Day 119 – A month at home

Since the Americans left and life went quiet around here, I’ve been quite lazy with writing my blog (and also with everything else, which made blogging useless anyway). But now that I am just about to start my next adventures, I think it’s time to give you an update of what I’ve been up to in this last month of blog-silence.

Two months of non-stop travelling, then coming home to my family and friends and a beautiful German summer, combined with outrageously expensive plane tickets to Norway, lead to my decision to cancel my original plan of travelling through Scandinavia and Eastern Europe during June and July. Being at home, made me feel so relaxed that I didn’t even feel too bad about it and settled down happily in my old room to spent the summer in our garden without moving too much. And that is basically what I did.

The last month has been mainly hot, sunny and dry; last week, a village right next to mine broke the German heat-record with 40.2 ºC in the shade and I could even spend a night outside sleeping in an hammock.

Even though my general activity level hasn’t been too high, I have maintained my physical fitness by going to the swimming pool every single day (with two exceptions) and independently from the weather, generally together with my mom. We had everything from 21º water temperature and 17º with rain outside to 26º in the water and sunny 38º outside and were completely alone in the pool more than once. Perfecting style and strength in swimming has been my way to compensate the little hiking I have been doing after finishing the Camino.

Of course, there have been some hiking trips anyway. Last week, Johanna and I couldn’t stand it anymore and went on a last hike together; we even started at 5 o’clock in the morning to avoid the heat, and walked 17 km before the swimming pool opened at 9.

On a different day, I made a special little hike with my mom, grandma and grand-aunt:

Then there was a family-bike-tour to the lake:

Apart from spending time with Johanna, there have been some meetups with my friends, including a beautiful wedding of two of my best friends this weekend.

Also, I spent two days working with my dad at the carpentry and a construction site and also did some work around the house.

The rest of the time – two weeks in total – I was with my grandparents in the city, spending my days mostly with eating, swimming, eating, painting, eating and playing games until late at night.

For me, all these things meant absolute relaxation and made me forget completely about any “normal life”, going back to how everything was when I was 17. I am almost starting to believe that I’m going back to school in August after the summer holidays.

Four month after quitting everything and starting my “gap period”, the ultimate inspiration of what to do with my life after August, where to live or *insert any other important question* is still missing. But there are still some planned activities ahead of me: Tomorrow morning, I will be heading to the Swiss Alps to do a 4-day high-mountain trek with my mom (and originally 3 other girls who have all chickened out / gotten sick or injured last-minute). Doing one high-mountain, only-women -tour a year is a tradition we started in 2004, that I missed several times since I moved out, then revived in 2016, then missed again, and that I am very happy to revive this year.
My plan is to continue blogging during the trip, even though I don’t know if I will be able to upload stuff every night because we will probably be far away from any mobile network.