Category: Travels for Fun
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A HOT PRAGUE IN JULY
In July of 2019, Padma and I travelled to Prague with our son, Joshua, and daughter-in-law, Shereen. I didn’t write a story or take notes and I hardly shot any photos. It was hot. And it was busy. And I vowed never again to plan a visit a European capital city in the height of […]
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AMPELMANNCHEN
Not much of East Berlin remained intact after reunification. The West invested billions to rebuild the infrastructure. But when the German administrators suggested that all pedestrian crossing signals adopt the signals used in the West, the East Berliners kicked up a fuss. There was no way they were going to give up the beloved ‘Ampelmann’ […]
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KILLING ME SOFTLY WITH AN ALBINO
BATU FERRINGHI – 20 January 1978 Olympus OM-1 on Kodachrome 64. Roll 1 Frame 14 Every time I hear Roberta Flack sing ‘Killing Me Softly With His Song’ I am immediately transported back to Malaysia. Funny how our brains can so strongly associate music with time and geography. I was 19 years old, half a […]
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ALPINE SKINNY DIPPING
NORTH CASCADES, WASHINGTON – July 1980 Olympus OM-2 on Kodachrome I think I invented selfies. I always wanted to have people in my photos but often I was the only human being around … so I became the model. I travelled alone in my younger days so I had no choice. A tripod and a […]
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MY FIRST SLR
SINGAPORE – 12 January 1978 I bought my first SLR camera in Singapore in 1978. I was after an Olympus OM-1, a brilliant manual camera which was smaller than most of the SLRs on the market at the time. So it was perfect to throw in a backpack. At the time Singapore was supposed to […]
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THEY’RE TAKING ME TO MARRAKECH
I spent much of my youth hearing Graham Nash singing about the Marrakech Express. It was a big hit in the early 1970s and always on the radio. I often visualized about that train with ‘ducks and pigs and chickens’ and ‘charming cobras in the square’. Marrakesh seemed like some exotic, far off land in […]
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MORE CAMERAS THAN TULIPS
It’s tulip time and the bulbs are blooming in full force in Holland Zuid. So Padma and I set out to cure our spring fever and travelled to the land of tulips over the weekend. Our destination was Keukenhof Garden, a 32-hectare garden dedicated to all bulby things growing in spring. We first drove around […]
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BACHARACH
Every night before retiring, I see a book sitting next to my bed. A book I use frequently to dream about my next adventure: the Lonely Planet Guide to Germany. The cover shows a little village with a dominant church on a river. After some map gazing I discovered the cover pic was taken just […]
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OLAV OF BYNESET
I hit a brick wall once. A genealogical brick wall, that is. For five years I had been trying to find out where my great grandfather, Ole Erickson Gaustad, came from. I was getting nowhere and figured I’d never find out. But one night in 2007, I was Googling ‘Gaustad’ and the village where I […]
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