cost? It’s free. You know, I’ve got thousands of people right now with me in their ears going to the Orsay Gallery or cruising the Grand Canal on Venice. I put all of my self guided tours for my books onto our website and iTunes or whatever for Venice, Florence, Rome and Paris. Cost me thousands of dollars, took me three weeks to do the job, but now all of that great information, people don’t have to read it, they can listen to it and be lost in the wonders of the Sistine Chapel. That turns people on.

EC: So did you feel that, ok, if I give as much information out there is possible, write as many books, get the TV thing going, the radio thing going, that really it’s kind of mass marketing?

RS: Yeah it’s marketing, I mean, rather than, as a matter of principle, I don’t pay for fancy bells and whistles, I don’t buy display ads, you know. I say let's take the money that you’d spend for that display ad and lets publish my blog in a sixty-four page, color, staple bound journal and I’ll give it to everybody who takes my class. I just gave a talk last week at my church to 400 people about Iran. Fresh home from Iran, you know, let’s give a talk.

And I don’t have anything to sell about Iran, but I gave everybody my, my blog and they are reading it and if they read sixty-four pages of my adventures, maybe if they’ve got a friend going to Europe they’ll think “well that Rick Steves knows what he’s talking about. Let’s check him out”. It’s not that tough, you to go to ricksteves.com. And all I need to do, is make sure that, if I write a great article about what’s new in Europe today, with the dollar where it is. I was just in Naples. What it’s like with the garbage strike you know? If I write that and someone from Atlanta calls me up and says “can we use that article?” my obvious answer is sure. Just say who wrote it and if you don’t mind putting my website there, that would be nice too.

And it all circulates that way in a beautiful way and I just really love to amplify my ideas. It’s sort of a turn on. Ever since I was a kid, you know, if, when I, if I could print 2000 of something it cost X it and if I could print 6000 of it just cost two X so let’s go 6000 and I’ll just give it away more freely. And its just sort of, it’s kind of intoxicating to be able to spread that information.

EC: So you are following your conscience?

RS: It’s an interesting, I’ve been talking to my kids about that, sometimes you have, you really, your ethics and your conscience has to be, you gotta, you gotta put up or shut up, you’ve got to be consistent and none of us are perfect at that, we all need to work on that. But that’s integrity and uh, the America uh public has uh, a hunger for that, I think.

EC: Well, let’s talk a little bit about that. I mean, the fact is that hey, this capitalistic society and Rick Steves has done pretty well for himself.

RS: Yeah.

EC: You know, multi-million dollar operation. This type of thing. You’ve got, as you said seventy people for you, you now have a television show, radio show. But yet you’ve also decided to speak out on things

RS: Uh huh.

EC: Things such as decriminalization of marijuana.

RS: Right.

EC: And uh, you know for some people that might not be a real smart move, particularly could hurt your business interest.

RS: Oh, you know, I, there are a lot of people that are really disappointed with me, not for my politics but for my willingness not to profit maximize. They think it’s almost unpatriotic for me to be honest at the expense of my business. I had a peace, you know Edmonds has a lot of American flags and I like American flags.

I just like them used as a logo for a war that was not an honest war. But I fly the European flag on my building because it’s Europe Through the Backdoor. And I fly a peace flag in times of war because I think peace is, I think there’re no winners in war and I think we can find alternatives. I remember standing in front of my building a while back and a man next to me, one of my neighbors, said “I bet if you understood how much that peace flag cost your business, you wouldn’t have put it out there”. He was, it was just obvious to him, if it would hurt your business, you would not speak out for peace. And I just, I didn’t say this to him, but I just thought what a sorry, sorry personal ethic that you would be quiet about peace and support a war that you didn’t believe in because it was good for your business.

You know, Americans are so outspoken as Christians. And somewhere in the Bible it says “blessed are the peace makers” or something like that. And I guess some people call machine guns “peace keepers.” I guess there are names, you know, but I think peace is peace. And with travel, I think travel is a vital force for peace. I went to a convention up in Vancouver a few years ago call “Travel as a Vital Force for Peace”. I firmly believe that we very well could have had a hot war instead of a Cold War against the Soviet Union if it wasn’t for people who traveled and you humanize your enemies when you travel.

EC: In fact you’ve said that travel should be used a political act.

RS: I’ve got a talk now that I give all over the country called “Travel as a Political Act”. And uh, ever since 9/12, I’ve been seeing my responsibility as a travel writer as a little bit more than how to catch the train and how to pack light and, and how to you know get a good dinner and a good hotel. I think it’s really exciting to broaden your perspective through travel. And I think it is constructive for America to better understand this planet.

America needs to realize that we’re four percent of this planet. We may spend as much as much as every body else put together on weaponry but we are just four percent of this planet. And uh, we get routinely outvoted in the United Nations on issues that matter desperately to the poor half of this world. And when we get outvoted in the United Nations on those issues the vote is usually a hundred and forty to four.

Who stands with us? Israel, Marshal Islands, and Micronesia. On issues that matter to the developing world, that’s it. United States, Israel, Marshal Islands and Micronesia against everybody else. Maybe we are right and they are wrong. But it would behoove us to get out there and understand why there’s this huge disconnect between us and the rest of the world. We could be right, they could be wrong but we don’t have the economic wherewithal to, to not understand the rest of the world.

And that’s a very constructive thing that we do through travel. If we, rather than fear the rest of the world we celebrate the diversity on this planet. There is a lot of fear in our society right now. Enrique, it is incredible how much fear is in our society and it has occurred to me lately that the flipside of fear is understanding and you gain understanding by getting out there and talking to people.

EC: So as I mentioned before, you are working with the ACLU, in fact even did a television program for them that I’ve seen it.

RS: Yeah.

EC: It’s kind of like this infomercial type of deal talking about decriminalization of marijuana.

RS: Um, there a lot more important issues than marijuana. Anybody can talk about homelessness, and hunger and cancer, and wife-beating or all sorts of very important things but nobody can talk about drug policy because its scary and it’s easy to be character-assassinated or swift-boated or something you know and I’m one of the very few celebrities in the in this country that can actually talk…speak for people who agree with me that the major of the nations drug policy should be in harm reduction not how many people you lock up but how do you reduce harm to your society.

And because I have spent a third of my adult life overseas where it would be laughable to lock people up for smoking a joint, I’ve got a different take on this. I’m not necessarily in favor of drugs, certainly not for kids having any more access to drugs. I’m just interested in the pragmatic effective of drug policy and right now we’ve got a policy about marijuana that is as smart and constructive and effective as the prohibition against alcohol was back in the nineteen-twenties and thirties.

And I’ve given this a lot of thought lately, and it took courageous people to stand up and say this prohibition against alcohol is, is hurting our society. When they finally repealed the prohibition against alcohol in the nineteen-thirties, they didn’t say booze is good, they said this law was counter productive and that’s what’s happening now in our country. We have 80,000 people in jail today because of marijuana. More than one percent of our society is in jail right now. It’s a horribly racist thing.

You don’t get thrown in jail if you are white and smoke marijuana, you get tossed into jail if you’re black and smoke marijuana. There are more black men in prison than in universities right now and on, and on, and on. And uh, nobody can talk about this because they’ll get fired or they lose their promotion or they’ll be crucified this way or that way. I can talk about it because I can just say I talk too much time in Europe where, where, people don’t get arrested for smoking pot.

And the fascinating thing is, to me, statistically, America smokes about double the marijuana Europe does per capita. And here we risk doing hard time and over there, a joint is about as exciting as a can of beer. So I bring that common sense home, the ACLU recognizes that, that why we have done this show on this half hour program on reassessing our, our marijuana laws and I’m proud to be able to be a spokesperson for that, and I hope people don’t think people think I’m pro-drugs cause I’m not.

I just believe in a society you can be hard on drugs or you can be, it not a matter of being hard on drugs or smart on drugs, we really need to be. I’m sorry, it’s not a matter of being hard on drugs or soft on drugs, it’s a matter to being smart on drugs.

EC: Let’s talk about Iran. So you go to Iran. This trip that you made there…you wanted to go there really as, you see this as a mission to bring cultural understanding. It is somewhat as your other trips as you have gone to Europe, but you see that this as a trip that has to have bigger meaning to it because of the tensions between our two countries. But I’m curious as you traveled over there, what did you hear from the Iranian people about Americans?

RS: Well, first of all, going to Iran is about as exciting as a Cuban cigar. I mean, it’s only a big deal for Americans, you know. Other people go to Iran all the time. There are guide books on Iran. I mean there are lots of tourists. The…book is a big seller on Iran. Americans thinks it’s dangerous, an American thinks it’s dicey, to go to Iran, and that was one thing that sort of motivated me to figure out what is the deal here. And I went to Iran and I was as clueless as the average American.

I was nervous. I almost left our big camera in Athens thinking it’s too dangerous, we better take our small camera. You know. I didn’t know what it was going to be like. I honestly didn’t, but I needed to go there and find out. That’s the beauty of travel. You overcome your fears by going there and talking to these people. I was there for ten days and I’ve never had as many interactions with people in my life anywhere.

I loved it, it was just vibrant that way. Seventy-million people live in this Texas sized country. And, the eye contact was so fun. And I did something that my producer Simon called “eye fishing”. I would, when I had a minute, when we were doing our TV work and I could walk around I’d just get eye contact with people and as soon as I could get eye contact, I’d say “hi” and they’d always say “where you from?” And I would always say “you tell me.” And they would guess. And people would go six or eight countries. They would never guess America. And we’d run out of guesses and they’d look at me and say “well where are you from?” and I’d say “America.” And they’d be shocked and then they’d say “welcome.” And it must have happened a hundred times literally and never once did anybody do anything but smile when they heard I was from America. That was the paradox because above you have big Death to America or Death to Israel signs and then they see this American and they say “welcome.” It’s just fascinating to go there.

EC: And you went to actually where the Americans were held hostage.

RS: Oh yeah. That’s the first place that any American goes. It’s like a pilgrimage. You go to the American Embassy there and it’s clear to me the American understanding of Iran, if you could call it that, pretty much is frozen back in 1978 or whenever the hostage crisis was. I mean, you know, we, they held our boys, our people there from the Embassy for 400 and 40 days or something it was a media spectacle and what have we learned about Iran since then? Not much, you know. There’s a big scary guy named Khomeini that, uh, was stoning people for adultery or what do we know it you know.

And I just thought that I bet that’s a little bit of a, of a misunderstanding. So I wanted to go there and we went to the embassy and it’s an empty, old building now with a lot of 20-year-old murals out front that are angry and anti-American and beautiful stuff to photograph. Very poignant stuff but it occurred to me this is a droning, kind of government, top down, dictate, you know, you know, just like something in, let’s say you don’t like your parochial school and they are always telling you this scriptural stuff or what ever and I just think it becomes white noise for these people. Half of the people of Iran were not even born during the hostage crisis. They’re moving on to other stuff.

EC: Was this the most important trip you’ve ever made?

RS: No, the most important trip I ever made. Well, that’s a good question. But I mean, my favorite trips have been trips to troubled zones. To the Soviet Union back in the Cold War, to El Salvador, Nicaragua. That’s where I really got my politically appetite was going down to El Salvador, Nicaragua back when I wanted Alexander Hague to be president. I remember vividly wanting Alexander Hague to be President. I voted for Ronald Reagan and then I went down there and I saw how imperial America can be with poor countries and how we will do anything to make money who are poor. And I wanna be wealthy, I like affluence, I like to work hard and be productive.

I’m a great capitalist. I employ people well but I don’t want to make money off of desperately poor people. I mean it’s like conning some naive person into getting an unrealistic, uh, loan like we have this crisis right now. I don’t want to make money from people that way. Went down to Central America, got my sort of political, uh sea-legs and this trip here, I don’t know, I think it was one of the most gratifying trips I’ve ever made. It’s exciting, to realize how little Americans know about Iran and to be able to contribute to a little bit of change there.

I mean, already the talks I’ve been giving have been overflowing with people and its exciting to, to talk to people of any political persuasion and say “I don’t know what’s right or wrong, I’m not saying we’re right or we’re wrong or they’re right or they’re wrong.” The fact is it behooves you to understand your enemy and we can do that quiet easily by simply talking to them.

EC: Is there any place that you have yet to travel that you want to travel to?

RS: You know, I’ve got such an exciting responsibility just making sure my material is good for the thousands of people who use my books and so on, that I’m most excited about going back to the places I’m supposed to be an expert in and making my information really good. Tomorrow I’m flying to Edinburgh in Scotland and then I’ll go down to England and then I’ll go up to Copenhagen and over to Istanbul and then I’ll go to the low countries, Belgium and the Netherlands, and then I’ll come home seven weeks later.

And of course I could be going to some place different, but I’ve got books on all those places and I need to be right up to date because for me it is gratifying to no end to think that I can find a great little pub in Edinburgh or I can get to the uh, Hamam the Turkish bath without the tourists in Istanbul, find that place, come home, put it in the book and then next year, Americans will grab that book and go over there enjoy the experience that I had and have a better, better trip.

EC: Rick Steves, it’s always fun talking to you. Thank you very much.

RS: Thank you Enrique. Always good to talk to you too.