the greatest idea.

am i really slow on the uptake for just now hearing about this website?

i had a borderline emotional reaction when i discovered “i found your camera”, because i sympathize very much with those whose cameras have yet to be found. 

during what my friend lindsay and i affectionately refer to has the W.T.E. (worst trip ever), we celebrated new year’s eve in salzburg and had a fabulous time.  we were dressed to the nines, laughed ‘til our sides hurt with hilarious friends at our austrian home away from home and counted down to midnight while standing on the snow-covered riverbank, a bottle of champagne in hand, yelling “Prost!” and “ein gutes neues Jahr!”.  in addition to our magical new year’s eve (and it really was magical, too – we got a free cheese pizza*!), we spent a few more nights of merriment in our favorite city on earth and had plenty of lovely photos and hilarious video footage to prove it. 

and then on january 3rd (which shall henceforth be known as ‘the beginning of the end’ or ‘the day we just shouldn’t have gotten out of bed’), we flew from munich to barcelona and then took an overnight train to the south of spain to visit a friend.  our train compartment was great – a little claustrophobic, but in a cozy sort of way.  lindsay and i chose 2 of the 4 beds provided in the compartment and went to sleep.

and somewhere between barcelona and granada, the camera was gone.

it should be known that we spent the majority of the next 48 hours pleading with renfe (the spanish rail company) to get our camera back, all to no avail.  we were told the camera was either a) in the grubby hands of a thief, b) being sold on ebay, c) a combination of both a + b, or d) or at the bottom of the renfe washing machine, had it been mistakenly collected with the bed sheets.  somehow, option ‘d’ was the most depressing.

if i sat down right now to construct a pie chart of the unforeseen catastrophes that made up our W.T.E., losing the camera would take up only 11% of said pie chart– there were that many other contributing factors, unfortunately.  maybe someday i’ll describe them in detail but i’ll have to wait ‘til the emotional scarring fades a little…which could take years.  i mean, this trip really debunked the whole “i’m the princess of european travel and i can go anywhere i want and isn’t it fun?!” myth for me, because sometimes – a lot of times, actually – traveling is an exhaustingly wretched nightmare (i told you this trip was emotionally scarring).

and that is why i recently spent a half hour relentlessly clicking through picture after picture on this site, expecting to see my face or lindsay’s.  and while my hopes were in vain, i do think the concept behind “i found your camera” is a fine one.  give it a look for yourself, if you have time.  it would be such a great feeling to identify a friend or acquaintance and spare them the turmoil of losing valuable memories, would it not?!

can you imagine how priceless this photo is?

and of course i love this one of salzburg’s mirabell gardens. 

 

*which we later discovered was not  even the slightest bit free.