The Long Way Home Still Counts
The final stretch. From Freiburg northward, straight through familiar names and familiar stress: Karlsruhe, Frankfurt, Bad Hersfeld, Jena, Leipzig, and finally home. The whole A5, then the rest of the route I know by heart. Eight hundred kilometers. Rain forecast. End of school holidays. A long day was guaranteed. Traffic confirmed it immediately. The autobahn turned into one continuous ribbon …
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France, that’s Goodbye for now
The night was wet. Properly wet. Rain and thunderstorms swept over the meadow by the motorway, behind the strip of forest and the railway tracks. Cars hissed past in the dark, wind shook the tent, and sleep came in fragments. Still, by morning the sky had cleared to an improbable blue. Sunlight hit the fabric, steam rose gently, and the …
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Northbound, With Less Romance Than Planned
October 3rd began with wind. Proper wind. Stormy gusts that stayed with us all day, pushing grey clouds across the sky at speed. Eighteen degrees at best. Summer was officially no longer interested. We left Millau and pointed the car north, grateful that the motorway in this sparsely populated stretch was free, at least until somewhere around Clermont. A small …
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Almost the Sea, Eventually the Valley
The plan was to reach the sea one more time. At least in theory. First, we said goodbye to Moritz, the dog, who in the morning had very clear ideas about how the day should start. Mainly with throwing pinecones. Repeatedly. We complied, then left him behind and rolled down the valley, passing through small, friendly towns, steadily descending, steadily …
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Leaving the big catalan city, heading north
It was time to step away from the city routine and back onto the road. Northbound this time. Further south would have been tempting, originally even planned, but some ideas don’t survive contact with calendars. Not on this trip. Our next destination was Andorra. Getting out of Barcelona took about an hour, mostly because the city prefers farewells that involve …
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Down into france, slowly warming up
The sun reappeared, conveniently just as we crossed back into France. An interesting coincidence. At nearly 2,000 meters altitude, light broke through above the mountains, and then we began dropping fast. The road carried us downhill through grey, seemingly abandoned villages clinging to the slopes, steadily toward the valley. It was immediately warmer than Andorra, brighter too, and somehow more …
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Andorra, briefly and without illusions
Es war ein nahtloser Grenzübertritt. Außerhalb der EU schon über 3000 km sind wir gefahren. Das kleinste Land liegt im Tal links und Rechts Berge, Tankstellen, überall der Sprit ist wesentlich günstiger ein paar Häuser graues Wetter viele Menschen 20° warm aber nichts gegen die tollen spanischen Temperaturen, Werbetafeln, Einkaufszentren, nichts aufregendes und einladen des Tanczik Tourismus und aufgrund der …
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Barcelona, day two: stone and salt
After a day like yesterday, sleep came easily. Deep, uncomplicated. The kind that resets things properly. For today, the plan was simple and ambitious at the same time: Sagrada Família and the beach. Architecture and horizontality. Stone and salt. The basilica was easy to reach by metro. Barcelona’s underground system works smoothly, even if it feels louder and more cavernous …
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Grey morning, moving towards the big city
The sunrise never really showed up. It stayed hidden behind clouds, leaving the morning grey, damp, and slightly unfinished. Not what we had imagined the night before. When the sneezing started, we took it as a hint. We packed up and moved into the car. The angler nearby hadn’t caught anything either, which felt oddly reassuring. Still, the night had …
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Barcelona, with and without a camera
Sunday in Barcelona leaned heavily toward shopping. The weather helped, soft, inviting, and so did the fact that many shops were actually open. T-shirts, ashtrays, postcards, shirts, trousers, scarves. Everything distributed evenly across a dense labyrinth of streets. We wandered through it calmly, immune to most tourist offers, which felt like a small personal achievement. Somewhere along the way, we …
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nice one
Amazing pics
Sunrise and sunsets are probably the best-est of times to explore Hampi. It looks like a veritable lost world and…
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