YouSaid · the spoken record

Rick Steves

lines on the record: 113
first: 2021-03-08
most recent: 2021-03-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, when you make a TV show for public television, you need a station to be your presenting station. And Seattle opted out for some reason, so Oregon took it up. And Oregon Public Broadcasting, OPB, all over the country now, you know, 30 years later, people think I'm from Portland because my show gets the little OPB jingle. And they presented it to the system in a few... Channels picked it up and if it works well there's a buzz and other channels pick it up the next time around but what that ended up doing was kicking off a series and we did five series with small world and I remember it was expensive every dissolve was a financial decision I remember they had to go to an editing suite and just have a sweet”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“yeah one of their friends had a a few thousand dollars that he could be the funder and we did a pilot and it was I look at it now and it seemed kind of gawky, but at the time it was good enough to get the show off the ground.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Small world productions, yeah. And they were, a lot of people had been contacting. There was this flurry of interest in the late 80s. And I was skeptical and I felt like, well, I can actually play hard to get because I don't want to do this. And they were really smart, good people, and they knew what I did. They had been followers of mine. They knew my program. They drank the Rick Steves Europe through the back door Kool-Aid and they wanted to share it on public television. And I said, okay, if you guys think you can do it, I'm with you. And I was basically a hired hand. I was the host.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“and dedicated to making TV shows where I'm not learning anything, you see, when I'm researching, I'm learning. I'm contributing. It's a huge practical investment in my program of who I am as a travel teacher. Sure. The TV show, it takes six days to produce a half hour TV show, and you learn nothing during that. I mean, I always thought, oh, I could learn while I'm there. No, you're just so all consuming. You're just there waiting for the jackhammer to stop, trying to remember your lines, waiting for the clouds to go away, and then saying it, and then you go to the next place and you do it. And after six days, if all goes well, you have a show.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was the trouble. I mean, everything I had done up until now had been no finance necessary. I'll gather 10 people together. I'm there all day giving you a talk. But this was different because you had to have a funder. It's expensive. Production companies. It's a huge investment of time. And for me, it was investment of time. Do I really want to take all that time away from researching my guidebooks?”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I thought, no way. But then I thought these are smart people, and they've worked with other people and made shows. They've got a track record of success, and they see something in this. And I thought, well, I'll give it a whirl.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you just said that, I'm just thinking I am such a reluctant, I'm sort of, in a way, I'm eager and I'm just like an energizer bunny about all this, but in another way, I'm sort of like digging my heels in like a stubborn dog and saying, no, some loved one says you should make tours and take people around on a minibus. No. And then I do that. And then somebody says you should write a book. And I say, no. And then somebody, actually a whole bunch of people in the late 80s were coming to me and saying, you should make a TV show.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The idealism of the business. Then I started to get people working with me. And that was kind of a breakthrough. You got a book, you got an idea, and you need to realize. It's not a one man show”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I remember the day I was walking to the book fair once in San Francisco and my publisher put his arm around me and he said, Rick, if you're ever going to get anywhere, you got to have more titles, because then I just had two or three titles. And I thought, oh, more titles. That sounds like a lot of work. And then I had to branch beyond that favorite places essays and generic travel skills into specifics. Where are you going to sleep in Brussels? Where are you going to eat in Copenhagen? What time is the museum open in Dublin? And that was a lot of work and that was a big change. But that's what people wanted. And that's what we could offer in a unique Rick Steve's kind of way. So then we embarked on all of making all of these guidebooks to different countries and different regions and ultimately different cities. But from 80 on, after I had the guidebook, the bus tours were funding.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I was married, I forget. I remember my class was Wednesday nights and I got married on a On a Saturday and a Sunday, of course. So I remember giving a talk one Wednesday and saying, I'm going to get married this weekend. Experimental college class. So I guess that's a little indication that I was focused on my business quite a lot. And my wife was very supportive and beautiful partner for that period of my life. And then I got this complexity, you know, a growing family and kids and also a business that was just taken off and my heart was in two places at the same time.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it was sort of this, it was like this big business that was just a little kernel and it was just ready to burst out because there was such a market for it if it was designed and what do you call scaled up properly”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And I was just a kid. And I mean, I must have been right after I self-published my book. And I didn't even know he knew who I was. He had me fly all the way to New York and be on his radio show. Or is it a TV show, I think, maybe? And he put his, you know, he kind of effectively put his arm around me and he said, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like you to meet the next Temple Fielding Eugene Fodor and Stephen Burnbaum of the Travel Publishing world. Those were the big household words in the 50s and 60s. Fielding guides, photor guides, burn bomb guides.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. Well, you kind of grow into it. I remember a big breakthrough for me was Arthur Fromer. I mean, he was the granddad of all this. He's the guy that inspired the democratization of international travel.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sort of a radical thing to do. I put everything I knew about doing the tour in the handbook for the tour, intending to give people the information necessary so they could do the Rick Steves tour without Rick Steves. They could buy the book for five bucks and do it on their own. And some people said, oh, you're giving away all your secrets. No, it was a great thing because it turned people onto the tours and it opened up my teaching to people that wouldn't take the tours anyway. And then I could stand in front of these groups of people who were taking my class for free and say, I don't care, you can take my tour or you can buy this book and do the tour without me. But just do it and do it right.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. And time and time again, and I was so impressed by how honest my students were in these classes I gave. I never checked ID for checks when people were giving me any money for anything. And I just didn't need to. They're just great people. But they were stealing this book, these books. And I thought these tour handbooks are driving decent people to theft. They need to be available for sale. So the next year.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And this was a formative time for me as a tour organizer because, again, I was learning what the market wanted. I was learning how many hilltowns can a mortal tour find worth climbing up, how many Madonna's and children can a mortal tourist be excited about. After a while, it doesn't matter if it's Raphael's greatest. They're going to stay in the bus and do something else because they're burned out on Madonna's and children. It's interesting. I remember this is this business kind of philosophy, I think, of mine, I would have the handbooks for those tours laying around in my lectures. The handbooks were designed so people could be independent in the context of the tour. There was always this focus. Everybody got a hand”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, yeah. And I didn't have the sophistication or the appreciation of a local guide or the money for a local guide. So we were just bumbling around together. You know, I remember we went to the craziest things. We'd go through There's an oak forest where Admiral Nelson used to get his masts for his ships in southern Wales. I forget the name of the forest of something, very romantic. And we would take turns sitting up on the top of the bus, on the luggage rack, and a couple of people up on the top of the luggage rack just so they could look up at the oak forest as we rolled through it slowly. Every night in the youth host, we'd pull out the map and debate. We would actually debate what we're going to do the next day.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Eight people per tour. It was usually 22 days. Back then, I only did 22-day tours. I was on a one-man crusade tour. Help Americans have a longer vacation. I was just amazed that we put up with such short vacations. And so it was 22 days in Britain, 22 days in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It's funny because now, you know, 40 years later, it's evolved where that's way too long for the American market. And the longest tour is 20 days in our best-selling tours are 10 or 12 days.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And this worked really well at the time. I would actually have a day where I would announce my minibus tour plans for the next year and I would give the talk. I would say, okay, I'm going to explain the tours and then I'll take deposits for the tours on that day. And I'd have four or five tours that I would do with the minibus. I was always the guide and the driver. And that night, all those tours would be full.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I drove the bus. That was a beautiful formula when people want to get into the travel business and make some money. I say, you know, I think the best thing is just to have a forte. You are Mr Scandinavia. You are Mr. Baja or Baja California. And just do that specialty with eight people on a minibus. And the economy of sharing a vehicle with eight people is wonderful. The fact that you don't have to take care of a driver and a guide, but the driver can be the guide is wonderful. And that was kind of my original formula there.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'd love to take people around Europe on these minibus tours. And so I was giving these talks and it was very easy to talk people who were enamored with me because of my fun stories I could tell about traveling. It was kind of natural. They'd be interested in traveling with me if I made that possible. And I did. And there was no promises. The minibus tours were like, it was like a commune on wheels. It was not profitable except to cover my costs so I could stay over there longer. And everybody had to almost sign a little agreement that says they wouldn't complain about the lousy accommodations. It was so upfront.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I just thought that sounds horrible. And then I thought, guys, there's huge efficiency in sharing the rental cost of a minibus. And I'd love to, you know, I love to help organize people's trip plans at the table and the dormitory over lunch.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know if I filed anything. I'm kind of laughing at that because I was so cluttsy then. I was just having fun teaching and selling books out of the back of my car when I had books to sell. But when I think back on it, friends and loved ones and relatives.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that's part of how I was successful. Part of my appeal is I'm not a scholar. You know, I mispronounce the words. I don't know how to say peri. I say Paris. I speak only English. Remember I was interviewing my students. That was a fear and apprehension. I don't speak the language. And I tell them, well, neither do I. And I write guidebooks. I make TV shows. I lead tours and have great vacations going to Portugal.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You were going Offering the book for sale. And then I would have the books in my car. And it was literally the books in the back of my car. And I remember a few occasions I was giving a talk and oh no, you can't sell anything on the premises here. Okay. After the talk, I'd say if you want to buy the book, I'll be out at my car. And it's just five bucks, you know, and then it's just bam, bam, bam selling like hotcakes. And I got to the point where I would get bigger and bigger classes and I would sell the book for, and the book got bigger and bigger and bigger, but I kept it at $5 for a long time just because I wanted to move those books. And I knew, though, that my audience was, my parents' age. For many years, now I'm older, so I don't have audience. That's my parents' age anymore. But in the beginning, I was always thinking, I'm talking to my parents and their friends.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it was a lovingly put together pile of a hundred and eighty pages, and I took it up to the publisher and I dug up all my money and it would cost a couple thousand dollars and I got a couple thousand books. Quebec a few weeks later, picked them up in my Oldsmobile station wagon, drove home. And now I had the first self-published edition of Rick Steve's Europe through the back door. And then after that, I finally got a publisher, which was a blessing.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was self published. I didn't know what an ISBN was, so it didn't have an ISBN, which was stupid. My girlfriend typed it for me. My roommate was an artist. I gave him the photographs and he sketched them really nicely. And then it was a time when you type and you correct by typing it on another piece of paper with a glue stick. You glue that strip over the line that has the mistake.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The book looked so simple that once it was already sold, people, when I tried to get publicity, they thought it was a pre-publication edition. They would say, when's the book coming out?”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the beginning, the book was two halves. It was like two books bound together. The first half was all the skills, packing, hotels, eating, transportation, communication, you name it. And then the last half were Individual chapters on my twenty favorite discoveries. These are the back doors. So I didn't need to write a guidebook to Paris or to Ireland. I just need to share my discoveries. And for a long time, I kind of almost prided myself in not having to bog down on, you know, phone numbers and prices and hours and that kind of stuff. I just wrote creative articles to turn people onto my favorite corners, the south coast of Portugal, Dingle Peninsula in Ireland, Arrow Island up in Denmark, you know, the Mosul River Valley instead of the Rhine for your castles in Germany.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They're fair to the language barrier. They're afraid of not finding a room. They're afraid of getting diarrhea. They're afraid of pickpockets. They're afraid of how do I use my traveler's checks properly. So, you know, and I just would have all of these issues that I would just bing, bing, bing.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep, I think I even handwrote it or something, but it was just my lecture. I mean, because I had given that lecture. And for me, giving the talk is recreation. How are you going to design these ideas and get it across and how are you going to illustrate it? And you're going to talk about bed and breakfasts and how does that relate to youth hostels? And what about sleeping on the train and finding cheap, free places to sleep and whatever? And after each at the beginning of each class, I had everybody write on a piece of paper, their fears and apprehensions. And I would survey for a long time. I would survey the class in the first night, and what are your fears and apprehensions? And I really got good at knowing what people's fears and apprehensions were.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You should write a book. That's so stupid. And then I, but then I thought, well, wait a minute, I've already written the book by giving this talk over and over and over. And I just sat down and gave my lecture to the paper. And there it was, the first edition of Europe through the back door.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would sit on a table facing the group in the classroom and I had a slideshow. I had my slide projector and I showed slides. And I remember I could, it was two, after a while it got, I mean, I was teaching all the time. I was just a teaching maniac. I would teach all Saturday. I would give that six-week course in a one Saturday session because people from out of town wanted to take it and they couldn't come every Wednesday night. So they would drive in and I would teach it from 9 till 5 with an hour break for lunch. And I could keep 100 people into a packed little hotel ballroom all day long giving my talk. And I got better and better at it. And I experimented with the delivery time after time how I would teach this and how I would get the points across. And eventually my mom's sister, my aunt said,”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or something like that. And I thought I'd get 20 kids from the dorm signing up. I had a hundred of their parents signing up. And I just remember, holy cow, I've struck something here. These are not the students. These are the parents. And I left the dorm. I was trained to be very efficient. I knew it would cost $8 for”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we sat there and he was just too cool for school. He just didn't prepare. He didn't care about our trip. He had the information, but he didn't give it to us. And it really frustrated me. And at that moment, I realized if somebody has travel experience and other people need it, it's wrong not to be well organized and share it in an artful, careful, practical way. And I thought, you know, I could do the same thing and I could really help people. So I put together this class. And it was sort of a lark, you know, it's just this goofy college where people teach you how to fix your bike or how to build a log cabin or how to forage and eat snails and all this kind of stuff. And I was teaching a class called European Travel Cheap. And I remember I'm not going to mince words. This is European travel cheap. That's all it is. How we're going to afford to go to Europe. And it was a six Wednesday class.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I took the class. I was going to do this trip and there's no good information back then. Today we have a glut of information, but back then, you know, you just didn't have much information. This guy had information. I signed up for his class and there was like 15 of us there dreaming about, you know, just like wide-eyed. He's done this trip from Istanbul to Kathmandu over Kyber Pass.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was in the dorm and I just love when I look back on it I just love teaching things I love I teach piano and I teach travel and I would spend a lot of time at lunch helping people plan their trips and I was the local expert in the dorm And I remember, you know, I remember I took a class about taking the hippie trail from Kathmandu to, no, from Istanbul to Kathmandu. That was what the ultimate backpacker trip back.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“These lectures for free? No, not quite, but almost, you know. A couple bucks something. But I mean, that was the turning point for me.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At that point, I think I just was very happy to be a piano teacher. I love teaching piano. I had a studio. So I was a little businessman. I had the studio next to my parents' piano store, paid $200 a month for the rent. We had a recital hall where twice a year the kids would do their recitals and I bought a coffee machine where I could actually serve coffee and styrofoam cups to all the parents and it was just for me it was just like so happy to do that and the kids wouldn't practice in the summer so I'm just going to go to Europe. I'll see you in the fall and life was going to be simple and sweet like that. Then I thought, well, I should get some practical so I got a business degree also. So I got a history degree for because I love that and business degree because I thought it'd be practical. But I had no thought about turning my love of travel into a business. But then things unfolded.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really is transformational. Yeah. And even as a teenager, I was aware of that. And I often think if the world was smart, they would establish a fund and give every American kid a little gap year trip. And it seems extravagant, but it'd be a small price to pay to get Americans out of their home and into the rest of the world and realize this world's a beautiful place and it's worth being part of. If you grew up in the United States, you think the world's a pyramid with the United States on top and everybody else trying to figure it out. And you get over there and you realize, no, they like their style of life and they've got different dreams. They don't have the American dream. They've got the Bulgarian dream. And these are revelations I had as a teenage traveler that are still integral to the talks that I give today.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's sure. So it was like when I think back on all the crap I aid in Europe, it's a wonder I am here at all. Although my lack of good nutrition never hurt me none, I got maggots on my stomach wall Bread and jam You know we went over there and I often think back why was that trip so great and that trip was so great because it was a challenge because every penny mattered because everything was new because we were totally on our own and it was just the beautiful part of growing up”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“While you were on this trip? I had no sense of nutrition. I would eat bread and jam. We had one of our theme songs, Kodachrome, was a big hit that year by Paul Simon. I don't know if you remember that. Can I sing you the little, if I can remember it?”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it was, and I came home and I was sick. I was what the doctor called chronically undernourished or chronically fatigued.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we'd count up the money and we'd divide how many days we had left, and we'd say, oh no, we were slipping down below two dollars a day, we've got to really tighten up. And then we went home after that trip with no money, and we went from the Frankfurt Youth Hostel out to the airport on an expired rail pass. It was frightening. The conductor, we were really good at stowing away on boat, on trains and boats. And the conductors were coming from either end of the train. And we knew we were just going to the suburban airport. It was like two collapsing walls with those spikes on it, like in Batman and our Superman. And they were coming closer and closer on the left and the right. And let's get to the airport and just in time we got to the airport, the door opened, and we popped out before the conductor before they could see your...”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've got the journals for this. I was a journal writing fiend. I wrote every day, even when I was 14 years old, what the weather was like, how much money I had in my money belt, you know, what food I ate. And I can trace every day I was in Europe for every year until I got wrapped up in my business much later when I didn't have the energy, the bandwidth to do that. When I was 18, my buddy Jean and I, we would have a game, we'd see how many hours we could go without spending any money. I mean, when we were sightseeing, we'd go right up to the door and if it cost, we'd find a way to sneak in the back door and we would visit it. We would buy a single room in a hotel and I'd sleep on the floor. Once a week we'd put all of our money on the bed.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I was making good money as a piano teacher. I mean, I think I made. six dollars for a half hour lesson, and that was a really good money. But back then you could go to your really cheap. You could fly to Europe for a few hundred dollars. You could get a year rail pass, a student year rail pass for, I think it was $250. And we lived on three or four. There was no $5 a day. We lived on like $3 a day.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I remember I used to, I had a jar on the mantle in my parents in our home, and it said send a poor boy to Europe. And every time guests would come over, I would try to beg a little money. But I was a piano teacher”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was a hardcore trip. That was the best trip of my life. And I wanted to go to Europe. I was hell-bent on going to Europe. And my parents said, well, you got to have a buddy to go with you. And they said, you got to send home postcards. So if you disappear, we know where you are and we can come and find you.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that was quite a commitment, quite a vision. And I didn't have any intention of making a business out of it. This is just what I did in the summer. It was just fun.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, those letters flipping. Ticket, ticket, tick, tick, ticket, ticket, tick, ticket, ticket, get him. And it's going to... Berlin or Stockholm or Amsterdam. And I saw those kids and I looked over at my mom and dad and I thought, I don't need you guys for this. The world can be my playground. And I vowed right then in the Copenhagen train station that I would go back to Europe every year after I graduated from high school. And I have.”
2021-03-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT