I’m back
I went away last week. I haven’t organized things out, but I wanted to post a picture for today and will review both my trip and my travel journal later this week. In the meantime:
Finally Friday
Here are some pictures from my daily walk:
I love the houses on some of the streets I walk by. I’m sure they’re also beautiful inside.
It’s hard to believe it’s fall on days like this. The photo doesn’t show how crisp it is outside, though. I hope everyone has a great weekend, see you next week!
Restaurant Mishaps
Every once in a while, amusing situations happen when me and my American family venture out into our German surroundings. I’m going to collect those stories on this blog under the title “Tales for the ‘Schland”.
Tales from the ‘Schland: Zu Frieden
Language is important. Especially in a foreign country. It’s telling how different people respond to language misunderstandings. My husband and I have both studied German at various times in our lives and we are at various levels. When he is talking to a non-native English speaker, he does his best to convey the impression that everything will be alright. Me? I get nervous, shut down and forget all words in any language.
Down the street from our house is a corner restaurant with huge windows that we have to pass whenever we want to do anything fun in our life. We pass it on the way to the grocery store, to other restaurants, to the subway, to the park, you name it – we pass this restaurant. Like the ideal European restaurant, there’s outdoor seating and I have been known to steal a few glances of the diners both inside and outside of the restaurant.
Recently, we decided to try it out for ourselves. The weather was beautiful, so we sat outside. My husband ordered the carbonara, I ordered a simple salad and we all three enjoyed the bread. My husband’s carbonara was delicious. My fork couldn’t help but to gravitate to his dish repeatedly. I made the declaration that this will be on my list of carefully selected restaurants to take my parents when they visit. Then the bill came.
What a pleasant surprise. Not only is this delicious, but affordable too! When the server came to clear our plates she asked us a question. Maybe it’s because we’re Americans, we assumed she was asking if we wanted more food. My husband shook his head, waving his hands slightly over his licked-clean plate “Nein, nein (no, no)” and then put his hands on his stomach to indicate he was full. The server looked at us, and didn’t seemed to happy with that answer. We looked at each other, the look that couples share when they realize they may have said the wrong thing – just what did she ask us? We looked at her and she asked us the question again “Ja, Ja (yes, yes)”… if nein, nein made her upset, maybe ja, ja would be ok? Nope. She seemed to be angrier. As my husband tried to let her know in his limited German that we weren’t upset and I uncomfortably fumbled in my seat thinking “Just say “alles OK” (all is good – my go to response in many situations)” I couldn’t get anything out of my mouth. I just shook my head at him in a way to say – whatever you’re doing – stop!
Here’s a thing with most restaurants in Germany. The servers have a little wallet with all the change in it and when you pay your bill, they take care of it directly at your table. You tell them the total amount you are going to pay (so if it’s 10EUR and you add a small tip, you would say 12 EUR) and they give you the change directly. We paid our bill and tipped a generous-for-Europe tip (tipping is not as expected here as it is in the US). Instead of giving us our change right away, she went into the building and then came back with our change – all in small coins. It was the equivalent of receiving $3 in change in nickels and dimes with a quarter or two thrown in.
We had no idea what upset her. Was she upset because we didn’t want a dessert? Because we didn’t order wine? Because unlike the lady next to me I only ordered a salad and not a salad and a main meal? I mentally removed the restaurant from my list of places to take the parents and we just decided that this person just did not like us. Fine.
Then we got home and looked up the only word from the questions she asked us that I could remember – zu frieden. Satisfied. She had asked if we were satisfied, and my husband said no. Confused, she asked us, most likely, in the negative “You aren’t satisfied?” To which, my husband said yes. No wonder she was so upset at us. I’m upset with us!
Now, one of the most convenient, affordable and tasty restaurants – one that I have to pass everyday, must think we are really horrible, tasteless and rude people. Oh, boy.
Wordless Wednesday
Today’s a Holiday, too
In Germany, today is a public holiday. All Saints Day.
I thought I could take today and take a look at the goals I set forth for myself and my blog earlier last month.
BLOG MORE: I wanted to blog once a day and I have so far. Yay! I wanted to comment at least twice a day on other bloggers post and I do well more than that. I actually enjoy it a lot. I used to only read blogs, but now that I also comment so much, I feel like I’m having a better online experience.
MAKE 3 CRAFTS FOR MY SON: I made his Halloween costume and a counter-part for it. So 2 out of 3 is not too bad at all.
COOK SOMETHING PUMPKIN-Y: I wasn’t planning on doing this until later in November, so we’re good.
CREATE A RANDOMS JOURNAL: I cancelled this one. Turns out, all the little pieces of things I’ve been saving up have a home either in another existing album, a planned album, or the trashcan. I might do this another time, but now is not it.
MAKE 3 HOLIDAY DECORATIONS: My three holidays to decorate for were for Halloween, my son’s birthday and Thanksgiving. I have started birthday decorations, my Halloween “decor” ended up being a mini-album and I have a plan set for Thanksgiving (plus I made a gratitude journal).
I would say that I’m doing a good job of keeping up with my goals. I’ll check in at the end of the month/beginning of next month and look at my goals for the following few months.
Happy Halloween!
I was at the pediatrician’s office earlier. The pediatrician, who was not my normal one, asked me where we were from. I said the US. Then he looked at my son’s shirt that said “My First Halloween” and said to me, “Well, if I would’ve seen the shirt first, I would’ve known you were from America.”
Halloween is just not too popular here. There seem to be a lot of activities for the bar-hopping crowd, but not as much for kids. So, the only other way to tell that it’s the Halloween season:
Happy Halloween!!
Vacation Mini-Albums: Organization
Welcome to the last day of the Travel Turtle series on vacation mini-albums.
First, please know, I’m a minimalist packer. There is no mini-album in the world valuable enough to make me want to check my luggage just so I have space for my mini. This is what I would consider my must haves for mini-album supplies when I travel:
- A camera
- A pen
- The album itself
- A way to attach items to journal (usually a small tape runner)
- An envelope
- A hole punch if I’m doing a binder ring album.
If I have space for it, I will add:
- Stickers and labels
- Multiple ways to attach items to journal (staples, needle and thread)
- Journaling paper
- Stamp and Ink
- Pattern paper
- Scissors (only if I plan to check in my luggage anyway, otherwise, I just tear paper, use a punch or buy cheap scissors locally)
- Post it notes for place markers (photos you’ll add later, for example)
- A shape punch (usually a big circle)
To sum up, my biggest tip to organization is to keep it simple. Only bring what you absolutely need.
Once in country, though, you will still need to organize things a bit. This is what I do:
- Before leaving for the vacation, make sure batteries are charged for all cameras and that the camera card is empty (or at least has adequate space for the photos you will take.)
- Upon hotel check-in, designate a spot as my temporary scrapping location (which is usually the desk). Unload all supplies onto desk. I will then immediately write about my impressions of the hotel, on hotel stationary.
- Before leaving the hotel grab your pen, hotel stationary and an envelope to collect anything from that day. I think it’s great if you can use a separate envelope for each day, even though you should be putting things in your journal as you go. It’s nice to know that if you don’t use everything, you still know exactly where it is.
- Whenever you’re back at the hotel (whether it’s for some rest in the middle of the day, or at the end of all the site-seeing) add something from the day to your journal. Put at least one thing in your album, regardless of how tired you are. If you followed some of journalling advice, you should already have journalling ready to go. Note the photos you want to include for that day (or just leave space for them). If you have more time, add more things, but don’t feel you need to add everything. Put the extras in the envelope, write the day on the outside of the envelope and know that you can go back to that later if you want to.
- Before checking out of the hotel, I like to go through my envelopes to see if there’s anything that really should be in my album that I didn’t get a chance to add earlier in the week. If there’s no space for it to fit in chronologically, I do an “out-takes” page or two. This is just for all the pieces and photos that don’t fit anywhere else.
- On my way back home, I will do the trip summary and unless I still have to develop photos (which I usually do), I can call the album done.
Thank you so much for joining me for this weeklong series. I hope you learned (or reminded yourself) of some tips that will be helpful the next time you travel and want to document as you go. Have a great weekend, and I will see you next week!
Vacation Minis: The Journaling
Welcome to day 4 of the Vacation Mini-Album series.
There’s one thing I realized while writing this series, and that’s that I like to get people involved in the mini-album while we’re on vacation. Yesterday, I mentioned a scavenger hunt that requires other people’s participation. Today, I want to talk about how to do the same thing with your journaling in a way that not only adds to the actual memories of the album, but will also make it easier to finish the album while on vacation.
To me, the journaling can be the most difficult part to complete. It’s time consuming, there are a lot of details that can be recorded because of all the new experiences, and it’s writing! The first thing to remember is that penmanship does not need to be perfect on these albums. Not at all. But, for your own sake, it should be legible.
When I first started making travel minis, I would bring various paper to write on. Then I realized how ridiculous it is to do that. There are so many paper options to write on, things with more character and evoke more memories of the place than any journaling paper can ever provide. What says the Eiffel Tower better than an admission ticket to the Eiffel Tower? No pretty stamp, sticker or piece of paper has the same effect as the real thing. So, pick up scraps during your day and write on those. Bring the SCRAPS back into scrapbooking. Things I’ve picked up and written on along the way: brochures, ticket stubs, business cards, take out menus, parts of flyers, maps, postcards… Do you have a lot to say? Most hotels have free stationary branded with the hotel’s name and even envelopes that you can include in your journal. Use those.
Make the journaling more inclusive by inviting your travel mates to write their own thoughts. Do it on the spot. Just finished watching a theater production of Les Miserables? Give everyone their tickets back and tell them to write down what they thought, what they liked, what they didn’t like. Walking around an amazing store that has a little bit of something for everyone? Grab one of the store’s business cards (or a few) and have everyone write what they want to get at this store. At restaurants, grab a take out menu, circle what everyone is eating and rate the food. At the end of the day, put all these little pieces directly in your journal and you are done. Use the hotel’s stationery to sum up the day if you have more to say, but you will find you probably don’t. (A note: using the same piece, for ex. multiple theater tickets, has the added effect of repetition which is an easy design element to work with as well.)
Again, there’s a little bit of preplanning I like to do before my trip. Like the photo scavenger hunt, I like to write a list of prompts that can help me think of things to write about.
- Counting: If I’m in a busy area, I like to count things that occur within a minute. In Amsterdam, I counted bikes that passed me. In New York, it was people that walked by the park bench I was sitting on and in China, it was how many car horns I could hear in a minute. In quieter places, I might focus my counts on something else like, how many boats are sailing by.
- Transportation: I like to write about the forms of transport I’m using and often will include the directions I wrote down to get somewhere in my journal. Or I’ll write what is repeated over the loudspeaker, or written around the stations. You can’t think of the underground in London without thinking of “Mind the Gap,” the Peter Pan ride at Disney repeating “Please step out to your left, step out to your left please, when the car stops, step out to your left,” and the car rental guy in Scotland telling me that my job as the passenger is to poke my husband in the shoulder when we get in the car and say “Stay to the left”!
- The Best Part about ____: This is an easy prompt for someone else to fill out. What’s the best part about this meal, this city, this tour…
- Speaking of tours, I like to write down some of the things tour guides say while on tours. Often, these are things that research won’t tell you, or are hilarious for other reasons. In Salzburg, our tour guide would point out a building and tell us it is the most important building in all of Austria. He would then continue to say the same about every other building in the tour.
- At the end of the trip, I like to make a “spreadsheet” of favorites and ask everyone what the best meal, drink, thing, shopping experience, whatever was. I usually include a list of 10 things that we’ll all answer. No, I don’t do this on the computer, but I do write it down.
- My favorite journaling technique for traveling: Haikus! This gives me an easy framework to work in and can sometimes be a bit challenging. It’s also makes time pass quickly, so when I’m at a train station and my train is delayed another 20 minutes – out come the haikus.
These are just a few ideas I have for easily, but meaningful journaling to add to your albums that are guaranteed to remind you of your great vacation in the future, and get other people involved (if you like that sort of thing!)
Come back tomorrow when I wrap up this series discussing organizing it all.
Vacation Minis: The Photos
Welcome to Day 3 of the mini-series: photos.
Unfortunately, there are many more talented photographers out there that can tell you how to take the best photos. I can’t tell you how to do that. In fact, since most of the people that read this blog are probably great memory keepers, there aren’t many tips I can give on that, either. You already know to get the details, the “everyday” vacation moments, get action shots. There’s a great post on Shimelle’s Blog with tips for travel photos. Instead, I’ll say something I just started recently that has helped to make the photo taking a fun, group event.
PHOTO SCAVENGER HUNT!!!
I first did this a little over a year ago. I wanted to create a scavenger list that I could easily use on every trip if I wanted to, so I made it generic. I can easily add more items if I wanted to do something a little more specific to the place. Here’s my list:
- A picture of each of us in front of a popular site: I change the number of pictures we need depending on the length of trip. A weekend trip calls for 2 sites, a weeklong trip needs 5 sites – this is negotiable.
- A picture of a meal: I am not a food blogger, but food evokes the senses of taste and smell and with the picture sight is there, too. With three of five sense represented in one photo, it’s a bargain!
- A picture of each of us posing like a statue, in front of the statue: This is more fun than I thought it would be. I actually now like to do this in front of most statues I see. And imagine the fun of posing like abstract statues.
- A picture of each of us that looks like the paparazzi is spying on us from afar: This is also so, so much fun. Since it’s from far away, there’s a lot of atmosphere in these photos. It’s always interesting framing as well, since we’ve usually done this in crowds and you have to time it correctly so that no one is walking in front of the “star”!
- A picture of something each of us thinks is funny: We like to get really obscure with this one. And I don’t think there’s anything more rewarding or journal worthy than a photograph that corresponds with something funny.
- A picture of each of us in our hotel room: I love hotel rooms and this is probably the only way I’d remember to take a picture in my room.
- A picture of the skyline: Sometimes I feel like I focus so much on the details, that I ignore the big picture. That’s what this one is about.
- A picture with more than one mode of transportation in it: In some places, this is more of a challenge (I have a little cheat for those places that I won’t share), but for most places there are always several modes of transportation whizzing by.
- A picture of a sign that is very whatever place we are in. (So, in France it would just seem like a stereotypical French word.): I just love languages, and this has to do with my language love. If I were in an English-speaking country, I would have to make some modifications, but it’s still possible.
- A picture with the name of the place we are visiting in it: The more, the merrier. I love the way this looks with one word in a bunch of fonts.
- A self-portrait: Specifically when you turn the camera onto yourself without a tripod. We do these as a family and these are my favorite photos.
- A reflection photo: I like to do these into windows when I’m traveling. I guess bodies of waters, car mirrors or other people’s sunglasses would work to.
- Combination of the above: For example, a self-portrait reflection in a deli-store front that’s name includes the name of the city we’re visiting, the deli display in the window and the reflection behind the self is a popular local site – with a bike in the photo and a train in the reflection… whew.
What I love most about doing the photo scavenger hunt is it gets everyone involved. So, I’m not the only one taking pictures. It also helps to guarantee a variety of photos to choose from.
When it comes to organizing the photos for your mini-album, to me this is the most difficult part of the process for staying up-to-date. My main tip here is to print the photos straight from the camera. Don’t worry about editing to get the perfect white balance, composition or to crop people out. If you are worried about those things, do that worrying WHEN you take the photo, not afterwards. If time allows, go to a local developing place and print a few photos every couple of days. Then put them immediately in your album. If you can’t add photos to the mini as you go, put in some place holders. Most people use digital cameras these days so you can easily guess which photos you plan on printing and just notate that in your album. Maybe even bring some blank 4×6 (or other sizes if you prefer) card stock to put right into the album and put your notes on the card stock.
Vacation Minis: The Albums
The most important step for creating a mini-album for your vacations? Picking an album. This is going to dictate exactly what you can and can’t collect. What do I mean?
Here are things to consider:
- Size
- Type of Binding
- Paper-style
SIZE
When I travel, I like to put whole tickets and whole flyers in my album. This means that a mini-mini album (smaller than 4×6) will not work for me. My favorite size is 4-6 inches wide and 6-9 inches tall. (I actually like 6×8 the most, but I made a decision that I will only use that size when I’m doing my December Daily.) From what I’ve seen, most in-store printing places have a 4×6 printing option (10cm x15cm outside of the USso I can easily print photos while I’m on my trip if I want to. This is also a realistic size for me to carry, it fits in a ziploc bag and in my bag, and most items I will put in it are within that size. I prefer long albums to wide albums, but that’s just my preference. This is not the time to have a 12×12 album.
TYPE OF BINDING
I absolutely love using my KOLO albums for on the go memory keeping. The paper is perfect for writing on and attaching things to it, the price is right, and I know how much space I need to fill. I’m limited in the amount of “bulk” I can accumulate without the album looking weird and it looks nice on the shelf.
Lately, though, I’ve been making my own albums out of patterned papers. I punch holes in them and they are ready to go. I like this because it adds more color to the album without much work. There’s also a lot more flexibility in how thick my albums can get and I can move papers around. I can bring a lot of paper with me, or remove paper if I don’t need it all. The only issue I have is that it doesn’t look as nice on the shelf, but I could probably plan better and get a ring binder to put it in when I return.
Bound Album
Above are a some of the interior pages of my bound albums.
If you are going to go with a bound album, the size is definitely important. Think of how much time you will have during your trip and what type of vacation it will be. When I went to the Bahamas, my KOLO album held one 4×6 picture for each page. This was a good size for a weekend trip and there wasn’t a lot of scraps that I would have picked up along the way. When I went to Scotland, the KOLO album was around 7 x9 or so with 36 pages front and back. Our trip was 10 days. It was enough for me to add several polaroids when I wanted to and to add any of the ticket stubs or other items I collected. I had to limit myself to around 3 pages per day and as long as I did that, I didn’t have to worry about running out of space. For my China trip, I made a massive error in judgement. The KOLO album was about 6×6 or so with 24 pages front and back. My trip was over 3 weeks and included two side trips (the Philippines and Hong Kong). I knew that we were going to see a lot of places and that I would want to collect anything I could get my hands on (I love the look of the Chinese Characters.) My solution was that this album became more of a place for me to keep ephemera and less a scrap as you go album. There’s no space for pictures and very little space for journaling.
Tips for Bound Albums
- Think of how much space you will realistically need. A 8×8 20 page album for a weekend at the beach means there will be a lot of white space in your album – which is ok, as long as you plan for that going in. A 4×6 10 page album for a round the world trip over the course of year may not be enough.
- Get a rough estimate of how many pages you can do each day maximum to fill out the album. Do you have the time to do that much? (I generally like to do a 2 page spread per day)
- If you find that you have more than you bargained for on a particular day and you don’t want to go past your self-allotted maximum number of pages, staple and layer!
- Keep an envelope to collect the items you get throughout the day when you don’t want to bring the whole album with you.
PLEASE NOTE: There are also sew-it-yourself bound albums (like Amy Tangerine’s Mini Album). I haven’t tried one of those yet, so I’m not as familiar. I do have Amy Tan’s album though and will be using it before the year is out.
Adjustable Albums
Above are two of my binder albums. The green one was for a month-long trip, the world map one was for a four-night trip.
I started doing the three ring binders for trips after I started doing the December Daily. What I loved was that like the December Daily, you can use the supplies you have on hand. There is no need to buy an album, or paper or anything else. The first album I did this way was for a month-long trip to Southern Germany just this year. I decided to go with a 6×6 album so that each 12×12 page I had could yield me 4 pages. I used the passports collection from Making Memories and simply picked one of each patterned paper. To help with any possible overages, I also added a bit of black cardstock to the mix. While we were in Southern Germany, we took two weekend trips (Salzburg and Munich). Because this album was not bound, I did not need to bring the whole album with me for those excursions. (I am a packing minimalist so the idea of bringing more than I need makes me break out in hives). I ended up using the black cardstock as a section divider for the two weekend trips. I didn’t need it for anything else.
Tips for Adjustable Albums
- Keep the color scheme simple. This is a good time to use paper from kits!
- You do not have to use a ring binder for this (thus, you do not need to punch holes). You can put the pages in page protectors when you get back if you like. If you do punch holes, make sure you bring your hole punch with you so you can add things directly to the ring binder without adhering to a page.
- This book can get thick quick, so you may want to have larger binder rings to change into once it fills up.
- Don’t be afraid to move things around to fit better than what you originally planned.
Interior shots of my binder ring albums.
I hope this helps when you consider options for what type of album to use when you’re traveling. Tune in tomorrow for a discussion about photos and some of the ephemera you’ll pick up along the way.
I also wanted to note, I don’t make minis for every vacation I go on. If it’s less than 3 nights, my schedule is really packed, or if I’m going to visit family and friends and spend more time chatting around the kitchen table than going out and looking at the sites. For these I just rely on the photos I take and the journal I keep and can scrapbook them into layouts if I want to later.