Rick Steves Travel as a Political Act Read online

  Pulling the loose skin down from a long-ago-strong upper arm, she showed me a two-sided scar. “When I was a girl, a bullet cut straight through my arm,” she said. “Another bullet killed my father. The war took many good people. My father ran a Grüss Gott shop.”

  I was stunned by her rage. But I sensed desperation on her part to simply unload her story on one of the hordes of tourists who tramp daily through her hometown to ogle at an icon of the Holocaust.

  I asked, “What do you mean, a Grüss Gott shop?” She explained that in Bavaria, shopkeepers greet customers with a “Grüss Gott” (“May God greet you”). During the Third Reich, it was safer to change to the Nazi greeting, “Sieg Heil.” It was a hard choice. Each shopkeeper had to make it. Everyone in Dachau knew which shops were Grüss Gott shops and which were Sieg Heil shops. Over time there were fewer and fewer Grüss Gott shops. Pausing, as if mustering the energy for one last sentence, she stood up and said, “My father’s shop was a Grüss Gott shop to the end,” then stepped off the bus.

  Conflicts between the majority and the minority persist in today’s Europe. Consider Northern Ireland, where the population is divided between Protestants (supporters of British rule) and Catholics (who identify with the Irish). While the familiar Union Jack of the UK is the “official” flag of Northern Ireland, minority Catholics who’d like to see Ireland united see it as a symbol of oppression. Unfortunately, they no longer consider it their flag, and call it “the Butcher’s Apron” instead.

  For a lesson in the power of symbolism, visit a town where about two-thirds of the community is Protestant and one-third is Catholic. These towns can be decked out like a Union Jack fantasy…or nightmare, if you happen to be Catholic. The curbs are painted red, white, and blue. Houses fly huge British flags. Streets lead under trellises blotting out the sky with flapping Union Jacks. (Not too long ago, many towns like these even came with the remains of a burned-out Catholic church.) A Catholic walking down a street strewn with this British symbolism can only be quiet and accept it. To independence-minded Catholics, the Union Jack symbolizes not a united nation, but the tyranny of the majority. The result: There is no real flag of Northern Ireland.

  Until experiences like these in Germany and in Northern Ireland humanized the notion of “tyranny of the majority,” I never really grasped the sadness of a society where a majority-rules mentality can, when taken to extremes, abuse a minority and bully it into silent submission.

  Many angry Catholics in Northern Ireland have no flag. To them, the Union Jack is “the Butcher’s Apron.”

  As the rhetoric for the Iraq War was ramping up in early 2003, a situation in Edmonds, my hometown north of Seattle, reminded me in some small way of what I’d seen abroad. This was a difficult and emotional time, with all the patriotic fervor that comes with an invasion. Perhaps a third of our town opposed the war, and two-thirds supported it. The Lions Club lined the streets of our town with American flags and declared they would stay there in support of our troops until they finished the job and came home in victory.

  While I supported our troops, I opposed the war because I believed that the president knowingly lied to get us there. When the Lions Club erected all those flags—which were normally reserved for patriotic holidays—I became very uncomfortable. I wanted to embrace my flag, but was put in a regrettable position that doing so would be tantamount to supporting the war. I felt as though my flag had been demoted from something that all Americans shared (regardless of their politics) to a promotional logo for a war I didn’t believe in. I knew several Edmonds merchants agreed that our Stars and Stripes had been kidnapped. But in my conservative town, they feared not flying it would threaten their business. They felt frightened. Their predicament reminded me of those German shopkeepers who had to stop saying “Grüss Gott.” And my own town reminded me of those red, white, and blue-drenched towns in Ulster. Although to a far lesser degree, I felt that here in my hometown, a minority (of which I was a part) was also being oppressed by a tyranny of the majority. In defense of our flag, I had to act.

  I explained my concerns to the president of the Lions Club. He understood and agreed to have his club take down the flags after a week. It didn’t happen. So, humming “Yankee Doodle Dandy” to myself, I marched through town collecting and carefully stowing the flags. It was a small, symbolic, and perhaps overly righteous move on my part, motivated by what I considered patriotic concerns.

  While some supported me, many were angry. I was shark bait on Seattle’s right-wing radio talk shows for several days. But now, when my little town is a festival of Stars and Stripes on holidays like the Fourth of July, Presidents’ Day, and Election Day, everybody can celebrate together because the flag flies for all of us—even the peaceniks.

  But invariably, wealthy people begin to realize that their “cheap labor” is not quite as cheap as they hoped. In Europe, the importation of labor creates fast-growing immigrant communities that need help and incentives to assimilate, or society at large will pay a steep price (as we saw in 2005, when the deaths of two black teenagers while being pursued by French cops ignited violent riots that rocked the poor African and Arab suburbs of Paris).

  In Europe, many immigrants melt into their adopted homelands, while others flat-out don’t want to assimilate. With the increasing affordability of modern communication technologies, it’s becoming easier and easier for immigrants to establish insulated satellite communities that remain in constant contact with the culture and language of their homeland.

  These days, it seems that immigrant groups can choose whether or not they want to integrate with their adopted countries. I’ve met third-generation Algerians in the Netherlands who don’t speak a word of Dutch, and don’t expect their children to, either. And I’ve met third-generation Pakistanis in Denmark that speak only Danish and know and love their adopted country just as their blonde neighbors do. Like the US, Europe is suffering growing pains when it comes to its immigrants. Coming from an immigrant family in a nation of immigrants, I like America’s “melting pot” approach. I think it works best for all if newcomers embrace their adopted culture, learn the local language, and melt in.

  But the European scene is a bit more complex. While I’m a fan of melting in, I also respect the cultural diversity and survival of Europe’s smaller ethnic groups. If diversity is such a virtue, what’s wrong with immigrants wanting to preserve their home cultures? Is it hypocritical to celebrate the preservation of the Catalan language, but expect Algerians to learn Dutch? Should Europe’s famous tolerance extend only to indigenous European cultures?

  While I’m glad I’m not a policymaker who needs to implement immigration laws in Europe, I’ll be honest about my take on this dicey issue: I favor indigenous diversity (policies favoring European “nations without states”), but policies facilitating immigrant laborers and their families (from outside Europe) to embrace local cultural norms and assimilate. For more on this topic, see “Immigrants: Treasure Your Heritage…and Melt” on here. While Europe could probably learn more from America on immigration issues, as both societies grapple with this challenge, we can learn from each other’s successes and failures.

  Tolerance and the Futility of Legislating Morality

  I’m hopeful that Europe can overcome the challenge of its new ethnic mix because of its proven track record for pluralism. While Europe has no shortage of closed-minded, knee-jerk opinions, most Europeans consider tolerance a virtue to be cultivated. At the leading edge of this thinking is the Netherlands. Historically, this corner of Europe saw some of the most devastating Catholics-versus-Protestants fighting in the religious wars following the Reformation. They learned to be inclusive—welcoming Jews when others wouldn’t and providing refuge to religious refugees (such as our nation’s Pilgrim founders). And, as a major maritime power during the Age of Discovery, the Netherlands became a gateway to Europe for emigrants and immigrants (and their ideas) to and from all over Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Based on lessons learned fr
om their history, it seems the Dutch have made a conscious decision to tolerate alternative lifestyles.

  When I’m in the Dutch town of Haarlem, I’m struck by the harmony and compromise people have worked out between tradition and modernity, virtuous lives and hedonistic vices, affluence and simplicity. People live well—but in small apartments, getting around by bike and public transit. While the frugal Dutch may keep the same old one-speed bike forever, they bring home fresh flowers every day. The typical resident commutes by train to glassy skyscrapers to work for giant corporations in nearby office parks, but no skyscraper violates Haarlem’s downtown cityscape, which is still dominated by elegant old gables and church spires. In Haarlem, the latest shopping malls hide behind Dutch Renaissance facades. Streets are clogged with café tables and beer-drinkers. The cathedral towers over the market square with its carillon ringing out its cheery melody as policemen stroll in pairs—looking more like they’re on a date than on duty.

  Two blocks behind the cathedral, a coffeeshop (a place that legally sells marijuana) is filled with just the right music and a stoned clientele. People enjoying a particularly heavy strain of marijuana stare at their rolling papers as if those crinkly critters are alive. Others are mesmerized by the bubbles in their bongs.

  And down by the canal, a fairytale of cobbled lanes and charming houses gather around a quiet little church, creating a scene right out of a Vermeer painting. But this neighborhood is different. Lonely men, hands in pockets, stroll as they survey prostitutes who giggle and flirt from their red-lit windows.

  In Amsterdam’s Red Light District, sex workers are unionized.

  While the USA is inclined to legislate morality on issues such as prostitution, gay rights, and drugs, much of Europe takes a different approach. While countries differ, the general European sentiment is not to make a law forcing someone to be what the majority considers “moral.” Instead, European law tolerates “immoral” acts as long as they don’t hurt someone else.

  For example, few on either side of the Atlantic would argue that prostitution is a good thing. But in most of Europe, where many people recognize that you can’t just wish it away with laws, prostitution is generally legal and regulated.

  Of course, each country has its own laws…and quirks. German sex workers in Frankfurt rent rooms in multistory “Eros Towers” and essentially run their own businesses. If a Greek prostitute gets married, she must give up her license to sell sex. Portuguese call girls can lose custody of their children. Dutch hookers have a union, get a license to practice their trade, and are required to have medical check-ups to be sure they aren’t passing sexually transmitted diseases. In Iceland and Switzerland, while prostitution is legal, it is illegal for a third party to profit from the sale of sex. In general, the hope is that when a prostitute needs help and pushes her emergency button, a policeman rather than a pimp comes to her rescue.

  While that’s the ideal, it’s not foolproof. There is still sex trafficking and abuse of women in the sex trade. But Europeans figure with their more progressive, creative, and pragmatic approach to what they consider a “victimless crime,” they are minimizing violence, reducing the spread of AIDS and other diseases, and allowing sex workers a better life…all while generating some additional tax revenue. Social scientists have a term for this approach: pragmatic harm reduction.

  In another example of European pragmatism, Europe’s drinking age is typically lower than the US’s. While no country in the world has a higher drinking age than America’s, most European countries allow 16- or 18-year-olds to consume alcohol. European parents recognize that—no matter how fiercely they moralize against alcohol—their teens will drink. (Europeans puzzle over why 18-year-old Americans can marry, buy a gun, go to war, and vote…but not buy a can of beer.)

  Around the world, when kids graduate from high school, they party, get drunk, and some die on the roads. When traveling through Scandinavia in May and June, you’ll see a creative solution to this problem: truckloads of drunk high-school graduates noisily enjoying a parent-sponsored bash. The parents hire a truck and provide a driver so none of the students needs to drive. The kids decorate their party truck. Then the whooping and hollering grads parade through their towns from one family home to the next, where parents each host one stage of the progressive graduation kegger. Just about everyone gets drunk. But no one lies, and no one dies. While this makes perfect sense to Scandinavian parents, it would be a tough sell for American parents.

  To celebrate their graduation, Scandinavian students drink while their parents do the driving.

  This is just one example of pragmatic harm reduction motivating drug policy in Europe. In some parts of Europe, a joint of marijuana causes about as much excitement as a can of beer. And the Continent’s needle junkies are dealt with by nurses, counselors, and maintenance clinics more than by cops, judges, and prisons. (The European approach to drug policy is covered in greater length in Chapter 7.)

  Perhaps Europe’s inclination to be tolerant is rooted in the intolerance of its past. In the 16th century, they were burning Protestants for their beliefs. In the 18th century, they were drowning women who stepped out of line as witches. In the 20th century, Nazis were gassing Jews, Gypsies, and gay people. Now in the 21st century, Europe seems determined to get human rights, civil liberties, and tolerance issues right. Instead of legislating morality, Europe legislates tolerance and human rights.

  Europe takes civil rights to extremes. Even farm animals are guaranteed certain rights by law. In 2008, Switzerland granted new rights to animals, including banning the use of live bait by fishermen, the right for sheep and goats to have at least a visual contact with their fellows, and a legal right for pigs to shower after rolling in the mud.

  While the US is not likely to embrace tolerance with the sweeping idealism of some Europeans, just knowing that reasonable people endeavor to respect human diversity, promote inclusivity, and champion human rights to this degree can be empowering. Once back home, you have the option of tailoring your personal version of the American Dream with similar ideals.

  European Flesh and the American Prude

  On a lighter note, let’s take a closer look at Europe’s relatively open relationship with their bodies and with sex. While not as high-minded as war and peace or taxation and social services, this is an aspect of the cultural divide that titillates any American traveler to Europe who’s window-shopped a magazine kiosk, gone to a beach or park on a sunny day, or channel-surfed broadcast TV late at night.

  Thinking through my recent travels, I recall many examples of Europe’s different attitudes about sex: My Dutch friends had, on their coffee table, a graphic government-produced magazine promoting safe sex. I was sitting on the toilet at an airport in Poland and the cleaning lady asked me to lift my legs so she could sweep. I learned that I can measure the romantic appeal of scenic pull-outs along Italy’s Amalfi Coast drive by how many used condoms litter the asphalt. Soap ads on huge billboards overlooking major city intersections in Belgium show lathered-up breasts. The logo of a German travel publisher is a traveler on a tropical-paradise islet leaning up against its only palm tree, hands behind his head, reading a book that’s supported by his erect penis. Preschoolers play naked in fountains in Norway. A busty porn star is elected to parliament in Italy. Copper-toned grandmothers in the south of France have no tan lines. The student tourist center in Copenhagen welcomes visitors with a bowl of free condoms at the info desk. Accountants in Munich fold their suits neatly on the grass as every inch of their body soaks up the sun while taking a lunch break in the park, while American tourists are the ones riding their bikes into trees. During a construction industry convention in Barcelona, locals laughed that they actually had to bus in extra prostitutes from France.

  I’m not comfortable with all of this. I find the crude sexual postcards on racks all over the Continent gross, the Benny Hill–style T&A that inundates TV throughout Mediterranean Europe boorish, and the topless models strewn across pag
e three of so many British newspapers insulting to women. And I’ll never forget the time I had to physically remove the TV from my children’s hotel room in Austria after seeing a couple slamming away on channel 7 (and the hotelier looked at me like I was crazy).

  Compared to Europe, America is almost laughably shy about nudity. An early edition of my art-for-travelers guidebook featured a camera-toting David—full frontal nudity, Michelangelo-style—on the cover. My publisher’s sales reps complained that in more conservative parts of the US, bookstores were uncomfortable stocking it. A fig leaf would help sales.

  When it comes to great art, I don’t like fig leafs. But I proposed, just for fun, that we put a peelable fig leaf on the cover so readers could choose whether they wanted their book with or without nudity. My publisher said that would be too expensive. I offered to pay half the cost (10 cents a book times 10,000). He went for it, and I had the fun experience of writing “for fig leafs” on a $500 check. Perhaps that needless expense just bolstered my wish that Americans were more European in their comfort level with nakedness.

  The last time I was at a spa in Germany’s Black Forest, in one two-hour stretch, I saw more penises than I’d seen in years. All were extremely relaxed…and, I must say, I was struck by the variety. Getting Americans comfortable in the spas with naked Europeans has long been a challenge and a frustration for me as a guide. I care because, once people get used to it, they almost unanimously consider it a great experience. My first European spa visit was with some German friends—a classy, good-looking young couple. I was swept into the changing area with no explanation, and suddenly the Germans were naked. Eventually I realized everyone was just there to relax. I eased up and got more comfortably naked. It’s not sexual…simply open and free.