Okay, a journal isn't for everyone, and trust me, you'll never ever have enough time to write everything that you want to write. However, you'll also never ever remember everything that you want to remember, and looking back at a journal will not only help you relieve some great travel memories, but you'll also get a glimpse into how you've grown as you travel.
Also, a travel journal can be like a scrapbook... I'm always picking up matchbooks, and ticket stubs and anything else that colorfully tells where I've been, and I stick them in the journal, and tape them in when I get home. Now I have several scrapbooks full of memories, and also a handy reference to places, like "what kind of train ticket did I buy when I went to York", and stuff like that.
A travel journal covers mostly highlights, and is written on buses, trains, and aeroplanes... anytime you're sitting down, really, with nothing to do but sleep. There's an excitement in them, though, that comes from rushing to get down as much as you can in the time alloted. There's also an immediacy to it, that comes from looking around as you write, and puttin down exactly what is happening around you at that moment. I tried to capture that feeling in my first travel book, my graphic novel 3 Knights in India. The book doesn't tell you nearly enough about India, but you do get the flavor for travelling there, and hopefully enough of a taste as to want more.
Sure, there's always more that you wished you had written, but that's not the point of a travel journal. Besides, you should also have some photographs to tell some of the story as well.
At this point, I'll give you a peek into one of my own private travel journals... nothing too personal, but a bit of fun. And don't worry about reading it: I'll include an excerpt after the photo.
7:15 PM Cardiff to London 5 Nov, 1995
{A nearby full moon is all I can see through the train window, and the occasional lights in the distance. It's very dark out. Inside, the train is packed, mostly with} obnoxious teenagers on their way to London. Where they come from or why they're going, I don't know. One of them, obviously drunk, is bellowing out a ballad of sorts. I don't know what she's singing, but lots of people have their hands over their mouths in apparent astonishment.
All right, so I didn't promise you War and Peace. :0)
Today, those of you brave enough to travel with laptops can blog from the road, and even further capture the moment. However, I'll leave you with another tip: Leave the iPods and computers at home, unless you're travelling for a month, and keep a cell phone only for emergencies. This is a must when visiting a foreign country, or some place for the first time. This way you can soak up the sights and sounds around you. Heck, I prefer to leave the video camera at home, as well. The fewer distractions, the better.
Thanks for visiting, JOHN :0)
2 comments:
Cardiff Central Station. You have to watch out round there. Monsters keep falling through the space/time rift and boring the locals to death by appearing in Torchwood.
Brian,
Unfortunately, I was in Cardiff before Doctor Who and Torchwood started discovering aliens and monsters and what not runnin around.
More unfortunately, I was in Cardiff before the reformation... They were just beginning to nicen the place up a bit, and believe me, the city looked like it had been raveged by monsters from outer space.
There were also times that I feared for my life, since it was difficult to navigate a city with such a crumbling infrastructure, and I found myself down by the river.
From what I see on Doctor Who, though, the place has been cleaned up nicely, and I could always recommend the castle. Lots of history, there, going back to the Romans, and heck, castles are just cool to walk around in anyways.
Cheers, JOHN :0)
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