670a Weekend in Brussels; The Temporary European; My Town

17:19Rick Steves:No. Why would you have a newspaper on your door when you've got the excuse to read the newspaper on a stick and have a coffee surrounded by that wonderful Viennese coffee shop ambiance. That's right, yeah. And in the United Kingdom, for example, you know, they've adopted some of the American Starbucks culture, but ultimately a lot of people still caffeinate not with coffee, but with a cup of tea in the afternoon. So each place has different traditions like this. And speaking of temporary European, Cameron, this is something I always kind of use as an example when I'm giving a talk. Tea makes no sense to me in this hemisphere.

17:49Rick Steves:But when I'm in England, Yes, I need a spot of tea. And you don't have a tea kettle with all the little extra things with it in Greece when you go to a B &B. But in England, you've got to have that or you can write a letter to the authorities. Yeah, they call it a tea service in each B &B room. And man, the cheapest, crummiest, most basic hotel room in Britain is going to have a little tea service in the corner. And my friends wouldn't recognize me. But in Cumbria, after a nice long day of hiking in the Lakes District, I come back to my B &B, and I actually feel like not a cup of tea, but a spot of tea.

18:25Exactly. I do the same, yeah. Well, and in the book, I start off the book by telling the story of another coffee tradition in Bosnia-Herzegovina. And I have a good friend there named Alma. And when I come into her town of Mostar, Alma wants to take me out for coffee. And she knows I'm busy because I'm there to work on a guidebook, and I'm just frantically busy, and I have a million questions. And she just does a beautiful job of saying, you know, let's slow down and I'll teach you how Bosnians do their coffee. And so she takes me to this beautiful, we walk kind of along the cobbled streets and we go into this sort of caravan survey courtyard.

18:54It feels like, you know, you're going back to the Ottoman Empire and they bring out unfiltered coffee. In the U.S. we often call it Turkish coffee, but they call it Bosnian coffee in Bosnia. And the thing about Bosnian coffee is if it's prepared sloppily or if you drink it too fast, you get a bunch of gunk on the bottom of the cup. But what Alma taught me is if it's prepared properly and if you take your time drinking it, you don't end up having the gunk in the bottom of the cup.

19:17Rick Steves:I'm cursed by gunk on the bottom of the cup when I'm in former Ottoman Empire territory, you know, and that would be the Balkans and Turkey. There you go. That's just, it's kind of like the whole culture screaming at me, slow down. Enjoy your coffee. And I've had the same thing. So when Alma has told me this, I don't believe her. And then sure enough, we sit there and the nice thing is she's, it's sort of a Trojan horse to get me to relax a little bit. Yeah. And have a real conversation. So she's saying, ask questions, listen to the answers, slow down. And here in our country, when we buy a car, the second thing you ask is, where's the coffee cup holder?

19:50Rick Steves:Yeah, exactly. We get our coffee to go because we got other things to do. Cameron Hewitt is my senior writer at Rick Steves Europe, and we're celebrating what we've both come to experience and enjoy about travel right now on Travel with Rick Steves. Cameron shares his own travel memories, insights, tips, and confessions in a book called The Temporary European. In it, he promises a candid but affectionate reveal of how the sausage gets made in the travel business. We also have a link to Cameron's travel blog, where he shares advice, observations, and photos from his latest travels in Europe. You'll find a link in the notes for this week's show at ricksteves.com slash radio.

20:29Rick Steves:Cameron, we've been talking about... We've spent the whole first part of this interview talking about one little example of temporary European. Normally when I'm, you know, we're always talking to people with books that are excited about their book and we think it's great and we'll share it. We'd be doing that bucket list kind of thing. It's this checklist of travel. But this really, the kind of travel you're evangelical about is the opposite of bucket list travel. It's intimate travel. And you have this knack, and a good travel writer has a good knack, of being a good, thoughtful observer. and seeing the psychoanalyzing the cultures almost.

21:04Rick Steves:And you've got a command of languages far beyond mine, but I love the thought that special words in cultures give an insight into that. In Bavaria, you got the word gemütlikkeit. They don't use gemütlikkeit in northern Germany, but it is Bavarian and it is that almost untranslatable kind of conviviality or coziness. In Denmark, you know, I love the word hoogli. It's cute. It's cozy. It's little. It's so Danish. In Andalusia, you've got this passion and this soul. And I don't know the word for soul in very many languages, but I know it in Spanish, duenda. Because that's flamenco. Ole! What's a good word that gives you an insight into a culture that, in your area of specialty, Slavic Europe?

21:49Well, speaking of Alma in Bosnia, while we were sitting there having coffee, she taught me this word. It's called chaf. Chaf is the word. And it's actually tied to the coffee thing because it's all about the sort of personal private ritual that you have, something that you do very specific to you that somehow is comforting to you or it brings you pleasure, but it's a very particular methodology almost. But other people observing it just think it's very strange.

22:13Rick Steves:Almost eccentric. Eccentric. So like the way that somebody prepares or drinks a cup of coffee, I thought in my case I have a very specific coffee order that no one else would ever order. In traditional Bosnian culture, they play with worry beads. Yes. One time I bought some worry beads in Greece and I said, well, how do you use these? And they looked at me like I was crazy. And they were like, there's no how to use it. It doesn't come with a manual. No, everyone kind of figures out. Worry bees with a manual. But they said, oh yeah, everyone figures out. Some people rub them, some people spin them, some people count them, you know.

22:42And so Chafe would be an example of that.

22:44Rick Steves:Well, you know, now that you mention it, I love oranges. I just think oranges are the greatest gift. They're so beautiful. They come in these little, you open it up and you have the little prepackaged wedges and so on. And I eat it with a delight. and to warm myself up to the beauty of my next orange. I peel it in a long, skinny spiral and I see how long I can make the spiral and in one piece. It's my own private little idiosyncrasy, but I guess that could be called a chafe. Yeah, in Bosnia, they would say that's your chafe. That's my chafe. In my case, I tend to chew gum, especially when I'm nervous or when I'm working on a project.

23:17And so my wife tells me, and it's the same kind of gum and I always choose two sticks. And she tells me, she can tell how amped up I am about whatever I'm working on by how hard I'm chewing my gum. There you go. But see, that's the thing. And there's also some wisdom here. It's not just a clever word. In Bosnian culture, there's an understanding that you have to accept somebody's chafe because everybody has a chafe.

23:35Rick Steves:Oh, that's so cut people some slack. Yeah, no matter how odd or quirky or annoying it might be to you, you just have to say, all right. Truth be told, you got your own chafe. And we've put up with that for 20 years now. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. We don't get tired of it. When you're not there, we roll our eyes. But that's you and God bless you. That's it. You got it.

23:58Rick Steves:Hey, now, there's some low-hanging fruit for travelers to become temporary Europeans. I think an easy, obvious example is the marketplace. How do you approach marketplaces in your travels all around Europe? Well, obviously, for any traveler, markets are exciting. But, you know, you find a lot of people who go to markets and they just kind of run through and they don't really know what they're looking for. They don't really understand how the system works. And they take some nice pictures and go home. I think it's really worth it to take some time to understand the way locals approach the market.

24:27So there was a trip where my wife and I had a week's vacation. And we said, you know, let's take a week in Provence, south of France. We'd been through a couple of times kind of running through. But we said, we want to settle in for the whole week. And we went to seven markets, seven different markets in seven days. And this is all in Provence? All within an hour's drive, honestly. Because in Provence, they rotate towns, rotate the traveling market.

24:47Rick Steves:So conceivably, you could have seen the same merchant in every one of those markets. We did. In a few of them, we saw the same people. but it was always a different kind of configuration in each market. It's kind of fun because each market had its own character. We had a local friend who showed us around and taught us some tips. So, for example, she said, you know, you see all this beautiful produce, but there's two kinds of people selling produce at the market. There's the produce resellers, and then there's the farmers. So the produce resellers, you can tell, because they have a wide variety of fruit.

25:11Sometimes it even still has the stickers on it. And if there's any kind of tropical fruit that wouldn't grow locally, like bananas or mangoes, they're a reseller. And she said, the resellers aren't bad. It's still good quality. But because it has to be transported there, it's not necessarily ripe. Sometimes you have to wait a little bit. Whereas the farmers are the ones that have only a few items. So if you see a table that has two or three kinds of foods that grow together, you know that's a farmer. You also know the farmer picked that stuff that morning. And so it's going to be fresh that day.

25:40He picked it that morning to sell today at the market and to be eaten later today.

25:43Rick Steves:And when we travel, we can connect in with that heritage and that love of nature that appreciation of eating with the season. You know, when I'm in Provence and I stumble into a market, I'm told, it's Wednesday, the market's on. And I go, wow, I'm lucky. But take it one step further. If you're planning smartly, you can easily find out when those markets are, and then it's not hit or miss. You don't have a one in seven chance of hitting the market when you're in Orde or Cirland. You are going to be there on Thursday when that's the market day. And that's what we did on this trip. We actually planned where we were staying.

26:13The first thing we did was figure out where the markets, and we moved to a couple of different home bases, but we kind of coordinated, let's go up to this town on Thursday because Friday morning, we know the market's going to be there.

26:23Rick Steves:And you can never see the same market twice. I mean, it's always different. You and I went to a market in Herzegovina once. And I'll never forget it. It was one of the most beautiful experiences because most of the stalls in that market were actual farmers, right? I mean, they literally had folding tables or even just like, you know, picnic blankets on the pavement that they had their produce out on. And shopping there, we were temporary Europeans. This is Travel with Rick Steves. I'm talking with Cameron Hewitt, and he's my most prolific partner in travel writing. And Cameron and I have been working together for 20 years.

26:53Rick Steves:Cameron's been instrumental in broadening our coverage of Europe to include Eastern Europe because that's Cameron's passion. And Cameron has long written a blog, a beautiful blog, and he's got a following there that appreciates Cameron's insights and thoughtful approach to travel. And Cameron has collected his writings over the last 20 years into a new book. It's called The Temporary European. And Cameron, congratulations on this book. It's just a real accomplishment and sort of a gift to travelers to contain all of your writing in a beautifully designed package like this. Yeah, thank you. It was fun to go back through my blog and pick out my favorites and kind of rewrite a lot of them.

27:27It was fun to have another crack at some stuff that I'd done pretty quickly and add some new stuff as well.

27:32Rick Steves:And you take this love of travel a little bit to a new dimension because of your experience as a tour guide. And as tour guides, people are hell-bent on seeing this or that because it's a tourist trap. They've heard about it all their life, and you can't go to Pisa without seeing the Leaning Tower. How do you deal with the necessity of including the kilts and the wooden shoes and, you know, that kind of stuff and still making it culturally worthwhile? Yeah, and I think that's a big challenge for the thoughtful traveler and especially the thoughtful travel writer is sort of how to navigate those cliches.

28:05So I use an expression in the book I call deconstructing cliches. So, you know, I know we have some colleagues, Rick, who are kind of sticklers and they say if it's just a cliche, we want to debunk it and we want to ignore it. We don't want people wallowing in cliches. But I'd rather kind of like dig into the cliche, deconstruct it, figure out where the kernel of truth is, because first of all, travelers want to see those things. But I feel like it's our responsibility not just to kind of give it to them on a platter and then move on to the next thing, but to learn more about it and kind of understand the background of it.

28:34Rick Steves:You know, I think in Scandinavia, there's a I love folk dancing, by the way. It's been there for centuries, and it's an insight into the cultures. And I think it's an instance in Norway, I think, where you've got a folk dance that features a girl holding a hat on a stick. And the guy who's looking for a girl, he dances around and he kind of struts like a peacock looking for a partner. And she holds the hat on the post, and he kicks that hat off the post. And he struts around and she raises the post higher. And another guy comes around and he kicks that hat off that post. Oh, I know what you're talking about.

29:07They take turns trying to see who can jump higher.

29:09Rick Steves:Who can kick higher. And the girl is really, when you look at it from a procreation, and who's my best mate and safety point of view for my children, she's looking for a guy who can protect her back in the old days. And you don't need to physically protect your partner now, but that does have that history. And when you think in the old days, you were all in the very care of your loved ones and your seniors, and there was all these taboos and everything, and your only avenue, your only social outlet was gathering around the fire with all the generations and folk dancing and flirting at each other at the same time.

29:42Yeah, that's a great example. I love that.

29:44Rick Steves:Oh, man. We've been celebrating Cameron Hewitt's work as my right-hand content manager at Rick Steves Europe by visiting the conversation we had when his own book, The Temporary European, was first published. Cameron's travel tales start out in Delaware, Ohio and eventually take him from Iceland to Croatia. For Cameron, reflecting back on his travels during the pandemic lockdown gave him time to write down his own lessons and confessions as a professional traveler. His website is CameronHewitt.com. You know, we travelers had this very long period where we couldn't travel. And basically all we could do was dream and kind of remember our travels.

30:24And I thought a lot, especially because I was writing this book about what I might do differently when I go back. And I think reliving these memories, I realized what they have in common is they didn't take place at the big bucket list sites. They took place between the bucket list sites. And so one thing I really could preach about in this book is slow down. You know, I know you've got a busy itinerary and I'm working, so I'm even busier than you are. But you've got to take moments to slow down, take it in, be present in Europe. The way I talk about this is if you hear a church bell chime, take a breath, listen to the church bell chime instead of rushing off to the next thing.

30:56and enjoy those sort of precious little moments where you get to try on being a European just for a little while. And, you know, it's hard. It's really hard for me and you as people who are working when we're in Europe and even for a tourist or a traveler. There's so much you want to see and do. But I got to tell you, it's very clear to me, the very best memories come between the stuff that's on your itinerary. It's those magic moments in the middle.

31:17Rick Steves:Amen. The book is The Temporary European, the author Cameron Hewitt, and it is the fruits of decades of thoughtful travel and teaching and inspiring all of us travelers to get more out of our trip. And it's not with a bucket list. It's with an appreciation of how to travel as a temporary local. Cameron, thanks a lot. Thanks for having me, Rick. Appreciate it. Have you found that your travels have helped you better appreciate the place you call home? Let's hear about what you find special about your own home turf next at 877-333-7425. Our email address is radio at ricksteves.com. I'm ready for this segment.

31:59Rick Steves:I get to learn from you about your favorite place, your hometown. I spend so much time talking about my favorites. Now the ball's near court. And our phone number is 877-333-7425. You can email us anytime at radio at ricksteves.com. And Dusty's calling in from Bar Harbor in Maine. Dusty, thanks for calling in. Thank you, Rick. How are you? I'm doing great. You live in a beautiful corner of Maine, I think. We do, yes. I think it's one of the most beautiful parks even in the United States. And this is Acadia National Park. Are you right at the gateway to Acadia, or what's the deal? We actually live inside the park because of rangers, so our housing unit is within the park itself.

32:41Rick Steves:Hmm. Now, I keep hearing people raving about Acadia. Yeah. You know, what is it about the intoxicating beauty of nature in Maine? Well, the place that makes this kind of special is this is where the mountains really meet the sea. You go from, say, 1 ,500 feet to sea level in a mandala of less than a quarter of a mile, somewhere around there. And the vegetation is lush. It's cool in the summertime. And people just enjoy getting away from the city. we're really the only place that people in the New England area can go to get to a national park. So it's intoxicating for them to get out of the city, away from New York City, Boston, and in a matter of a couple of hours just being up in the mountains in a really beautiful spot.

33:34Rick Steves:So end of the day on Friday, you can hop in your car in Boston and in a couple hours be in Acadia National Park? You can be at the park from Boston in about five hours. In five hours. Okay, so that's a fair drive. Yeah. And people do it. You've been there for a long time. How long have you been working there? About 20 years. Does it get old? No, not at all. Not at all. It's fascinating. It changes every day. The people are wonderful. We get to see people from all over the world all the time. So it can get hectic at times. Well, Dusty, dissect the wonderful for me here. I mean, specifically, I mean, of course it's beautiful.

34:12Rick Steves:It's green. It's where the mountains hit the sea. But what is it? Is it the sound of the clams squirting at low tide, or what is it? No, I think it's, for a lot of people, it's their first real solid exposure to nature. If they live in a city or they've grown up in a city, and now they've made a venture out here to see what it's like to be in the wilderness. And they're just amazed. And they enjoy the serenity, even with a lot of people. You can certainly get out on the trails here. We have 150 miles of trails here. People can go out and they can wander for hours and just enjoy being by themselves with nature while they're here.

34:53And it's the first experience for a lot of people. And for them, it's a big wow factor. They've never done it before, and now here they are enjoying it.

35:01Rick Steves:And to enjoy Acadia National Park, do you basically drive there, park your car, enjoy the natural exhibit where you get primed to see and appreciate the nature, and then use that as a trailhead and go walking? Or what is the mechanics of a visit to your great corner of the country? Well, one of the first things people do is they take the Park Loop Road, which is a 27-mile loop that covers a lot of the iconic stuff that's here in the park, especially when they drive out on the cliffs and they're right over the ocean, and especially if the waves are really pounding in, they'll stop, get out of their car, take some pictures, wander around, not really hike the first day too much, and just try and take in one section.

35:46And then what we do here is we try and help them plan the rest of their visit. Not everybody's a hiker. Some are, some aren't, but we can usually convince people to go on a short hike. And that's usually all it really takes, is if they've gone out on maybe a half hour, 45-minute walk. That's a really big thing for them, and they want more. They said, this was a wonderful experience. We've never done anything like this before, so let's do some more.

36:14Rick Steves:That tip there, Dusty, and you're a park ranger in a beloved American national park, that tip to leave the car. So many people, whether they're in Europe or the United States, they complain about the crowds, and all there was was exhaust humes and noisy people and traffic jams. Park the car. We have those. Walk for half an hour. Every time you think of how much energy you put in to get there, well, get over the goal line, leave your car, walk half an hour, and then you get to connect with that pristine nature. And if you have a park ranger and the organization of a park to make sure you're going in the right direction, it's going to be a rewarding experience.

36:50It is. Not everybody is up to doing serious hiking. We have a lot of mountains here. There's hardly anything that's flat in the park. But when John D. Rockefeller was here, his estate was here, One of his favorite things to do was build roads. He built about 45 miles of carriage roads within the park. And those were the roads that he used to take his visitors out on to see all the magnificent sites. Well, when he left the property to us, he also left those roads to us. And those are like 12-foot wide gravel paths that are less than a 7 % grade. So for somebody who's not quite as ambitious, they can go out and they can hike on those or they can bike.

37:34And that's a big deal. There's no cars on it.

37:36Rick Steves:You must get some blustery weather on the bluffs. I mean, that makes it more dramatic. Well, today's kind of blustery, but it can be, especially if there's a hurricane at sea. We've had times when there's been 20-foot waves here that smash against the granite. And on those days, I would think everybody would stay home, but they want to come out and see this dramatic action. I would. That sounds great. Yeah. Dusty, thank you for your work at that park because you must be doing your job right because I've never heard anything but rave reviews about Acadia National Park in Maine. Well, Rick, you need to come.

38:12Rick Steves:I'm gonna. It's on my list. I will. We've got your contact information there. Thanks so much, Dusty. Okay. We're talking about your neck of the woods. I get to share my travel adventures. Now you're sharing yours. Our phone number is 877-333-7425. And Carol's calling in from Bel Air in Florida. Carol, thanks for your call. Hello, Rick. How are you doing? I'm great. And you're in Florida. Yes. What do you like about, what do you rave about Florida for your visitors that you want to entice down there? Well, people think of the beaches, but we have more than the beaches. On a rainy day or just to enjoy it, We have a wonderful Dolly Museum down in St.

38:55Petersburg, a brand new building that was designed for this to really showcase this exhibition. And additionally, we have a wonderful museum called the Imagination Museum, which is glass. It's a history of glass making. It's contemporary, antique glass. There will be people that work in glass there that you can talk with. You can take classes there, all sorts of things. In fact, we are considered an artist's glass destination. We have Chihuly here and Morian Art Gallery, so a lot of art glass being done here.

39:34Rick Steves:What's another dimension of the attractions in Florida? Well, we have beautiful beaches. We have marine study areas. In fact, every other year, the Great Blue Ocean, it's not a festival. It's a meeting of people that have to do with the health and education about our oceans. It alternates years being in Monte Carlo and then being in St. Petersburg every other year. Okay. So world-class destination for a lot of scientists. So we've got art, we've got nature, we've got all sorts of, you know, just amusements, of course, in Florida. What about the cuisine? What would you recommend for some unforgettable meal to have in your state?

40:20Well, Ray Lamp, who is Dr. Barbecue, has a new place down next to Tropicana Ballfield, not far from the Imagine Museum.

40:28Rick Steves:Dr. Barbecue. Wonderful barbecue. Barbecue in Florida. All right. What's unique about barbecue in Florida? because I travel around the country to different stations, you know, for my work in public television and public radio, and lots of states are eager to feed me barbecue, but I've never had barbecue in Florida. Well, Ray Lamp is, he's in the Pitmaster Hall of Fame, so he is that good. And it's a very artsy, very quirky building that they've converted down there. Okay, so he does good barbecue. Yes, he does. But, of course, we have seafood, too. Lots of seafood. We have Cuban food, Spanish restaurants not that far north from St.

41:12Petersburg. We have Tarpon Springs with the Greek community, wonderful Greek food.

41:19Rick Steves:So, Carol, what about just a good old-fashioned gut bomb on some roadside diner in Florida? What would I look for? I would look for Frenchies, which is the old-fashioned seafood restaurants like you used to have on the beach years ago. So, you know, everybody just put something over their swimsuit and walked in and had sandwiches, fries, local seafood. Right on the beach. Sounds good. Right on the beach, your crab cakes. All right. Carol, thanks for your call. Okay. Thank you. Happy travels. Bye now. All right. Bye-bye. And Deb from Albany, New York, sent us an email, and Deb writes, My hometown is Troy in New York, across the Hudson River from Albany.

41:59Rick Steves:Troy is the home of, quote, Uncle Sam Wilson and a downtown core of fabulous Victorian buildings. Visit the triangular Rice Building across the street from where the Night Before Christmas was published. See the Tiffany-class windows of our churches or take in the view across the horizon from Prospect Park. Eat at a new restaurant or cruise the huge Troy Farmer's Market on Saturday mornings. That all sounds pretty darn interesting, and if you're near Albany, We can thank Deb for that tip.

42:35Rick Steves:Alexis, who's in Lausanne in Switzerland, sent us this interesting email. I'm an American travel writer who's made lovely Lausanne my home for the past 13 years. Skip Geneva and spend the extra day here in the San Francisco of Switzerland. It's home to two top universities. There's always an interesting event on the city's cultural calendar. Switzerland may not win any prizes in the excitement department, But bustling Lausanne is the closest you'll get to cool in the Alps. Wow, Alexis, that's quite an endorsement of Lausanne. Remember, there's Lucerne and there's Lausanne. This is L-A-U-S-A-N-N-E.

43:12Rick Steves:It's on Lake Geneva in the south of Switzerland, the French-speaking part of Switzerland. And I agree with you, Alexis. Geneva, it's pretty good if you're some international official, but it's kind of boring if you're a traveler. And I would far prefer the town of Lausanne on the same lake. and you call it the San Francisco of Switzerland. Well, yeah, I can imagine that because it's on hills. In fact, there's an upper town and a lower town connected by like a funicular or a very steep cog rail train. And on the waterfront, you've got beautiful boat rides on Lake Lausanne and you've got a fascinating museum to the Olympics.

43:47Rick Steves:And up in the high town, you've got a wonderful church. You've got a museum to art done by people who are locked up because they were criminally insane. And you've just got a wonderful opportunity to feel the pulse of urban Switzerland. So often when we go to Switzerland, we're all focused on the Alps, high in the mountains. But, you know, there's some beautiful cities in Switzerland, and I would say Lucerne and Bern, the capital, and Lausanne on the south end of the country, on Lake Geneva. Ha! Those are the most beautiful cities, and they're all worth a good look. Thanks, Alexis, for the email.

44:28Rick Steves:A while back, we spoke with an Icelandic journalist about a few of the quirks of everyday life in Iceland. Here's part of the interview with Egil Bjarnason that we didn't have time to include as he tells us about the small town of Selfoss, where he comes from. It's now boasting a renovated town center, and it's less than an hour's drive from Reykjavik. This is Travel with Rick Steves. We're talking with Egil Bjarnason about Iceland, and we're talking about his hometown, which is just outside of Reykjavik. It's called Selfoss. and I sure noticed when I was in Iceland not many dogs but a lot of cats.

45:02Rick Steves:Why is that? It's funny you notice that. We love cats. We are a cat nation and in Reykjavik especially they kind of roam the streets like they own it and the sidewalks in Reykjavik many of them warmed up with geothermal heat so they lay there and kind of... Oh, that's it. So there's warm sidewalks. I didn't realize that but they're heated by all of the volcanic activity under the ground. Yeah, they have warm pipes so they never freeze, they never get slippery. The cats... And people have little doors where they just let the cats come and go out of their houses so the cats are just kind of like wandering the streets freely and they go home when they want to go home.

45:39Yeah, I mean, cats, they almost have a right to vote here. We take them seriously. But not the dogs. Why not the dogs? What's the problem with dogs? Well, it's interesting because dogs were banned in Reykjavik until 1976. We consider them a farm animal. We said they didn't really belong in the city. But I think it's changing now.

46:01Rick Steves:Dogs were banned until 1976. That's amazing. Iceland is just, it's a surprising land. And so many things about it. And just wandering around in these towns, one thing I've noticed is a big deal, Egil, in any town at dinnertime is the hot dog stand. That comes from you guys. That comes from the Second World War when Iceland was settled by a lot of U.S. army men, and the hot dog arrived. And it's a little bit different from the U.S. hot dog. It has a lot more sauce on it and a lot of different ingredients. But it's popular. It's a popular food. I think it's almost our national dish, the hot dog.

46:40Rick Steves:I think so. There's a famous one in Reykjavik. I think Bill Clinton or somebody famous ate there, and they make a big deal about that. Yeah, we made a big deal that he also then got sick. But we take no pause for that. No prisoners. Hey, do you have a hot dog stand that is beloved in your town of Selfos? Absolutely. I mean, that's our main establishment in Selfos is a hot dog stand. I can't believe how I forgot. Do you sit down inside or is it something like you sit outside on the bench? It's really a car culture in my town. So it's a drive-thru. Or if you're coming home from the bar, you stop there.

47:19Rick Steves:Oh, and in Scandinavia, when people get drunk and the only thing open in Copenhagen is going to be the pulse of the hot dog stand. And that's where they go to cap their night of drinking and drunkenness is to eat a hot dog. And I guess that helps them not get sick or something like that. What's the deal with hot dog and late night? It's just for some reason it tastes so good when you're drunk or when you're drinking. The munchies. The munchies for somebody who's drunk. I need a hot dog. It's midnight. For me, as a budget traveler, I like a hot dog in Iceland because it's the only thing for under$10 that you can buy and eat.

47:55Rick Steves:You can get a hot dog for$5 or$6 or$7 and you can call it lunch. I think it has a lot to do with its popularity, that it's inexpensive, yes. Now, your little town has one claim to fame that I think is fascinating. It has the Bobby Fischer Center. And if you're my age, when you were little, you know that was the big deal to the chess championship of the world. It was like Rocky. And you got Boris Spassky, the communist, and Bobby Fischer from the United States of Freedom getting together. And they got together in Iceland. And today, how is Bobby Fischer, the American chess champion associated with your little town of Selfas?

48:34It's completely random. But long story short, Bobby Fischer became an Icelandic national to save him from prison in Japan. He had been jailed there for breaking an embargo with Yugoslavia years earlier. So we gave him citizenship. And he did not like it in Iceland so much. But he couldn't get away. There was still a warrant for his arrest. And just after being here for a couple of years, he got sick and died. And his life was complicated. So there was a dispute over kind of where to bury him and when. So they decided to bury him immediately after he died. in the middle of the night. And it shows a quiet place just on the outskirts of Salfors,

49:16Rick Steves:this tiny farm church. Okay. And therefore, when people are fans of Bobby Fischer, they can make a pilgrimage to your little town, Salfors, and remember the chess champion. And we have a lot of that. We have a lot of people who come. And Bobby Fischer, he meant a lot for Icelanders. Iceland is a country that has state-sponsored chess players. We take chess really seriously. it's a sport that you can play indoors so it's really suited for Iceland and Bobby Fischer also at the time during this match of the century he sort of got Iceland on the map in a way. Iceland was the center of this major sports event and it was the first time you'd had foreign press and all this sort of attention that Icelanders were not used to.

50:06So people felt like they owed Bobby Fischer a lot.

50:10Rick Steves:Ah, that's fascinating. Eagle Bjarnason is the author of How Iceland Changed the World. You can listen to his full interview from the Travel with Rick Steves program number 659. There's a link to the show archives at ricksteves.com slash radio. Travel with Rick Steves is produced at Rick Steves Europe in Edmonds, Washington. I'm the executive producer, Tim Tatton, assisted by associate producers Kaz Mural Hall and Donna Bardsley. Our website is managed by Andrew Wakeling. Our theme music was written and performed by Jerry Frank. Affiliate relations are by Sheila Gerzoff. We'll look for you again next week with more Travel with Rick Steves.

50:53Rick Steves:Imagine a community of well-traveled friends who love sharing tips and comparing notes. That's our online community. It's called the Rick Steves Travel Forum. You can read trip reports, reviews, and share itinerary planning questions, peruse the topics, or post your own submissions. It's at ricksteves.com, and you're invited.