RICK STEVES SAYS TRAVEL IS A POLITICAL ACT

Is Rick Steves right about travel?

He ought to know after all the traveling he’s done.

From all over Europe, to Paris, he’s been around.

So why is travel a political act?

Like any decent writer would do I went to the source instead of making up my own ‘facts’ about travel being a political act.

Rick Steves lists ten reasons why.

1. Get out of your comfort zone: Choose Managua over Mazatlán or Turkey over Greece. When visiting Israel, explore the West Bank. You can enjoy far richer experiences for far less money by venturing away from the mainstream.

I had a dream when I lived in Brooklyn and Philadelphia, a dream where I lived in the same building I worked in and there was a grocery store on the ground floor.

I’d never need a car, never need to leave the building.

Turned out that’s a common dream with a little expansion. People wanted to live and work on the same block, if not the same building. I met people who’d done it for generations.

Italian families in Queens expanded their comfort zone to work in Manhattan, but other than that didn’t leave their block if they didn’t have to.

At the far extreme, people would go out, but never leave the city.

“We don’t need to go anywhere when we live in the greatest city in the world. Why would anyone go to New Jersey?”

My comfort zone, had I stuck it out in NYC, would have been throwing an anchor out and staying put like everyone else. But I made my escape before that happened.

I Got Out ‘Just In Time’

If I hadn’t left when I did, I’d still be there, married to the most beautiful Italian woman since Sophia Loren.

Or maybe a Puerto Rican lady like those I worked with at One Battery Park Plaza.

I would have spent the rest of my life as an outsider in those families and loving every moment.

But I was in my mid-twenties and still had a few moves to make and not ready to settle down just yet. But close.

Every woman I dated had wife qualities. I could have married any of them, except for one nagging question: Would I stay married?

Eventually I answered my own question about staying married and tied the knot.

Thirty-six years later it’s proven to be a tight knot instead the slip knot too many use for a marriage tie-down.

Did I know my wife was a world traveler wannabe when we first met? All I cared about was that she knew her way to my apartment.

She’s made travel plans for us over the years like a grown up adult. When we met I rode a bike as my main mode of transportation. My mom asked, “What kind of a girl do you think you’ll attract riding a bike?”

The easy answer was, “A biker chick.”

2

One trip was Rick Steves Paris.

The two men in uniform were like so many check points around town manned my armed soldiers.

I asked about it at Napoleon’s Tomb and was told Paris duty was a reward for troops all across France.

Keep a clean nose in the field and maybe make it to Paris.

The shot above came from an inner-city high school campus.

Later in the morning we stopped at a memorial for the Paris children of WWII.

During the 1940-1944 Nazi occupation, a total of 76,000 Jews were deported; more than half of the 11,400 children sent to the gas chambers were from Paris.

The worst part of the story for modern times? Sending people to extermination camps “was entirely a French operation. “Not one German soldier” was involved, said the newly elected Socialist president.“

Standing on French soil and reading the French names of murdered children was chilling.

Rick Steves Comfort Zone

10. Make a broader perspective your favorite souvenir: Back home, be evangelical about your newly expanded global viewpoint. Travel shapes who you are. Weave favorite strands of other cultures into the tapestry of your own life. Live your life as if it shapes the world and the future — because it does. Believe that you matter. Then make a difference.

Make a difference to separate yourself from the people comfy in their ignorance.

If you feel like the king of the world and you deserve whatever it is you want at any particular moment, congratulations. That’s right, congratulations for living in hole, for not getting out, for not taking note of what’s around you.

You didn’t go to college but you have a favorite team in March Madness?

Okay.

You didn’t play football at any level, but you’re an NFL expert?

Cool.

Let’s stick with sports and not expand into your geo-political expertise, Kissinger.

When an under educated blowhard explains the importance of listening to them explain Ukrainian history based on Fox News disinformation from propaganda spewing pimps in bowties and women dressed up to answer Roger Ailes big questions: “Honey, how bad do you want this job? How loyal are you willing to be? How low can you go? I need proof.”

What happens when a man says he loves his ACA, but hates Obamacare; who loves Trump, but hates the ‘government’; and who is under investigation for his actions on Jan 6; what happens when the same words that come out of Fox News mouths comes out of his?

If you, my brother, are letting those words out of your mouth, take a moment to consider what has been in the Fox News mouths first.

Now it’s in yours, and you’re asking for more?

I’m no expert here, but that doesn’t sound like your happy ending.

You might want to include some mouthwash in your future plans.