July 2017

235 photos – Published on Oct 2, 2017

July was the month we started our journey from Croatia’s south back up north. Along the way we once again enjoyed the natural features of these countries, as well as the sights of their bigger cities: Dubrovnik, Split and Zagreb in Croatia, Ljubljana in Slovenia, and Munich in Germany. I was especially looking forward to those cities, because I wanted to shoot a bit of street again.

This is the entry with the most images so far – mostly due to ever-changing locations as well as shooting street photography again – and that’s why I divided this post into sub-sections, which you can navigate to directly:

Dubrovnik
Croatian Coast and Split
Zagreb
Ljubljana
Rest of Slovenia
Austria and Munich

Dubrovnik

What a unique and pretty city. The old town – with its old, steep and narrow streets and lanes – is built on a rock and surrounded by a huge city wall, which drops directly into the ocean on the southern side.

And it’s so popular with tourists, that it hardly feels authentic anymore. There are simply too many visitors for such a small area, that all originality seems lost. Almost like an amusement park. At least it felt like this while we were there.

Anyhow, let’s get started…

We arrived at 1pm and it was way too hot outside. So we decided to visit the air-conditioned War Photo Limited museum first. While this cooled our bodies, it inflamed our minds. Often human kind is so shit!

Mostly tourists roaming the streets. It’s a very pretty and unique town, but does not feel authentic at all.

Of course, we were two of those tourists ourselves. And we decided to walk around the old town on top of its city walls.

When I was little, my arms were able to do this as well. Not quite sure, if it was that extreme.

Found a rather hidden little restaurant. It was worth the wait.

The next day, Nicole flew back to Germany for another doctor’s appointment.

On the way back from the airport, I stopped for a while to watch planes arrive.

And then I went back into town, taking some more photos of tourists.

We were camping a few kilometres south of the city, and close by and easily accessible where four big abandoned and partly destroyed hotel buildings. They had lots of signs of the war that took place here in the early 90s. I went there one day and explored.

This could be heaven or this could be hell

Croatian Coast and Split

After Nicole’s return to Dubrovnik, we started our journey north. The first stop was a campground on the coast, so that we could enjoy a few days of beach life for one last time this year.

I only had colour film left for 35mm, and that’s why there are quite a bit of colour pictures coming up. But for beach photos, it fits quite well anyway.

It was a weekend, and so lots of locals joined all the campers. The beach was packed!

The traditional Croatian pig roast at the campsite’s restaurant.

Then we visited another popular town: Split. We didn’t plan to spend much time here and ended up only visiting for an afternoon plus dinner. A few impressions:

Zagreb

I was looking forward to visiting the capital city to be able to do more street photography again. While we only spent one afternoon and one morning in town, Zagreb proved to be very satisfying in this regard.

On arrival, I only had medium format films left, so I decided to give the Rolleiflex a serious try for shooting on the streets. And I had so much fun!

I shot a mixture of black and white films, but in terms of looks, I very much liked how the results turned out with Ilford FP4 Plus. I haven’t shot this film much in the past, but that’s going to change, I think.

Finishing a roll of colour film, picturing the Sava river.

He approached me, because he was excited to see someone photographing with an old film camera. We had a brief chat about photography and the increasing equalisation of cityscapes worldwide. Thanks, Stanko, it’s been a pleasure! And it turned out, he’s a bloody good and renowned photographer.

I noticed again that the Rollei seemed to be less threatening and obtrusive to people than a rangefinder or SLR. It’s probably due to the waist-level viewfinder or maybe even its vintage look. Not quite sure. But to me, it makes it more comfortable to take photos of strangers.

Bought some new b/w 35mm films, though, too.

It was still early enough to capture some market scenes

Ljubljana

Leaving Zagreb, it didn’t take long until we hit Slovenian roads. And we drove straight through to the country’s capital Ljubljana. I don’t have much to say, other than that we simply enjoyed this city.

Bird siege after eating a burek in public

I’d love to see how this selfie turned out!

We saw an ad for a Robert Capa exhibition by chance. Of course, we went. And it was absolutely amazing: lots of images and history, great presentation, and almost no one there.

Rest of Slovenia

After two cities in a row, it was time for some nature again. We first spent a few days at Lake Bohinj and its surrounding mountains, before driving to the other side of Triglav national park to visit the town Bovec. While you can go all crazy with adventure sports there, we took it easy and simply did a few-km roundtrip walk to a nearby waterfall and pool. As a bonus, I decided one morning to take a cable car up into the mountains.

The next day: roundtrip to a waterfall and pool

Said waterfall with pool. Took a very refreshing dip in here.

Haven’t seen a ghetto blaster in a while

The cable car I was going to take the next morning…

7am. The big dude was handling the cabins.

It took 45 Mins or so to get from 480m up to 2600m

Did a little hike to this hole, which is right on the border to Italy.

We drove on, over a mountain pass, offering some spectacular views along the way! That’s Nicole in the middle bottom of the frame.

And this wraps up our relatively short time in this nice country.

Austria and Munich

Austria was just a little stopover before our visit to Munich in Germany.

Worrying about some problem with the injection system.

Got it fixed right away. Wasn’t too big a deal.

We did the only reasonable thing in this weather: visiting museums.

The Deutsches Museum’s famous Faraday cage demonstration

After the museum visits, Nicole slipped on a wet metal surface and fell. She was fine, but we wanted to get her pregnancy checked. It turned out to be all ok. But she had to stay at the hospital overnight.

While Nicole was resting, I went for a photowalk during our extra day in town.

Only one person is wearing a safety helmet

On the way up north, we visited my uncle and his family in Würzburg

That’s all, folks!