One warm summer day in 2016 on our balcony in Munich we looked at the mountains and remembered our hiking trip on the Camino de Santiago from which we just returned.
Our trip was a great retreat. We did not only relax but were really “away”. On one hand, we enjoyed nature and on the other hand we had great conversations about everything and anything.
Three times on the Camino de Santiago for one week each
That hiking trip was not the first of its kind. In 2013, we walked the first part of the Camino de Santiago from our home (you are supposed to start the Camino at your doorstep) at the time, Kreuzlingen/Switzerland to Lake Lucerne.
The next stage was from Lake Lucerne to Fribourg, which we walked in 2015. We went for our final Swiss stage in 2016 and reached Genf by the end.
We really enjoyed our conversations, were thrilled about the nature – well, the entire experience was great and unique. So, we wanted more of that.
However, to get to Santiago de Compostela, we would need to use our vacations for the next 20 years. Additionally, it is much easier to walk from the fourth day onwards as the first days of hiking are always kind of a torment. Then we thought, why not walk the entire Camino at once. After calculating a bit, we would need approx. 3-4 month to cover the remaining 1,500-1,800 km.
When we started to consider the timeout for real, we started to think what else we would like to see and experience. And added more and more to our bucket list. At one point in our conversation it popped up that we could do an Europe roundtrip. Since we both outgrew hostels we had the idea of traveling in a motorhome.
That was, when the idea of “720 Days in Europe” was born.