Living the dream

I had a dream when I was a kid. A literal, “I’m asleep” kind of dream, that is. This isn’t an inspirational post. In it, I’m swimming along the bottom of the pool, my favorite place in all of Childhood’s Kingdom, when I realize I can breathe down there. Not fully, not well, but if I calm down and do it just right, modestly, I can breathe. I remember an infusion of calm and an understanding that everything could be fantastic. Could be better than I’d known to hope for. (It wasn’t until later that I suspected I’d just rolled over and was breathing through my pillow.)

Amsterdam welcomed me my first day

This morning I’m coming up for air. After 21 days of Best of Europe tour-guiding, I’m waking up to a day without appointments, no reservations to confirm or information to convey. Not even a city to depart.

The street is polite vespas and well-dressed Parisians, nothing on my plate but baguette crumbs and the promise of more good food to come, perhaps after a stroll by the Seine? And I remember that dream. Its epiphany that I can do something I really enjoy and get the air I need while doing it. And I realize that’s what I’ve been doing for 21 days.

Swiss Alpine calm

I’ve been swimming, diving into Amsterdam’s historic harbor before turning up the Rhine to reach Austrian Alpine passes, waterfalling down Roman roads to muse about Venetian canals before making my way through old Florence to reach older Rome, just to smile and drift up into Swiss glaciers, a liquid core of calm that persists when I slide down through the vineyards of Burgundy to wash up fully rational on Seine shores.

And I’ve been breathing.

Water was an element of my boyhood joy, and travel is essential for my adult satisfaction. Sharks and me, stop moving and we suffocate. But it’s not a compulsion, not addiction, neither distraction nor delusion. It’s adoration. Adulation. Celebration of our worldwide nation and the strokes that pull us all together.

Islam is supposed to be scary? Me and
the little girl don't buy it. You?

For years I traveled. Helpless before my vagabond urges. It was right for a time, but wrong in the end. Insufficient for the long term, serving nothing but my whims. Now there’s a purpose to my travel. In a world of multimedia capitalists who profit from our fear, who compete for the spectacles that widen our eyes and shrink our horizons, I find something more worthy than mere movement when I take others with me, show them these faces of beauty left here by centuries of human struggle and millennia of natural process.

For twenty one days spread across half a dozen countries we delight in the reality of the places, rooms in our global house, and I watch the tension of the first day dissolve into the ease of the last. Day One I see apprehension when I show them the train track that will reliably bring them home, Day Twenty I drop them off in Paris’s elegant metro maze and say “See you tomorrow” and they’re off without a pause.

And in the calm, when they don’t need me at all, I can imagine them going home, feeling merely tired, to be greeted by the anxious homebound with their pinched brows who desperately inquire “You were in Europe? But weren’t you worried? Didn’t you feel unsafe?”

And in my daydream I see their calm smile, perhaps wearing the appropriate regret for the incidents of the moment, but underneath is the deep understanding that the world is something other than the misconception made up by those make-up talking heads. And my traveling companions ease back to a full library of happy moments, warm welcomes, beautiful humanity and they can shrug off the constipated clench of petty terror. Stories they know better than to buy, now.

Think they wish they'd spent more time fearful and divided?

No, they didn’t feel unsafe. They felt free. If I did my job right. And the memory of every one of their smiles resonates within me, and I feel that dream’s sense of delighted astonishment, astonished delight, and can pull in deep lungfuls of fresh air.

Maybe it’s an inspiration post after all. For me, anyway.

Europe's normalcy and hospitality are waiting, on every boulevard and back street.

A gift from a fellow traveler

It was another vacation weekend. Sitting on the beach with two of my favorite people, my telephone far away, unchecked, the madness of the modern moment unimportant before the relentless majesty of an ocean.

Then back to this side of reality, the profanities of each day’s presidential manipulations and depredations. Trump standing in front of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, “This plane, as you know, was built right here in the great state of South Carolina. Our goal as a nation must be to rely on less imports and more products made here in the USA.”

Because it doesn’t matter to him that the fuselage comes from Italy. The wings from Japan. Passenger doors from France. That Boeing would suffer bigly under his backward agenda of tariffs and isolationism. He doesn’t understand or care that modern reality is not one of warring city-states but of progress through cooperation. The sad shriveled soul of an insecure narcissist cannot fathom cooperation or trust. They are not in his nature, and I pity the human in him.

But in the meantime he’s trashing the rest of us. And my mind wants to go back and hide on that beach...watching the waves...eating that sandwich...hearing the laughter and words of loved ones…

But what’s going on matters. And it’s bleak, in reality and in the headlines. So it was all the more precious to get an email from a former tour member:

Paris is picnics on the Seine.
Whether you're wearing a hijab or not.

“I thought of you today when I read about Trump’s bashing of Paris. I want you to know that the Paris you showed (my husband), me, and the rest of our wonderful group was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life...the amazing sites, the rich history, the art, the kindness of the people and well, of course, the food and wine. While Trump’s distortion of reality makes me feel quite hopeless at times, I know first-hand that his ‘alternate reality’ is dead wrong--thanks to you.”

And suddenly the sun feels warmer, my heart feels lighter, and I feel connected with the real human spirit, which is welcoming, encompassing, and kind. Which seeks to understand and support, not belittle and blame. Which is exactly the understanding we seek to foster on Rick Steves tours. It's immensely gratifying to know I succeeded at least once.

85% of those Dreamliners are sold overseas, and each one can carry about 300 people like my tour members towards greater understanding of each other, community with each other, peace with ourselves.

It’s still important to take short breaks from the dire headlines. But even more important to remember that they are not the full story.

A Parisian response to fear

I was focused on the situation so don't have
good photos, but man it was fun and loud

What do you do when terrorists want you to be afraid? To be closed off, fearful of strangers, and angry? To stay locked in your house, suspicious of others, scared of crowds and skittish of loud noises? Well, if you’re Paris, you throwing a mutha-phunking techno parade to draw in the crowds and blast out the windows, that’s what you do.

Because screw fear! Sucks to your divisiveness! And extremists can kiss my unafraid not-shut-in tolerant liberal western ass! It’s time for a party so loud everyone’s invited whether they like it or not. Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Zoroastrian, and Animist, I don’t care, if you have eardrums, you’re at the party.

And who cares if modern music seems to have forgotten musical instruments, because for the moment all we need is the sort of gut-thumping noise that makes everyone feel the rhythm in their ribs and the beat in the bloodstream as our hearts accelerate to match.

And if it’s my tour group, midway through my Paris walk, caught and beached somewhere between the converted church and the place where the boy king’s life changed forever? Oh well! Change of plans! We’re travelers: we adapt. And so we hold off on the French Revolution for a moment and instead lift cell phone cameras to the beautiful and blissfully idiotic thudding of a techno resistance movement. And if that swarm is hefting bottles of booze to the sky? Good for them. Ain’t nobody driving, ain’t nobody fighting, but all of everybody is moving and defiantly alive. Tolerating each other, who cares how you dress, if you can sing, or whether you pray and to whom.

Paris is unafraid, and these thousands of hoarse shouting, public drinking, sexual tension exploding, uncovered, unashamed, and celebrating youngsters are going to make sure you know it.

Because Paris is a city attacked. Once by terrorists, and repeatedly by fear. A city maligned by well-meaning purveyors of information, and by loving and thoughtful individuals who are right to feel fear, but wrong to act on it.

How did my group act on it? Did they stay home and huddle in front of the panic-inducing television? Nope, they came and saw for themselves. And when I asked them in the Champs de Mars if any of them felt afraid of Paris, they laughed. The correct response. They’d seen for themselves that fear on this global scale is a packaged commodity you don’t have to wear. And shouldn’t. Because locked inside, it’s quiet and safe and dead and complicit. But outside? In the traveler’s world, the citizen’s reality, the truth of the shared experience? It’s doing just fine.

Paris is alive and well. It is not unsafe, and it is not dangerous. Nor is it afraid and lashing out. It’s alive. It’s joie de vivre. It’s all those hearts beating defiantly together, celebrating and loud.  Can you hear it from there?

The Secret to Europe

No photo of the boulangerie, but this was just down the street

The smell of fresh baked bread. Is there anything on earth so glorious as that smell on a Paris morning? It was Friday and the perfectly round fruit-topped tarts were glistening with sugar and the muffins with their floured plumpness were the first part of an equation whose answer was a comfortable chair, cup of tea, and a good book. But it was the freshly baked baguettes that drew me in.

The mademoiselle behind the counter was chatting with the dignified madame l’customer ahead of me, their words lilting about in that frolicsome French that seems always on the verge of a loving tut-tut.

When it was my turn I stepped forward, gave a friendly smile and nod, and said in my very best French “Un baguette si vous plait.” I was killing it. An integrated part of this morning in the boulangerie.

Except maybe not. The mademoiselle seemed annoyed by my presence. She wasn’t rude, but nor was she nice. She was curt and briskly businesslike with my bread, so different from the affectionate glow of moments before, and barely looked at me as she handed over the bag and greeted the next person in line with a friendly hello.

Maybe the old stereotypes were right. Maybe the French (or Parisians at least) really were still rude to foreigners. Maybe my inevitable accent was just not good enough for their demanding sensibilities. How terribly disappointing!

Good thing it wasn’t true. It took me some time to figure out. Countless more small interactions across the continent, but eventually I noticed the missing piece. And what a difference it made.

So when I watched three young Americans make the same mistake I had, ordering their sandwiches on the Rue Cler last time I was in Paris, and receiving the same terse Parisian response, I was ready to share what I’d learned.

That's my big mystical secret

“It helps a lot if you say hello first.” I told them (not bothering to say hello first because we’re Americans). “It took me awhile to notice it, since back home we smile and get straight to the point, but over here they really like it if you greet them before saying what you want.”

Being Americans, they were guarded about this stranger speaking to them, their defensive caution struggling against the desire to learn and enjoy their vacation.

“So if you just start with a quick ‘Bon jour madame’ in France, ‘Buon giorno signore’ in Italy, whatever, you usually get a much better reaction.” They kind of mumbled a response, still wondering when I’d demand their wallets, so I let them be and stepped up to the counter.

“Bon jour madame” I said to the mistress of sandwiches, who chirped back the answering greeting. “Un sandwich au jambon et fromage, si vous plait.” And we were best buddies by the time she passed across my lunch.

The Americanas were immersed in their guide book when I turned around, but perhaps somewhere down the road they’ll speak from experience when they whisper to someone “It helps if you greet them first.”

Paris might be getting to me

Paris, where even the two dimensional
want to stay on the street

The Rhine was running high, Florence was florid with wine-flushed cheeks and well-trod streets, and the Alps were calm as only stone can be. Last night 24 of us, from 21 days of this, said goodbye. My first tour of the season is finished, and today is getting underway with a salmon crepe to make French coffee go down, and something Parisian seems to be seeping into me. Or maybe it’s just three weeks of sleep deprivation.

But sitting here in my wicker chair, a table lopsided just right, a fromagerie across the street and a nascent Francophile rhythm in every beat of my heart I am set to restart, a week until the tour that ends at my favorite jour when the doors of Athens will open and love and I will reach out for each other again.

Paris, where even the bathrooms
start looking beautiful

Damn right I love my job. And perhaps my peers, with their longer careers, would find me a foolish young man. But today I’m excited, for a love well requited, is marking this passage of time. And in a month we will reach, on that far Grecian beach, the vacation we both will have earned.

I’m halfway through the work, and exhausted enough by the quirk of these numerable days, with their detail-filled haze, that I’m tempted to sleep for the week. But there’s much to prepare, in this fine Gallic air, for the people who are waiting for me.

Thirty of us, in a big black green bus, still have six countries to visit together. But when all that is through, I’ll take my me and her you, and climb into a plane for the east. And if all goes quite well, after this introvert’s hell, we’ll have fine times and delicate weather. But between now and then, while I play father hen, every day is an experience feast.

But first, I need to get out of Paris. I think this city is getting to me.

Responding to Paris. Islam is not the problem.

Inside a mosque in Malaysia

What can one say about what happened in Paris last week? How to adequately address this manifestation of humanity’s darkest potential? I’m not sure how to do it well, but I’ve seen some examples of how to do it incredibly poorly.

So, as John Oliver said: “after the many necessary and appropriate moments of silence”, I want to shout that this, as all of these incidents, is not a situation of Islam versus The West, nor Christianity, nor democracy, nor anything else. This is a case of Extremism versus Human Decency.

If you’ve met any Muslims through any medium other than TV “news” you know that they are people. Not terrorists, not extremists. People. Just like you and I. I wish I could take anyone who says differently with me to my class, where tables full of Syrian, Iraqi, Rohingya, Eritrean, and other refugees show me the true face of human kindness, the profound depth of human decency. They are solidly on “our side”. The talking heads of the TV networks on the other hand, seem solidly on the side of extremism. The danger of that is insidious and shameful.

Being a boy in rural Turkey

This misunderstanding of the nature of the conflict is what allows “our” government (and its business interests) to pursue the “War on Terror.” The tragedy of that strategy goes far beyond my ability to express. You can not go to war with Terrorism. It is an idea, not an opponent. It’s like trying to dry your clothes by spraying them with the garden hose. It only makes the problem worse.

We’ve seen, time and time again, that “our” bombs don’t just land on extremists. They land on innocents, and bystanders, and angry people, and sad people, and markets, and schools, and hospitals, and weddings. For every extremist “we” kill, we create a dozen more. We’re standing in the sun, hoping it will cure our sunburn.

Somewhere in Tanzania

You already know this. Every child knows this. Little Jimmy says Tommy is a doodoo head. The other kids aren’t so sure, Tommy seems fine to them, though he doesn’t share his potato chips very well. Then Tommy comes up and punches Jimmy in the face. Now everyone agrees, Tommy is a complete asshole.

It would be funny, except we do that with missiles.

So how should we respond? That’s the challenge of our age, to somehow improve the rampant inequality that fosters this anger, the widespread lack of education that allows extremism to take root, and most of all, the profound absence of hope for any better option that makes someone pursue the type of indiscriminate violence that I believe is fundamentally against our human nature. We don’t want to kill, but if you saw only bleakness ahead for your children, what wouldn’t you do? And as if that isn’t difficult enough already, we will have to do it, for an extended period, even in the face of the ongoing attacks that are already growing. It seems an impossible goal, but given the world’s capacity to generate wealth, I bet we can do a step or ten-thousand better. Call me an optimist.

Growing up in Diyarbakir

But for starters? How about we stop making things worse? We stop blaming an entire religion for the actions of a few. (We can talk another time about the truly insane quantity of violence perpetrated by each of the religions of Abraham, but for now, do the Westboro Baptists represent Christianity?) We can acknowledge that Islam is only a religion, not a personality type, and certainly not a psychological dysfunction! Once we stop actively producing more terrorists, we can start to heal the deeper wounds that are producing them in the first place.

Not terrorists. Just people. Good people.

I’d like to give it four years. Just one presidential term. Instead of spending billions of dollars on bombs to kill Middle Easterners, we spend it helping those people who want to help themselves and each other. Pour ourselves into peace and improvement, instead of death and Halliburton. If you think there is no one left in the Middle East who wants peace, wants safety, wants a better world for their children? Then you’ve been watching the wrong TV.

Okay fine. I give up. I love Paris too.

Locks, love, cathedral landmarks, history, yada yada yada
I get it, Paris is beautiful.

There’s something terribly cliche about loving Paris. It’s like loving chocolate, puppies, and The Princess Bride. Of course you love those things. So does everyone else. Not interesting. After reading the 10,000th love poem to the City of Obvious, I had decided I wasn’t going to comply. I was going to snob the snobs.

On my big Europe solo wander, I spent a couple days in the city. Just long enough to meet some of the smelly fellows who shared my dorm room (including one who didn’t seem to have packed anything but underwear), walk rain-soaked streets where fancy people were being fancy, and disprove the stereotype of delicious Parisian cuisine: the kebabs were just as greasy and gross there as everywhere! Take THAT!

Finding a copy of The Tropic of Cancer on a hostel shelf a couple towns down the road made me more kindly disposed...but only to Paris of the 1930s. That age of Gallic elegance amid crass ennui and the inherent decline of being on top was past; the 21st century could keep its tourist temple!

Then I got this tour guide job, and where must I guide, every tour? Friggin Paris! Of course. So I went to Paris. Ready for snobs, stinky cheese, and pretentious wine. Over-dressed fashionistas sipping café in a café, staring at ca-mé. Grandiose museums with grandiose price tags and inscrutable art that we come see because They have told us we should.

“Yup.” I’d say, snarky and justified. “That’s the Mona Lisa. Just like it always looks, on every postcard and dorm room wall.”

What did I find? Precisely poignant cheese to go with eloquently savory wine that tastes like the place it grew. A city so dedicated to living well that they dress well just to go to the café, where they make no pretense of isolationism but angle all the chairs straight out to overtly people-watch. Just the way I love to do. And if I now have nicer clothes by several notches than when I came around as a vagabond? Feels good. Doesn’t mean I’m superficial now. And the museums? Succulent with centuries of creativity and culture, enduring manifestations and reflections of the historical, or spiritual, or emotional, or sexual, or tragic, or any number of the other passions in human life. All it took was a little education, a little context, a little knowledge of how to look, some kind of (ahem) guidance, and it all came alive. Not inscrutable. Beautiful.

And the last piece? The snobs? Did I find them? I found one. But then I stopped being him.

So next season I’ll go back to Paris. I’ll walk those gorgeous boulevards, thinking about Baron Haussmann, past the Hotel de Ville (which was never a hotel) and the Conciergerie prison (which kind of was) until my feet ache with satisfaction. Then I’ll sit on a wicker chair beside a mid-sized stream of joie de vivre, and eat the flavors that tell me where I am. (I know a great place for boeuf tartare if you want to come along.) I’ll watch petanque, sit by the Seine, mirror the emotions Rodin placed in clay, and get the chills when I hear Emmanuel ring out of from Notre Dame’s south tower, the way the 13 ton bell did when it announced the end of Nazi occupation.

And best of all, I’ll sit down to dinner, or lean back to a coffee or stroll around with a gelato, visiting with the friends I’ve found in that city. In that city which I’ve found to be a friend. Yes, I admit it, I love Paris.

Not quite fitting in, in Paris

Sweating and styling, today in Paris, on the vagabondurges.com post today.