Episode 134: What We Did on Our Summer Vacation, featuring Rick Steves 

 

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Doug Gordon: Hey, everybody. After we recorded this interview, Rick Steves announced that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. We’ll put a link to his statement in the show notes. In the meantime, we want to wish Rick the very best, and many more years of inspiring people to explore the world around them. Now enjoy our interview with Rick Steves.

Rick Steves: A car in Europe these days, if you’re doing cities, is just a worthless, expensive headache. You know, you pay to rent it, you pay to park it, you hope it’s there when it’s time to go. You don’t use it in the big cities. And it is so relaxing to be coursing across the countryside at 150 miles an hour, silent, smooth, scenic, comfortable, just relaxing or getting your work done. And then before you know it, you’re stepping off the train in the middle of a big city. Whereas if you were driving, you’d be battling the cars just to get out of the city and into the city. And there’s none of that at all when you take the train. You reach a critical stage where it’s so obvious that trains make sense to move people that why would anybody advocate anything else?

Doug: This is The War on Cars. I am Doug Gordon, and I am sitting next to my co-host Sarah Goodyear.

Sarah Goodyear: Hey there, Doug.

Doug: Aaron is off this week. So Sarah, it’s the end of summer. It’s September. What did you do on your summer vacation?

Sarah: Well, I did what I so often do, which is I went to Europe and enjoyed the atmosphere in several fantastic European cities in Spain, France and Italy. And I saw a couple places I’d never seen before, including Genova and Trieste, which were two Italian cities that I had never been to before, and were incredibly interesting, and highly recommend to people who want to get off the beaten track a little bit and not the top-tier tourist destination cities maybe, but filled with interesting stuff.

Doug: So I went to Ghent to the Velo-city Conference, and I got to spend some time there. I loved it. Speaking of a non-top-tier city, it was a very nice alternative to Amsterdam, not overrun with tourists, but still, like, really quaint streets and lots of little shops that you could go into, and really great museums and cathedrals. I loved it. We have a really good guest today who’s going to talk about those sort of off-the-beaten-path European cities. But first …

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Doug: Okay, so everybody knows that there’s this trope in urbanist circles that Americans spend tons of money to go on vacation to places where they don’t need a car, then they come home and they oppose anything that would make their cities easier to get around without a car. You know, you think of all the folks, they love strolling the streets of Paris or even just going to Disneyland where their kids can roam free, then they come home and someone says, “Put a bike lane on your street.” And they say, “No, no, no, no. How am I going to get around without a car? What is this, Europe?”

Sarah: [laughs]

Doug: At the same time, we know a lot of our listeners have traveled to places with excellent street life, walkability, bikeability, functional transit, and have been radicalized into the war on cars, so to speak. You know, seeing how things work in other places, seeing people who are living lives just like you but who do it without a car, is this thing that you take home with you and you say, “Hmm, maybe this could work here.” Well, we have the perfect person to discuss travel, how it shapes our view of the world and where we live, plus a whole lot more. Rick Steves, welcome to The War on Cars.

Rick Steves: Hey, Doug and Sarah. Nice to meet fellow combatants.

Sarah: [laughs] Ah, yes.

Doug: Okay, so our first question should probably be both how are you and where are you?

Rick Steves: Ah, thank you for asking. Well, I’m just getting over cold, so my voice is raspy, so I’m not as good as I normally would be, but I’m just feeling great. And in regards to travel, I’ve done a lot of traveling this year. Just got back from a month in Germany and Portugal, updating my guidebooks. Before that, I was in London and Italy. And in a couple weeks, I’m flying off to France to make a TV show in Paris. And then we’re gonna be barging on the canals of Burgundy for a gourmet hedonistic fling—the most delicious thing I’ve ever put on TV. So lots of good travel, and lots of good thoughts about ethics, environment, politics, civil liberties, sustainability, quality of life, so much that I think is great when, as you guys mentioned, you know, when you’re traveling, you can’t help but think about it if you’re a caring citizen of this country.

Doug: Lots of our listeners actually know you very well because every now and then, people will post something on social media about a journalist, a celebrity, somebody, and they say, “You should get this person on because they are taking it, like, right to cars. They are taking it right to the streets.” And Rick, you are one of those people who people are constantly saying, “Get Rick Steves on the podcast.”

Rick Steves: Hmm.

Doug: If people don’t know your company Rick Steves’ Europe, you started it in 1976. This year marks the 40th edition of your first book, Europe Through the Back Door. You’ve written tons of books and a collection of essays called Travel as a Political Act, which we’re gonna talk about. You’ve been a fixture on public television since the ’90s. You’ve taken tens of thousands of people to Europe on tours, or tons of people have just taken your guidebooks with them to help them navigate these sort of backdoor European cities, and have a new and different perspective than the typical guidebooks, I would say.

Rick Steves: We try to cover it kind of all ways. I mean, if somebody wants to take a tour, we do tours. If somebody wants to go on their own, we put what we know about the tours into the book so they can do the tour without us. And then if they just want to sit home and watch TV, we do that as well. So we just love Europe. Europe is our focus. I really make a point to just do the best I can for Europe, because to me, Europe is like the wading pool for world exploration. I joke with my hundred workmates here in Edmonds, about half hour north of Seattle, that our mission is to equip and inspire Americans to venture beyond Orlando.

Sarah: [laughs]

Doug: [laughs] So I think we’re gonna do a sort of reverse podcast here. A lot of shows that you are on probably end with a kind of speed round where you just list your favorite things. Let’s get that out of the way first before we get a little deeper. I’m sure lots of people ask you to name your favorite countries and cities, but related to the war on cars, what are your favorite streets in the world?

Rick Steves: Well, I think about where I cannot drive, and where I usually have a bicycle. And I do all of Europe. And more and more, cars are like the mechanical equivalent of persona non grata within the medieval walls, you know? Nobody goes driving within the walls unless they live there, or unless they have some kind of business there, or if they’re a taxi or something. And every year, it’s becoming more and more clear. Mayors are elected by the people to make drivers miserable.

Doug: [laughs]

Rick Steves: You know, it’s just—it’s bold. People say drivers hate it, taxis are mad. But the people love it. You can hear the birds. You know, the formerly congested streets are now green belts. I just love it. I was in Amsterdam recently in what used to be a congested street. Now it’s like a green belt park with a couple of shiny tram rails, beautiful cobbled bike paths and a pedestrian path, and tree cover and bird song. And this sleek feeling that you can get around so easy in downtown Amsterdam.

Rick Steves: I always joke even if I had a car at my beck and call, I would just tell it to go away. I’m happy with my bicycle. I can get there quicker by bike. So all over Europe, you find these new environments, which I think are exciting. And if I think about the best places for biking, cities I routinely have a bike, I was just in Hamburg researching last month and I never was in a car. I rented a bike at my hotel, and my guides had bikes. And we just did the whole city by bike, and it was a delight. I do Munich by bike. I do Copenhagen by bike. I do Amsterdam, of course, by bike. The Scandinavian capitals are pretty darn good by bike—Oslo and Stockholm, good by bike. And every year there’s more places that you feel, “Wow, I didn’t dream I’d be biking in this town,” but you are.

Sarah: Hmm.

Doug: I think I know the street you’re talking about in Amsterdam. The transit there, they put in some new streetcars and some of them run on grass, which is a lovely, lovely thing to see.

Rick Steves: Oh, yeah. And I like every city in Europe, they seem to be bragging. What is their goal? And their goal is not 2050. Their goal is next year or in five years or something like that, you know? Oslo is gonna have totally green-powered ferries in the Oslo fjord in the next few years, Amsterdam on the canals, totally green powered. It’s just amazing when you glide around the fjords in Oslo, the ferries are like floating Teslas. When you dock, the people get off, and this looks like a shark’s tail or a whale’s tail comes down and it goes clunk into the ferry and it recharges the batteries.

Sarah: Hmm.

Rick Steves: So everybody gets on and off. The batteries are topped up, the whale’s tail goes up and the ferry glides across silently. And you know there’s no fossil fuels, so as you’re gliding around that pristine fjord, you feel like, how have the people of Norway done this where we can’t?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Rick Steves: You know? What is it about Americans that are so afraid of dealing with this head on? Like you said, we go to Europe and we celebrate traffic-free zones, and then we come home and we freak out if somebody threatens to make our main street traffic free. I see that in my town, and it’s just—it’s kind of wacky.

Doug: So the flip of that question: what city has the worst traffic that you’ve experienced?

Rick Steves: Tehran. Tehran, when you cross the street, they say, “Now we’re going to Chechnya.” That’s just what they call it. It’s dangerous to cross the street. There’s no crosswalks. There’s no lights at intersections, believe it or not, it’s just four lanes going this way, four lanes going that way, and they all shuffle through. It’s just a battle on the streets. You know, the taxis are motorcycles, and if you get on the back of a motorcycle, he recommends you wear this helmet. And if you don’t, he shows a scuff on a bus passing by and he goes, “That was from a helmet. You don’t want that to be your head.” So it’s just like you’re going to Chechnya when you cross the street in Iran. And that’s kind of a goofy answer. In Europe, it’s just different governments come and go. There’s a pendulum in Europe, just like in the United States. You know, if you get somebody who’s really environmental, there’s a good chance the next government will be a reaction against that because it overreaches. So some cities don’t have governments that are interested in that and some do. But I would say in Europe, the trend is clearly toward traffic-free centers and public transit, bicycles and pedestrians.

Sarah: Okay, we’re gonna take a break, but we’ll be right back with Rick Steves.

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Sarah: So Rick, you asked what I think is the million-dollar question, which is: why can’t America get this right? We joke on the show about what we call ‘Copenhagen Syndrome,’ which is, you know, you go to Europe and you see what’s happening there, and then you come back to the United States, and it’s an adjustment period. There’s grief involved.

Doug: Usually it’s just getting back from the airport on the US side, you think, “Why can’t this be on a train?”

Rick Steves: Oh, yeah.

Sarah: Right. And my rant is always, we live in the wealthiest country in the history of countries, and we can’t have these pretty basic amenities and improvements that are now becoming commonplace in other wealthy countries. What is it about us?

Rick Steves: I don’t know why we don’t know how to drill. You know, we know how to drill for oil, I guess—drill, baby, drill. But how about drill, baby, drill for public transit? The mayor of Madrid was nicknamed “The Mole” because he drilled everywhere. And when he came into office, all the squares were parking lots, and when he left, all the squares were parks. All the charming squares—charming today—were parking lots because people had a different aesthetic, a different value. It’s a social ethic where they’re part of a community. It’s the Rousseau social contract instead of the Locke social contract, if I understand it correctly. We have this don’t tread on me, I need elbow room so I can be completely free. It’s do anything I want as long as I don’t hurt other people.

Rick Steves: Europeans live in tight quarters on top of each other, and they have done that for a long, long time. And they know if we’re gonna live together, we’ve got to compromise and be more neighborly and give and take, or we’re never gonna manage. So Europeans have woven that into their system a little more. You know, we pay taxes, and it’s for the communal good. And there’s something about Americans that are afraid of what is the consequence to businesses if people can’t drive and park right there? You know, you can’t walk a couple hundred yards. And I think that’s pretty sad, but it’s human nature. You’re afraid of change.

Rick Steves: In Europe, especially in the earlier days, every time they instituted a new radical pedestrian boulevard swept free of fossil-fuel traffic, it was controversial. And people were afraid at first, but the government pushed it. And the government knew when the people got used to it, they’d like it. And then the reality is, after a little while, when they got settled in, the merchants on that pedestrian street who were a little nervous were so thankful. And the merchants on the parallel street that still had car traffic were lobbying to get their own street made pedestrian like the main boulevard. 

Rick Steves: I’m thinking of Copenhagen, Strøget, and the street parallel to Strøget. And I’m thinking also of Munich, the wonderful boulevard that goes from Marienplatz right through the town center. I remember when that was a traffic mess. My brain’s going all over Europe. Even Athens used to be a traffic mess. I mean, you used to blow your nose in Athens and your hankie was black. Today it’s not. And you can’t get a car into the town center, but you can certainly get there by public transit.

Rick Steves: So that’s just we’re afraid of that. I know that in my own hometown. You know, I’m well known in my town for being an advocate for European sensibilities when it comes to urban design and so on. And we have a fountain on our main what could be a piazza. You know, why do I like Italy so much? One word, “piazza.” You know, that’s where the community gathers.

Doug: [laughs]

Rick Steves: And we could have a piazza in my little town. Any European who came here would say, “Why do you have cars ruining what could be a beautiful piazza? You know, what is driving that?” We have a little fountain, and we have Main Street and Fifth Avenue coming together, and all you hear is cars. And the fountain is there, but if you didn’t have any cars, you could hear the water. Cafes could spill tables out into the sidewalks. People could stroll their children and sit next to the fountain. You could walk your dog all the way across the piazza. What I do as a little bit of civil disobedience when I’m in a feisty mood is I jaywalk across that circle and I sit on the fountain and I wave at cars as they go by. And they kind of go, “Rick Steves, what are you doing?” And I’m demonstrating how cool it could be if you weren’t here in your car. We could talk to each other, you know?

Rick Steves: So we try it. We shut down the traffic for a Saturday in August just to see what it’s like. And everybody goes, “That was great.” But of course, nobody can really commit to it all year long. But I don’t know what the downside is. I don’t know what people are afraid about. But when I write an editorial in my local hometown newspaper advocating for this kind of thing, it’s fascinating to me how many people are up in arms, they’re so threatened by it. And generally, they’re very nice to me, but when I do that, it’s “Rick Steves, if you like Europe so much, why don’t you move there? This is America. We’re not gonna do that kind of bullshit.” You know?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Rick Steves: So what can you do? Yeah, I guess if everybody traveled, it would be helpful.

Doug: It’s funny that you mentioned the Strøget. I knew that was the street that you were talking about in Copenhagen because there is a kind of famous story, at least in our circles, that when they did originally propose shutting that down, the merchants said, “Why are you doing this? This isn’t Italy.” And you still hear that today in New York and elsewhere. “This isn’t Amsterdam. This isn’t Copenhagen.” Well, Amsterdam and Copenhagen weren’t Amsterdam and Copenhagen not that long ago.

Rick Steves: I mean, we got to remember that our cities, I think, were built for cars, and European cities were laid out before cars. So there is a little bit of a challenge for us to transition to that. But, you know, if you invest in public transit, you gotta really invest in it. You can’t go, “Well, we tried it and there were three departures a day and nobody used it.” You know, you got to have three departures an hour. And it’s got to be you need a schedule that you can memorize: at the top of the hour, at 20 after and at 40 after there’s a ride, you know, all day long.

Doug: Or a schedule you don’t have to think about at all, actually, right?

Rick Steves: Or a schedule where you just go. Yeah. Because nowadays, much as I’m excited about the biking in Europe, I’m also impressed by public transit. You know, the reality is in Seattle, you don’t have the schedules that can let a person who’s got to get a lot done in a hurry rely on public transit. It’s a huge—you’re pretty committed if you’re gonna limit yourself to public transit in Seattle, at least where I live in Seattle.

Rick Steves: But in Europe, people go through their whole lives and they never learn how to drive. And it’s not an environmental statement or a political statement. It’s just, why should they bother driving? They’ve got—government really subsidized public transit, and they can get anywhere they like. And then Germany subsidizes it. For $50 a month, you get a pass, a ticket that gives you free use of all the public transit, including the trains, anywhere in the country. You go anywhere in the country. You take the train to Berlin. You can use the light rail, you can use the buses. You can hop on the train and go to Hamburg in two hours, and you can use all the buses. And it’s $50 a month. It’s a buck fifty a day. And if you want to have the whole country by the tail, why would you have a car when you can do that?

Rick Steves: It’s been a long time since I’ve rented a car in Europe. I mean, there are cases when you want a car, for sure. If you’re cruising around the Isle of Skye, you know, you want a car. But if you’re going from city to city in Italy, the last thing you want is a car. A car in Europe these days, if you’re doing cities, is just a worthless, expensive headache. You know, you pay to rent it, you pay to park it, you hope it’s there when it’s time to go. You don’t use it in the big cities. And it is so relaxing to be coursing across the countryside at 150 miles an hour, silent, smooth, scenic, comfortable, just relaxing or getting your work done. And then before you know it, you’re stepping off the train in the middle of a big city. Whereas if you were driving, you’d be battling the cars just to get out of the city and into the city. And there’s none of that at all when you take the train. You reach a critical stage where it’s so obvious that trains make sense to move people, that why would anybody advocate for anything else?

Sarah: You asked a question earlier that I think about a lot. You said, “What are we afraid of here in the United States, you know, when it comes to investing in transit and bike infrastructure and pedestrian infrastructure?” And it seems to me that one of the things that we’re afraid of is each other.

Rick Steves: Huh.

Sarah: And we are nervous about being put into contact with each other, and about having to share space with other people, right? We’re very comfortable not sharing space. We’re very comfortable being atomized in our cars, in our homes. And so, you know, it seems to me that in Europe, there’s just a higher level of commitment to the idea of society existing in public space, you know, and being comfortable with that idea. And I just wondered if that sounds right to you.

Rick Steves: It does. And Europeans recognize the epidemic of loneliness that we’ve got in the United States where people don’t join clubs anymore. People hang out with the echo chamber of kind of virtual social world online. It’s not good for the fabric of our community, nor the fabric of our democracy. And Europe knows that trends in the United States can cross the Atlantic, and they’re dealing with them too—sometimes more, sometimes less.

Rick Steves: But I noticed in Scandinavia in the last year when I was researching there, many restaurants that are booked out all the time. They go to quite a bit of financial loss to not reserve one big table, and it’s the community table. And when you can’t get in with a reserved private table for two, you can sit with strangers at the big table. And they’re doing that as a mission. And this is not just one crazy restaurateur, this is a thing in Scandinavia where you have the community table that does not take reservations. And if you show up and if you’re willing to sit with strangers, you can enjoy that restaurant that otherwise would be booked out sitting at the community table. That’s quite a thought provoking initiative that they’re taking on there, believing that they make a difference in their community, and doing something as small businesspeople to get people more comfortable with each other.

Rick Steves: As a tour guide, I love to turn my group loose in some kind of a beer garden or something, and my group will look at me like, “Well, there’s not a place for 20 people to sit together.” And I say, “Well, no. You’ve got to sit with other people. I mean, you know, there’s all these picnic tables, and they have two people on them and they can sit six. So you need to get your beer, get your pretzel, and then sit down and make friends with a Bavarian.”

Sarah: [laughs]

Rick Steves: And that’s part of travel. Yeah, I think Americans do like the domain of their car, but that’s kind of a vicious cycle. It gets worse and worse the more you honor that right to be apart. And if we don’t have so many convenient options to be apart, I think we’ll be better at being together. And public transit is someplace in Europe where people are together. And I like it. I sit on a train car, I sit in a metro car, or I sit on a bus in Europe, and I take a moment and I look at how it’s kind of the great equalizer. Everybody’s together in this green mode of transportation—you know, powerful business leaders and almost homeless people are right there sharing the same car. A lot of Americans would be a little bit nervous about that, but that’s because we’re too pampered in that regard anyways. And Europeans are a little more rough-edged about that because they have not withdrawn from their community, because they’re not comfortable with people that aren’t like them. And the society is better off for it.

Doug: I always think about that in terms of the New York City subway, which I just see as this great civic miracle where you do have people heading to their jobs on Wall Street and you have unhoused people and you have everybody in between, and it somehow works. And maybe that explains why New Yorkers are sometimes seen as, I don’t know, a little snobbier, more cosmopolitan than other places. We have our problems just like anywhere else. And you’re talking about loneliness and the social isolation. I was thinking about the role of children in cities, and how in European cities, you see a lot more kids. And even at those fancy restaurants, that there’s less, I don’t know, separation from kids spaces and adult spaces. It’s not that they don’t have places where kids are not as welcome, but here we tend to think, like, kids belong at the playground, kids belong at school. And there you do see more children in cities than in a lot of our cities here.

Rick Steves: You know, Europeans—just this last trip, I was talking to some friends in Europe, and I forget the exact term, but it’s something like “free-range kids,” you know? Their kids at a young age, they get a transit pass, and they are comfortable in the city. And they get used to that, and they’re not so protected.

Rick Steves: I was just thinking, when you were talking about the New York subway, I had kind of a debate within my staff. A lot of people thought the Circumvesuviana, that’s the working-class train that goes around Mount Vesuvius south of Naples to Pompeii and then to Sorrento, it’s a rough and tumble, graffiti-slathered, ramshackle train that goes four times an hour. It’s cheap, and it’s how people get around in greater Naples. And for a lot of tourists, we’re not comfortable with that intensity. And there’s a risk that you get pickpocketed or something like that. And the inclination by some of my staff was to favor the train that goes four times a day that costs four times as much, that’s air conditioned and nobody can afford it who’s in the ramshackle world, so it’s just tourists. And that’s a nice option, but I did not want to abandon the Circumvesuviana. The Circumvesuviana, which is the reality, the New York subway, the four-times-an-hour commuter train that goes in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius. It’s part of the whole scene, and I wanted my people, my travelers to deal with that, you know? So I made the case that I don’t want to bail out of the Circumvesuviana and pretend all there is is the tourist shuttle. I want my people to be in the fray with the locals, and to be smart enough not to get pickpocketed.

Sarah: It strikes me as one of those cases where luxury is actually—what is perceived as luxury actually ends up being a deprivation of a sort, you know? Where if you pay, you get to have less of an experience.

Rick Steves: You buy yourself out of the reality. And also you have to worry about there’s four departures a day. I love it when I don’t need to worry about when is the next train, because there is a next train in 15 minutes, so I just get to the station whenever I want to, and then I look, when’s the next one going? Oh, good. It’s going in five minutes. Track two. I’m there.

Doug: I’m thinking there’s that classic Onion article. It’s headlined, “Woman Who ‘Loves’ Brazil Has Seen Only Four Square Miles of It.”

Rick Steves: Well, that’s so true. That is so, so true. As a TV producer, we always laugh that, okay, this is quote, “the best of Lisbon,” but what are we really showing? And what I’ve got to struggle with now is, especially when we’re grappling with this bucket-list-Instagram-everybody-follow-the-leader kind of tourism where everything seems crowded because everybody’s going to the same places at the same times, we’ve got to start celebrating places that are the second cities. I think Sarah was talking about having visited Genoa and Trieste. What a great thing to do. I’ve not been to either of those cities, and I’m sure they’re great places without any tourism, yeah.

Sarah: They’re fantastic.

Rick Steves: The same thing, Doug, you went to Ghent instead of Amsterdam or Bruges. I know Ghent very well, and it’s perfectly good as an alternative to Bruges if you don’t want all the fairytale tourism and the high prices.

Doug: It’s beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

Rick Steves: That’s what my theme has been this last year is to find places that are not a compromise really, that are an alternative to the very, very overwhelmingly touristy places. And we’re seeing a backlash in Europe right now in places like Barcelona and Venice and Amsterdam, where there’s so many tourists aggravated by the Airbnb phenomenon where if a landlord in some charming town wants to make money, he’s not gonna rent an apartment to a retired couple on a fixed income because they don’t have a lot of money. He can get triple the gross revenue by kicking them out and renting to short term people through Airbnb. It’s just turnkey. Somebody will manage it for him.

Rick Steves: He turns it over to Airbnb, and suddenly the people that made the Ramblas, the Ramblas don’t live there anymore—I’m thinking of Barcelona—and the whole area is populated by tourists. And you go to the market and what’s in the market? Nothing to help local people. You’re not gonna have beans in the market. You’re not gonna have berries or a serious fishmonger. You’re gonna have potpourri, you’re gonna have slushies, you’re gonna have exotic fruits on skewers, all the stuff for rich tourists instead of local people. So it’s a sad transition. Most travelers don’t even see it, but when you walk into the charming areas of Europe these days, if you look up above the street level, all of those apartments are now inhabited by short-term touristic rentals rather than locals. And that changes the personality of the commerce. And what used to be a charming gothic quarter in Barcelona is now a shopping zone for tourists. And all of the locals are having to pay rent in uncharacteristic concrete slab suburbs where it’s just kind of depressing for them. Their neighborhood has been stolen by tourism. So that’s an ethical issue that we have to grapple with.

Sarah: That was one of my questions for you is, you know, there is this obviously a Rick Steves effect, right?

Rick Steves: Yeah.

Sarah: And if you recommend a place that’s not touristed—I saw you talking about, I think the Amalfi Coast or something?

Rick Steves: Oh, did you read that post on my Facebook page? I’ve never had such a unanimity in people that are telling me, “Rick, you’re wrong,” you know? Because I was celebrating finding an alternative to Positano and Amalfi, Minori and Maiori, two beautiful little towns that strangely have almost no tourism, just five miles south of all the tourist traps. And they’re great. And I was just all excited because this is what I do. You know, I find these places.

Sarah: Right.

Rick Steves: And people were realizing that, “You know, Rick, maybe you should not promote those places.” Which is a very good case. I can understand that and I think they’re right. On the other hand, I don’t think my travelers leave such a negative dent on a community as mass tourism and cruise travelers. When mass tourism comes, there are 50 people on a bus, and when 3,000 people dump out of a cruise ship, and when people barrel into a town like Venice and don’t spend the night and don’t buy dinner, that’s the problem. The people who spend the night, they’re part of the economy. They like it when people spend the night and buy dinner.

Rick Steves: Having said that, it’s still an issue, and the takeaway for me is: remind people you can find the untouristy places, I have. Here’s a couple examples, but you can do it on your own anywhere in Europe. We don’t need to all go to the same places, but now we’ve got herd mentality when it comes to all going to the same places. And you see people all over Europe. It’s the strangest phenomenon these days. If you see a mob scene somewhere of tourists and you’ve never seen tourists there before, for some reason it became the trendy place to get your Instagram shot and everybody has to go there. They don’t even know the name of the town they’re in, but that’s on their bucket list of places where they got to get a selfie.

Sarah: Yeah, we have that right here in Brooklyn. There’s a spot down by the Manhattan Bridge where you can see the Empire State Building through the legs of the Manhattan bridge.

Rick Steves: Oh, yeah.

Sarah: And the good thing about that becoming an Instagrammed spot is the city has finally just sort of given in and pedestrianized that street because there are just so many people there.

Doug: And it was dangerous before with the cars. Yeah.

Sarah: So that’s the one thing I would say about that mass tourism effect.

Doug: Probably a nightmare for the people who live on either side of that street, but yeah, exactly.

Rick Steves: I was just in Zermatt at the foot of the Matterhorn in Switzerland, and they were building—they had a building construction site on the little bridge over the ravine. I said, “What’s going on?” And they said “We’re building a platform for the Instagram people, because every morning they were stopping traffic to get their selfies on the bridge, and now we have to make a place for them to stand and get their selfies so the traffic can continue.”

Doug: Rick, you’re really honest about the effects that travel can have on the world, good and bad. And one thing that we wrestle with here, Sarah and I were just talking about traveling to Europe. We love traveling, and that involves flying. And we do get pushback, and we wrestle with it ourselves about climate change. There are climate activists who say we should all stop flying. How do you fold in this idea of climate change and our effect on the world into our travel habits and how we experience the world?

Rick Steves: Well yeah, anytime we talk about green travel and ethical travel and so on, the white elephant in the room is well, you’re flying when you travel, and that’s a big contributor to climate change with all the carbon it puts in the air. I see that. I know that. I know that when you fly to Europe and back, you’d be amazed at how much carbon you’ve created just with that act. Now am I gonna be flight shamed out of my travels? That’s one option. No. I want to travel, frankly. It’s a great thing. It makes the world a safer place, a better place. But it comes at a cost. So as an ethical traveler, what do I want to do? Well, it’s two things. I want to throttle up the value of that trip that makes me a global citizen, so when I come home and I go into the privacy of the voting booth, I’ve got no excuses. I know who wins this election impacts people south of the border more than it does me and my neighbors and my loved ones. And I vote for what’s good for the world, what’s good for the future, what’s good for the environment because I’ve been out there and I’ve seen it.

Rick Steves: My worldview is shaped by travel, not by fear mongering, commercial news media designed for people who have no passports. So I want to get more out of my travels, to make it a better investment when we consider the cost of the environment. But also, I want to mitigate my carbon. Now ‘mitigate’ means create as much good as you created bad so it zeros out. Now this is nothing heroic. This is just baseline ethical. I’m not bragging about it. I just wish our government would tax us for the carbon we produce when we fly. It should be the cost of the goods sold. You should have to pay for your carbon as you go, but we don’t because in the United States, that’s not good for business in the short term. That’s good for sustainability in the long term, but we don’t do our accounting that way.

Rick Steves: So until we get in a government that can have the political will created by people who want this to tax us for our carbon, as a leader in the tourism industry, I like to tax myself. So I’ve created a self-imposed carbon tax, and I tax myself $30 for every person I take to Europe on one of my tours, and that will mitigate the carbon they create by flying from Chicago to Frankfurt and back. How do I know? Well, it’s just the consensus among scientists, and I believe in that kind of stuff. So what we do is we take 30,000 people to Europe on our Rick Steves tours every year, multiply that by $30 is $900,000. Round it up to a million dollars. I have earned a million dollars too much this year because I’m not paying for my carbon. Government’s not gonna tax me for it. I’m gonna tax myself for it. So I have this climate-smart initiative where I’ve got a portfolio of 10 organizations that I can invest in, $100,000 each year, and it empowers them to do their work that fights climate change.

Rick Steves: You could do it with carbon offsets, but I don’t really like that. But I want to help in a more creative way. So we’ve got 10 organizations that do that. We give them $100,000 each year, and that mitigates the carbon we create when the 30,000 of us take a Rick Steves tour every year. And it’s good business because my customers know they’re traveling with a company that’s paying for their carbon. And it’s baseline ethical. Again, it’s nothing heroic. We do other stuff that contributes to carbon also, but it’s a very, very solid start. It makes a difference. And on my website at RickSteves.com if you just search for climate, right on the top it says, “If you’re a tour organizer, please steal this program. Don’t credit me, just implement it, because we’ve got to start paying for our carbon if we’re gonna be taking people traveling for profit.”

Rick Steves: So that’s what you can do. Get more out of your travel. So when you come home, you’re a soldier for sustainability, and travel in a way that minimizes the carbon just by thoughtfulness. You take a train instead of a small flight in Europe if you can, you bike instead of rent a car or whatever, you take public transit, and then you pay to mitigate your carbon. I love it. We’ve given $4- or $5-million so far, and it’s just very exciting.

Doug: Rick, I want to talk about some issues that I think are war on cars-adjacent, but that you’re really involved in in your hometown of Edmonds. Washington. And one of those is housing. So you have dedicated a lot of money and a lot of time towards supportive services for single moms recovering from drug addiction who want to retain custody of their children. I wonder if you could talk about the apartment complex that you kind of quietly bought in the early 2000s and then donated back to the YWCA.

Rick Steves: You know, it’s interesting, when you travel, you realize how stressful it is not to have a roof over your head at night just when you’re on the road. Americans can’t imagine not having a reservation. What are we gonna do tonight? Are we gonna be homeless? And then they fly home, and they’re so good at ignoring homeless people. And I’m not able to do that, you know? When I travel, I learn more about my home by leaving it and looking at it from a distance, and I get tuned into certain realities in our life.

Rick Steves: And we have so many blessings in this country. We’re so affluent, and with all that wealth, how can we have some of the very simple, basic problems that other countries don’t have? It’s because of greed in our society and the gap between rich and poor. So I want to raise my voice as an activist and a traveler who has an ethic about it, a global ethic. I wrote a book, as you mentioned, called Travel as a Political Act, where I talk about this stuff, but I also want to do my part, just walk the talk, you know? So if I care about affordable housing, I can invest in it. And I did.

Rick Steves: And I found this clever way that I thought was really cool when I didn’t have that much money, but I still was a businessman with some money to do something clever with, That take my retirement equity and buy a multiplex. Keep ownership of that, but let it be used by the YWCA or some organization like that to house people in transition or people who were homeless. And then instead of getting taxable income from my equity, I would be housing people. But I would still have that equity. It would still be appreciating. And then when I needed to retire, I would just take back that, I would sell it, and I would retire on that retirement equity. That was a really great idea.

Rick Steves: And then years passed, and I realized I’m really not gonna need this for my own retirement, so I decided just to give it to the YWCA. It was a 25-unit apartment building. And I’m proud of that, and I love the thought of housing people. And, you know, In the United States, we don’t have this option of being content. Being content is subversive. There was a political organization, a movement in Scandinavia called the Future In Our Hands that I was a member of way back in my younger days. And it actually had members of parliament in all the Scandinavian governments. And the whole notion, it was Eric Dammann was the Norwegian philosopher that was the foundation of this, the Future In Our Hands.

Rick Steves: And the idea was we can be content. As capitalists, it’s okay to be content. It’s like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Somebody put a barbed wire halfway up it, and we’re all focused on the lower rungs. You got enough shoes, you got enough clothes, you got a fancy enough car, you got enough housing. Slip over that and do something more creative, more self actualizing, more fulfilling that doesn’t mean conspicuous consumption. If you can do that, you find a way to consume vicariously the money you produce that you can’t consume yourself and be happier by. Does that make sense?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Rick Steves: And it’s just almost a selfish way to be wealthier with the reality that you reach a point where you get a diminishing curve of returns for how much you consume, and you can’t be happier by consumption. You recognize that, and you find clever ways to use that extra money to do great things. So for instance, I’ve got extra money because I just still sit on the floor and have a picnic when I’m on the road. I’m just happy without having to have a yacht and a mountain lodge in Vale, or whatever you do when you got a lot of money. And I just get great joy out of housing 25 moms who are having tough times, and their husbands have beat them and left them, and they’ve had drug problems, and now they’re getting their kids back. What a joyful thing for me to be able to provide a roof over their head. Is that being a saint? Well no, it’s just being aware of what you can do to contribute and being able to get joy out of that.

Rick Steves: You know, I got a tax break a few years ago by a Republican president. I figured out, what would the tax break do? And I figured with that tax break, for me as one business person, I can pay the rent for my local symphony orchestra in my town easily. So now for years, I’ve been paying the rent of our local symphony orchestra by the tax breaks a republican president gave me, a rich guy who didn’t need those tax breaks.

Rick Steves: We could all do that, you know, but we don’t. So it’s just my way to be annoying and kind of remind people that you could do more creative things with your money. I’m really fortunate I found my niche. I love what I do, and I get to make money taking people to Europe, but I also want to remind people that we’re all in this together. And that’s one of the beautiful souvenirs when you travel. You realize when you travel the world’s filled with joy, it’s filled with love, it’s filled with beautiful people. And when you come home, you bring with you that greatest souvenir. And I think that’s a mindset of what you really want to do in your life is not build walls but build bridges. The world’s a great place, and that’s why I love to explore it and come home with the lessons I learn.

Doug: It’s funny, I wrote, Rick, in the outline that there’s—your approach to travel, there’s something that reminds me of the Joseph Campbell Hero’s Journey. You know, you go out like Luke Skywalker. All you want to do is explore the galaxy, but you end up on this adventure. You face some challenges, like maybe not knowing where your next reservation at your hotel is going to be or who you’re gonna sit with at dinner. And these are minor things, but to Americans, sometimes feel like great challenges.

Rick Steves: Yeah.

Doug: And then you come home and you’re the same person. Your identity hasn’t changed, but there is something inside of you that causes you to see your little village differently. It’s like any Greek myth, really. And I think there is something about travel that does that to us. It seems like you’ve really, over the many years, taken that to heart, that you’ve changed your perspective on the inside and brought it to your own little village.

Rick Steves: You know, when—travel writers love all these quotes, you know? And I love this idea that Thomas Jefferson wrote that travel makes a person wiser, if less happy. And that doesn’t mean you’re a depressed person. It just means you’re, I think, engaged in serious issues that matter for people. You realize there are some challenges out there. And when you travel, you realize that need and suffering across the street is no more real than need and suffering across the ocean.

Rick Steves: And I’m a Christian. If you’re a person of faith, you really believe in a God. We’re all children of God. That means we’re all brothers and sisters on this planet. And when you travel, you get to know the family. So I’ve got this quirky attitude of family that can frustrate some of my closer family, maybe, but it’s a beautiful thing to remind people that we are all children of God on this beautiful planet. And we can, instead of building walls to protect ourselves with our affluence, we can build bridges and make the world a better place. The irony is, or the good news is, even if you’re motivated only by greed and you don’t buy this love-your-neighbor stuff, if you know what’s good for you, you don’t want to be filthy rich in a desperately poor world. It’s just not a nice picture. You need to have a world where there’s not desperation outside of your designer fortifications, you know?

Rick Steves: Too many people measure their success by being in a gated community, and their kids can hang out with other kids that are so privileged and be safe. I don’t like that. That’s not a success to me. I want to be of the world. I want to be in the world. And we can do that. And if we travel, it’s a good step toward that direction. And when we travel, we get tuned into issues of sustainability, because that’s just basic ethics. You know, the war on cars, that would be a good example of something you could relate to when you go to see societies that have learned that everybody doesn’t need to have a car. I was in Copenhagen once, and people were walking around with big plywood cutouts on their shoulders the size of a car. Have you ever seen that?

Doug: Yep.

Rick Steves: And they were jostling with each other. And each person was the size of a car, and it was—it was a fiasco. And then when they put their plywood down, you looked around and you’d see that there’s 200 bikes parked in that street and you didn’t even notice them. If they were all cars, you wouldn’t be able to walk anywhere. But bikes work. Cars don’t. And then downstairs, you have a sleek underground system that gets you from point A to point B in a snap. What a delightful revelation. And you wouldn’t get that if you stayed in Los Angeles.

Doug: I think that’s a great place to wrap things up. Rick Steves, thank you so much for joining The War on Cars.

Rick Steves: I’m happy to be with you. And thanks for your work, and you’ve caused me to see things a little differently, and I’m thankful for that, as I am with my travels that cause me to look for better solutions. And together, I think we have some hope.

Doug: You can find all things Rick Steves at RickSteves.com. You can also pick up his book Travel as a Political Act, as well as the 40th edition of Europe Through the Back Door at our Bookshop.org page or anywhere books are sold. We will put links in the show notes.

Sarah: Please support us on Patreon. Go to TheWaronCars.org, click “Support Us,” and pitch in starting at just $3 a month. You’ll get access to bonus episodes, ad-free versions of regular episodes like this one, and we’ll send you stickers.

Doug: We want to thank everyone who supports us on Patreon, including our top supporters: Charley Gee of Human Powered Law in Portland, Oregon, Virginia Baker, Mark Hedlund, and the Parking Reform Network.

Sarah: Thanks also to our sponsors Pinhead Components. Lock up every part of your bike with one key. Go to PinheadLocks.com, enter coupon code WARONBIKETHEFT for 15 percent off.

Doug: We also want to thank Cleverhood. You can get 15 percent off the best rain gear for cycling, walking and actually traveling with the code RAINFALL. That’s valid now through the end of September. Go to Cleverhood.com/waroncars.

Sarah: This episode was recorded by Justin Fernandez at the Brooklyn Podcasting Studio. It was edited by Ali Lemer. Our theme music is by Nathaniel Goodyear. Our transcriptions are done by Russell Gragg. I’m Sarah Goodyear.

Doug: I’m Doug Gordon, and this is The War on Cars.