The Zen Koan of Rick Steves' Monday Night Travel

Last night, my best travel partner and I made tacos and toured Europe with famed guide and bestselling travel author Rick Steves, which means we joined a Zoom chat with hundreds of other people to watch Rick Steves give commentary on old Rick Steves videos. It was beyond comforting; it was a sublime meditation. Yes, really. Allow me to convince you.

If you've never heard of Rick Steves, he’s the cheerful, aggressively basic middle-aged white guy shepherding gangs of nervous Boomers down charming alleys in Europe, in mild-mannered pursuit of food and culture. Rick Steves is not for thrill seekers. Rick Steves inspires people with pensions to "travel with a youthful vigor at any age."

No, I'm not a Boomer myself. However, I'm every bit as soothed by his gentle, boyishly enthusiastic Europe tours as any retired schoolteacher from Boise. I've also just returned from a trip down a Rick Steves internet k-hole, having learned all kinds of beautiful things about the man, like how he's been paying all 100+ employees to serve their communities during the pandemic. Now I'm convinced: For those seeking their center, a calm place to regenerate a little hope, Rick Steves is the ticket.

He first won me over last Christmas with this magical nighttime scene in the Swiss Alps, featuring a family who just found and cut their Christmas tree. They load it onto a sleigh, light torches and sled homeward for some fondue and hot chocolate (the sledding scene starts around 1:50):

"Here's to a happy Christmas," they cheer, very sweetly. It's so wholesome it's almost otherworldly. By the way, Rick Steves has been advocating for drug reform for decades - not because he's a pothead, but because "Prohibition is racist and getting high is a civil liberty." He's pledged millions of his own money toward decriminalization, and millions more to food banks and to fight climate change. At one point during our streaming of Monday Night Travel, he took a moment to plug a CD just released by one of his employees.

That's wonderful.

During this clip from a Portuguese food tour, he sipped port through a glass snifter and made a joke that no one in the chat seems to get: that it looks like it might be for something besides port. You be the judge:

The room just knows what it's called and where to get one. "You can just google 'Port bong,'" I offer, helpfully. Crickets. Not even a titter. Isn't this the generation that went to Woodstock?

I think this might be the members of that generation who stayed home. These are the people Rick Steves is enticing, so carefully, to try new things, to support their local Greek place by ordering takeout during lockdown. Maybe I'm just high, but the task seems monumental, miraculous even.

So it isn't too surprising when someone pipes up in the chat a minute later:

"Steve. What can we do about these vaccine passports being required. It's ridiculous."

I like that, when he answers, it's just something simple, logical, and humane, about taking the need to take responsibility so others can benefit. There's no attempt to coddle the questioner, or condescend. Rick Steves speaks with the quiet confidence of someone who knows they’re on the right side of history. To give him credit, he has been for longer than many, all the while dressed in his coat of extremely basic colors.

That’s kind of beautiful.

Being on the right side of history is maybe not such an impossible peak to scale, when so much of your job is simply talking to people and trying to understand their history, their culture, and what’s most important to them.

In Zen Buddhism, a koan can come in many forms: a riddle, a story or dialogue. The point isn't the form. The point is to confuse you, make you consider deeper layers of meaning below the surface, as in this famous question/answer koan:

Q: What is Buddha?

A: Three pounds of flax.

The most important thing to understand about koans is that they’re an invitation to take on the same state of consciousness as the characters in the story, to arrive at new understanding. Here, try this one:

Q: What is Rick Steves?

A: A mediocre white man who went to Europe.

If the teeth-gritty, reality-disguised-as-a-joke is asking God for the confidence of a mediocre white man, then Rick Steves’s life, treated as a koan, is a goldmine of possibilities concerning legacy and mutual aid. His method of delicate subversion, which allows him to carefully open the minds of the hesitant and stubborn, is also parlayed into millions of dollars in direct aid to those need it most. It's also just a great show to chill out to.

^^^ Case in point.

Below is the complete playlist of clips I compiled on his website, where many more are available free of charge, because of course Rick Steves does not charge for educational materials. You can also access whole episodes of Monday Night Travels if you feel like breaking out the ol' port bong and sipping along.