Burt Wolf: Travels and Traditions

River cruising has become one of the best ways to see Europe and at a great price. Burt takes viewers on a cruise down the Danube. He started in the Hungarian capital of Budapest and returned back to Budapest eight days later. While the ship was on the river it made stops in Bratislava the capital of Slovakia, Vienna the capital of Austria, Durnstein, Melk, as well as Grein, Linz and Passau. This show gives you a unique insight into river cruising while stopping for all the sites on the way.

Milan has been an influential city for well over 2,000 years. It was a significant political and commercial center for the Roman Empire, and it has maintained that position ever since. Today, Milan is an industrial powerhouse. It is the financial and commercial center of Italy, a focus for electronics, publishing, television, textiles, international trade-fairs, fashion and food. Burt takes viewers to a 16th century Italian palazzo, filled with authentic furnishings and objects from the Renaissance. We'll also find out why Milan is the source of some of Italy's best cooking.

Platinum is a naturally white metal that's been around for a long time but its only found in a few places including a few meteorites that crashed to earth 2 billion years ago. Platinum is an extraordinary metal---thirty times rarer than gold. And it is virtually impossible to corrode. Most of the Crown Jewels of England and the world's most valuable diamond, the Hope Diamond, are set in platinum. Why is the highest honor in the music business the award of a platinum record? Burt travels around the world to find out why the highest level of respect many credit card companies offer is the platinum card.

In contrast to New York as The Big Apple, Rome has been called The Big Lasagna, and it's a perfect description. Like lasagna, Rome is all about layers -- layers that could easily stand on their own, and yet being together in the same pot has made the entire dish more interesting. Burt takes viewers shopping through the famous streets of Rome to the international fashion houses... the great Italian tailors... the jewelry makers. And, of course he visits some of the city's great restaurants.

Burt takes viewers on a gastronomic tour of Western Switzerland. The most mountainous region in Switzerland is called the Valais and it is the home of Switzerland's most famous mountain ---the Matterhorn and that is where our gastronomic tour begins. We'll learn about a chocolate bar shaped like the Matterhorn. Why this is one of the great cheese producing regions of Switzerland and why raclette is the ultimate melted cheese dish. The Valais is also the largest wine producing area in Switzerland. Viewers also discover Charlie Chaplin's contribution to chocolate, the gastronomic specialties of the Lake Geneva Region and why Geneva has some of the best restaurants in Europe.

The two most powerful forces in the history of Holland are wind and water. For over a thousand years, the people living in this part of the world have had an amazing ability to take advantage of these two forces. We'll explore the use of windmills, Holland's trading empire and how the nation's wealth was used to commission great works of art. Burt visits the Vincent van Gogh Museum, takes a canal tour and tastes Amsterdam's famous street foods.

Fragments of the earth's crust drifted together to form Alaska. And they are still very much in the process of drifting and forming. And what they have formed is already the largest state in the United States of America. It's twice as large as Texas and has fifty percent more coastline than all the states in the lower 48 put together. We'll tour the Red Onion Saloon; ride the White Pass and Yukon Railroad and check out 1,500 square miles of ice cap.

Hong Kong is a small island just off the southern coast of the Chinese mainland. It's a bustling metropolis and one of the world's most important financial centers. It is also a focal point for traditional Chinese history and culture. Burt shows viewers Hong Kong's Chinese music, Chinese art, Chinese theater, and of course, Chinese food. The city's unusual blend of western high-tech with Chinese high-touch has made Hong Kong the most important tourist destination in Asia.

Burt has spent most of his life as a stranger reporting from strange lands and trying to understand what was going on. A few years ago he decided to look at his own country and try to discover the true history of our population. Each year the United States grants permanent residency to more immigrants than all the other nations of the world combined. Most people come here believing that with hard work and determination they will end up with a better life---more money and more freedom. In fact, everyone who is in the United States today is either an immigrant or the descendant of an immigrant.

Every person who lives in the United States is an immigrant or the descendant of someone who immigrated here. In some cases they were travelers looking for a place where they would be free to practice their traditions. In every case they were looking for a better life. Social tensions were always part of the immigrant experience. Burt explores how immigration has created social difficulties and also produced a new vitality. This program will show how immigration has transformed American society and culture and demonstrated that diversity, as well as unity, and is a source of our national strength.