Now, when I look back to the times before phones and our constant generation of memories, what I remember most are people. The featured photo may look like a macro of a flower, with the sun positioned just so. But to me it is the memory of a colleague and a friend, his house in Paris and in the south of France, and of his family, his wife, their children and grandchildren. Our families grew closer over the decades, as we kept visiting each other. On a holiday, I sat in the terrace behind their kitchen with my camera, helping to sort and peel vegetables for lunch, and kept an eye on the sun as it moved over the flower. It is a memory of a long, sunny, and pleasant afternoon with friends.
This was the view outside my bedroom window for the year that I spend in a farmhouse on the Jura. Every morning I would wake up, throw back the curtains, look over the valley where Geneva nestled, to admire the view of Mont Blanc in various weathers. I recall the mornings, having a tea and a small pre-breafast at home, before driving down to the village bakery for a croissant or a pain au chocolat and then driving in to work in Geneva. This was a lovely part of the world, and a time when one was young enough to make friends instantly over a drink. I spent winters trying to learn how to ski, summers ambling over mountain trails, and on rainy days taking long drives across the mountains to find interesting restaurants or auberge tucked away in little villages on the Jura or the Alps.
My first visit to Japan was during these years. Few people spoke English, and there were certainly no signs in English in railway stations. On the plane I read up tips on Japan in a Lonely Planet guidebook from the early 1990s. I had kept a little time outside of work, so I could see the major sights in Tokyo, and visit the Toshogu shrine in Nikko. This photo is of a gate at the entrance to the shrine. The photos I took inside now look very faded compared to those I took thirty years later. The sights were wonderful, but what I most remember is the extreme helpfulness of random strangers. At work too I made friends who are still in touch.
My second trip to the US took me across the continent. My first stop was in rural Tennessee for a conference. I reached my hotel late in the evening and met colleagues and friends for dinner. It was only the next morning that I had a first look at the Smoky Mountains. It was a lovely place. Quite as lovely as the fall colours in Berkshire County, Massachusetts that I’d seen on my first visit a couple of years before. Over the years I visited many places of exceptional natural beauty in the USA. I keep finding more such places even now when I visit.
In my years in Germany there were a few people who became, and remain, very close friends. One had an apartment in his old family home, and since I visited often enough, his parents also became close. Eventually it became a family friendship. In later years when my friend had gone away to a different town for work, and I visited the old town, I would go and visit his parents. One Sunday afternoon in these later years we sat with a nice rosé in their garden. My friend’s mother had baked one of her cakes, and I took this photo. It reminds me of that long northern afternoon in a town which was once a hotbed of Nazism, the flowers coming alive in the glow of the sun in the west, as I talked with people who were born in that house before the war. The world changes fast, and a lifetime is soon history.
One of these old memories is of trying to buy phone cards (anyone remember them?) in each country you traveled through. Which one gave you more minutes per buck? This one fell out of a bag some years ago, and brought back memories of days when there were phone booths on roads, maps were printed on large sheets of paper which had ingenious folds, and cameras came with rolls of film which you had to load and remove carefully. Three of these photos come from those days. Can you spot which?
Don't hold your breath 
