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Wednesday, October 6, 2021

A lot can change in 64 years!

I've mentioned before that my father did two fairly long trips to Europe in the 1950's. The first in 1954, and the second in 1957. He was an avid photographer and took a lot of slide photos from those trips. Ruth has scanned them all and we have them on our laptops. 

Regular readers might remember that we have in the past made a game out of trying to match up some of those photos by trying to stand in exactly the same spot that my dad might have stood many years ago. 

As an example, here is a post we did in Morocco in 2017 where we managed to recreate a couple of photos.

Yesterday, we managed to find a few more. He was fairly detailed in writing descriptions of what the photos were of and where they were taken. But sometimes it's still difficult to match them up because a lot can change in 64 years!

Our route was taking us right by Chiemsee Lake and the village of Feldwies where my dad had stayed for a couple of nights in July 1957. 

When he was there, he had nicer weather! The lake photo he took was much nicer than the one we managed because it was overcast and we couldn't see the mountains!

1957.

An overcast 2021.
Too bad we couldn't see the mountains.

From there, we drove down just south of Übersee where there was a possible free overnight spot at some tennis courts. We parked there and walked back to Feldwies. We were overdue for some exercise and managed to put on almost 10 kms (6 miles) looking for the other photo locations. We stopped in at the tourist office and they were quite helpful when we showed them the photos. One lady had lived there her whole life and she was pretty quick in being able to point out where some of the photos had been taken.

1957.

Some things have changed a lot. This first photo was really difficult to recreate because I just couldn't stand in the same spot. Also, trees and hedges and shrubs have grown and been planted or removed. It's also difficult because sometimes he may have stood further away and we don't know what focal length of lens he might have used.

!
This hedge was not there in 1957!

I tried from the other side of the hedge, but I was pretty much in someone's yard!

We had a difficult time finding this house because there were quite a few similar.

It has changed quite a lot!

This is the main village pub.

2021.

A typical house in the area in 1957.

The same house... 64 years later.

The May pole is no longer at this location.

But we did find the same house.

And it was easy to find the May pole but it's in a different location.

So that was fun. We really enjoy doing this, and we've got so many more of his photo spots to find.

Here are the other photos we took yesterday...

Scenery along the way.

Marina at Chiemsee Lake. 

Horses painted on the side of this building.

Ruth, searching the shoreline for the best location to recreate the photo.

We wandered over to look at the Übersee church.

Unfortunately it was locked.
We've heard that the interior of some Bavarian churches can be interesting.

Ruth, looking at Oktoberfest clothing.

More scenery.

This house was really pretty.

This woman helped us find some of the locations.

Übersee is a nice enough spot.

But we didn't stay. Where we had parked would have been fine for an overnight, but it was just a parking lot. Our friends Steve and Glen had carried on another half hour to the town of Piding at the Austria border where they had found a spot in the forest, and they sent a message back with the GPS coordinates so when we were done with our photo hunting we carried on to meet up with them.


Scenery along the way.

More scenery.

Max, parked up at GPS 47.761446, 12.891155

Louis, and Max.

We had Glen and Steve over for dinner and we played a few rounds of euchre.

Steve, Glen, and Kevin.

It was a steady rain overnight, and it's supposed to rain all day today and tomorrow. Too bad, because there are a lot of hiking trails in the area and we are right at the Austria border so the scenery would have been fantastic. Too bad. But, the only thing you can change about the weather is your attitude towards it! So, we might go out for a hike anyhow. Glen and Steve have gone into the town this morning and they will report back if they find a decent overnight spot.

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18 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Thank you Connie and Barry, we had fun doing it. :-)

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  2. Thanks for sharing. I love the photos

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    Replies
    1. We are glad that you enjoyed the photos! :-)

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  3. Such fun recreating the photos, and I love all the decorative buildings! Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It is a fun project and we look forward to doing more pictures in the future.

      The buildings really are lovely here, they have lots of character and some pretty architectural elements.

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  4. Love the "then and now" photos. Your dad would be pleased!

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    Replies
    1. Thank you and yes, we think he would very pleased with what we are doing. :-)

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  5. I had just as much fun matching up the 1957 photos to 2021. People don't take the time to take photos of beautiful homes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It is definitely a fun project matching up the photos and seeing the changes over those 64 years.

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  6. I love the matched photos! Good job and what fun too. Glen must be short for Glenda, or else it's an awfully pretty man. Lol! That must have been a fun reunion.

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    1. We are so glad that you enjoyed looking at the matched photos, we had a good time hunting down the locations.

      Glen is actually short for Glenys in her situation and she really doesn't like that name so she just prefers to go by Glen. And yes, it was a fun reunion. We had lots to talk about with lots of laughs and a whole pile of card playing. :-)

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  7. We really enjoy the "then and now" photos. It looks like your dad had a good camera!

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    Replies
    1. We are happy that you enjoyed the photos. Hopefully we will have a few more to match up before we leave Austria. Yes, it must have been a decent camera that he had.

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  8. Interesting that the scans of the slides have such saturated colours compared with the present digital photo's.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Slides don't normally hold their colours well over the years, plus the technology has probably change a bit as well when it comes to developing slides. Also the slide scanner that I used is about 10 years old and is not the best quality so I am sure the scanning doesn't help either.

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  9. What a fun rewarding activity of matching the photos.

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    Replies
    1. It really was and we are looking forward to hopefully matching up a few more while we are going through Austria.

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