0:01

Enjoy traditions that are centuries old

0:03

and a good meal at the

0:05

harvest festivals in rural Italy. You

0:07

have an excellent kind of food, which

0:10

is absolutely local for a very

0:12

little amount of money. Discover

0:14

the lively street life of Rome. Local

0:17

guides tell us what they enjoy most about living

0:19

in the eternal city. Summer

0:21

evenings along the Tiber River come

0:23

highly recommended. There is food fair, there

0:25

is live music, there is a

0:27

lot of people doing their passaggiata along the

0:29

river. We'll also hear what it

0:31

was like to oppose Soviet control in Budapest in

0:33

October of 1956. Michael

0:36

Korda was there. It

0:38

was a very impressive demonstration

0:41

of national feeling that was

0:44

beyond any question of class,

0:46

profession, or education. We'll

0:48

take you to Italy from Rome to the countryside

0:51

and to an eyewitness account of the

0:54

short-lived Hungarian Revolution. It's in

0:56

the hour ahead on Travel with Rick Steves. It's

1:01

almost 68 years to the day that

1:03

a group of college students in Hungary

1:05

demanded reforms from its strict communist government.

1:08

In a bit, we'll remember the

1:10

short-lived Hungarian Revolution with Michael Korda.

1:13

The editor-in-chief emeritus at Simon & Schuster was

1:15

a student himself at the time and

1:18

drove from England to Budapest to witness what

1:20

was happening. We'll also get an

1:22

update on what's new in Rome to help the

1:24

plan of visit as they spiff things up for

1:26

the busy Jubilee year ahead. Let's

1:28

start today's Travel with Rick Steves looking

1:31

at the centuries-old celebrations called Sagra that

1:33

pop up all over rural Italy in the fall.

1:36

Our tour guide is Vintner T'chilia

1:38

Botay, who comes to us from

1:40

Orvieto in Umbria. T'chilia,

1:42

thanks for being here. Thank you for

1:44

inviting me. So, describe a Sagra.

1:47

What is that exactly? Well, the

1:49

Sagra is an event that has

1:51

a very long tradition in history.

1:54

The Sagra comes from sacred

1:56

sacro because that

1:58

was sort of a... Virginia

18:00

also leads tours from Lake Como to

18:02

Sicily. Vanessa Nicole's father

18:04

is Scottish and her mother is Italian,

18:06

so she was raised in both cultures.

18:09

She's made Italy her home for most of her adult

18:11

life. Vanessa offers private English

18:13

lessons and shows visitors the pulse of

18:16

daily life in her trustavory neighborhood. They're

18:19

with us right now on Travel with Rick Steves to

18:21

help us get up to date on what we should

18:23

know for visiting Rome today. Virginia,

18:26

you also live in Rome, and I'm just

18:28

curious, you've got, as a tour guide, both

18:30

of you have a season and an off-season,

18:33

and you also have the heat to deal with. Talk

18:35

a little bit about that as a resident of

18:38

Rome. Yes, yes, it's correct. Well, in

18:40

the last few years, the temperatures

18:42

have definitely gone up. For

18:45

instance, I have air conditioning in

18:47

my apartment, but it doesn't

18:50

seem to be sufficient. I need, like,

18:52

a stronger conditioning system and it's unbearable

18:54

temperatures, and it's not so much, you

18:56

know, it gets in the 102, 103

19:00

in the summer, but it used to

19:02

be like that one, two, three days

19:04

in the summer. Now it's just consistent

19:06

for about five, six,

19:08

10 days, and that's what

19:11

really makes it difficult. 10 days of

19:13

100-degree weather, and it's going to

19:15

be muggy, too. Yes, and you need to get

19:17

out for a day trip outside of Rome in

19:19

that case just to get some fresh air. So

19:22

has it pretty much understood that a big city

19:24

with lots of concrete and lots of traffic and

19:26

so on will be a few degrees hotter than

19:28

a breezy beach or a

19:30

little town in the hills? That's correct. That

19:33

actually raises the temperature of a couple of degrees. So

19:35

it's just an objective reality.

19:37

Yeah, that's a sad thing from a sightseeing point

19:40

of view and from a tour guiding point of

19:42

view, because July and August, you have to earn

19:44

your living, and it can be brutal. Yeah,

19:46

I mean, if you're visiting the city, you

19:48

can get around that. You can, you know,

19:50

try to live early in the morning, maybe

19:52

take an early morning walk or... Yeah,

19:55

because all over the Mediterranean these days, climate is

19:57

going to be a challenge. Vanessa, what are some...

38:00

were mostly National Service

38:02

conscripts. There was

38:04

then several days during which

38:07

the Russians pretended to negotiate

38:09

with the provisional Hungarian government,

38:11

while in fact they brought

38:14

up strong professional troops

38:16

and more modern tanks from the

38:19

Ukraine and from deep inside Russia,

38:21

and then attacked and put the

38:23

revolution down. So the revolution divides

38:26

itself up into three relatively

38:28

short periods. It

38:31

was thrilling and exciting to see

38:33

a country throwing off its occupiers

38:36

and getting rid of its government

38:38

and installing a new one. It

38:41

was very difficult the last

38:43

week of the revolution to see how

38:45

that was put down with such brutality

38:48

and bloodshed. This is Travel

38:50

with Rick Steves. We're getting an

38:52

intimate and personal look at the

38:54

Hungarian Revolution of 1956 today with

38:56

Michael Korda. Michael is a

38:58

writer and novelist with more than 20 titles

39:00

to his name. Born in the

39:02

United Kingdom to English and Hungarian parents, he

39:04

served in the Royal Air Force. His

39:07

role in the Hungarian Revolution earned him

39:09

the Order of Merit of the Republic

39:11

of Hungary. We have

39:13

links to Michael's work in the

39:16

show notes for this episode at

39:18

ricksteves.com/radio. Michael's book is Journey to

39:20

a Revolution, a personal memoir in

39:23

history of Hungarian Revolution in 1956.

39:26

Michael, Hungary to me always was sort of

39:29

the odd duck in the Warsaw Pact. It

39:31

always had a little more feistiness,

39:33

a little more freedom, a little

39:36

special kind of communism when other

39:38

places were more subservient to Moscow.

39:41

Can you just very briefly explain how

39:43

Hungary was different than the neighboring states

39:45

in the Warsaw Pact? Yes.

39:48

Hungary was always a pain in the ass for

39:50

Moscow because the Hungarians

39:53

felt themselves drawn to the West, not

39:55

to the East, and

39:57

because Hungary is also a pain in the ass. And

44:00

I think it's one of the many things that

44:02

makes Budapest a place worth visiting. You know, that's

44:04

interesting because in our country now we have a

44:07

controversy about what do you do with

44:09

statues of Confederate soldiers. Well,

44:11

what Hungary did with all the

44:13

propaganda statues that lionized the people

44:16

that kept them down was take them

44:18

out to a park and make a learning experience out

44:20

of it. You've still got them there and everybody can

44:22

go out and remember what their heritage

44:24

was. And if they want to make a

44:26

teaching moment out of that for their kids, they can do that. I

44:29

think that that's a wonderful thing to do

44:31

actually and a wonderful idea for what we

44:34

should have done and ought to be

44:36

doing here in this country as well.

44:39

Michael Korda, it's so great to talk

44:41

to you. Your book Journey to a

44:43

Revolution, a personal memoir in history of

44:45

Hungarian Revolution in 1956, is a treasure

44:47

for anybody that wants to better understand

44:49

the struggle of the people of Central

44:51

or Eastern Europe when it came to

44:53

earning and winning their freedom. And

44:55

when I think about Hungary, it's just

44:58

such a poignant mix. And I go

45:00

to Heroes Square, which I think was

45:02

built in 1896, the 100th birthday of

45:04

the founding of

45:06

Hungary. And it celebrates the very

45:08

first people that came a thousand years

45:10

ago to Hungary, reminding locals of the

45:12

hard-fought history that they have today. When

45:15

you go to Heroes Square and when you

45:17

think of a thousand years of struggle and

45:20

the resilience of the Hungarian people, and then

45:22

when you think of the struggles they had

45:24

which you participated in, in the communist times,

45:26

50 years ruled by Moscow, and

45:28

then you think of the struggles in Hungary today,

45:31

Hungarian democracy under Viktor Orban, if

45:34

you want to still call it democracy, how do you

45:37

bring all that together? What can the

45:39

takeaway be right now when we think

45:41

of the challenges that face the Hungarian

45:43

people and their resilience and their heritage?

45:47

Well, I think they've always kept to their

45:49

heritage. The president government of

45:51

Hungary is on which

45:53

we deplore, but at

45:55

its worst, it's hundreds

45:58

of times better the more...

46:00

existed under the communist

46:02

government of Hungary until the fall of

46:04

the Soviet Union. So I think

46:06

you have to regard the present

46:09

political position in Hungary as a

46:12

way station on the way to something

46:14

else, not a permanent condition. I

46:16

think that's a very hopeful thought. I

46:19

hope it is, and I feel that way certainly. Because

46:21

one thing we can learn from history is you just cannot

46:24

wish freedom away from a proud people

46:26

like the Hungarians. That will be an

46:28

ember at a minimum and

46:30

an inspirational flame when it's left

46:32

free to thrive. Michael Korda,

46:34

thanks so much for joining us and best wishes

46:37

in your teaching and your travels. Many

46:39

thanks. Many thanks for

46:42

having me. Michael Korda's

46:44

latest work is News of Fire,

46:46

World War I, as seen through

46:48

the lives of soldier poets. I

46:51

recently wrote about my favorite places, people, and

46:54

stories from a lifetime of exploring Europe in

46:56

my own book called For the Love of

46:58

Europe. Here's what I observed

47:00

after visiting a difficult historical site near

47:03

Munich. Dachau,

47:05

forgive but never forget.

47:08

In route to Dachau's infamous concentration camp,

47:11

I sit next to an old German

47:13

woman on the city bus. I

47:16

smile at her weekly as if to say, I

47:18

don't hold your people's genocidal atrocities

47:20

against you. She

47:23

glances at me and sneers down at my

47:25

camera. Suddenly, surprising me

47:27

with her crusty but fluent English,

47:30

she rips into me. She

47:32

says, you tourists come here not to

47:34

learn but to hate. Pulling

47:37

the loose skin down from a long

47:39

ago strong upper arm, she

47:41

shows me a two-sided scar. She

47:44

says, when I was a girl, a bullet

47:46

cut straight through my arm. Another

47:49

bullet killed my father. The

47:52

war took many good people. My

47:55

father ran a gruscott shop. I'm

47:58

stunned by her rage. But

48:00

I sense a desperation on her part

48:02

to simply unload her story on one

48:04

of the hordes of tourists who tramp

48:07

daily through her town, tramping

48:09

through to gawk at an icon

48:11

of the Holocaust. I

48:13

ask, what do you mean, a gruscott

48:15

shop? She explains

48:17

that in Bavaria, shopkeepers greet

48:19

customers with a cheery gruscott,

48:21

or praise God. During

48:24

the Third Reich, it was safer to change

48:26

the greeting to Sieg Heil. It

48:28

was a hard choice. Each shopkeeper had

48:30

to make it. As more

48:33

and more shops became Sieg Heil

48:35

shops, everyone in Dachau

48:37

knew which shops remained gruscott shops.

48:40

Pausing, as if mustering the energy

48:42

for one last sentence, she

48:45

stands up and says, My

48:47

father's shop was the last gruscott

48:50

shop. Then she steps

48:52

off the bus. By

48:54

the end of the line, there were only tourists

48:56

and pilgrims on the bus. Together,

48:59

in silence, we walk into

49:01

the concentration camp. Dachau,

49:04

founded in 1933, was the first concentration camp,

49:09

a model camp, and a training

49:11

ground for wannabe camp commandants who

49:14

studied such subjects as crowd control

49:16

and torture. The

49:18

camp at Dachau was built to hold 5,000, but on

49:21

liberation day in 1945, 30,000 were packed inside

49:24

its walls. Some 3,000 were so sick that

49:30

they died after liberation.

49:32

The number of Dachau deaths is estimated

49:34

at 40,000, but the

49:37

total will never be known. Thousands

49:40

of Russian soldiers were brought here as

49:42

prisoners, not even registered.

49:44

They were simply taken into the field

49:47

and shot. Dachau

49:49

is both a barbed-wire box of

49:51

memories and an eternal flame for

49:53

the future. The sound

49:56

of hushed voices and sad feet and the

49:58

pebbled walk seems to promise remains. while

50:01

the breeze whispers never again through trees that

50:03

stand on the parade ground where inmates once

50:05

stood. A statue, as big as the

50:08

train cars that brought in the inmates, marks

50:11

the middle of the camp. It's

50:13

a black steel tangle of bodies, like

50:16

the real ones found woven together at

50:19

the gas chamber door. At

50:22

its base, in French, English,

50:25

German, Russian, and

50:27

Hebrew, is the wish of

50:30

the survivors. Forgive,

50:33

but never forget. Travel

50:38

with Rick Steves is produced at

50:40

Rick Steves Europe in Edmonds, Washington,

50:43

by Tim Tatton, Kazimer Hall, and

50:45

Donna Bardsley. After Wakeling and

50:47

Sherry Court upload the shows to our website, our

50:50

theme music was written and performed by Jerry

50:52

Frank. You can find

50:54

links to our guests and search

50:57

the show archives at ricksteves.com/radio. Rick

51:01

Steves Classroom Europe is a fast,

51:03

free, and fun video archive. It's

51:05

designed for teachers, travelers, and students.

51:08

It gives you immediate access to some 500 short

51:11

video clips from the Rick Steves Europe

51:13

TV Show Library. Clips

51:15

cover European history, art,

51:17

culture, food, and geography.

51:20

Google Classroom Europe or visit ricksteves.com

51:23

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51:25

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