Seeing to remember

I am a little frustrated in these postings because the pictures are not as easy to post as they should be. So I will post pictures a little later when things are not so slow. For now let me just say a few words about my impressions. Each town we have stopped at has an almost iconic look to it. The round towers of the castle at Nurmberg ... the Old Stone Bridge spanning the Danube at Regensburg with the spires of St. Peter's in the background ...the onion hats on the steeples in Cesky Krumlov ... a cup of Viennese coffee. And as I had wanted to paint a watercolor of each of these stops, I have been looking carefully each day for that perfect sketch ... the one that says "This is Vienna !!!" "This is Regensberg !!!"

So the looking with an eye to remembering on paper has been an added dimension to this trip. And now that we are leaving the river Danube and moving into the cities of Budapest and then Prague, I think my eye will turn to smaller things to capture. It is hard to imagine that in the past if one wanted to remember where they had been, the paint set was all they had. I have watched many travelers ont his trip using video cameras ALL THE TIME and talking into them to name the things they are seeing.

It reminds me of the practice of a woman in a book I am reading, who sends herself postcards from places she has visited. Only on these postcards she writes about the feeling she is having in the excitement of the new place .... about the way the place renews her. I like that.