Munich to Venice by foot

In the summer 2008 I attempted to walk from Munich to Venice, using an old cross country hiking trail, the “Traumpfad“. Unfortunately I was stopped by early snow just before the Italian boarder. The following are some thoughts two years down the road.

“We seem to gain wisdom more readily through our failures than through our successes. We always think of failure as the antithesis of success, but it isn’t. Success often lies just the other side of failure.” Leo F. Buscaglia

After I lost the summer of 2008 to my new workplace, I decided to make the most of 2009. I had just returned from a solo bike ride to Russia. It was an amazing trip but my university was not to start for another month, so I decided to get myself a train ticket and go for a long walk.

On my feet life seemed even more simplistic than in a bike saddle. The scenery passed by even slower and I found a lot of time to let my mind wonder. Walking through my home country gave me a sense of security and communication was not a problem anymore. However, the beauty of the Alps had a sweat bitterness about it. The dying thoughts of Christopher McCandless kept popping into my head, “Happiness only real when shared”, and I felt lonely.

I continued my journey though Austria. I had been waking about 15 kilometre further than the daily recommendations of my guide book in the hope to complete the hike in time before university would start again. However, things started turning more and more grim. It had been raining three days in a row and I even managed to get snowed in crossing a mountain path. The time pressure, my cold feet, bad preparation and general physical wear down started pushing my limits. But most importantly I had enough of being by myself and I truly realised how much I loved my family and friends around, and how much I needed them. If you want to know how I felt go to a restaurant by yourself, without the destructions of a book or a TV playing, and see if you enjoy your meal the same as with a group of good friends and loved once. I had enough of lonely dinners, enough of beautiful sunsets with no one to share them with, enough of listening to my own jokes and enough of secluding myself. I was ready to fully appreciate human contact again, and with one of my most important lessons learned I left the mountains, catched a train to my friends in Zurich and spend the rest of my time with them.

I think I enjoy being around people more than ever before, in good and bad times. And with this in mind, the failure of this adventure turned into one of my most successful lesions.