Until We Travel

This month I participated in a new field recording project called Until We Travel. It's goal is to analyze the sounds of traveling during the Covid-19 pandemic. The atmosphere was recorded on Friday morning at Autobuska stanica Kragujevac (main bus station). Friday is usually the busiest day of the week in Kragujevac, students are going home for the weekend, people travel for a short 3-day holiday, especially now in March for skiing. But, today is a day before the partial lockdown. On Saturday and Sunday only food stores, gas stations and pharmacies will work. Everything else will be closed - restaurants, mountain resorts, cinemas, shopping malls, schools... People have to stay at home. It will be a rainy weekend so no one travels for a nature trip neither. Only two buses were at the station, both with engines running on idle, which could be heard on recording. Few people are waiting for their buses, it is very quiet and scary. 10 years ago when I was studying in another city and traveling back home on Fridays for the weekend the situation was so much different. Endless lines of people waiting for their buses, noise, engine loudness, crowd talking. This atmosphere was recorded with Shure VP88 microphone and Sound Devices MixPre 6 II recorded, 32 bit 192 kHz. Below is the project description written by the project creator:

Almost a year has passed since the first global Covid-19 lockdowns, and the world of travel changed completely for us all. Until We Travel is the biggest ever showcase of the sounds of travel from all over the world. From the roar of aircraft engines to the hubbub of a busy railway station, the project functions as both a record of how much the sounds of our world have changed in the past 12 months, and a celebration of a potential return to a world in which we’re able to travel to new places and visit and connect with loved ones once again. We’re looking for artists all over the world to remix and reimagine the sounds of travel, using their own experiences, memories and emotional responses to travelling (especially in the current times) as inspiration. We have a database of travel sounds from all over the world ready to be recomposed, ranging from crowds gathering pre-pandemic in the world’s airports and train stations to the visceral, kinetic sounds of travel themselves – and sounds demonstrating how Covid-19 has changed how we travel in the present day. 

https://citiesandmemory.com/travel/