Capturing Memories

Our trip is sure to be filled with much that we will want to remember, to savour as we look back on our pilgrimage in months and years to come. In order to keep our memories fresh and accurate we are planning to do a few things as we travel. First, and foremost, is this Blog. If we are able to post to this blog often while in Europe that will create a nice travel diary, with details noted shortly after they take place while they are still fresh in our memory. I plan to keep a written journal as well, since we won't always know when we will next have access to the internet to post, thus my written journal will be a place to jot my memories down before transferring them to this blog.

Of course we will be taking lots of pictures. Beth will have her digital camera, and I will be lugging along my old film camera (along with 20 rolls of slide film!) We figure we can get the best of both worlds this way. Using her digital camera Beth will be able to check right away to see if her camera captured a good image, and she will be able to take lots of pictures, deleting unwanted ones later. I will be taking pictures with a camera system I am familiar with and one which has the ability for a lot of artistic control, including different types of lens and filters. However I will not know for sure how my pictures turn out until after we get back and get the slides developed. Important for both of us is keeping a log of our pictures, so we don't end up saying "Which church (or castle, or harbour view, etc.) is this one? We saw the Sali twins do this diligently on the trip to Whitehorse, Yukon last year (for the Canadian Lutheran Youth Gathering) so they have inspired us to try and be as faithful with our photo logs.

Then there will be some souvenirs: programs from concerts, guide books for tourist attractions, and other such things that will help us remember. Sometimes a guide book, or postcard, is the only way to get a picture of a certain place. I still have postcards from my other trip to Europe 29 years ago!

Finally I also intend to record audio memories of our trip. Today I was excited to have my friend Jay Harman (from B Sharp Music) email me to say my Yamaha Pocketrak CX was in. This device is a little digital recorder that has built in stereo microphones, and everything else required to make CD quality recordings on location - and it really does fit in a pocket! (see picture above) I plan to record all kinds of things while in Europe - general ambiance of places, worship services, relatives talking, music, the sound of trains and ferries, surf on the shore, and whatever else I think I might want to hear later. I even have some partially formulated ideas of how to incorporate such collected sounds into some of my music recording projects.

So we hope to bring back words, images, objects and sounds from our journey. Hopefully this will allow us to remember well, and to share what we experienced with others more fully and accurately.