On The Road With Rick Steves

Vicki Mabrey Follows Steves Through Europe In Search Of His Travel Secrets

(CBS)  And, he says the world doesn't really know Americans either. "We tend to be ethnocentric. It's the old ugly American problem," says Steves. "We're not bad people, but the bigger your culture is, the more you tend to be ethnocentric. Not just Americans. There's ugly Russians, ugly Germans, ugly Japanese. You don't find ugly Danes and ugly Portuguese and ugly Belgians. They know that their norms are not the world norms because they're so small."

Steves sees each American tourist as a potential ambassador, and hopes to turn them into what he calls temporary Europeans. To do that, he says, they have to leave their comfort zone and cultural baggage behind.

Immersing Americans into other cultures is his travel gospel and he spreads it all over the country in his lectures.

His love affair with travel began in 1969, when his parents took him along on a business trip to Europe. He says seeing the sights really opened his eyes.

"But I got over there and it was fascinating. I mean, different pop, one-armed bandits in the hotel lobbies, women with hairy armpits," says Steves. "I mean, it was a wonderland for a 14-year-old kid!"

Four years later, Steves convinced his best friend, Gene Openshaw, that they should hit the road -- this time, no parents allowed. The day after high school graduation, they left for Europe. With a few hundred dollars in their pockets, they toured 15 countries in 10 weeks, on a trip they took to calling “Europe through the gutter.”

"We learned from the school of hard knocks," says Steves. "And for the first couple of days, we were sneaking into hotels and we were stealing lunch from breakfast and were pathetic street urchins in Europe. And then we got our act together and we got it down, and by the end of the trip, we were good travelers."

"He'd read about some place," says Openshaw. "He'd read about some castle and say, 'We gotta go see this castle…it’s on the Rhine.' And I’d say, but Rick, we’re in Spain! It’s like 300 miles away.' 'Yeah, but we could take the overnight train and we’ll be there.' And we would!”

Steves was a natural. Two years later, he started teaching travel classes and recruiting customers for a local tour operator. That’s when it dawned on him that he really could make travel pay. In 1978, he set out to lead his own tour, with seven women in a mini-bus, and an unusual plan.

"I used to have a personal mission to inflict upon every one of my tourists, the people who took my bus tours, a terrible, miserable hotel that other people would find acceptable, but that was not comfortable enough for them," says Steves.

What were they supposed to learn from staying at a bad hotel? "They're supposed to learn that most of the world would love to have a roof overhead," says Steves.

Thirty years, thousands of miles, and millions of dollars later, Steves is still taking the train, eating out of a plastic bag, and doing his laundry in the sink. But there’s a difference: These days he’s almost never on vacation.

"Do you ever go on trips and you’re not working, you just are there as a tourist to enjoy yourself?" asks Mabrey.

"I wish I could. But when I’m in Europe, I love my work so much – I just work."