On The Road With Rick Steves

For millions of Americans, planning a vacation in Europe means following - literally - in the footsteps of one man. Rick Steves is a backpacker who's become a business tycoon by writing about life on the road.

As found out, when she went to Europe with Steves, legions of travelers use his guidebooks like bibles. In fact, there are so many "Rickniks," as his followers call themselves, that a review from Steves can make or break a tourist attraction from Barcelona to Budapest.

You could say he's a professional tourist on the road about four months a year, chasing down tips to make the perfect trip. That means poking, prodding, and scribbling his way through as many hotels and cafes as he can cram into a day.

On a three-day trip to the Netherlands and Germany, Steves showed what it takes to stay a step ahead: "I'm over here, making mistakes, running down bad leads, and trying to assemble information so people who like my style of travel can get it right every time."

Some may call his style of travel eccentric, but he calls it "blitzing." He's on a constant quest to take his readers off the beaten path.

What's the key to enjoying travel? "One of the fundamental things is, if it's not to your liking, change your liking," says Steves. "This is a chance for us to immerse ourselves in something that's different."

"What gives your trip the magic memories is connecting with the people," adds Steves. "Anybody can get a list of famous sights. And they can take a taxi from sight to sight and check them off. You don't need my guidebook for that. But if I can put you into a magic situation on the west coast of Ireland or in a little pub in Athens, those are the magic moments that really make the trip, I think, more successful."

Steves has 30 travel guides that sell about half a million copies a year. His guide to Italy is the bestselling travel book in the country. His books have led to a booming tour business, a signature line of luggage and a TV show on PBS, all of which has made him a celebrity.

When 60 Minutes Wednesday was with him in Europe, it seemed there wasn't a street he could walk down without being recognized. His fans treat him more like a rock star than a travel writer. And they have a name for themselves: "Rickniks."

Everybody knows his name in Edmonds, Wash., the tiny town near Seattle where he was raised, and still lives with his wife and two teenagers. He's built his company there into a $20 million-a-year empire with 60 employees who primarily gather information for his books and lead tours. But Steves isn't just selling a way to see the world; he's selling a world view, too.

"This is all about experience. I don't want to sit on a bus and look at things through a tinted window and hear some guide tell me the stories in three languages," says Steves. "I want to be out there in the market! I want to be ripped off when I buy my Belgian endives, OK? I want to learn about that."

Is he promoting the experience, or has this now turned into big business?

"This is big business," says Steves. "On the other hand, my mission, my calling is to teach Americans how to travel smartly."

What do Americans get from going overseas? "Americans who travel thoughtfully get a broader perspective and a better understanding of what this planet is truly like," says Steves.

Is that something Americans are lacking? "America is desperately lacking that understanding. America doesn't know what's out there!"

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."And many European merchants work feverishly to get a recommendation in one of his books. Majel Tromp was thrilled when he printed a blurb about her canoe tours near Amsterdam. He's expanding the blurb into a full recommendation in his next book, but only after taking the tour himself.

Is everything the way he thought it would be? "Yes, this is everything I hoped it would be," says Steves. "Three hours, $30 … and you get Vermeer paintings along the way. You get the real thing that inspired Vermeer."

How important is it to Majel as a tour guide to be written up in Steve's book? "Very important," says Majel. "Because that's how I get the Americans coming to do this tour."

As the "blitz" rolled on, we wound up in Amsterdam's red light district. The oldest profession is legal here, so in his Amsterdam book, there's a map showing where to find prostitutes, and cheaper prostitutes. Steves also highlights cafes where marijuana is on the menu.

"It's not my responsibility to shield my tender Americans from something that is a reality here," says Steves.

"Do you tell your readers how much it costs to buy a joint?" asks Mabrey. "Yes, it's $3," says Steves.

"Do you tell them the best places to go?" asks Mabrey.

"Well, most of my readers are older," says Steves. "So I tell them where older people would be more comfortable."

What makes Steves successful? "I think it's his average Joe-ness, his American-ness," says Openshaw. "I think when people see Rick and he is, I think, a genuine down-to-earth, almost goofy guy, and when they see he can go to Europe, 'Well, I could do that!'"

Steves says occasionally there is a downside to his influence on thousands of "Rickniks" -- like what he sees happening in Rothenburg, Germany, a picture-postcard town he almost single-handedly put on the map for American travelers.

"I see more tourists coming with my book in hand and the locals can crank up the quaint and serve up the clichés, and suddenly all these tourist crowds are trampling the bit of reality I was trying to catch," says Steves.

But Steves says even the American stampede he helped to create won't stamp out the Europe he loves.

"You must have a shorthand for some of the cultures, some of the countries," says Mabrey. "So I'll rattle off some nationalities."

The French.

"Complicated," says Steves.

The Italians.

"Lovable chaos," says Steves.

Germans?

"Achtung!" says Steves.

The English?

"Proper," says Steves.

The Irish?

"Lots of beer," says Steves. "Lots of talk, lots of love."