How To Travel Without Leaving Your City

Hello dear friends, I overcame my own personal corona crisis this week. What was my crisis? Badly wanting to travel for new impressions and ideas, but unable to do it because of Corona. In this post, I will share how I did it along with 8 steps to how you can travel without leaving your city.

Like most creatives, I live for new experiences, to meet people, to soak in new ideas and inspirations. That’s why I became a journalist, and later a stylist and photographer… To hunt stories, homes, and learn what’s happening behind the smoke and mirrors, and then to document it. I believe everyone has a story to tell and that I’m the one to share it with because I’ll cherish it but also, I’ll tell your story it in a way that makes you so proud that you took the time to reveal it to me. I like nothing more than for others to trust me, so with my recording app and my camera in hand, I’m at my happiest and feel like I’m doing the work I was created to do.

Gabi with her twigs and branches

If I’m not meeting people to shoot their homes, cafes, creative studios or offices, I am thinking of how to create stories from nothing. I get bored so easily without people or places to tickle my curiosity. My insatiable curiosity drove me to relocate from the USA to northern Europe. Through my mind’s eye, I can create my own reality and add it to the Holly Bubble which is whimsical, kind, pretty and creative. That’s not THIS world (I know) but it’s MY world and I couldn’t survive without my imagination - my BUBBLE world - it’s how I stay sane. When I travel, I often create a magazine story in my head as I take photos. I have authored four books and ran my own magazine for two years, plus I’ve created content for magazines and books for 15 years, so I know how to shoot a story. But with Corona it’s hard to really be creative and tell stories in the same way. Over the past 8 months, I’ve not been able to travel outside of a few spots in Germany so I’ve felt like my bubble was getting really small and tight. I’m longing for newness. NEW STORIES to create or find or interview. A pull towards the unknown. A drive for something more. It’s a challenge when you’re working in a creative field that rewards you financially for finding stories and creating compelling content, and you’re mostly working from home or stuck in your city or state. Or worse, depressed and stuck in your own head! Like Betty Draper said once in Mad Men, “Only Boring People Get Bored!” and this is absolutely true. Whenever I feel bored, I think of Betty’s words and instantly realize that my boredom is my problem and only I can lift myself up and out of it.

Yesterday, I took a rather last-minute plan to meet my friend Gabi for a bike ride around the city and turned in into something else. I decided that a bike ride wasn’t really going to give me what I need right now emotionally or on a creative level. I love biking, but things fly by, and I want to slow down at this time and stroll. I get anxious at the moment watching traffic and obeying signs and speeding around the city missing all of the details along the way. My anxiety recently resurfaced, I think it had to do with all of the stress this year, so I asked my friend if we could please just take a walk and gather some things from nature and maybe go back to my office to make some wreaths.

But Gabi had what ended up being an even better idea.

We met at the u-bahn station in Hannover Nordstadt, then walked through her neighborhood over towards Herrenhäuser Gärten. We walked behind the Leibniz University into the park and over the tram tracks to the wonderful open lawns that lead into the grand gardens. We stopped along a lake to watch the geese while she snacked on a sandwich and I took some photos. We strolled and strolled, and stopped a few more times to collect acorns and pine cones.

I loved how these colors together reminded me of my trip this time last year to Paris. The exact colors were everywhere then.

Get outside! It’s so important especially during stressful times.

Later, we walked back towards Engelbosteler Damm (E-Damm) and her neighborhood and ran into her friend with two lovely dogs wearing quite cute sweaters. Gabi bought me a cappuccino to go, which meant a lot to me because I had forgotten my wallet at home. As various things caught my eye, I snapped a photo on my iPhone. It was easy and relaxed. I haven’t put pressure on myself to create a blog post or magazine article from our time together - I just randomly snapped photos for me, and for fun.

When I got back home, a funny thing happened.

Soup cafe where you can walk up to the window and buy one of about 5 different homemade soups.

Dollhouse I found in a run down shop window

Meeting furry friends with stylish sweaters on

The colors were vivid and beautiful, can you believe this wasn’t edited? No filter, I swear!

Contrast - proper church and “I can’t breathe” graffiti

You could ring the doorbell of this house on Thursdays to buy some fresh honey

Cafe Kopi for a mini cappuccino to go that was absolutely divine and gave me a boost

He had not only a lovely brown sweater, but a fantastic scarf

Found a little artist studio but cannot find the artist online, can someone help me? I am so curious if she has a blog, website or Insta….

Dried “velcro” along the lake, was so beautiful

Some lighting by Christel Bodo

More handmade things from her lovely studio

I looked at my camera roll and all of my photos had a red thread that I was absolutely not aware of as I shot photos. The same colors, and lots of texture, kept appearing as I swiped through each pic. It was quite fascinating to see how my brain is still wired to shoot “stories” as I do for magazines and books even though at the moment, I haven’t shot content for either since June.

It felt so wonderful to be able to capture some joie de vivre & whimsy by taking a vacation in my own city. I visited a small piece of Nordstadt, her part of our city here in Hannover, a place I rarely go outside of Engelbosteler Damm where I love to eat. Our time together was incredibly inspiring. It expanded my bubble and I felt like I gave oxygen back to my creativity. My mini-adventure snapped me out of my low mood and gave me great joy. The photos in this post are from this journey. I hope that it inspires you to go explore an unknown part of your city by foot (wear a mask!) and find some new inspirations. Perhaps it will restore your good spirit and creativity... Maybe it will expand your bubble world, too.

How To Travel Without Leaving Your City

1 / Decide which neighborhood you’d like to explore and have in mind at least 2 things you’d like to do there. Then leave the rest up to chance. Let yourself roam.

2 / Bring a good friend who is totally compatible with your likes and interests so that you can share the experience together and even share your visual documentation later on over coffee - it’s fun to share your photos with her and her photos with you. I love to do this because most of the time, my friend saw things that I completely missed, which makes the time even more special.

3 / Don’t plan on shopping. You don’t need bags to carry. You can shop at the end of the day, but save the earlier hours to be bag-free and to just explore and roam.

4 / Bring your camera or phone with you and only take snapshots of things that catch your eye, things that gave YOU an emotional response. Don’t take photos of what your friend is photographing UNLESS it’s also something you first spotted and wanted to include in this visual diary. The reason for this is that you want your impressions to be truly your own.

5 / Plan to spend 4-6 hours on your adventure. Roam streets you’ve never walked down. Pay attention to details.

6 / Don’t Instagram while you’re out and about. I know it’s tempting to do tons of videos and live sharing, but this can cloud the water - it can be a big creative distraction. I started my day with one video showing when we arrived to a beautiful park and then, I didn’t use Instagram again until I was home last night and was ready to share some of my photos. I liked having time while I was out to think about what I liked, versus wondering if what I was sharing was resonating with others. It’s nice to just not care and see what comes from that.

7 / You don’t have to ever show your photos to the internet. They can be purely for fun, for yourself, and that’s it. I went out with NO intention to share anything publicly. I just snapped photos as I saw things that gave me a feeling that was too hard to ignore. Later, when I was home looking through my photos, I saw a “red thread” or a consistency between the photos in color and texture - it was really beautiful to behold because it was purely intentional. After seeing how nice the photos looked, I then decided to share on Instagram and today here on my blog.

8/ Repeat this journey again and again until you have seen your whole city. We don’t know how long it will be before we can vacation to our favorite destinations again, so enjoy what you have and use this pause as a chance to get to know your locals, the small shops, the gardens and parks, and everything else you can find when you just stroll around and let yourself explore.

Love,

Holly