The night was pretty cold and I didn’t sleep too much. It’s funny that I slept extremely well in (almost) all the 20 different beds during the last month but now – supposedly more tired than ever – I can’t sleep. Everyone started to leave around 7 in the morning so we stood up too. As Johanna’s packing skills still need some perfecting, we finally left around 8:15 after everyone else. We climbed the first 300 m and had breakfast next to a little chapel on the top. Today’s stage was a little longer than yesterday’s but much clearer too which is why we coped with it much better. After…

Sleeping hadn’t been as easy as expected and we started later than anyone else this morning after breakfast in the hostel. I also stopped by the post office to send half a kilo of food to a city aproximately 14 days from now. I had done this part of the Camino only two months ago which is why I knew the way pretty well already. It didn’t affect it’s beauty nor it’s toughness though. We had lunch at the Elorriaga Picknick Site after the first 15 km and met lots of other camino-walkers, many of which we had passed during the morning without noticing. It is fascinating how many people…

After a pretty long time of organizing, packing and repacking, we started at 9 this morning with much too heavy backpacks (mostly because of horrendous amounts of food). Our first stage of the Camino took us out of Donosti, 16 km up and along Ingeldo mountain to Orio, where we arrived perfectly in time for a busy sunday’s market on the square. The Camino welcomed us with very nice sunny but pretty cold weather. After lunch in Orio, we walked the last 5 km to Zarautz where we wanted to stay at the albergue of the campsite that I had used two years ago. It was closed permanently so we…

Here we are again. After a (too) short break at home, 4 days of family, friends, May-tour, Schwenker, nice houses, warm chimney fires, sun and rain, private beds and bathrooms, good family food and lots of love, I am back on the road, ready for the next part of my journey. This next month will be dedicated to walk the Camino de Santiago with my good friend Johanna. We set off this morning in 3°C and snow (!) from Luxemburg and flew for 4,5 hours to Lisbon. There we had a short moment of panic, thinking our connection flight was leaving 10 minutes after landing until we remembered time zones.…

Having my last breakfast at the Loft, I thought about this last month, the first month of my sabatical episode. I have been to 14 places in 8 countries in the last 29 days. I have had good days and less good days, no really bad days. I have hiked through wild landscapes and through big cities, gotten lost but always found my way. I have met many interesting and nice people, most of whom I will never see again and some of whom I would love to stay in touch with. There was Kostas the crazy and funny ex-ralley driver who had fallen in love a year ago and…

This morning, I made my last border-crossing and arrived at my last destination in this Balkan-month: Budapest in Hungary (actually not part of the Balkans anymore). I checked into the perfect hostel (Loft Hostel Budapest), with super nice staff, enormous living room and nice mixed guests. For the first time, check-in was not standing in my jacket at the reception but sitting down in the kitchen with a tea, getting lots of information about the city. After lunch, I climbed the upper town with its little streets and buildings with the typical, beautifully colorful roofs. From up there I also had a perfect view on the famous Parliament building on…

For some unidentified reason, I got up in a bad mood and in a completely disfuncional state today. When I had first arrived in Zagreb two days ago and had been trying to find out how to get a ticket for the tram, I had talked to a very nice girl who was an speleologist and had recommended me to visit a cave on Medvednitza mountain. The cave had turned out to be closed after some research but I had decided to climb that mountain anyway and visit the castle on top of it. So that was my plan for today. Switching between map, tram map and Google maps, I…

This summery day started with a nice breakfast together with fellow travelers in the hostel’s garden. Sun was shining, it was already really warm and it would get warmer during the day.I set off to explore the city and walked a while through residential area until reaching the center. Zagreb immediately amazed me. Without any prior expectations at all I found out that this capital is extremely lively and beautiful. Unlike the other Balkan capitals and even Athens, the whole Central is packed with beautiful old, impressive buildings in belle epoque -style, perfectly intact, colorful and spreading a very European aura. Walking across the center, finding every corner more astonishing…