Cameron Hewitt - The Temporary European: Lessons and Confessions of a Professional Traveler

Copyright 2022 Cameron Hewitt. All rights reserved.

Travelers Tales and Solas House are trademarks of Solas House, Inc., Palo Alto, California

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Art Direction and Cover Design: Kimberly Nelson

Interior Design and Page Layout: Howie Severson

Cover Photograph: Jannes Jacobs

Interior Photographs: All images Cameron Hewitt

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

978-1-60952-204-9 (paperback)

978-1-60952-205-6 (ebook)

First Edition

Printed in the United States

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Shawna
(of course)
who made possible all of these stories
and so much more

Usually none of my friends wants to go to the same place at the same time as I do, so I strike out alone. But I tell people I am not alone after a taxi driver comes to my door and takes me to the airport in Columbus, Ohio, until a taxi driver brings me back to my door. Interesting people are found all over the world.

Mildred C. Scott, Jams Are Fun

I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, If this isnt nice, I dont know what is.

Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

Table of Contents

Epilogue
After the World Changed, a New Hope for Travel; Or: Shutterbugs Miss the Lion

Lumpensammler
Favorites (and Least Favorites)

Foreword

by Rick Steves

I n 1999, I received a long letter from a recent college graduate in Ohio. I had just returned from a trip to Europe and was working through a two-month-tall stack of mail. This letter was destined for the recycling bin, but something about it grabbed my attention. The writing was lively, thoughtful, and filled with a boundless joy of travel. And it was ballsy. The writer couldnt wait to tell me about his trip to Europe. He described his favorite moments, shared insights that had escaped me, and even offered to write an Eastern Europe guidebook for me. (The nerve!) And before I knew it, Id read all five pages.

At the end of the letter, the writer mentioned that he was looking for a job and an excuse to relocate to Seattle. So, I called him and asked: Are you serious about coming to work for me? He was. And a few months later, Cameron Hewitt joined the staff of Rick Steves Europe.

My instincts told me that Cameron might play a key role in the future of my company. And in the two decades since, thats just what hes done. Soon Cameron was updating our guidebooks in Europe and editing them when he was back in the office. And within three years of his arrival, Cameron had written a Rick Steves Eastern Europe guidebookexpanding our coverage, for the first time, to include Hungary, Poland, Croatia, and Slovenia.

Cameron was content to spend time in his beloved Eastern Europe. But gradually I nudged him toward the rest of the Continent. To be honest, I needed another generalist to help shoulder the workload. In the years since, Cameron has updated, at one time or another, just about every chapter in every Rick Steves guidebook. And, collaborating with our talented team of researchers, our co-authors, and our editorial staff, Cameron has spearheaded the creation of many new titles, from Greece to Belgium, from Switzerland to Barcelona, from Istanbul to Scotland, from Iceland to Sicilyand he pioneered our cruise port guidebooks, as well. If youve used a Rick Steves guidebook, youve read a lot of Camerons words, likely without realizing it.

Meanwhile, Cameron also worked for several years as a tour guideleading Rick Steves bus tours through Eastern Europebefore retiring to focus full-time on books. And hes helped me scout, write, and produce several episodes of my public television series. It turns out that kid from Ohio was prolific... a travel content dynamo.

A few years agoas if he werent busy enoughCameron started a blog, which I was proud to host on my website. It became the perfect creative outlet for all of the travel tales and observations that just dont fit in the pages of a guidebook. As Camerons blog gained a loyal following, I found myself looking forward, too, to each new installment.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, our travel business basically went into hibernation. Cameronlike the rest of uswas grounded. When he said he was considering using that time to gather these writings, and some new ones, into a travel book, I was all for it. What a perfect way to spend those long quarantine months. After helping create so many Rick Steves guidebooks, and with so much travel experience woven into his unpublished essays, he deserved a book of his own. As Cameron headed off on his writing sabbatical, I told him I wanted to be the first person to read it.

Now that I haveand admittedly, Im biasedI can say its some of the best travel writing Ive read . Reading it during COVID was, for me, the next best thing to a plane ticket. While Cameron hasnt actually led a Rick Steves tour in many years, with The Temporary European , hes once again playing tour guide: His book led me through favorite haunts with a fresh perspective and to new places for wonders I didnt even realize Europe had to offer.

I find Camerons writing vivid, funny, perceptive, intimate, and charged both with a love of travel and a deep sense of humanity. He has a knack for dropping you right down in the middle of places you didnt even realize you wanted to be. His writing inspires me to be a better and more insightful traveler. Cameron travels and writes as I would hope to, if I were 20 years younger. And he does something I cannot: gives voice to the next generation of Rick Steves travelers.

Travel writing like this isnt exactly in vogue, and hasnt been for many years. But thats a shame. Im troubled by the state of what passes for travel content these days. In our age of bucket lists, Instagram beauty shots, and content-farmed listicles, weve lost sight of authentic, substantial travel writing: stowing away with a great traveler and seeing where the road takes you. And Im happy that Camerons book found the right home at Travelers Tales, which has been publishing just this sort of high-quality, transformative travel content for decades.

Its fitting that this book was, in a roundabout way, a product of the pandemic. Not being able to travel caused many of us to reflect on what got us traveling in the first place. And, to me, Camerons thoughtful approach perfectly embodies what I hope will be a new ethos of mindful travel as the world opens up again. What better time to simply read, and dream, as a great traveler leads you through the joys of Europe?

Rick Steves

Edmonds, Washington

Preface

Coffee and ejf

O ne morning in Mostar, I met my friend Alma for coffee. Not just coffeeBosnian coffee.

Alma greeted me with her customary, exaggerated warmth: Aaaaah, Cah-meh-ron! So goooood to see you, my old friend!

I first met Alma years ago, when I was leading a tour in Bosnia and she was our local guide. She has a painful personal history and a huge heart, two things that seem to go together. Alma and her husband were living in Mostar with their toddler on May 9, 1993, when they were rocked awake by artillery shells raining down from the mountaintop. They persevered through the next few years as bombardment, siege, and street-by-street warfare ripped their city apart.