My parents split up when I was a little kid and ever since, we would go on vacation twice as often, as both my mother and my father took us somewhere separately. Our family may not have had that much money back then, what with the divorce and all, but both my parents always managed to save up enough for a nice summer vacation and the odd long weekend in Toscana or Provence.

While most of those vacations took place in Europe, it wasn’t until my late teens that I really started to travel to other continents. It was my father who took me to New York City for the first time – he had been there several times to run the NYC marathon and had promised to take my brothers and me if we would not smoke until we were 20. For me, it was the beginning of a beautiful love affair with the city that never sleeps.

I go back to this city as often as I can and fall in love over and over again… Back then, it was the skyscrapers and the overwhelming amount of lights, taxis, people, buildings. These days it’s not so much about the skyscrapers any more, but the culture, food, people, food, neighborhoods, the endlessness of new places to discover, food, and many more things each time.

I am twenty-eight now and I’ve been traveling a lot over the last ten years. I often do one long trip per year and lots of short trips throughout. Lately, I’ve been lucky enough to have the possibility of combining several travels with my work. While I still enjoy traveling and very much appreciate whenever I can travel for work, by the end of last year I felt very exhausted from too many trips and too much work.

I had gone back to school three years ago and just finished my studies in the summer. I started my own little business and yet spent a lot of time traveling (both for work and vacation). Those things led to my New Year’s resolution to:

  • shift down a gear
  • be more selective of the things I do
  • travel a little less in 2017
  • take more pictures
  • travel more within the beautiful country I live in
  • work a little less and plan my work with more foresight

Fewer destinations and being more selective in my approach travels resulted in a travelogue of the first half of 2017 with more photos from Switzerland than I’d taken in previous years. I’d like to share these experiences with you.

Here are the locations I cover in part 1:

Sarajevo, Bosnia

I joined my girlfriend’s family on a trip to Sarajevo, Bosnia, to visit her grandpa and see in the new year. It was my first time and despite the cold, I enjoyed eating new food, especially cevapi and pita, and seeing a new city, though it’s one with a sad history.

We attended an open air concert on New Year’s Eve by Dino Merlin, one of the Balkans most famous singers. I could hardly feel my toes because of the cold but it was lovely. I also learnt that Sarajevo’s air quality in winter is terrible because most people still heat with wood. The fact that most restaurants and cafés are filled with cigarette smoke obviously doesn’t help.

Click the images below to view them full-size.

Gornergrat, Switzerland

We took a day trip to the Gornergrat summit, 3135 masl (meters above sea level), reachable by Europe’s highest open-air railway (and second highest railway in Europe after the Jungfrau). Because of the weather, we weren’t able to see the Matterhorn – the famous Toblerone summit from atop and though it’s the main reason most tourists come here, there are many other beautiful things to see: the Gorner Glacier, second largest glacier in the Alps, the Dufourspitze (Switzerland’s highest mountain and the second-highest mountain of the Alps), or 28 other summits higher than 4000 masl. The views are amazing – even with the Matterhorn hiding behind the clouds.

Bern, Switzerland

Technically, this is probably not what you would call traveling. But since I wanted to spend more time in Switzerland and Bern, I decided to include a few photos from some of my photo walks through my favorite city as well.

Provence, France

It was Easter weekend and this was the first trip abroad for my girlfriend and me since the very beginning of the year. We managed to stay in Switzerland for almost four months despite the winter! So we finally did travel to another country: we borrowed my parents’ car and spent a few days in Southern France, mainly the Provence, and had a wonderful time with a lot of good food. Annecy, Grenoble, Avignon and the little village Dargoire.

Warsaw environs, Poland

One month later, a reunion with a bunch of friends I met in Sweden two years ago was due and it somehow seemed convenient and affordable to book a beautiful lake house in Poland. Some of us didn’t make it so were were only four instead of six, but we still had a great time. That was the house, in case you’re ever looking for a beautiful lake house for your stay in Poland.

Hamburg, Germany

I had been to Hamburg a couple of times before, but all my previous visits were very short, so I was looking forward to spend four full days in the city this time. Four days are not a lot, but we did a ton of things and walked a lot.

In accordance with my New Year’s resolutions, I am trying to steer my work towards the things I like and be more selective. One of those things is darkroom printing. I launched a print shop earlier this year to be able to print more often.

Part 2 of my Travelogue will be published in early 2018 with photos from Denmark, Switzerland, Spain, Vietnam and maybe more.

See you then!

~ Fabian

Hey folks, EM here. I had a chat with Fabian about the print shop Fabian mentioned above and welcome you to check out his work here. If you’re interested in making a purchase you can grab a 10% discount by using EMULSIVE.ORG as your discount code on checkout.

~ EMULSIVE

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