Young European Travellers
By Alex Lyons
31 Aug 2008
Me and 4 of my friends decided this summer to travel across Europe, for a number of different reasons. We all wanted to go to different places for different reasons. Some wanted to experience nightlife, some wanted to experience food and culture, some wanted to relax in the sun but me i wanted to record with photographs every single inch of the trip.
I decided on just using analog cameras for the unpredictability when i would finally return home with a sack full of film to my local lab. So i kitted myself with 75 rolls of out of date provia. One medium format camera, an underwater camera and a 35mm camera.
We headed to Paris first, after a bottle of rum some ended up in the river seine. We then met a strangling friend and smuggled him in the luggage holder to Barcelona where we sat on the beach and took in the sun. We then headed to the old Spanish town of Sevilla it was ridiculously hot so we rented a pedal o and swam in another river and in favrious fountains in the city. The whole time i recorded photographs with my camera it so happens provia works perfectly with water. We then went to the tip of Spain where you can see Morocco across the water and swam in the sea at sunset.
We then went on a long painful sleepy train ride all the way to Zürich taking 42 hours. Here we fell into a crazy football culture which packed the streets for Euro 2008 it was colder and very different to our surroundings in the baking hot south of Spain. I went around asking football fans for their photographs in their impressive costumes. Next we headed over to Prague which was surprisingly hotter, we found an old camera shop where i brought a cheap old original LC-A camera which then got used a hell lot more and became my new toy of the trip!
Next we headed back over to Berlin, which i hadn't really expected to be anywhere near as intresting as it was. We saw the world sandcastle championships by the river and i ran around taking floor shots with LC-A. Then we discovered Tachles an artists squat with a beach outside with old Volkswagen's camper vans opened as bar and big tractor tires to sit in while artists paint and work with metal all around you. The nightlife was great with bars dedicated to punk music and great kebab shops.
Next we headed over to Amsterdam and met some friends before embarking on another ma mouth train journey down to Milan, i found this city very clean and expensive it had some lovely architecture but didn't have some of the dirty interesting old crumbling buildings i had found in other places. We all wanted a break by the sea after being in main land so headed to a beach town called Marina De Massa, there was a lovely pier with old men fishing on it which we all jumped off into the sea. I Jumped with my underwater camera and broke the case but i got a few good films out of it. Next we headed to Pisa all very sun burnt from being on the beach and stupidly forgetting sun cream. We hid in the shade of the leaning tower which seemed to be the only thing we knew about Pisa and we wern't going to risk walking in the sun.
Next we headed to Napoli, quite a dangerous place the first bus ride we took from the station we almost got pick pocketed. Napoli is very dirty there is a lot of rubbish, a lot of tramps ,the statues have no arms and graffiti on their faces. We met some amazing people here most of them living on the street with the most amazing life story's of traveling running away visiting prison and living on the streets. We then headed up to Rome which was an amazing city we only stayed one night but played hacky sack outside the Colosseum!
Lastly we headed up to Belgium intending to go home. We met some friends in Brussels and ended up a music festival an hour later!
When i returned home i took a big bag of film to be developed and when they were all ready about a month later we all sat round a table looking back on all the amazing memories of our trip!
2 responses
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Joven DelaCruz said (25 Oct 2008):
great adventure full of cool photos. yeah this rocks!
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michaela Lewis gave props (25 Nov 2008):
Fantastic story Alex and great pics, voted. good luck!
