Today is the 111th day of my journey to and through southern Europe. More precisely: our journey. Hilka, my faithful Labrador-she-dog, has accompanied me the whole way. Many people we encountered first approached her, spoke to her, petted her, encouraged her before talking to me. The goal of the journey was to take a view from the road on the countries most affected by the Euro crisis – France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece -, to personally meet the people and to get their view, their opinion on Europe. So nearly everyone I met on the street, while hitchhiking or in the train I asked the question: What do you think about Europe? And time and again I was surprised and impressed how clear-sightedly they answered.
The Europe I got to know on this journey fundamentally differs from that Europe that politics and media generally present us. I write about this in my travel stories. Some of them are already published in this journal under subscription and so far only in German language.
With Thessalonike I have reached the final city on my way through southern Europe. From here I want to find my way back to Germany without any bigger stops. I just bought at the train station of Thessaloniki a ticket for Hilka and me to Belgrad. From there I will try to get a train to Vienna.
On paper, however, the journey is far from being finished. There we just arrived in Murgia, a village in Spain. Everything shall be brought in the right form. Moreover, it was a big challange, too, to proceed with the normal programme of this journal while travelling. Apart from the volume of work this challange was also of logistical nature, since enquiry and publishing need always a good internet access. However, also this could be successfully managed during the whole tour, thus, analysis and opinion did not fall behind.
Hence, now I have to find my way back home and to finish the journey on paper, too. Perhaps I can find a good publisher for this, too, to make a book out of it. I will try. This journey, I wrote yesterday to a well known economist in a short correspondence, “perhaps led me still just in time finding my way through a borderless and peaceful Europe”. Since we all cannot know how far politics and media in Europe still go. Only one thing is clear I think: the limit of economic and social impositions is already exceeded long ago. The more great it is, that most people I met showed me how a different, a peaceable, amicable, human Europe can look like.
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