For the uninitiated, Rick Steves is a travel writer and hosts the show mentioned above. He started out by writing a book called Europe Through the Back Door and has expanded his travel empire since.
As a travel writer, Steves' is both useful and cheesy. As he goes around Europe you get the distinct impression that he is a very much a tourist. He dresses like an American, he can't really speak any European languages, and he balances hard to find spots with very tourist-y places.
But the thing that really stands out to me about Steves is that he seems like a genuinely nice guy (don't know him personally, so I can only say here that that's how he comes across in his work). He also seems to have a genuine love for the places he visits and the people he meets. In other words, Rick Steves' travel approach is all about visiting places with empathy.
At certain times I've mentioned my love of Rick Steves' travel materials to friends and have been surprised to find out that some people look down on the genres of travel writing and TV shows. Certainly, the argument could be made that this sort of thing mainly appeals to bourgeois, middle-class Americans who want to "understand" a place by visiting it for an afternoon (or, worse yet, but simply seeing it on TV).
Yet, as I think about it, I'm not sure there is any genre of writing that is more empathetic to different people than travel writing. The whole point of the genre is to soften the visitor's impact on the culture he or she is entering. Travel writing is supposed to bridge cultural divides and is directly concerned with communication and understanding. Certainly some people use travel information to appropriate and totalize, but ideally it would be used to build understanding.
Rick Steves' is a master at this because he understands both the places he visits, as well as his audience (who, in my case, is sitting at home). He's an entertaining link that makes empathetic travel seem possible.
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