TRAVELING Magazine

Turned out that Castro run-scoring slide image was indeed my favorite, as I could not see any other image working for the cover of my image-only-no-text TRAVELING Magazine.

Travel Week

Travel Poster

SATURDAY POSTER

A Facebook friend posted the Kerouac quote and I just had to check my collection of poster backgrounds waiting to be wed to a quote. The Alaska Railroad seemed pretty excellent to me and I hope you agree.

SUNDAY POSTER #2

SUNDAY POSTER

Good advice from Mark Twain, a famous world traveler.

SUNDAY POSTER #3

I had no plan for a third poster today . . . until The Amazing Race had this quote and sent me to the photo collection to find this look at Pompeii's Forum and Mt. Vesuvius.

Auf Wiedersehen Europe

Our luncheon complete and our shopping trip finished, we trooped back to our tour bus to leave Hamburg, with a bus back to Kiel and an overnight cruise return to Copenhagen. We knew that our SAS flight home would be waiting for us the next afternoon. After the longest vacation in our lives, it was time to head home. Across the walk from where our bus waited, I saw the hand graffito seen here, and I high-fived it before boarding.

Rather than explain or reminisce about the final image from the trip, I thought I would post a handful of poems from the days of the departure and immediately after. The only note here is to explain that folks do not say "good bye" in German: "auf wiedersehen" means "until I see you again."

Auf Wiedersehen, Europe!




AUF WIEDERSEHEN HAMBURG

We looked at the Rathaus, we saw the canal and its locks;
We noticed large homes with manicured lawns and gardens and
We rode round both lakes created by and for the canals.
We remarked about how different from crowded Berlin it was;
We noted how graffiti-free it seemed in comparison.
We checked out the Reeperbahn and the Beatles statuary and
We had long tasty Bratwurst and Beer aboard a tall-mast museum.
Most of all we had a local guide, filled with stories and jokes; we
Met shopkeepers and other Hamburgers with such smiling faces
That as I leave Hamburg and say ‘Auf Wiedersehen’ I mean it.
Literally.




NOT SO DIFFERENT AFTER ALL

Corn or beans, wheat or canola in field after field,
Cows or horses in every pasture we pass by,
Sunshine and puffy white clouds on bright blue skies,
Cold beer and tasty red wine with lots of hot food,
Dozens of museums and public buildings and statues,
People who respond to a smile and a thank you.
Eight countries away from home and nine hours early
Only to learn once again we are not so different after all.



LONG LIST

Eight countries, 18 days, 7600 pictures taken and sorted,
Rough drafts of 29 poems onto the laptop on the way home.
So why am I intent on returning to Northern Europe?
After spending some cruise time in Mediterranean areas,
Will I ever want to see some of these same countries?
Yes, indeed: Let me count the ways I wish to return:
Kensington Palace, Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh.
Arc de Triomphe, Champs Elysees, Museums, Normandy,
Most of the Louvre. Paris and Berlin at night, lit up.
Stockholm’s suburban palace, lots of Tallinn haunts.
St. Petersburg’s hundred palaces and excesses not seen.
Sparakoff’s Beer Tram in Helsinki. All of Amsterdam.
More of West Germany, Belgium, perhaps little Luxembourg.
The long list of things we were not able to make time for
On our breath-taking two-and-a-half-week whirlwind tour.

That list, along with pretty much everything we did see,
Which we could stand to see again. And again.





THANKS, EUROPE

Little words we teach our kids can certainly mean a lot:
Most of the trip was in England or on the cruise ship,
Places where “thanks” is easy to use and well-accepted.
The word-lover in me made me try “merci” in Paris,
“Danke” in Berlin and again later in Hamburg.
Each use earned me an appropriate reply, returning the
Respect my choice had given the Frenchman or the German.
In Russia I tried a word I confess to having learned from a
Billy Joel concert album; several times I said “spassib” and
Again received respect, Russian this time, from the beautiful
Human beings I had the pleasure to visit.

TRAVELING MAGAZINE Arizona Edition

The latest edition of the world's thinnest magazine -- my personal cover-only TRAVELING Magazine -- hits the newsstands (well, hits the blog) today. It is the souvenir of my spring training trip, of course, and includes a few elements already seen in the blog.

What I find most interesting about the Magazine Cover concept is how much it helps my understanding of my photo collection, believe it or not. Trying to work as an editor in capturing the multi-part essences of the event, things come into clearer focus. While I loved Big League Field of Dreams, for instance, the local softball/baseball fields were not the driving force behind the trip and no photo made the cover. I scheduled the trip with the Fergie & Friends game in mind, so the ticket-like ad for the game made the lower-right corner.

But the ad that mentions the celebrity game actually came from the HoHoKam Park scoreboard during a Cub game the day before. That game, depicted across the bottom as the base layer, becomes more important as I think back. I am excited today, Opening Day, for the Chicago Cubs 2009, and a lot of that comes from seeing the team in the warm sunshine of Arizona.

My feature layer, the uniform of Mr. FINALLY! with the number 09, was the center of an earlier post and was snapped during the celebrity game. But again, that game appears on the cover only in the two cuts that refer back to the current year of the ballclub. The date on the magazine is March 2009 and it looks to the current season, not long-ago good times. And all this crystallized in the text blurb "Hope Springs Eternal."

More to the point, I went back looking for one more detail, one more graphic element that would complete the work. And I realize that on my first day, a quick "grab shot" that made me smile for a second before I forgot it, is one of my favorite photos of the trip. So often that little detail shot catches something that works in an event, and the Arizona license plate IT'S ALL GOOD really works for me. Acting as the magazine editor each time has helped me focus my memories in a way that makes the exercise completely worthwhile. And I wound up with an image I really like. Hope you enjoy the magazine!

The next post will show the result of my other look-back, clarify-the-memories project. Coming soon.