What to write in travel journal
How I travel journal
Hello friends, and welcome to my first video of 2020. I hope you all had a
wonderful celebration of the new year, and that you're not too hard on yourself
now that you have already failed all of your New Year's resolutions. Today I want
to talk to you about how I travel journal. Whether it's a weekend trip or a
one day trip, I like to collect memories from my travels in my travel journal. The
reason why I'm making this video right now is because I just came home from an
Interrail trip through Europe. An Interrail pass lets you take most trains in Europe
within a limited time, so basically it's an all-you-can-ride pass. I knew I
wanted to document this trip, so I'll take you through the steps I follow when
I travel journal, while I finish up my last travel spreads and show you some
clips from my trip. But before I do, I want to thank Rustico for sponsoring
this video. Rustico gifted me this beautiful leather
Traveler's Notebook, and I've been using the cover for a while now with
absolutely no complaints. Rustico is based in Utah, and all their leather
goods are made to order. Check out their website in the
description box below if you want to know more. Back to the travel journaling.
I have split this video into three parts. Step 1: before the journey. Traveling on
trains means you want to bring limited luggage. I decided to put together some
stickers and ephemera that fit together, as well as some washi tape, markers and
pens that would fit the theme. This might seem very time-consuming, but I find it a
lot easier to journal when I've already put together limited kits, kind of,
because it's less overwhelming when I sit down to journal. My Rustico TN cover
is able to hold the three inserts I wanted to bring along; my long-term
spreads insert, my monthly journaling insert and my travel journal. I also have
a paper pocket insert that I used to hold my Interrail pass and some other
journaling supplies like double-sided tape. I was able to travel with all of
this in my backpack so that it was easily accessible, and it wasn't too
heavy so I'm quite happy with what I brought with me.
Step 2: during the journey. All of you hoarders out there; this is the step for you. While
on the trip, collect EVERYTHING. Museum tickets, receipts, tourist pamphlets, maps,
business cards, you name it. I like to combine journaling with visual
depictions of what I've been up to, but I don't like to put polaroid photos in my
journal, and I also didn't want to carry around my polaroid camera, so tickets and
maps and receipts are great decorations for a travel journal. It's also an
alternative to draw or paint, but I find that when I'm on a trip I want to see as
much as possible instead of sitting down and drawing something. I went on this
trip with some online friends who are also into journaling, so we had some fun
journaling sessions on the longer train rides. I tried to keep up with my spreads,
but you know - when you visit like seven cities in the eleven days there's a lot
to be recorded and not much time to process. So that leads me to the next
step. Step 3: after the journey. This is the step I'm at right now. This is
when I process what I've experienced and complete the spreads. I collected more
paper scraps from some cities than others, so not all the spreads are as
easy to complete while on the trip. For example, I didn't collect much from
Geneva, so when I came home I did print out some pictures I took while I was
there, and now I am ready to complete the spreads. So while I do that let me also
tell you a little bit about the trip. I'm not going to pretend that the trip was
perfect, because we did have our fair share of obstacles on the way, but
overall it was really fun. I flew from Oslo to Munich on my own, where I met up
with my friends and we got on a train to Füssen, a beautiful little village by
the Alps. We went there to see the Bavarian castles, which names I will not
even attempt to pronounce in this video out of fear that my German
friends will ridicule me (and they will). I loved seeing the castles and the Alps - it
felt really magical. From Füssen we went back to Munich, and we stayed in this
hostel with a guy who was both great entertainment and a huge annoyance. He
came in drunk at 3 a.m., tried to climb into his bunk without
using the ladder, and then both his phones had alarms on starting from 5
a.m. and continuing every 10 minutes until we left just between 7:00 and 8:00
a.m. I will never forget that ringtone. We then went to Geneva to celebrate New
Year's Eve. New Year's Eve in Geneva was awesome - I mean, we do really great
fireworks in Oslo every year, but Geneva had a huge street party with street food,
bars, and not one, but three stages with live music just by the lake. I had such a
good time there. On January 1st we took trains up to Brussels, which is the city
I will name the highlight of this whole trip. Brussels was really cool, and so
rich in history. We went on a free guided walking tour and was introduced to the
city in a really fun and interesting way. So shout out to our tour guide, Anna, who
made the experience extra lovely. After a couple of nights in Brussels we made our
way south to Calais in France, where we caught the ferry to Dover in England.
This is probably a good time to mention that our trip was quite impacted by the
train strike in France, which prevented us from going through Paris on our way
from Geneva to Brussels, and also prevented us from getting to the train
from Paris to London. but we found a good solution in the ferry, and we got a prime
view of the White Cliffs of Dover, so that was really cool. Another shout-out
to Taxi Driver Tony, who got us safely from the port to the train and from the
train to the ferry a couple of days later. I can't believe we found the same
taxi driver both times! We spent a couple of nights in London, and we made sure to
visit lots of big bookstores, vegan restaurants, and cute coffee shops. I also
did some stationery shopping, and may or may not have come home with a bit
more than I expected. So this is kind of when things really started falling apart,
as delayed trains led us to not making it to the right ferry, which in turn led
us to being stuck in Calais because the evening trains had been canceled due to
the strike, so there was no way for us to get out of that town. But we made the
best of it, and got a lovely evening stroll on the beach and a nice visit to
a pub, so it worked out fine. Now, after a strange night in a strange
hotel in Calais we made our way to Nuremberg, the final destination of our
trip. One of my friends lived there, so we
stayed at her apartment and got prime tourist tips for the city. Nuremberg
looks SO German, with the old city walls and towers and churches and cute houses.
Most of nuremberg was bombed during World War II though, so most of it is
not original from medieval times, but the atmosphere is still there and it's such
a cute city. After a few nights in Nuremberg, I said goodbye to my friends
and headed back to Oslo. It's always sad to say goodbye to friends, but I know
it's not forever, so that helps. And there you have it - my 11 day Interrail trip,
summarised in just a few minutes. I am so excited for this new year, and I hope you
are too. I'll be really happy if you want to
subscribe to my channel, and I hope to see you all in my next video. Make sure
to stay for a final flip-through of the spreads I made for this trip. I hope
you're having a lovely day, and I'll see you next time. Bye!
