836 Van Morrison's Belfast; Roma in Europe; Classic European Hikes

22:26Rick Steves:Who was, but he was on the German team, right? Yeah, but he was fighting against his internal championship in Germany. Yeah. The crowd was furious. So the jury had to award him the title. But then later, very cowardly so, when they were away from the wrath of the people, they stripped him of his title. When he was to box again, they told him that he was not allowed to, that he had to box in a German style, not dance around, which they associated racially with the Romani people. There were so many caricatures in the right-wing sports press that mocked him, that emphasised his ethnic features, that were featuring a little kind of violin in a thought bubble.

23:09They were absolutely horrible racist caricatures. So what he did, he thought, OK, if the Nazis want this kind of blonde Aryan ideal, I am going to give them that blonde Aryan ideal. So he went and bleached his hair. So when everybody was expecting him to come into the ring, he was famous by now. People were shocked because what came on was not the usual Johann Trollmann, but a caricature of him mocking those Nazis with bleached periccide blonde hair. And he had doused his skin in flour to make himself look white. And I think it takes absolute courage to do that during those times.

23:55Rick Steves:What a tremendous example of wit and pride. Yes, yeah. And courage. With a story like that, you can draw a better understanding of the plight of the Roma people and their spirit and character to live through that. Exactly. And that's what I mean, looking the devil in the eye and snaring at him. Tell us, who was this Mary Squires that you featured? She's a woman who lived during the 18th century who was accused of kidnap and theft when a young woman by the name of Elizabeth just suddenly vanished into thin air. She was just going to visit her aunt and uncle and never returned home. Nobody really knew what happened to her.

24:41And then a month later, she returned home. She looked a mess. She was bloodied and bruised and abused. and she claimed that she had been kidnapped and imprisoned by a posse of villains whose head was this gypsy woman called Mary Squires. So Mary Squires was arrested and eventually she was convicted. She was condemned to death. But there was a judge called Sir Chris Gascoigne who was very, very suspicious of this whole affair. So he started looking into it, partly because there was this whole public hysteria around the case. And he found that crowds, the mobs that had gathered outside had prevented potentially very, very valuable witnesses from entering.

25:26So he started his own investigation and he managed to find that Mary Squires had an alibi. So he managed to convince the jury actually to overturn her conviction. But he then faced the wrath of the people who called him the King of the Gypsies and who attacked him. But Mary Squires was released and Elizabeth was convicted of perjury.

25:52Rick Steves:Ah. Well, this kind of relates to the underdog status in legal circles of the Roma people. I mean, it's just that kind of travels with a nomadic community. Okay, on our trip through Europe to find Roma culture, let's go down to Spain, because I believe there are more Roma people in Spain than anywhere else in Europe, I think. It's the biggest presence I've seen in my travels. What is it, 750 ,000 people estimated with Roma heritage in Spain. The story there has a long history. Way back in 1763, they were given by the king equal citizenship on the condition of assimilation. Yes. That's the big condition.

26:38That's the catch, yeah.

26:40Rick Steves:So that basically means stop speaking your Hindi language and embrace the church and the king and what it means to be Spanish. And that's why, again, going back to that question of what terms do particular groups prefer? And these terms are very much tied with the history of the country, because when that happened, they tried to ban the Romani language and they tried to ban the term hitano. So the fact that they continued to call themselves hitanos is a matter of pride for those communities, right? Wow. So the term itself in Spain is often associated with the sense of pride and resistance. And that's what I mean, that these terms are very much tied in with particular groups in particular countries and places, because they have these individual histories.

27:29Rick Steves:Consequently, the word gypsy, to this day, could be more permissible in Andalusia, in southern Spain. The Roma there call themselves gypsies. Yeah, yeah. So you need to know the cultural context. Exactly. When you want to be sensitive to the culture. I think the cultural context is absolutely paramount, yeah. Very, very important. There is so much to know about the Roma community. It's interesting how there's 12 million Roma in Europe. Again, that's as many people as are in Greece or Portugal, and Roma really kind of flies under the radar unless you know where to look. But when you know where to look, you can find it.

28:08Rick Steves:Madeleine Potter grew up in post-communist Romania and explores her family background in her book The Roma, A Traveling History. Today, she's a teaching research fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Maddie first spoke with us in 2025 about her book on the Roma and about her interest in visiting sites associated with Gothic literature. Look for web links to those conversations in the notes for this week's show at ricksteves.com slash radio. Now, I'd just like to finish in the United States. There's a million Roma people here in the United States with a long history. What should we know about the Roma in America?

28:44So one thing that really stands out for American Roman history is that the travel didn't take the usual pattern of moving from India westwards, but that they came with the waves of migration and colonialism from Europe. So a lot of them were shipped over as indentured servants to colonies. We know that in Christopher Columbus's third voyage, for example, there were a number of Romani people who were being banished. We know that France shipped a lot of its Romani people to French Louisiana. So they were sent off either as indentured servants or as undesirables into the colonies, into the New World.

29:28So it's tied in with that history rather than the natural migration. And then also after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, there was a lot of, there were new waves of migration of Romani people into the States. And today, the majority of Roma in the U.S., on the West Coast and in California.

29:49Rick Steves:And they still identify with their Romani heritage. They do, yeah. You know, when we think, Madeline, about the diaspora, the fact that millions and millions of Roma people, they left India a thousand years ago, and today that culture survives in countries all over the planet. Let's just finish our conversation with Roma people. Disparate as they are, do they have heroes? You were a child in a Roma community in Romania. Who were your heroes? What is a Roma hero? A Roma hero is a person that we really admire, that we really just grow up with legends about. There are stories. Unfortunately, when I was growing up, there was this shame associated in the public sphere with being Romani.

30:41There was not much talk about Romany people. It was something that was just chucked to the side. People didn't really, really talk about it much. But if you, and this is what I was trying to do in the book, is to collect these stories of wonderful Romany people who've lived and resisted and did something for the community. So I think one of my favourite Romany heroines is Katerina Tykon, who was a Swedish Romany woman who was called the Martin Luther King of Sweden. who did tremendous work for the rights of Romani people.

31:15Rick Steves:Well, there are inspirational stories coming out of the Roma community from every country where they have a presence. And Madeleine Potter, thank you for shining a light on this fascinating dimension of our many-faceted world. Best wishes in your teaching and your travels. Thank you so much, Rick. So happy to have been here. Thank you. Madeleine Potter examines how three prominent Irish authors used monsters as a way to grapple with questions of the afterlife and with what's sacred or profane. It's in her latest book called Theological Monsters, Religion and Irish Gothic. Get up close to the scenery and cultures of Europe and away from the tourist crowds with a little help for wandering off on your own.

31:56Rick Steves:That's next on Travel with Rick Steves. I love how you can never exhaust Europe of the travel fund it has to offer. I've spent three months a year ever since I was a student exploring Europe, and it never gets old, and there's always new ways to travel. And lately, I'm on a hiking, venerable trails kick. In fact, for the last three years, that's been my vacation. I'm a big believer in avoiding the crowds by not going where the crowds are. And when you're on a beautiful trail anywhere in Europe, it's you and nature and beautiful bits of culture. I love how nature and culture shared the same crib in Europe, and you experience that so vividly and intimately when you commit yourself to a serious hike, not just a short walk from a pullout where you park your car, but actually hiking from hotel to hotel to hotel for several days.

32:44Rick Steves:And I'm joined right now by Neil Lapping, and he's a man who's been a pioneer in putting together tours where you organize a great route, you book hotels, and then you arrange for a Sherpa service to take bags from one hotel to the next so travelers can just frolic freely with their day bag up the ridge down into the next valley and find their bag waiting at a hotel and a big appetite ready to enjoy a good local dinner and do it all again tomorrow. Neil, thanks for joining us. Great to be here, Rick. Excuse me, I just sort of ventured off under my visions and memories of hiking this way around here.

33:25Rick Steves:It looked like you were enjoying it. It looked like you were right back there. I'm serious. It's something I look forward to. but I kind of enjoy hiking in Europe because there's no way I can have to research. You know, I can't go to Lisbon or Copenhagen without worrying about research and hotels and restaurants, but I don't cover hikes in my guidebooks, and I'm just there enjoying, as I said, the culture and the nature together. I know that you run a company called Max Adventure, and for decades now you've been organizing these tours. It's kind of trendy these days. More and more people are seeing this as a kind of tourism, isn't it?

34:01Rick Steves:You can go on your own or you can hire somebody to essentially propose a route, book the hotels, and provide the Sherpa service to take your bag from one hotel to the next. For me, I've just loved connecting people with places across Europe and trails and great experiences. And the way we do that and create these incredible moments, these moments of connection with your traveling companions and people has been through hiking and hiking trails and that getting into a journey every day. And I still do those every year with my wife, my kids. That's our vacation too. Last year it was biking in Portugal.

34:39the year before it was hiking the Bernese Oberland the kids are going to be a bit grumpy about it now they're teenagers I love it they're teenagers, yeah

34:49Rick Steves:well, that's a good way I just think it's great parenting to get your kids out on the road and you did with your family the Bernese Oberland I was just, that's the tour that I've done without having the help of a tour company I just booked four great hotels in a region I've known and loved for a long time but I've always been intrigued by these hotels that are off the grid that 150 years ago were venerable places, destinations, you know. There are so many fabulous hotels like that around Europe. There's a lovely one in the Valdana Viers in Switzerland called the Hotel Weishorn. We've had a couple of New Year's Eves there.

35:27So not hiking in the summer, but actually snowshoeing in the winter. And the only way you can get up is either ski touring or snowshoeing. Oh, wow. It was built to service the Victorian mountaineers

35:39Rick Steves:That was it, the Victorian Mountaineers. That was the late 1800s, basically. You know, they've got this history of welcoming mountain travelers for hundreds of years. And it's still the same experience. You meet people from all over the world. You have an amazing dinner. You meet great people. It's so much fun. And the next day, you hike or you snowshoe off. And you actually have these hotels. Some of them are literally off the grid. They're a two-hour hike from the nearest paved road or vehicle. sometimes no electricity, sometimes no menu, but always a good convivial crowd and a warm welcome and a comfortable bed.

36:16Rick Steves:And you're sleeping in this woody, historical sort of dream come true high up in the mountains that has been housing hikers for more than a century. And what I often love is often it's been run by the same family for many, many generations. So you've got this lovely continuity and history of, you know, this is just what they do and what their pride and pleasure is of welcoming travelers. Talk about history, Neil. Do you know Shinnegeplatt? Yes. You hike from Wildersville, just outside of Interloch, and you take the old cogwheel train up to the very top, Shinnegeplatt. And from there, you take my favorite hike anywhere in the Berner Oberland, along a ridge all the way to First and come down to Grindelwald.

37:01Rick Steves:but I needed a jump on that hike so I could catch the last lift in first down because I didn't want to hike all the way down and I didn't want to rush my hike so I slept at the beginning of the hike up on the ridge on the top Shinnega Plot that hotel was so traditional they still left the bedpans and the washing basin out in the hallway and it was this old 150 year old porcelain basin and jug that people would actually pee in in the middle of the night, I guess, and all that kind of thing. Well, I hope you don't get the jug and the bed pack confused. You know, make sure you keep those apart. But we didn't actually use it, but I thought this is a cool touch.

37:42Rick Steves:And as you mentioned, it had been in the same family for generations. That is the best hike in Europe, in my opinion. From Schoenock, I've done it several times. One in glorious sunshine, once in an absolute snowstorm, where we were doing it in summer, and the weather turned, and I was like, we're still going. Let's go. We caught the train up, and we hiked. There's a hut about halfway along called... It's called the greedy source of drinks. You cannot have a picnic there without paying for a drink. They have water, but you've got to... And we had to... There's not much water on that trail. I know that hut you're talking about.

38:21Rick Steves:I don't blame them, but you can't just fill up your water bottle there. No, we arrived in the middle of a snowstorm. We were spending the night. But that hike, when you've got the legs from Interlaken down on your left-hand side, and you've got the Eiger, the Munch and the Jungfrau on the other side, it's just beyond belief, isn't it? By the way, this is Travel with Rick Steves. I'm talking with Neil Lapping, and he lives in Glasgow in Scotland. And he's for 20 or 30 years been organizing mountain hikes with his company Max Adventure. Neil, these hikes are all over the place. Let's talk about very briefly where people might find these venerable multi-day walks in Europe that they could learn more and they could do it on their own or they could hire any number of hiking companies to help book the hotels and provide the Sherpa service that takes their bag from one hotel to the next and provides a smart route.

39:17Rick Steves:What are some of the classics that people should be mindful of? So I think it starts with what you're looking for. What do you love? So if it's mountains, I think you can't beat the Tour de Mont Blanc. A circuit around Mont Blanc, starting in the Chamonix Valley, going through France, Switzerland, Italy, and coming back into the Chamonix Valley. I think that's the mountain classic. And that's 100 miles and 10 days, I guess, by my pace. I did it in six days with a tour where we cherry-picked just the best six days and 60 miles and took public buses through the boring parts, and it was a beautiful week on the trail hiking around Mount Blanc.

40:00And that's the thing, they're super flexible. You can do as much or as little as you want. I think staying in the mountains, you can't go far wrong in the Dolomites. The Dolomites are those dramatic limestone peaks, you know, northern Italy, where you've got fantastic people and welcome, and, you know, of an evening, everyone's promenading down the high street and, you know, having their aperitif and their evening chat. So I think that mountain culture in the Dolomites, which is fantastic. And the super well-known walk there is the Altavia 1. Yeah. There are various variations. There's also an Altavia 2.

40:34And you can cherry pick, pick and choose the best sections of that as well. You know, they're pretty full on, the big ones with stays and mountain huts, but you can really kind of tailor it to what you want. So those are probably the two big mountain ones.

40:48Rick Steves:Mont Blanc, the hike around Mont Blanc, which starts in France, goes through Italy and Switzerland, and finishes back in France. And then the various Dolomite hikes in the north of Italy. Those would be perhaps the two most popular examples of hiking on venerable trails. I think you could make Zermatt a home base and hike forever just from that home base in and around the Matterhorn. And you and I both love the Berner Oberland around Interlaken. Bernie's under that's fantastic as well. But let's leave the Alps and we'll go to other places. I love the TV series Poldark, and it's filmed in Cornwall in southwest England.

41:24Rick Steves:And there is, what is it called, the Southwest Coastal Trail or something. The Southwest Coastal Path is an absolute delight. It's over 600 miles, and it starts on the west coast, and you follow the coast of Devon and Cornwall and back into Devon, just over 600 miles. And some adventurers will do the whole thing. And it's amazing. And I'm in awe of that. But most people will do five, six days, either on the Atlantic side, you know, around St. Ives and Padstow, where you've got the little fishing boats coming in and Rick Stein's famous restaurants. And, you know, this great Cornish life and, you know, very kind of special culture down there.

42:08The other great places are just like around the Lizard, where so many maritime adventures started.

42:13Rick Steves:And that is, if people have watched the movie or the series Poldark, it's filmed there because it's just so drop-dead beautiful. We've filmed there. I've hiked there. It's gorgeous. The Cotswolds in England are very popular. Most people do it by car, and they only see the places you can drive to. I've taken a few all-day hikes in the Cotswolds, and I'll tell you, if you get away from the cars and if you see the villages from tops of hills and if you see the backyards walking through the farms, it's a whole different Cotswolds. the first time i went to the cotswills and hiked there i was just going wow okay this is england it is picture perfect you walk from one impossibly beautiful village of little houses and cottages and flowers and roses and you're like it couldn't get any better and you get to the next one and you're like wow wow wow the problem is it takes forever to get anywhere because you're taking so many pictures.

43:07And I think in the summer, it's just delightful. And then, you know, you pitch up at some tiny village and there's always a pub.

43:14Rick Steves:Okay, so that covers Britain. I mean, you could talk more and more, but I want to cover a little more. How about coastal areas in the south of Europe? Portugal, Spain, Italy? So, there are a couple of areas that are absolute classics and have really known for a while. So, in Italy, the Cinque Terra and the Melfi Coast are just two absolute knockouts. The Cinque Terre is getting pretty busy now. Amalfi Coast is still just, you know, stairs after stairs into kind of, as soon as you get away from the coast, you're into the mountains and smaller villages and towns, but you've got these drop-dead views across the Mediterranean, across to the Isle of Capri.

43:56Rick Steves:What about pilgrimages? There's a lot of people are on these, you know, beloved, time-honored, venerable pilgrimage trails. So the Camino is the most famous, and that's been a pilgrimage since the Middle Ages. You know, it was a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, and that has had this amazing renaissance in the last 30 or 40 years, where people are looking for connection and experience. And you can do everything from, you know, walking from the French border of Saint-Jean-Pierre-de-Portes to 700 or 800 kilometers all the way to Santiago. Or you can just walk the last 100 kilometers. And there are multiple routes that go in.

44:38Some come up through Portugal. You can start from Porto or Lisbon. Some come along the northern coast of Spain and Bilbao and Santander. So there's this amazing camaraderie where everyone's like beyond Camino.

44:51Rick Steves:I noticed in your company you've got a short, less than a week hike for the last stretch of the Camino. I think it's like 30 days you allocate to go from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. It's about that. Most people take about that. And most people don't have that much time. A lot of people do it in segments, which is permissible, or a lot of people do what you offer in MacAdventure is the last week. You get your Compostela if you've done more than the last 100 kilometers. So, you know, that's the kind of pilgrim certificate. The Camino is the best known, but there are other pilgrimages around Europe.

45:24You know, the Via Francangina starts on the Swiss border and finishes in Rome. It's a lot less well-known. But you'd be surprised how many people are now taking that time out to reconnect. And often we get a lot of solo walkers. I actually first discovered the Camino when my mom did it at a kind of changing time of her life. And I was like, what's this you're doing? She's like, oh, yeah, I've just got my pack and I'm staying in auberges every night. And I was like, what are you doing, mom? You're mom.

45:52Rick Steves:That's great. And she met people that she's still in touch with 20 years later. So it was a formative experience of her life and just an amazing thing to do. There's even a Camino or a pilgrimage trail that goes in Norway all the way up to Trondheim. Yeah, I think it's around St. Olaf, I think. Yeah. We're getting inspired to take off on the classic trails of Europe right now on Travel with Rick Steves with a little help from Neil Lapping of Max Adventure. Neil's company advises solo travelers, couples, and small groups on planning active travels on hundreds of hiking and cycling trails in Europe and the UK, Japan, and New Zealand.

46:31Rick Steves:Their website is maxadventure.com and being based in Scotland, that's spelled M-A-C-S, adventure. Neil, if you could take me just to one spot with your family on one of the happy days when all of you were out there in the wonders of nature, where would we be and what would we be marveling at? Going back, I think it was 2019, we did the GR5, which is the hike from Lake Geneva to Chamonix. The kids were young, so Annabelle must have been eight. Robbie was 14. And we had the most incredible kind of, I think it was a six or seven day hike. And it was a combination of hotels with raclette and fondue and really simple mountain huts.

47:17And that last day, we walked, we walk up the most amazing, beautiful remote valley. And you come over the crest of the hill, just around the Brevant mountain. And the whole of the Mont Blanc Massif just opens up in front of you. And you've had this amazing experience of chatting and swimming in mountain rivers and lakes. And, you know, this great adventure. One day we made my son walk so far that we had to bribe him and buy him a guinea pig when we got home. He just had this amazing experience. But that moment, as we saw Chamonix, we knew that Chamonix, the best ice cream shop in Chamonix, and we said to the kids, the first thing we're doing, and looking down at Chamonix, first place we went with Chamonix, they got the most enormous ice creams.

48:09And that's just those moments of connection and specialists of what comes out of these self-guided adventures through Europe.

48:17Rick Steves:Oh, geez. You know, just it's so fun to share our experiences, Neil, because anybody who's had these nature in the extreme experiences can get together and just celebrate the memories that it created. but you're talking about your favorite hike is going from Lake Geneva to Chamonix, and I went from Lake Geneva basically to Chamonix on a taxi transfer to catch my hike around Mont Blanc and Chamonix, and you're just reminding me there's great hikes everywhere. And then for you to come around the corner and find Brevant, that hike, that traverse high above Chamonix with the Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in Europe, 15 ,000 feet right across the valley, that was the climax of our Tour de Mont Blanc, hike, and it was the very best day that we traversed over, and then we rode the lift into Chamonix, and instead of Chaman Ice, like the ice cream for your kids, we came into town, and an organist was practicing in the old church right on the main square, playing the beautiful pipe organ.

49:17Rick Steves:And we sat down there and listened to that pipe organ play high up in the mountains of France, the Alps, and just thought, what a glorious experience we've had. And then we went out to a wonderful dinner, and we just thought, when's our next hike? I think that is the thing that so many people come away. It's never what's on the itinerary, what's in your plan. It's always the unexpected. It's the person you bump in against the trail. It's the organist. It's the musician. It's the person you meet around the table. It's the restaurant you never knew about. It's all these unexpected things that when you travel slowly, you discover them.

49:56When you travel slowly, there you go.

50:00Rick Steves:Neil Lapping, thank you so much, and I'd love to spend a day on that ridge, high above Interlaken, hiking with lakes on one side, stretching all the way to Germany, and the most incredible alpine panorama anywhere around on the other, and just have a glorious day. You and me both. Thanks, Rick. Take care, Neil. Travel with Rick Steves is produced by Tim Tatton with Kazmurl Hall and Donna Bardsley at Rick Steves Europe in Edmonds, Washington. Andrew Wakeling and Sherry Court upload the shows to our website. Sheila Gerzoff handles affiliate promotions. Our theme music is by Jerry Frank. Take a look at Rick's list for what to pack in your suitcase and share tips with fellow travelers.

50:43Rick Steves:It's part of our online travel forum. It's at ricksteves.com. We'll see you next week with more Travel with Rick Steves. My Facebook friends are a fun community of curious travelers, and you're invited to join in. To stow away with me in my work, play, politics, philanthropy, and travels, follow me at Rick Steves on Facebook.