The Ledger, every show

“To this day, I mean, I just was talking to the people at Public Television a week or two ago, and they said nearly 20% of all the money that they raised in Pledge this last quarter was from my show, for the whole system.”

“Before COVID hit, my publisher was so excited. He showed me the sales chart, and 25 of the top 30 guidebooks published in the United States for Europe had Rick Steves on the cover.”

“When we peaked in 2019, I think we were, our gross revenue was a hundred million dollars with a hundred employees.”

“Before COVID hit, my publisher was so excited. He showed me the sales chart, and 25 of the top 30 guidebooks published in the United States for Europe had Rick Steves on the cover.”

“He had me fly all the way to New York and be on his radio show, and. Or it was a TV show, I think, maybe, and he's, he put his, you know, he kind of effectively put his arm around me, and he said, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like you to meet the next Temple Fiel…”

“In a normal year, we take 30,000 people and 1200 tours.”

“I was spending 20 days a year, 20 days on the road doing pledge, and to this day, I mean, I just was talking to the people at public television a week or two ago, and they said nearly 20% of all the money that they raised in pledge this last quarter was from m…”

“In a normal year, we take 30,000 people and 1200 tours.”

“In the beginning, the book was two halves. It was like two books bound together. The first half was all the skills. Packing, hotels, eating, transportation, communication, you name it. And then the last half were individual chapters on my 20 favorite discoveri…”

“So it was a lovingly put together pile of a 180 pages, and I took it up to the publisher with, And I dug up all my money, and it would cost a couple thousand dollars, and I got a couple thousand books.”

“It's funny, because now, you know, 40 years later, it's evolved where that's way too long for the American market, and the longest tour is 20 days, and our best-selling tours are 10 or 12 days.”

“But from 80 on, after I had the guidebook, the tour, the bus tours were funding the idealism of the business.”

“The TV show, it takes six days to produce a half-hour TV show, and you learn nothing during that. I mean, I always thought, oh, I could learn while I'm there. No, it's just so all-consuming. You're just there waiting for the jackhammer to stop, trying to remem…”

“Coins sold in Seattle in the sixties. Foreign coins for Three cents a piece, you know, in the coin markets, if it was a German coin or a Norwegian coin. So I could buy 52 Groschen coins for a nickel and bring them home and sell them for three cents each.”

“I vowed right then in the Copenhagen train station that I would go back to Europe every year after I graduated from high school, and I have.”

“Back then, you could go to Europe really cheap. You could fly to Europe for a few hundred dollars. You could get a year rail pass, a student year rail pass for, I think it was 250 dollars, and we lived on, on three or four, I mean, there was no five dollars a …”

“I thought I'd get 20 kids from the dorm signing up. I had a hundred of their parents signing up, and I just remember, holy cow, I've struck something here, there's, these are not the students, these are the parents”

“I just sat down and gave my lecture to the paper, and there it was, the first edition of Europe Through the Back Door.”

“It was self-published. I didn't know what an ISBN was, so it didn't have an ISBN, which was stupid.”

“The longest tour is 20 days, and our best-selling tours are 10 or 12 days.”

“The TV show, it takes six days. To produce a half-hour TV show, and you learn nothing during that.”