TEDxRainier - Rick Steves: The Value of Travel

After spending 4 months a year for the last 30 years living out of a suitcase, Rick Steves reflects on the value of thoughtful travel. Sharing lessons learned from Iran to El Salvador and from India to Denmark, Steves tells why spending all that time and money away from home has broadened his perspective, enriched his life, and made it clear to him, as he says in his talk, "Fear is for people who don't get out very much."

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Thank you very much.

You know, I have spent
a third of my adult life

living out of a suitcase.

And looking back on those 30 years,
four months every year of traveling,

it occurs to me, it's really clear
that travel, thoughtful travel,

is well worth the time and the money.

And I'd like to take just a few minutes
to explain to you why.

Travel opens us up
to the wonders of our world.

In so many ways,
it helps you appreciate nature.

I mean for me, a great day is walking
high in the Swiss Alps,

like tightroping on a ridge,

on one side I've got lakes
stretching all the way to Germany,

on the other side the most incredible
alpine panorama anywhere,

the Eiger Mönch Jungfrau:
cut glass peaks against that blue sky.

And ahead of me I hear the long legato
tones of an alphorn

announcing that the helicopter-stocked
mountain hut is open,

it's just around the corner
and the coffee schnapps is on.

That connects you with nature,
and that connects you with culture.

And when I'm traveling
I love this whole idea

that travel connects us with culture.

When I am traveling I find that
there are different slices of culture

that I never realized people
could be evangelical about.

Cheese, for instance.

You go to France and
they're crazy about cheese!

I like being a bumpkin in my travels.

For me, cheese was always just orange
and in the shape of the bread.

There you go: cheese sandwich.

(Laughter)

Then I meet these people and, I mean,

there's a different cheese
for every day of the year!

You step into a cheese shop
and it's just a festival of mold.

(Laughter)

I love going shopping
with my Parisian friends,

they'll take me into a cheese shop,
put up a moldy wad of goat cheese

take a deep whiff:

"Oh Rick! Smell this cheese!
It smells like the feet of angels!"

(Laughter)

Okay! Well when you're traveling
you open up to new things

that might smell like the feet of angels.

A great thing about travel is
that it connects you with people.

And, if I am making a tour,
or a guidebook or a TV show,

and I am not connecting people with people

I am kind of nervous,

because it's going to be
a flat experience.

It's people that really
make your experience vital.

That's the mark of a good trip.

It doesn't need to be
earth-shaking encounters,

they can be just silly encounters.

I was in Italy recently
and I met this little kid.

He was just staring at me,
he was kind of rude.

Finally his dad said: "Excuse my son,
he stares at Americans."

(Laughter)

I said: "Why's that?"
and he said:

"Last week, we were at McDonald's
having our hamburger,

and my son, noticing
the fluffy white bun, said: "Dad?

Why do Americans
have such soft bread?"

and the dad said: "Son, that's
because Americans have no teeth."

(Laughter)

So, I showed him my teeth

and I sort of straightened out
a little misunderstanding

between peoples there
and it occurred to me:

that there are so many
misunderstandings between people,

and when we travel we straighten them out.

I don't know about you, but I was raised
thinking the world is a pyramid,

with us on top and
everybody else trying to figure it out.

(Laughter)

Then I travelled and I realized
we have the American dream,

that's a great thing, but other people
have their own dream.

Norwegians have the Norwegian dream.
Bulgarians have the Bulgarian dream.

These people have the Sri Lankan dream.

Travel wallops my ethnocentricity,

and I'm very thankful for that.
It's something to celebrate!

Our dream is beautiful, but so is theirs.

In my travels I have really been impressed
by the amount of pride on this planet.

Wonderful pride.

I was in Afghanistan once, in a cafeteria
where the backpackers were hanging out,

a man sat down next to me

and said: "Can I join you?",
I said: "You already have."

(Laughter)

"You're an American, aren't you?"
I said: "Yeah",

"I'm a professor
here in Afghanistan,

I want you to know that

a third of the people on this planet

eat with spoons and forks like you do.

A third of the people
eat with chopsticks,

and a third eat with
their fingers, like I do,

and we are all civilized just the same".

He had a chip on his shoulder.

He thought I thought less of him
because he ate with his fingers.

That lesson stuck with me and
for the rest of my trip through South Asia

I was aware of that.

I went to restaurants, fine restaurants

with well-dressed professional
local people that had no spoons and forks.

They had like a ceremonial sink
in the middle of the restaurant,

people would wash their hands
and eat using their fingers

the way God intended them to be used.

It actually became quite natural for me.

I had to be re-trained when I got home.

(Laughter)

But these are the lessons you pick up

and it is so fun to change something
that you thought was a basic truth.

Well, in the adulthood you realize:

Hey! Other people, smart people,
can see it differently.

I'm impressed how many heroic struggles
are going on on this planet all the time

that I am completely oblivious to.

Every year, eight or ten
distinct languages go extinct.

That's eight or ten ethnic groups
that lose a long struggle.

I was raised thinking Nathan Hale,
Ethan Allen, Patrick Henry

they were the ultimate. Ah!

Well you know they are great,
but they're certainly not unique.

They're a dime a dozen on this planet.

It doesn't diminish ours
but it's really important for us

to remember in our travels that there are
other heroes and other causes.

One great way to make your travels
more meaningful

is to relate to, to embrace
a contemporary Nathan Hale,

in a different country. Get into it.

An easy one is: Archbishop Oscar Romero.

Go down to San Salvador, El Salvador,
and learn about Archbishop Oscar Romero.

A present-day Nathan Hale.

A few years ago I was due for a vacation.
I was heading for Mazatlán,

and I was just needy for
a nice stretch of pristine beach,

swept free of local riffraff.

(Laughter)

I was gonna have a plastic strap
on my wrist,

giving me unlimited margaritas,

never have to dirty my fingers with coins,
you know what that's like,

I was ready.

And then some friends invited me
to go to San Salvador

for the 25th anniversary of the
assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero.

He marched with his people.

He stood by his people
during the Civil war that they lost.

These were the landless peasants.

He said: "I'll probably be killed,

and when I'm killed
I'll raise again in my people".

And I wanted to see Romero in his people,

25 years after his assassination.

And I went to El Salvador. Two days into
that trip I was covered with bug bites,

in a sweaty dorm bunk bed,
eating rice and beans one day

and beans and rice the next,

(Laughter)

and I was having the greatest
travel experience you can ever ever have.

It changed my whole outlook,
it was really valuable to me.

And I marched with those people
and in El Salvador we came upon a monument

that looks a lot like a monument
we all know and love:

the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C..

It's a knock-off of that Memorial, right
there in the Capital city of El Salvador

with just as many names
chipped onto that black granite.

The only difference is
these are names of people

who died fighting you and me.

Maybe they were Communists
and we had to kill them all,

I don't know, it's not an issue of --

what is the reason for that,
there's a reality:

there's 50,000 widows
who died fighting us,

for a cause.

And I want to know that cause,
I want to empathize with that cause.

I don't need to agree with it,
but I want to appreciate it.

That's why I went to Iran,
a few years ago,

I had the great opportunity to go to Iran

with a Public television TV crew
to make a show.

People asked me:
"Why are you going to Iran?"

And I thought about it,
why am I going to Iran?

And it occurred to me:

I'm going here because
I think it's good character

to know people before you bomb them.

(Applause)

(Laughter)

Sometimes we have to kill people,
but it should hurt.

And it is a nation's inclination to
dehumanize its enemies

before we go kill them.

So I went to Iran.

It occurred to me, when I was in Iran,
I was afraid to go here.

And when I got there, I was so glad
I had the courage to go there.

And I learned once again that fear,
and there's a lot of it in our society,

fear is to me for people
who don't get out very much.

(Applause)

Now when you go to Iran: it's a
thriving country of 70 million people.

I want to know what makes them tick.

Their Capital city Tehran,
with about 12 million people,

and there's a veneer of hatred there,

I mean look at the banner there:

It's a 8-story tall American flag
made of dropping bombs and skulls

for stars and stripes,

saying "Down with America".

We've all heard about
"Death to America" and so on.

I was in a taxi in that traffic jam there,

later on that day, just silent,

and suddenly my driver just bursts out:

"Death to traffic!"

(Laughter)

And I go: "Wait a minute!

I thought it was "Death to Israel"
or "Death to America""

and he said: "Right now
it's death to traffic!"

(Laughter)

And I said: "But well what is that?"
and he said: "You're in Iran,

anytime something's frustrating to us and
out of our control, we say "Death to that"

(Laughter)

And I thought about that,
I'm so glad I'm here

to understand this with a little more
sophistication than a bumper sticker.

So he speaks Farsi,
he doesn't speak English,

he's translating it directly and
to him he's saying "Damn that".

I thought well, have I ever
said "Damn something"?

Have I ever thought "Damn those teenagers"
Oh yeah! I have.

(Laughter)

You know, do I really want them to die
and burn in hell for eternity? No!

It's just after midnight,
turn down the music. Damn those teenagers!

(Laughter)

So, when we travel we gain a little
better appreciation

of what is the baggage
that people are carrying

when they respond to us.

Think of the baggage we have
in our country after 9/11.

We are a mighty nation
of 300 million people,

we lost 3,000 people on 9/11,
ten years ago,

and it's part of our baggage,

just like for our parents it was
the Depression, World War II and so on.

Iran has got baggage and
we need to understand that

if we're going to deal with them smartly.

Their baggage, and they've got
one quarter of our population,

is losing several hundred thousand people
when Saddam Hussein,

funded by the United States,
invaded their country.

I don't know if we really funded him,
but they think we did,

and that is baggage,

and when you travel around Iran
every town has got a vast martyr cemetary

filled with victims of that war.

And for me, to see a widow,

sitting on the tomb of a dead loved one,

as she's done every week for decades,

knowing the propaganda she's lived through
and the struggle she's lived through:

that's baggage.

I've got to understand
what she's going through

if I can understand their country better.

I wanted to know what makes
70 million Iranians tick,

and I found out a lot by going to Iran
and actually traveling there.

I was standing on the street corner
one day, a woman crosses the street,

she said: "Are you a journalist
from America?" I said "Yeah."

She did one of those little
"point-on-my-chest" things

she said: "I want you
to go home and tell the truth.

We're united, we're strong,

and we just don't want our little girls
to be raised like Britney Spears".

(Laughter)

I said: "We've got something
in common here!"

And I thought about that:
What's her baggage?

Well, you know, they grew up with
the Shah on the throne.

And if you grow up with
the Shah on the throne,

back then, they were
bragging the miniskirts

are shorter in Paris
than they are in Tehran;

you don't want your little girl
to become a boy-toy,

a crass material and a drug addict,
and for good reasons,

given her situation
she was afraid of that.

I wanted to know what is
the core constituency

of the fear-mongering party
that rules that country.

And I learned that it's small town,
less educated, fundamentalist parents.

Good people, motivated by the same thing

their counterparts are here,
in the United States:

Fear and love.

That's a powerful lesson
you cannot learn watching TV.

You need to go there
and meet these people.

A great sort of learning area, wading pool
for world exploration to me is Europe.

It's kind of my beat!

I love going to Europe because
we have smart similar people

dealing with similar problems
and coming up with different answers;

we can compare notes.

Europe and America are both wealthy
Christian democratic capitalist societies.

we're all passionate about government
by and for the people.

I thought about this
and I think there's a difference.

Here in the United States we're all about
government by and for the people,

via the corporations we own.

That's not a judgmental statement,
that's just a kind of an observation,

and it might make sense for a government
to provide a good environment

for our corporations to prosper.

I think in Europe they've got government
by and for the people

in spite of the corporations they own.

I think their government goes to bat
for the future, for the poor

and for the environment,
at the expense of their businesses.

(Applause)

I'm fascinated by how the United States
is really into legislating morality.

In Europe, they've got the same
victimless crime issues

and they have
different approaches to them.

My friends in Europe always remind me:
a society has to make a choice,

tolerate alternative life styles
or build more prisons.

And they always remind me we lock up
8 times more people per capita as they do.

Either we are inherently more criminal,
or there's something funny about our laws.

Prostitution is a good example.

You travel in Europe you realize in a lot
of countries prostitution is legal.

Prostitution is not good,
nobody would say that,

but it's a pragmatic kind
of harm reduction

that motors their laws and policies
about this issue.

They would rather have a situation
where sex workers are unionized,

in order to get a license they have to be
checked by a doctor or a nurse,

so they're not spreading diseases,

so when they push their emergency button

a pimp doesn't come to their rescue,
but a policeman does.

It doesn't work perfectly, but that's
their attempt to deal with this problem.

We can learn from them.

I think it's interesting
when you go to Scandinavia

how many drunk teenagers
you find on decorated trucks.

(Laughter)

And finally I asked: "What's going on?"

And it was always in the spring,
like May and June,

they said: "Here in Scandinavia our kids
really get drunk in graduation time

and the parents don't want them
to drink and drive.

So, in a classic European sort of example
of pragmatic harm reduction

when it comes to solve drugs,

the Scandinavian parents pay the keggers,

they hire a truck and a driver,
let the kids decorate it,

and the kids go from house to house
and their parents serve them the beer.

(Laughter)

Now, in the United States,
we'd deal with this problem --

teens drinking and driving
on graduation -- with moralism.

"Just say no".

In Scandinavia, they would rather
have a situation where,

okay, the kids are going to drink anyways,

let's do it so they don't have to
lie to their parents,

so nobody drives and nobody dies.

That's an example that we can learn from.

(Applause)

I was in a Starbucks in Zurich,
a couple of years ago,

I went down to the bathroom downstairs,
stepped inside: blue lights!

I thought: "what's this?
Blue lights in the toilet?"

Then I realized oh!

I cannot see my veins.

I couldn't shoot up if I wanted to.

Lot of needle addicts, lot of junkies
on the streets of Europe,

because they're still alive and
they're not in prison.

(Laughter)

I have to explain that to my groups.

They say: "These darn Liberal Europeans!"

I thought well this is frustrating
for a junkie, you can't shoot up

in the bathroom at Starbucks,

(Laughter)

So then, across the street, I noticed a
machine that used to sell tobacco

and now it sells syringes,
government-subsidized syringes,

they're almost free; nobody shares needles
and passes diseases in Switzerland,

that would be, like, unthinkable.

The government is into pragmatic,
compassionate harm reduction

for the solutions to their problems.

And then down the street from
this needle vending machine

there's a heroin maintenance counter
called a "Cafe Fix",

where people can go and
get their addiction maintained,

get counseling, get their lives back
on track, get a job.

It's not right or wrong,
but they're learning,

and we can learn from them.

And it's a valuable thing about travel
as we struggle with persistent problems.

When comes to marijuana, of course Europe
is much more progressive in this regard.

In Holland, the coffee shops
sell marijuana.

Now, a lot of Americans worry that
there's a whole reservoir of people

that would love to ruin their lives
smoking marijuana if only it was legal.

(Laughter)

Well, it's been 25 years since they
arrested a pot smoker in the Netherlands

and what they found after 25 years is:
use does not go up.

As a matter of fact, by every measure
Dutch people, young and old,

smoke half the marijuana per capita
that we do here in the United States.

Portugal legalized the consumption
of all drugs 10 years ago.

A lot of Americans are worried about
the gateway element of marijuana;

you know, you smoke marijuana and
suddenly you're a heroin addict.

In Portugal they worried about that too,

and they found the only thing gateway
about marijuana is its illegality,

because when it's illegal
you've got to buy it

from a criminal on the street
who has an invested interest

in getting you hooked on something
more addictive and more profitable.

We can learn from Europeans,
and it's exciting.

(Applause)

I love to have European friends
as a sounding boards

so I can test out ideas
and confusions and frustrations for me.

I've got a good friend in Switzerland
who's a school teacher,

in a little traditional village

where almost everybody
has the same last name.

When I visit with Olle,
his wife Maria and their kids,

I love to ask them questions.
Recently, I asked Olle:

"How can you Swiss people
so docilely pay such high taxes?"

Without missing a beat he said:

"What's it worth to be living in a country
where there's no homelessness, no hunger,

where everybody, regardless
of the wealth of their parents,

has access to quality
health care and education.

(Applause)

Now, Olle is not a crusader.

Olle is just a capitalist
with a European social ethic.

And it's interesting to learn from them.

One thing occurred to me recently is:

Americans are loving,
compassionate people,

but we're not very good
at grabbling with the gap

between the rich and the poor.

There's something in our upbringing

that makes it very tough
to deal with, honestly.

When you travel, you have the poor
reaching into your window.

You can't escape it
if you're traveling honestly.

And for 30 years I've had the poor
reaching in my window.

And it's been a powerful impact
in the value of my travel.

And I'll tell you: I've learned that
even if you're motivated only by greed

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 pretty picture.

I was down in El Salvador last Christmas,

any middle-class neighbourhood
has to pull its money

to have an armed guard on the corner,

just to protect them
from angry poor people.

And you don't want to raise your kids
behind designer fortifications.

We're on a track to that if we don't
learn from the other parts of the world

that have not dealt
with this very smartly.

Let me finish by taking you to Turkey.

I just love Turkey, and as a tour guide
I had the chance to take a group

to get to know a whirling dervish.

I knew this dervish, and I asked him:
"Can our group come and watch you pray?"

He said: "Well, I'm not a photo op.

You can watch me pray, but I want you
to know what I'm doing".

I said: "Great".

So we went onto his roof,
the sun was setting,

he was wearing his robe and his hat,

and he said, now I'll just paraphrase it:

"I'm a dervish, that's like a monk
that follows Mevlana,

that's sort of a teacher in Islam,
like Saint Francis was for Christianity.

A teacher of love.

And as a dervish I pray five times a day,
meditating on the teachings of Mevlana.

I plant one foot in my community
and my home,

the other foot goes around the world
acknowledging the variety

in God's great creation.

One hand goes up to receive the love
of our Creator,

and the other hand, like the spout
on a tea kettle, goes down

to shower God's love on his creation.

And I whirl, and I whirl,
and I lose myself in that transe

thinking of the teachings of Mevlana".

To be there as tour guide
with my group, watching him,

his head tilted over his robe,
then goes out,

and he loses himself
in that beautiful path.

I thought: "Wow, I am really
understanding now, like my group was,

that this man is very different from us,
but he is fundamentally the same.

And if we take home that understanding,
that's the very best souvenir possible.

And the rest of our lives,
when we look at the rest of the world,

rather than fear its diversity,
we can better celebrate it.

Now, appreciating the value of travel
is nothing new.

1400 years ago Mohammed said:

"Don't tell me how educated you are,
tell me how much you've traveled".

Thomas Jefferson traveled and he wrote

that travel makes a person wiser,
if less happy.

(Laughter)

Mark Twain traveled and he famously wrote:

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry
and narrow-mindedness".

I've traveled and travel has inspired me
to be engaged,

and to do what I can to make a difference.

In other words, it's helped me to become
a better citizen of this planet.

And I hope thoughtful travels
can do the same for you.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)