Summer Plans

Since before coming over to Germany I've been planning to do a lot of traveling this summer. The travel agency that Fulbright set us all up with, STA Travel, lets you book a return ticket pretty much anytime you like so long as it's within 365 days of your flight to Germany, so I've got my return set for August 30'th. From June 3rd to August 30'th I'll be on the proverbial road: eight-and-a-half weeks out in the world. The planning for all of it has been a little stressful, especially considering the fact that I'm planning and doing everything pretty much 100% solo, as opposed to my last backpacking trip when I was traveling with my friend Alex from the Berlin program, but I am unbelievably stoked to be doing it! I've worked up a really excellent itinerary so far, and while it's not completely set in stone just yet, I'll share the rough outline of what everything is shaping up to look like:

PART ONE: For the first week and a half of July I will, as the famous Lonely Island refrain goes, literally be on a boat. A little while ago one of the other Fulbrighters in Kiel who's really into the sailing scene up there put up a link to this website. The organization, ELSA (English Learning Sailing Adventures), now in its second year, does English learning sailing trips for German students. Essentially you jump on board a ship, learn how to sail, and get two hours of English instruction per day. This, of course, struck me as an amazingly cool opportunity, and I sent the guy who runs everything an email asking if I could come aboard and work. Not only did I get a spot on the trip, but in exchange for teaching I get the whole thing for free! So from the 4'th of July to the 13'th I'll be on the Gulden Leeuw (Dutch for Golden Lion). We're departing from Kiel, sailing up through Denmark, and then setting out westward on the North Sea, ending in Aberdeen, Scotland. Not a bad way to start things off!

PART TWO: I'll disembark in Aberdeen, and meet up with my girlfriend Jessie. She's staying in Germany for a couple weeks after our grant period ends, so before she flies back to the US we'll meet up and travel in Scotland for a few days. We'll be spending one night in Aberdeen and two in Edinburgh. After that she'll fly back and I'll be riding the rails for about a week-and-a-half. This part of the trip is still a little vague, and I've got several options I've been thinking of:

1) The first is a trip up to the Isle of Skye, one of the islands in northern Scotland. I've been looking at pictures and reading descriptions of the rock formations and castles and mountains and hiking trails up there, and it looks like such a unique, fascinating place. In the last stage of the journey (more on that in a bit) I'm going to be doing a ton of hiking, so hiking around the Isle of Skye would be a good way to warm up. If I take this option I'd probably spend a few days up on the island and travel further in Scotland afterwards.

2) The second option would be to spend a lot of time in Ireland, which is endlessly recommended to me every time I talk about traveling in Europe. Everyone says to get out to the coast and to check out the rural parts of Ireland, and I would really love to get out and experience that. Nature is something I've seen very little of, having lived in the second largest city in Germany for ten months now, so it sounds particularly appealing to get out into some of the more remote parts of the island. I was talking to one of my friends last night, Marie Eve, who traveled there a little while ago, and she said she'd never seen such green grass or an ocean quite that color in her life. Out of all the places she's ever traveled to in Europe she said Ireland was her favorite--a solid recommendation if I've ever heard one.

3) Another option is to visit my former roommate Loic in Cambridge, in the south of England, for a day or so. He's been working at a language school there for a year or two, and he'll be there over the summer before going back to school in the fall. It was a fabulous time living with him over the course of the year (living with good roommates is such an important part of feeling at home in a place), and it hardly seems right to be in the area and not visit him. The only thing is that he's incredibly busy when he's down there, so it may not end up that I get to see very much of him if I visit. But we'll see how it turns out.

PART THREE: The final stretch of the trip, and in a lot of ways the one I'm looking forward to the most, is something called the Camino de Santiago in Spain. The Camino is an ancient pilgrim's path in northern Spain, which runs from St. Jean Pied de Port in the French Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela in the northwest corner of Spain. The path runs all the way along Spain lengthwise, and it is about 800 kilometers in total. Here's a map of the route so you can get an idea of what it looks like. A while ago one of the girls who was in IC Voicestream with me, KC Englander, did a documentary on the Camino, where she traveled along the route with a film crew and documented the experiences of the people walking it. You can visit the website for the documentary here and check out the trailer for the film (as yet uncompleted) here. At the time I thought it would be an amazing thing to do, but forgot about it until yet another ICVSer, Shannon, walked part of it a few weeks ago.

It is going to be very intense: five straight weeks of walking 25+ kilometers a day (16+ miles), but it appeals to me for a lot of reasons. Firstly, it's just a damn cool thing to do. Countless tens of thousands have done a European rail journey (including me!), but there's something special about doing a hike like this. Out in the wilderness, taking my time, seeing a part of Europe that few people get to experience, it's a very unique opportunity. I've been looking at photos and watching videos and reading up on it, and it looks so staggeringly beautiful in places.

Secondly, there's a simplicity to it that I wouldn't get if I traveled somewhere else. One of the worst things about traveling in Europe, ESPECIALLY during the summer, is the maddening logistics of it all. Where am I going? What am I going to see? How long am I staying? Where am I going to stay? How much does it cost? Where am I going after that? Am I missing out on something by traveling to destination X instead of destination Y? Ad nauseum. Not only do you have to make an endless series of very complex decisions while trying to enjoy the trip at the same time, but you're almost competing with the other tourists around you while you're doing it. In 2009 I wanted to travel to Stockholm, and I couldn't find a single hostel with a free bed in the whole city, and this is the capitol of Sweden we're talking about. EVERYWHERE was literally booked for weeks in advance. On the Camino, though, there are special hostels for pilgrims called Aubergines. You show up, pay a very small sum (7-10 Euros usually), stay one night, and they kick you out at 8 AM so they can serve the next round of hikers coming through. The path is predetermined, the accommodations bountiful and inexpensive, and the only schedule I have to worry about is my own walking pace.

And finally, it's seeming more and more like a really special, significant way to end this year. I've undergone so many changes and experienced so much over the past ten months, and this summer is likely going to be...let's change that, definitely going to be one of the most significant and memorable things I ever do with my life. Even if I'm not doing the pilgrimage for religious reasons, there's a strong symbolism with walking a path to a final destination, something loaded with meaning and hundreds of years of history. It seems like the appropriate way to end my year in Europe: one final journey before I finally pack my bags, get on a plane and say goodbye to this place. Everybody walks the Camino for a different reason, and mine will be to give this year closure and bring it to an end.


So that's the plan! As is the case with all things, the details will endlessly reorganize and shift and switch around until I'm actually on the road doing it, but for now this is the mostly finalized form.

I. can. not. wait.