SNAPSHOTS

snapshots - the BOOK
WORK IN PROGRESS!!

The concept of our book: a compact album with portraits of people we met on our way and with stories, they told us. Stories about heimat, and stories about mountains, losses, healing and traveling, about a fire and planting trees, about freedom, love and emigration.

At the moment we are working on the book design and we are experimenting with different formats, image alignments and fonts. Meanwhile we also put the final touches to the text.

EXPECTED PUBLICATION DATE: MARCH 2015!

Dear Friends, Family, Colleagues, anonymous Contributors and all of You who supported us!

With Your help, we have made it! The first stage of our Project is successful: 100 days of crowdfunding at crowdify.net!
Thank You very, very much for Your generous support!

In the meantime we got in the saddles, rode over 1000km and let the snapshots cross paths with us to see what stories we will hear. Whom we are meeeting, is exciting, sometimes surprising.
We have met expats, cheesemakers, Québecois, cyclists, people travelling in Tibet, the healed, and heard all kinds of stories about culinary art, hunting, finances, animals, speed, wanderlust, independence and Heimat...

Snapshots. Stories about heimat. THANK YOU!

Natalie & Piotr

News from the trip and many thanks for the support!

After the roundtrip Toronto-Detroit-Chicago-New York-Toronto we are finally on our way to the east coast of Canada, where in two weeks we will start our journey on two wheels. Spring is still really shy, and when we look out of the train window there are only bare-branched trees and a snow blanket existing out there in a persistent way. Nevertheless, yesterday we went with our host Paul for a short bike ride in the Don River Valley in Toronto and today we biked 8km to the train station. We cannot wait to start our journey, no matter if there is spring or not!

We will be staying two weeks on the east coast with Wwoofing-Hosts (www.wwoof.ca), in the vicinity of Halifax and will be helping with the refurbishment of their Inn. Around 10th of April we will back in the saddles and will start our journey across Canada.

We would like to thank again all the supporters and boosters. Thank you very, very much! Thanks to your help our project has made a huge leap towards a successful end. 75,5% of the costs has been already financed. And there are still 39 days to go...

Many thanks to all our anonymous Supporters and to
Yooji's
Mario
Lukas
Malwina
Wojtek & Gosia
Cornelia
Zofia
Carla
Han
Steffi
Agi
Fabienne
Edyta & Wojtek
Chelsea
+ of course our Families


Photo: At the Don River Valley with Paul

100 Days, 50 days, Snapshots!

Today is the day, we have reached the half time!
50 days of our 100 Days are behind us and another 50 still ahead. A bit more than a half of the project is financed!

To all of those who supported us up to this moment in a moral or financial way:
Thank You Very Much!

Since two weeks we are underway on the Great Continent: Toronto – Detroit – Chicago. Not yet on the bikes, it is simply too cold and icy. People say it is the worst winter since 20 years...Nevertheless we have already heard some stories and collected a certain amount of snapshots. Particularly in multicultural places like Toronto and Chicago we are told about home, nostalgia or wanderlust. It is so exciting how much we have heard in such a short time – in other words, Snapshots Stories About Heimat is emerging! According to the weather forecast we should be able to continue our trip on bicycles in the beginning of April. It is then, on the east coast in Halifax, when we will start our journey across Canada.

With the beginning of our trip on two wheels we will enter the last phase of the 100 Days financing.
Already now, in the middle of it, we know that the second half is a real challenge – just like in a marathon.
We hope we can activate all strengths once again and reach our goal.

Support us please on this last Crowdify stretch!
Any kind of donation or support counts and helps us to realize the Book Project.

You can also help a lot just by recommending or forwarding informations about our project to your friends and families, promote it in any way or simply liking it on Facebook.

Many thanks for Your support!

Natalie & Piotr

“SNAPSHOTS stories about heimat” is a book about places and people who live there. A book about people, who are telling stories from their homeland. A book full of stories, anecdotes, snapshots and portraits.

STORIES ABOUT HEIMAT
We will be collecting stories during our one-year bike trip through North America. We will be meeting the narrators by accident, spontaneously. At places where they live, work, places they call homeland. We want to hear their stories, why they stayed there, came back, or why they want to leave. What binds them with that particular place.
We are here today, tomorrow already there. Each encounter is a moment in time, a snapshot. No tourist guide, no history book tells us more about the people and the country.
“SNAPSHOTS stories about heimat” is no travelogue. In fact it is a mosaic made of various encounters, moments and soundtracks collected along the way. An assemblage of stories put together into saturated narration.

STORYTELLING
Storytelling is a key element of our project. During our past travels we have learned that people, often spontaneously, have been telling us stories and in that poetic manner we have been able to find a lot about places we have had visited.
For us a particular charm of storytelling is that every story is personal and subjective. It does not matter if what is being told is factual, exaggerated, politically or historically correct. We simply want to listen and to relay it in our book.
The Storytelling will be happening spontaneously. We will just create a space for the narration, perhaps an offer of a simple meal and invitation to the table. We will sit together and wait for what will be told.

THE TEXT AND THE IMAGE
For the project we will make use of our skills. Natalie, a cultural scientist, who is into writing, will be collecting stories. Piotr, an architect and photographer will be making portraits, landscapes and snapshots, as the case may be. What will be heard and seen is to be processed into concise profiles made of text and image in form of a book.

AT THE END COMES THE BOOK
The goal of our project is a high quality, nonfiction book. It is oriented towards anyone who likes albums, is afflicted with wanderlust, or the opposite: homesickness. Who is interested in the literature about Canada and North America. Or simply has preference for travel literature.
The first and the most time-consuming step towards the book is formulation of the content: writing texts, photographing and photo editing.
The next step (at the end of our journey, around December 2014) is to develop a draft version of the book in collaboration with an editor. After that comes the copy-editing and translations, if need be.
During the project runtime (until February 2015) we will be looking for a suitable publisher. It is considered optionally to issue the book independently by book-on-demand service.

FINANCING THE PROJECT
Financing through the website crowdify.net is meant to cover the expenses of the elaboration and compilation of the content. This includes the processing and digitalisation of the stories, selecting and editing the photographs, designing the layout of the book, copy-editing, translations and communication with editorial offices.
The target cost of 3500 Swiss Francs will cover the expenses of our work on the content (workplace, internet, gear), cooperation with specialists (graphic design, layout, translation, communication) and the test print.