Rick Steves, 70, brings his travel show to the DMV this month. Part history lesson and part concert, “Rick Steves’ Europe: A Symphonic Journey” transports audiences through nine countries, with Steves as tour guide. “Travel is the fountain of youth,” Steves said. Photo credit: Rick Steves' Europe

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Rick Steves takes a break from filming an episode in Italy’s Dolomites. Steves conceived “Rick Steves’ Europe: A Symphonic Journey” 10 years ago and will narrate the show to a live audience in Fairfax, Virginia on March 29. Photo credit: Rick Steves' Europe

Rick Steves, photographed above at Cambridge University, has spent a third of his life traveling abroad. Photo credit: Rick Steves' Europe

Rick Steves has been called a travel guru, a TV personality and a hippie backpacker. But he prefers the term travel teacher. Since the late 1970s, Steves, now 70, has been teaching others how to travel.

“In a lot of ways, travel is a fountain of youth,” he said in an interview with the Beacon. “You can travel with a youthful spirit.”

This month, he’ll give audiences an armchair tour of Europe in “Rick Steves’ Symphonic Journey.” Accompanied by the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra on March 29, Steves will act as a tour guide of sorts as he introduces the stirring sounds of Verdi, Beethoven and Strauss, along with video footage from nine countries, including our own.

Part history lesson, part concert, the Symphonic Journey was Steves’ idea, he said.

“I have the love of music, the historical background, the passion for tour guiding, and a huge reservoir of beautiful images that I can share on the big screen when we play the music of the Czech Republic or England or Norway or Italy, so we can take people there visually.”

The concert, which has already toured Cincinnati and will head to four other cities this month, begins in America, with our scenery and and music, but the idea is to understand the patriotism of other countries.

“You feel the pitter patter in your heart when you hear ‘America the Beautiful,’ and then you go to Austria, and you think, ‘Oh, the people here love their waltz,’ and you go to Norway, and think, ‘Oh, the people in Norway love their fjords and their [Edvard] Greig,’” Steves said. “As a tour guide, I’ve always been sort of a crusader against ethnocentrism.”

From hippie backpacker to TV star

Steves was born in Barstow, California, but when he was 12 his father, a piano tuner and importer, moved the family to the Seattle suburb of Edmonds, Washington. His parents brought him to Norway to visit relatives when he was 14, and he was hooked.

The day after Steves graduated from high school, he and a friend, Gene Openshaw, backpacked around Europe on $3 a day in “the best trip of my life,” he said on X last year. Thus began a lifetime of travel.

At the University of Washington, Steves majored in business administration and European history, the perfect combination for his life’s work. At first, he dabbled in teaching travel classes through the university as well as piano lessons, which he’d taught since high school.

“I used to be a piano teacher. That was the only other job I’ve ever had,” said Steves, who still plays piano.

The summer after his college graduation, however, a pivotal trip to Asia changed his trajectory. On that trip, Steves, then 23, discovered 10 countries with his travel buddy Openshaw.

“Good travel is more than selfies and bucket lists,” Steves later wrote in his book about that trip, On the Hippie Trail from Istanbul to Kathmandu. Instead, the goal should be to “come home with that most valuable souvenir: a broader perspective.”

Small beginnings

When he returned from Asia, Steves made some life changes. He transformed his hometown piano recital hall into a lecture hall and began a career as a travel teacher, launching a business he called Europe Through the Back Door.

Two years later, he self-published his first guidebook with that name. Today he has more than 50 titles in print, and his company, Rick Steves’ Europe Inc., has more than 100 employees and is still based in Edmonds.

Steves ventured into public television in 1991 with 30-minute segments on budget travel. With his boyish, average-Joe manner and gee-whiz curiosity about people and places, Steves convinces viewers that they, too, can learn to navigate the Paris Metro and the alleys of Athens.

Since 2000, he has hosted a TV series on PBS called “Rick Steves’ Europe,” which brought him international fame. The show, which celebrated its 25th anniversary last fall, has aired 157 episodes over 13 seasons. The latest season, which included episodes in Iceland and Poland, aired in October.

In each segment, Steves meets with locals, sharing fondue in Switzerland or learning a Hungarian folk dance. His good humor and humility come through in the blooper reels at the end of each episode.

‘Love your neighbor’

Steves made headlines last year for what he called “the best Christmas present I could give myself.”

Steves, who had previously donated a $4 million apartment complex to the YWCA of Seattle to house single mothers, purchased the nearby Lynnwood Hygiene Center for $2.5 million.

Last fall Steves noticed an article in his local newspaper about the impending closure of a hygiene center, a building where people can shower, do laundry, pick up used clothing and even fix their bicycles.

“I didn’t even know what a hygiene center was,” Steves said. “And I thought, are you kidding me? We can’t afford that?… Well, somebody’s got to step up, and I’ve got the money, so I just bought the hygiene center,” he said.

He not only sympathizes with unhoused people, he said, but also lives by the credo “Love your neighbor.”

“I was unhoused in all my early travels, that’s for sure. I know the value of a shower and the value of a good meal and the value of a roof over your head. Of course I’m a privileged, white American man, so I can’t pretend to understand what it’s like to be a homeless person in the streets.”

Empathy and fearlessness are the natural byproducts of seeing the world, he said.

“A lot of people don’t know the joy of giving, and that’s a function of fear. And I’m not afraid because I travel. I’m not particularly courageous; I’ve just had the opportunity to travel,” Steves said.

Steves frequently gives inspirational talks about how travel can be a “political act” by changing our world views.

“Tragically, I think we have a problem where a lot of comfortable and wealthy Americans are more afraid of homelessness — and angry about homelessness — than they are compassionate about homelessness. That’s not who we are. We’re better people than that, but fear gets in our way,” he said.

Steves has seen first-hand how other countries support their unhoused population and knows we can do better.

“We can be people that want walls, or we can be people that want bridges. And I think the best way to be a society we’re proud of, and the best way to actually be safe, is to have more bridges and less walls,” he said.

Still hiking

Despite a prostate cancer diagnosis and surgery in 2024, Steves still keeps a rigorous travel schedule. He estimates that he’s spent a third of his life traveling. This winter he spent a week hiking in the Dolomites.

“I’m doing my best to keep mobile, but yeah, I’m getting older,” Steves conceded. “But in my travels, I’ve learned that age only matters if you’re a cheese,” he joked. “I just keep on moving.”

The Fairfax Symphony Orchestra will perform “Rick Steves’ Europe: A Symphonic Journey” at the George Mason University Center for the Arts in Fairfax, Virginia, at 5 p.m. on Sunday, March 29. For more information, see ricksteves.com/symphony or fairfaxsymphony.org.