Today is grandpa’s birthday and the family came together to celebrate him. It is already some kind of tradition to talk about family birthdays on my blog, although I missed to write about some when I was too busy, but I usually try to do a recap. Normally I do upload photos of the cakes we did eat and this time we had cakes as well but I thought I do something else now. I show you some photos of grandpa’s and grandma’s old travel photo album.
They travelled a lot with ships because grandpa was musician, guitarist and singer on cruise ships in Europe, mainly Northern Europe. As Lübeck is a city at the Baltic Sea, we have of course several cruise liner that travel back and forth between Germany and all countries of the Baltic region. They saw Denmark, Sweden and Norway for example. But not only because grandpa was a musician on a ship, they did also spend time of their private holidays in Scandinavia. Today on grandpa’s birthday, they talked a lot about it and showed us a lot of photos. We did take photos of some in the album and I want to show you them now. Here a for example photos of Bergen in Norway…
Of course, I wanted to listen to grandpa’s story and I didn’t want to take more photos because I listened to him. However, grandpa said that it would be a cool idea if I would take all of his albums some day to scan the images and to basically secure them digitally too. I will do that some day and maybe I can show you more when I do but first I need to read the manual of my new multipurpose printer and scanner that I own since some time and that I didn’t make run because of laziness.
Talking about the images, grandpa said that they drove with a car through Sweden to South Norway and from there up to the most northern point of Norway. He said they saw all fjords of Norway and many hills. It was also good to see Sweden before Norway as grandma’s parents are from there and she felt attached to the country anyhow. So, this would explain why I get a familiar feeling when I see documentaries about Sweden. I’m just kidding but one thing is true, I believe I would enjoy Sweden and I would like to live there or in Norway because I think it’s very beautiful but I have never been there.
Grandpa also said that Sweden was beautiful but he also liked Norway pretty much. The photos I showed you are shot in Norway Bergen and he said most architecture in Norway was wooden architecture. On the image you can see a church and he said it was totally wooden and beautiful while they are in Germany usually built with stone. He also said that the houses near the port and every other houses were wooden and he said that the port looked like a hideout for pirates but with some Vikings flair of course.
Grandma and grandpa said that we should see this some day and mentioned that it might have changed a lot and that they don’t know, but they said Norway and Sweden are great. Apart from architecture, of course, the nature is very stunning too. Nevermind if I saw grandpa’s nature photos from there or if I saw documentaries, I love fjords, hills and everything I see about Norway. But the nature of Sweden is in my opinion very beautiful too.
I am not sure if I ever wrote a bucket list and I saw already some places but if I would write one, Sweden and Norway would be absolutely on the list. It was very interesting to listen to grandpa’s and grandma’s stories and watching all the photos. I really need to scan some more photos when I did set up my printer correctly. So, maybe I will do this. As most family meetings, grandpa’s birthday was very interesting today too. I love family celebrations, not only this, I always love to spend time with my family. Hope you enjoyed the old holiday photos of grandpa too. I try to show more some day.
Diary of Dennis 
Norway and Sweden would be on my travel bucket list too but sadly they are very far away from Australia. I’ve scanned some of the photos that my husband and I took when we went overseas in the 1990s but there are so many to do and I’ve been lazy about getting on with it. Going by the orange car in one photo your grandad’s pictures are older than that so you most definitely should scan them before they degrade. Some of our 1970s photos are a bit faded now. Of course photo editing software can fix them and I know you are good at that. I have Photo Shop Elements and Picasa on my computer but I’m self taught.
I know what you mean. I have seen some countries in Europe but I never came out of here. Travelling to far away places would just cost much more. I would like to see most places on earth but who wouldn’t 🙂 Fortunately we can see a lot with the internet and other media today. I like to see country documentaries, even if it’s not like travelling, they are still very interesting. Same as going through other blogs.
Grandpa’s and grandma’s photos are surprisingly well-preserved, at least the material but that is due to the slipcovers of the album I think. But you are right, the colours maybe suffered. I am really interested to preserve them all digitally and liked grandpa’s offer but I saw into the cabinet today where he stores all the photos, it would be a huge amount of work. However, I think too it’s important and I might do one album at a time.
I think as long as there are still small amounts of colour in the photos, it might be possible to push the colours with some easy tricks and without manual recoloring but it would be extra work unless I do this in bulk, but then the results could be different with each photo. I think once I have them stored digital, I could still work on this later. Improving colours of old photos, that is actually a good idea for a future tutorial that I could write if I work on those photos.
Nothing bad with self teaching. That’s how I learned too. I’m no professional, it’s more of a hobby to fiddle around with images. If you have questions some day, you can ask. I don’t know everything but I like to share what I know. That’s how I found things out too in the past. 🙂