I had the pleasure of meeting and being interviewed by Rick Steves recently in his town of Edmonds, WA. Visiting his European Travel Center, I was impressed by his very friendly and enthusiastic staff, the many resources available to travelers, and by Rick Steves - a travel guru worthy of respect.
More about our interview later, I wanted to write about an interesting conversation - thoughts and plans that he had for his next venture.
He was working with the higher ups to visit and focus on the toursim and people of IRAN.
And what made this all the more fascinating - was his reasoning behind the trip.
He said his goal was to show the people of the country, stating that it was harder to bomb a country if you understood the people at a local level. Not feeling comfortable with our only view of Iran being a country that is a nuclear threat to us… he wanted to film the tourist/local aspect of Iran. Rick is very open about his political views, and encourages people to have intelligent conversation about the world around them - not just agreeing with him, but coming to the table with different viewpoints yet an open mind.
What an interesting and very true concept to view Iran in this way. I imagine myself in Iran sharing dinner with a local family, Tehran no longer would be just a city in some far away land, but instead a city where people live and work and laugh and have family. Babies are born there, toddlers and preschoolers play and discover how to share with siblings, and mothers deal with sleepless nights with newborns or teething babies.
Without getting into politics, I would just like to point out that his blog entries are very interesting and eye opening. His initial blog entry on this explains his mission http://www.ricksteves.com/blog/index.cfm?fuseaction=entry&entryID=238
I invite you to join Rick on his journey at http://www.ricksteves.com/blog/