Hello Intermaggio,
Congratulations on your traveling and on being brave enough to ask for commentary. After reading the post you linked, here are some of my most brutal thoughts (brace yourself, I'm a big meanie when I review someone's writing):
- My main concern is that the piece doesn't flow particularly well. I understand it's chronological and true to your experience, but for me as a stranger, the events are a bit staccato. Perhaps this is because you've tried to describe a journey of a few days in a short article? I feel like this article is either too long (and should be broken up into shorter, more focused bits), or too short (and needs a lot more detail and linking between the different events).
- I haven't ever been to the part of the world you describe, and I don't feel like your piece transported me there mentally. I'm a very visual person (and so are lots of other people); could you include your photography in the post? Or a map? As a reader, I need a reason to care about the places you're describing. Perhaps, since you end the piece musing about history, you could include more history at the beginning? If your goal is to earn money with a travel blog, you need to hook the reader into lusting after travel as well (specifically, lusting after your travel experiences), and you can do this by describing the places you're visiting vividly and evocatively.
- Choose a tense and stick with it. I'm very guilty of breaking this rule, so I know it can be hard when you're drafting a piece to decide how you want to remember past events, but be sure to go back and make sure it all fits. (I'm specifically referring to this sentence "Our first stop would be for lunch in the Austrian city Velden, where I would order a full rack of ribs for myself" which sounded off to me.)
- I didn't like so much the bits about food. While of course food is a important part of any trip, I feel like you either talked about it too much (it wasn't really related to the other parts of the story), or not enough (if I am a foodie, I want to know what it tasted like, or see pictures, or get recipes, or learn about why that food fit that place or those people). I love peanut butter and banana too, but that was a terrible ending: it felt out of place and sudden, like you suddenly changed your tone after the previous dreamy paragraph, and then stopped midway through a scene. So confusing.
- Tell me more about the free accommodation! Or tell me more about the waterfall, which you said was the "centerpiece" and yet didn't talk about why you like it so much. Or tell me more about all your hosts, because meeting interesting people is one reason we all travel, and everyone has quirks that make for good "characters" in writing (my friends all get funny nicknames to describe them and preserve their privacy). Or point out some lessons you learned from this trip that other travelers would find useful (e.g., don't eat a big meal in a small car, waterfalls are awesome, English isn't necessary to commune with ghosts, etc).
- I like the musing, slightly ghost-like paragraph about the tower. I like your casual tone, and I like your mild humor. Keep at it!
I would potentially read more posts from you, but obviously I'm hoping your writing will get a bit more.... oomph. I wouldn't tell a friend, but I hardly ever share blogs with friends, so that's not you, it me. :) The descriptions work and I got some vivid images, but I think you can make them more cohesive and/or punchier.
The best way to develop a strong writing voice is to keep writing, so if you don't agree with my brutal (but hopefully constructive) criticism, just keep writing and prove me wrong. ;)