Anna from European Chic doesn’t plan trips; she just shows up and talks to the locals. Each week I love the way the passions of the participants weave their way into Boarding Pass. Anna who documents interior design and inspiration in Europe through her blog clearly wasn’t lying when she said that architecture is her favorite thing to photograph. She’s currently off traveling in Warsaw, and I can’t help wonder what she’s capturing. Don’t forget to click the linked countries in her posts for some great shots around the world (oh, India…). Thanks, Anna!
last trip taken:
London, UK for a week to see friends. London has great museums and design shops and I try to see as many as I can.

next trip on deck:
South India. I’ve been to India before and adored it but never to the South. I heard that it is different from the North.

one place you would go back to again and again:
It is a tie between Italy and Germany! If you follow my blog you’ve noticed that I ‘have’ to go to each country at least four to five times a year. I know it’s a dirty job but someone’s gotta do it.

place you’d most likely recommend a friend go visit:
Besides visiting me in Paris, I’d recommend Mexico, Thailand and Turkey for the culture, design inspirations, beaches and the food. Those countries really inspired me design-wise.

preferred method of transportation:
Anything but mules like on some of the beautiful small Greek Islands with no cars we visited. [I also dislike] small planes, as it happened when we flew to an amazing resort on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Scary in both instances. In Paris I take the velib’ everywhere.

place you’ve never been but dying to go:
Japan. I love Japanese design and food and want to find out more about it.

place you’d never go back:
I went to Bosnia and Sarajevo right after the end of the war and it was a wild, wild ride. I had to change transport at each (newly established) border, got my passport carefully inspected and stamped and finally stranded in a tiny town with no hotel or hostel to stay… Remember, after the war there were landmines everywhere so you certainly wanted to stay ON the beaten path. I am sure things have changed in the meantime, though.

most memorable trip in 2 sentences or less:
Being invited for tea at a friend’s place in a township in Johannesburg, South Africa just as Apartheid had ended. It was so, well, normal, and I felt right at home.

how do you prepare for a trip?
I don’t. I just show up and talk to locals. It always gets me into very strange situations but off the beaten path. Luckily, speaking a couple of languages can be handy at times. I love to travel! More than three to four weeks in Paris and I start to feel a familiar itch. Oh, and I tend to travel light so packing takes 15 minutes tops.

how do you record your travels when you’re traveling?
Photos, photos, and more photos. And sometimes a travel diary.

what is your favorite thing to photograph in a new place?
The architecture.

on an average, how many pictures to you take on a trip?
Too many.

what’s in your “designer travel kit” ?
A camera and sometimes a travel diary.

what do you do after a trip? how long after a trip does this happen?
I write about some of my European trips on my blog. As to the second question; Well, have you seen any London photos on my blog yet? I am pretty organized about putting my photos into albums though and labeling them. It is so much fun to revisit a place I went to after many years.

favorite souvenir/thing to bring back?
Hey, I live in a Paris flat so I aim to bring stuff back that is actually useful for me or my friends. Whenever I go to Switzerland, for example, I have to buy local chocolate you wouldn’t find elsewhere and Swiss wine, of course. My weakness are foreign shelter magazines. I can never say no to an interior magazines. I tell myself they are for blog ‘research’.

blog: europeanchicdesign.blogspot.com

For more from Boarding Pass, check out the list of participants on the right.