The Sketchbook Tourist

Castles and Coffee

As you may have deduced from last week’s post I have been away, out and about with my sketchbook which I dutifully carried with me for the entire week of our holiday. Sadly, the number of pages filled does not accurately represent the number of places visited, nor fascinating sights seen, but I have been sketching and interestingly I have been thinking about my sketchbook habit.

Usually when we travel we like to either go somewhere we can walk at length, hiking, exploring and discovering as we go, places like the Norfolk coast or the Yorkshire dales or alternatively we enjoy visiting European cities for the culture and food which also invariably involves a lot of walking. But unfortunately, this year my husband has been suffering from a long term problem with his feet and ankles that have ruled out any serious walking. Neither of us enjoy the sort of beach holiday where one lazes around not doing very much, but after such a grey, miserable, wet winter and early spring we were both desperate to get away for a change of scenery. With sunny beaches and any serious walking ruled out, in typical last minute fashion, I booked us on a river cruise.

Now I know a lot of people enjoy them, but the thought of a cruise would usually send me running and I don’t think I could ever entertain the idea of going out to sea on one of these huge ocean liners that accommodate thousands of people. It’s my idea of hell and I would rather stay at home in the rain. But a river cruise appealed. The ships, and they do call them ships as opposed to a boats, are a modest size usually with only about 150 guests. The fact that they sail down a river means it is all rather lovely and leisurely with lots to see along the riverbanks and most have plenty of stops with short walking tours which are all entirely optional.

We chose a cruise down the Rhine starting in Cologne sailing as far as Strasbourg in France, mostly because neither of us had been to Germany before. Because we are trying to avoid flying where possible we decided to travel to Cologne by train and coach, which was probably a mistake. On our day of travel there was yet another national rail strike in the UK which meant getting an expensive taxi to North London where we could pick up the underground to St Pancras. The Eurostar to Brussels was okay, notwithstanding the soggy baguette, although there was a moment when we realised most of the fellow passengers in our carriage were going the same place as us and we both looked at each other aghast and silently mouthed “Everyone is old…” and then laughed when we realised so are we! On the coach we encountered traffic jams around Liege which meant we were rather late getting aboard ship. However, after a delicious dinner, with wine included it was plain sailing from then on (pun intended).

We stopped and moored at delightful towns and villages that looked like they were illustrations in fairy tales, with half timbered houses, gothic churches and castles in abundance. As well as excellent short, guided walking tours in each stop with some hilarious guides there was plenty of free time to wander at leisure and sample some good coffee and kugelhopf. Most days were spent exploring like this, returning to the ship for our meals which were all excellent as my waistline can testify. We tended to sail overnight allowing a maximum amount of time ashore, although on the days where we cruised during waking hours it was through tree lined gorges dotted with more fairy tale castles, straight out of a Brothers Grimm story book.

The sun shone all week and although the walking was probably a bit much for Stewart some days, especially over the mostly cobbled streets (not that he would admit it and risk being left behind on the ship with the somewhat older and infirm passengers) it was pretty much a perfect holiday. We met some lovely people with whom we shared our evenings and all the crew aboard ship were brilliant offering a first class service with a smile. I have no hesitation in recommending Riviera Travel should you fancy something similar. (Although request a brochure and give them a call because their website is not great!)

But… and I hesitate here as we were obviously part of the problem, some of these gorgeous small towns were heaving with tourists, something I hadn’t really expected so early in the season. Many were local people out and about as we seemed to have picked a week full of public holidays including Ascension Day as well as both Fathers’ and Mothers’ days in Germany, but many were people like us visiting from other countries.

Now it’s not so much all the people that I minded, well I did, but I realise that turning into a grumpy old woman who would rather have the place to myself is perhaps a little unreasonable. What I minded is the fact that so many people seem to wander around with their phones in front of their faces indiscriminately snapping photographs and recording videos, seeing the world through a lens, making me want to scream “Use your eyes and look around you”.

Susan Sontang, the American writer in her essay ‘On Photography’ wrote:

Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted… it’s the most irresistible form of mental pollution… Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs

She wasn’t wrong and that was back in the 1970s! It is almost as if travel itself has become a form of consumerism, where photographs become trophies as a testimony to the places we visit. As someone who enjoys travel and experiencing different places and cultures I am not sure what the solution is.

Worse still, as in one case we experienced, a woman was setting up her phone against a pillar in a cathedral and posing for a timed selfie, pouting with a total narcissistic lack of self-consciousness that would have left me mortified. It may have resulted in proof for her social media accounts that she was there in the cathedral, but will it create memories? Will she even remember which cathedral she was in? 

Lisa Abend

has written a great essay called Hamburg Outtake looking at this need to take selfies everywhere we go. Her Substack, The Unplugged Traveller, is all about her travels without her phone making serendipitous discoveries and makes for an interesting read. I would love to do what she is doing if money and time allowed.

Of course, I do take photographs when I travel as I imagine you all do too, and my phone is more convenient than lugging around a camera. There wouldn’t be any pictures with this post if I didn’t, but I do try to take the time to look too, to spend time seeing my surroundings without stopping every two seconds to snap a picture. And this is where my sketchbook comes in.

When I look through my photographs of various scenic views or ancient churches I am already hard pushed to remember where they were taken and that’s only a few days after our return. Everything seems to merge together. But by carrying my sketchbook with me, although it didn’t get used as much as I might have liked, I found I was looking around me with different eyes and spotting the details that create the memories of a place. For example, when I look at the sketch above of my coffee cup I remember the fabulous old café in the centre of Heidelberg where all the coffee cups had different arty designs on them.

I have discovered that I’m not interested in trying to sketch views and vistas, I did a few as we sailed down the Rhine Gorge and I don’t especially like them, finding photographs maybe do a better job than my pens in those situations, instead I like to capture the details such as the coffee cups, or graffiti, the quirky statues and the interesting people. For me this creates a better memory of where I have been. Come back and join me next week and I’ll share some of the quirky things that caught my eye and ended up in my sketchbook.