Mountain Ride. Intro
Visual essays series about the road trip across the Alps in Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and Lichtenstein we’ve had in August ‘18.
With this post, I’m starting a series of visual essays based on a bit aged film photographs from a trip across Italy, Austria, Swiss and Liechtenstein we’ve had in August last year.
Aged Photographs
It always works the same way. I’m greedily shooting everything on film while we are traveling somewhere. Then it takes months to develop and scan all the film rolls. And a few more months to edit scans. And some more time to pick good shots and publish them. I love this process a lot.
These film photographs give some special magic: I have already cooled down off from the impressions I experienced on the trip, and now all these memories have obtained exceptional value for me. It also seems to put me into the observer position from where I watch and enjoy the story as for the first time.
Now I relive all these precious moments with Sveta and Leo once again. Lev was about three years old — still a baby, but so conscious, curious, and eager to learn new things.
This trip was an escape from unbearable August heat in Cyprus. And also a fulfillment of a big dream to visit the Alps where we have never been before.
Sveta has carefully planned a 2,700 km road trip with many stops to avoid transfers longer than 3 hours. We wanted to spend as much time enjoying these places as possible and not to keep our restless son tightened to his car seat.
The plan was simple: we arrive at another location and explore all the things around by car.
To Live Like A Local
Having many stops on the route has another advantage for us: many new homes which allow us to experience local life. The place you stay means a lot for the overall impressions about the location, and the comfort is not the most important thing.
We look for the atmosphere and always happy when it happens to intersect with the hosts.
That’s why we prefer renting flats or houses via Airbnb and make it very thoroughly. We stayed in ten places during this 22 days long trip. Nine of them were just good or exciting, and only one — really terrible.
Most of them were far from urban areas — farmhouses or just villas and country houses. In several places, we lived side by side with the owners — in guest houses or on a separate floor.
This time we were lucky with our choices.
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