Before you delve into my collection of travel musings, I must take a moment of your time to introduce the work as a whole. The idea of writing travel literature came to me as I was endeavoring to create an interim course for credit at Birmingham-Southern (my college in the United States) that I could complete overseas. As an English major studying abroad for an academic year, it was important to me to intertwine writing with whatever I planned for January. I worked with the head of the English Department at BSC, Dr. McInturff, to come up with an independent course on travel writing. The course consisted of my reading a number of authors’ travel writings and, through this, I could begin to develop my own writing style.
As December came to a close, I read excerpts of many different writers’ works, finding some too starched, too academic, or too impersonal. I had spent the previous semester keeping a travel blog of my time in Italy (http://annakristen.blogspot.com), written in a very conversational and somewhat journal-esque style. Often, because I was immersed in the Italian culture, I was able to include amusing anecdotes and stories that gave a true sense of the culture and people who surrounded me. My audience seemed to really appreciate this way of writing, different than anything I had written previously in college. When I embarked upon my journey throughout Eastern Europe in January, I struggled to write in a new tone – to write pieces of travel literature that were not chronicles of a day’s actions, but more a taste of the town. As tourists rather than residents, it was hard to get those little intimate stories with locals. I did not hope to write a “what to do in name-that-town” guide, for I did not have enough time in each destination for that depth of research. What I seem to have gravitated toward is writing from a first-person-point-of-view, detailing the sights, sounds, and tastes of a city; yet, intertwining this first-person experience with historically significant facts gleaned from my travels.
So, as my father (who had so graciously come to travel with me) and I traveled throughout Warsaw, Krakow, Oswiecim, Budapest, Prague, Vienna, Salzburg, and Gruenau im Almtal, I experimented with different voices, tones, and styles in my essays. Unlike many of the writers I had read, we did not have an unlimited budget. We attempted to travel to each country, enjoy ourselves, and get a glimpse of its history and culture, and spend as little money as possible. In some ways, this goal influenced my writings, for I only experienced the side of the cities that fit in with our budget. However, we had such a great time in the making of memories that I hope it shines from the musings that they inspired.
It is quite important also to note that when I arrived home in Florence after our sojourn in Eastern Europe, a tragedy occurred. My roommate and I sat waiting on a shuttle to our new apartment with copious amounts of luggage. A triad of thieves scammed us, and under our hawk-like guard, stole not only my prized digital SLR camera and gadgets, but also my laptop with all my completed drafts of my travel writings. Luckily, I had emailed quite a few of my rough first drafts to my mother in the States, so some of the twenty-seven pages of work were salvaged. But, my dream of formatting the works in magazine style, embedded with pictures with captions and enlarged colored quotes, could not be put into reality as my computer with its store of pictures was now gone. I find myself feeling much like poor Ernest Hemingway, when his wife lost all his many months’ worth of manuscripts – devastated and swamped with the regret that I cannot recapture what has been lost. So, although this collection of works has been tested through the fires, so to say, I hope you enjoy what it has become!
~ Anna Kristen Nichols
February 2, 2008
Comments