Renowned Travel Expert Rick Steves Celebrates TV Santa Barbara with Special Appearance
Support Nonprofit TVSB’s 50 Years of Broadcasting with a Benefit Evening at the Arlington
Television and radio personality Rick Steves — who came to fame as a travel expert and educator known for his open-minded approach to travel and learning about different cultures — makes a special appearance in Santa Barbara this month to honor the 50th anniversary of TV Santa Barbara (TVSB), the nonprofit operator of two community access television channels, 17 and 71.
“I am so happy to be in the public media family,” said Steves in a recent interview ahead of his appearance in Santa Barbara. He believes it is essential to “make programs that are driven not by a passion for keeping advertisers happy, but that are just driven by a passion for inspiring and equipping people to reach out and embrace the world in all its beautiful diversity.”
Guests at “An Evening with Rick Steves” should expect to learn from his lessons traveling in Europe and be encouraged to explore countries outside of Europe as well. “Europe is just the wading pool for world exploration. My mission with my 100 colleagues here in Seattle is to equip and inspire Americans to venture beyond Orlando. … What we want you to do is get out there and get to know our world,” said Steves.
He stressed the importance that in this current American sociopolitical atmosphere, we as American citizens need the government to advocate for complexity. He also said that there is a lot of fearmongering and “othering” of people by our society, and the best way to learn the truth is to experience different ways of life.
Travel anxiety over physical safety is generally misinformation, said Steves. “I’ve spent 100 days a year in Europe ever since I was a teenager. The world’s a beautiful place, but you can get yourself in trouble if you’re careless and looking for trouble, but if you’re doing the normal things that tourists do, it’s totally safe. … When somebody tells me, ‘Have a safe trip.’ I’m inclined to say, ‘Well, you have a safe stay at home.’ Because where I’m going is statistically safer than where you’re staying. The interesting, counterintuitive irony is, if you think the world is too dangerous, if you stay home and don’t get to know it, it’s going to become even more dangerous, and the best way to make the world a safer place is for all of us to get out there and travel and get to know each other.”
When Steves reflects on all his travels, the beauty of art and architecture stands out. “I love Gothic architects. The Sainte-Chapelle in Paris is the best Gothic interior in Europe. I love Renaissance art. I just love Botticelli paintings. They’re so dreamy to me. I love looking into the eyes of David by Michelangelo and thinking I’m looking into the eyes of a renaissance man. … Now we’re going to step out of the darkness of the medieval world. We’re going to grab challenges and solve them, and we’re looking into the eyes of what is really kicking off the modern age.”
His book On the Hippie Trail: Istanbul to Kathmandu and the Making of a Travel Writer describes his epic trek to Istanbul to Kathmandu. “I wrote it when I was 23 years old, before I was a travel writer. … It was a coming-of-age trip. It was what hippies did in the ’60s and ’70s, back when the Beatles were hanging out with the Maharishi in India. My best friend and I went on this trip.”
It was originally a journal, and he put it away for decades — until the pandemic. “I got it out and read it, and it was like going into an anthropological dig of a 20-year-old version of myself.”
He continued, “It was 1978 when I did this, and it was the last year you could do it, because the next year, the Shah was gone, Iran turned into a theocracy under Khomeini, and the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.” So, the Hippie Trail no longer exists, but Steves said, “You can’t really go from Istanbul to Katmandu like I did, but you can still have a hippie trail experience. …You’ll never regret having an adventure like that when you’re just deciding where you’re going to go with your life.”
He added, “There’s some beautiful educational dimensions to travel, there’re some beautiful spiritual dimensions to travel, and there’re beautiful hedonistic dimensions to travel. And if you’re just having fun in the sun, you’re missing some pretty important dimensions of travel.
“I’ve spent 100 days a year overseas, hanging out with people who find different truths that are self-evident and God-given, and I know that the world’s filled with beautiful people, it’s filled with love, it’s filled with families, it’s filled with joy, and of course, there’s some complicated problems and some bad apples, but generally, the world’s a beautiful place, and when you travel as an individual, smartly, with respect for others, you come home feeling pretty good about this place, and you also realize you can do a lot to make it a friendlier place.
“I like to hope that my work will help us be better, not only better citizens of the United States, but when we come home, we have a dual citizenship. We also realize that we’re citizens of the planet, and that’s a good thing to be, to be mindful of.”
An Evening with Rick Steves takes place on Friday, February 21, at 7 p.m. at the Arlington Theatre (1317 State St.). Tickets are on sale at tvsantabarbara.org, or in person at the Arlington box office.
